What else do you want Cortana to help you with?

[Reflexx]

I think Cortana should do Microsoft PR.

Whenever MS wants to give some insight or reasoning behind a decision or a strategy, they normally go to their blogs. They might put it on a podcast. They might have someone do an AMA. They might give a press release.

What I think MS should do is record Jen Taylor giving responses to common questions about MS products and services. New and upcoming products. MS events. Common problems. FAQ. Etc...

 

[rapitt]

I set one of my interests as political news when I first set up Cortana. I removed that interest today because I did not want a diet of political headlines fed to me via Cortana of nothing but Fox news. I would like to select the news source if Cortana can only provide political news from Fox. The last place I go for political news is Fox.

 

[perbear]

First of all be universal. First question at start up should of course be In what language do you want me to henceforth communicate? Also possible to change that later in the settings. Then as a final touch the question What would you like to call me? (in your preferred language and also changeable in settings).

 

[Rushab Chopra]

I just want her to call me by my name :/

 

[NaatakCompany]

It'd be great if Cortana recorded conversations/calls if asked to.

 

[Longstone]

I want Cortana to allow for customized automation rules - things like:
- Turn off my security pin-code when I am at home;
- Do not activate Quiet Hours if I am not at home;
- Turn on my rewards card app and open to that particular rewards card whenever I arrive at my grocery store;
- Open driving mode and start my GPS app when I get in the car and connect to my bluetooth;
- Turn off my pin-code when I am driving so I don't have to actually type on the phone to unlock it;
- Set certain brightness settings when I have a game or my Kindle app open and active;
- Silence my phone when I have a movie event listed on my calendar and I am located at that theater's GPS coordinates.
- Silence my phone and auto-respond to phone calls with an away message when I am at the office and have a calendar event titled "Client Meeting."

This is the type of functionality I'm looking for. Finding local move times would be great to.

Instead of focusing on one specific thing how hard is it to look at the most downloaded and used apps and attempt to build their functionality in? I mean that type of analytic information will tell you what people want.

 

[PurpleHippo587]

This is more for fun than functionality, I want to be able to ask her to sing a specific song.... For example "Cortana, sing Counting Stars" It'd just be something to show all my iPhone friends that my phone is better... And yes, they would probably need Jen to sing this beforehand, so the songs would be pretty limited...

 

[Kevin Grigsby]

I would love to say "Set speech settings to Always On" or "Turn off speech settings" I know I can say "Launch speech settings" and that works, but I still have to interact with the phone.

Not to mention if I ever say "Cortana ..." it should never give me a list of web pages that I can go to since she didn't realize exactly what I was asking for. Perhaps say "Can you rephrase the question" or "I do not know, here are some links." Meaning just like if you type into cortana, it will not audibly respond. But if I say Cortana, it should always audibly respond no matter what the result.

 

[teemulehtinen]

I would like the following for starters:

- Full integration of favourites and collections from Here maps instead of MSFT maps since I use the former, not the latter.
- Travel and flight tracking to be included in the calendar and access with one click to a hub that includes all trip related data (hotel reservations for the dates of travel, car rentals etc.).
- As said earlier, possibility to track parcels with UPS, DHL and postal services globally.
- Possibility to dictate longer emails and messages with punctuation.
- Possibility to choose news and other information on basis of geographical preference (just as weather is local)
- Inclusion of Bing vision (bar code scanner) directly to Cortana without having to go through camera, lenses...

For starters, these would be nice and useful.

 

[EssThree]

I have a couple of things:

1. Speech activation with something like "Hey Cortana...". with current Windows Phones using the Snapdragon 800 this should be possible from lock, yes?
2. Failing that, having one of the hardware keys unlock the phone and jump into Cortana WITHOUT having to unlock the phone THEN hold the search key.
3. Wider variety of commands: turn on/off cell data, tell me the time, etc.
4. Tell me who is calling when connected to bluetooth/headset and ask me if I want to answer.
5. Dictation everywhere via voice (like saying "Post on Facebook Traffic is bad on the highway, try to avoid it guys!" and then she opens Facebook, writes the post and then asks for confirmation).
6. Less reliance on Bing searches that I have to look at, and more talking about the results.
7. Options to choose metric or imperial (I have my weather app set to metric but the weather posts in her app say them in imperial).
8. Read all incoming messages, not just texts. Be able to voice send messages via any service (like Facebook messenger) rather than just text.
9. Same with emails.
10. A command list so I'm not accidentally doing searches on bing all the time by testing out commands.

There was one other one that I wanted to say but I can't remember it, so I'll come back when I do. But yeah, there's a lot of things I want her to be able to do!

 

[iyae]

Silence my phone and auto-respond to phone calls with an away message when I am at the office and have a calendar event titled "Client Meeting."

It already puts the phone in quiet mode when you have meetings in your calendar. Love that. I agree more customisation for that would be awesome.

 

[tejedor1967]

Read and take SMS, facebook messages, tweets, emails and WHATSAPP using the voice... while driving.

I could read and send facebook messages before using the voice. Now with 8.1 I can't even don't activating Cortana.

 

[T Moore]

Play an alarm when text messages are received from selected contacts.

 

[docsp2]

Dictate EMails, Play Songs, Search Bing.

 

[Cheewii Poon]

"Cortana, find me the picture I took of my drunk friend kissing a stray dog and send it to him."

 

[Mridul Arya]

I would like Cortana to plan trips or itineraries.
For example, I'm in Bombay and I say "take me to New York" or "how to get to London", I want to be able to get options for the commute. Like, a cab to the airport, available flight times and then a cab from the airport to a hotel for when I get there.

 

[chandy227]

These things

Have her use the camera to "see" surroundings and help. Similar to City Lens – Cortana Feedback

Know the location of big events – Cortana Feedback

 

[Liam Perry]

It would be great if:
a.) Cortana had access to public transit information ie. "When is the next train to university?" Or "how long until the next tram arrives?"
b.) If she could print files for me.
c.) Contextually aware calendar ie. "When is my psych paper due?"
d.) If it had access to other wp users location (ala find my friends on iphone) so i can ask "where is samantha?" And cortana can tell me or show me on a map.
E.) If she could proof read my work.
​

 

[anon(8151408)]

c.) Contextually aware calendar ie. "When is my psych paper due?"
​

Nightmare to implement...

 

[Thargoid]

Personally, I'd like to see less news about "new and updated 8.1 apps" and "Cortana can do this and that". The release is supposed to be for devs only but it seems practically the whole user base has it.

For those of us that don't have it (yes I do actually know how to get it) and are waiting for the official release, are you going to repost all of your news threads? Perhaps you'll make us troll through 50 pages of news to catch up on what we can and cant do or what is good to download?

Here's a thought - how about putting a sticky thread somewhere with all of the news properly organised in it so that when it is released officially, people can see what is worth reading.

Gripe over.