Cortana, what I'd like to see next.

Graelock

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First off, I do understand she is very early into Beta, so these are the things I think would be neat to see...down the road.

1. First, of course, is she sounds mostly like the original Windows voice assist system, but renamed to Cortana...and not like Jen Taylor so much...but I reserve the fact, that maybe all of her audio files haven't made it aboard yet.

2. Feature-wise, I wish she had a voice alert option for reminders, alarms and phone calls...if you schedule a reminder, she only uses the default notification tone and there is no option in the list of tones/ chimes for Cortana. It would feel more "personal assistant-like." My team lead, at work, has one of the competing assistants and I constantly hear her uttering, "Your wife is trying to reach you," or "your daughter is trying to reach you." It's really cool!

3. Where is she? A separate app for the "Halo-heads" would eventually be awesome. Have 343 develop some animations that tie into what she is saying for lock screen/ foreground viewing.

4. Speaking of lock screen, you cannot currently access Cortana from there, nor while the display is off, for things like; directions, temperature, weather and other things that she could just read off to you.

5. The idea that she replies via text, if you text a question to her and via voice, if you voice questions to her...not true. As of right now, she feels exclusively and only like a Bing search tool, than an assistant...especially and again, considering that she does not personally(? lol) notify of much at this time.

6. A "Teach Cortana To Say" option NEEDS to be added to various files/ album names...my wife, the other day, said "Play Kasabian (Kah-Say-Bee_in), Cortana said, "Playing Ka-saa-bee-in." LOL It was both, impressive that she did, but funny that she butchered the name.

7. Options are needed to tag your relationship to those in your contacts/ inner circle. As of now, I only see an option in the People contact list, to mark someone your significant other e.g. no Father, daughter etc. Although, the Inner Circle options gives you the ability to tag them as such, but it doesn't seem to count for anything as of yet.

8. Reminders should contain the ability to be set up for both, "location" and a specific time and not for one or the other. I would not, for example, want to be reminded to check the company voicemail at 7:30AM, if I am not in the office/ am at home.

9. A Cortana voice for Drive app or comparable...it's great that Cortana can call up directions and the drive app, but it's weird that it transitions over to another voice, when Cortana should be quite capable of navigation...I suspect a Microsoft drive app may be produced, however.

10. The ability to change your news feed source to MSN or other...not FOX!

11. Cortana calcuations - let's face it, Cortana is supposed to know numbers, it'd be great if you could ask her "what's the square root of 28" and get "the square root of 28 is 5.29150262. It would just be a nice embellishment...the same with things like, the periodic table "What's the atomic number/ element name for copper?" etc.

Overall, I think we're all waiting for a smart and sassy Cortana and again, I suspect it's probably already on the charts. It would just be awesome to get to the point, where, just prior to leaving the door, Cortana is commenting on how hot/ cold it is, traffic reports etc. and the ability to scale up/ down her comments and suggestions when spoken vocally (for those who, maybe, prefer her not to say so much)...and of course, integrated into your quiet hours so that maybe she sends off a lock screen viewable text asking if you are available/ notifications are available, instead of speaking vocally.
 
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narv

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not to sound clich? but she is in beta still and look at everything she can do already and hold her own / be better than google now and siri who have been out and had updates already for years. That being said I too would like some of these features added and hope MS is "absorbing the internet" of feedback and taking what they can. As for her voice I know at build they said they want to add more jen taylor voicing to cortana. I believe I read an article, even on WPC maybe that the final decision for it to be "Cortana" and to use jen taylor happened about 2 weeks before build happened so I am sure they have her busy recording audio and such now.

I would like to be able to access her without having to open the phone (without sliding the screen up) but that MAY be a rewrite of some of the OS code that they will add later in for having any of the buttons work while the phone is locked. I could see that being a feature they put off as a "we need this but getting her to work properly while in use is a higher priority".

I told cortana "Abby is my dog" and she heard "Abby is my dawg"... no lie.. and I know when I added people to my inner circle she let me give them up to 3 nicknames so for some people I added that in.

I'd like to see her voice be extended to inclusion in other apps like nokia drive so hopefully that will happen in a GDR or something.

more "out of web search" responses would be awesome, like doing math or science questions like you said. Even how they do weather, pull up the periodic table and show that. Though this is also something that could very easily be done with an app that ties in to cortana. Though giving feedback outside of the app itself would be an awesome feature to provide, to give data without having to launch the app, and have cortana read it.

There is a lot they could do... even like in Daniel's review of the 3 voice assistants, how you can't so "cortana, go to cnn.com" and have her launch the browser for you, she just does a web search for cnn.com and you can click that and open the browser... hopefully overtime they will add these and more that we can't even think of to Cortana.. I am very happy with her right now though.
 

Meokazi

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I made an account on this just to agree with that this guy/girl said.

I would love for Cortana to sound more human-like (Jen Taylor)...and I understand that this is still in beta but hopefully we can get past this robot voice. It would also be great to hear a more natural response from her when she tells me I have an incoming text, something like "[name], you have text message from [name], should i read it?". And Her reminding me about my reminders (in voice) would be awesome, "Hey [name], just reminding you to pick up shampoo now that you're at [name]."

The teach to say really needs to be added...how else is she going to learn if we're not teaching her!

I would also love nothing more than Cortana to be more than a circle. Now that Microsoft owns Bungie (who made Halo) they can easily input that Halo 4 Cortana as the app.

Don't get me wrong, I love where it's at right now, I'm in no way complaining but what Graelock said makes sense. It's where I'd like to see Cortana in the future.


Tom-
 

SpaceyO

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I would like to be able to access her without having to open the phone (without sliding the screen up) but that MAY be a rewrite of some of the OS code that they will add later in for having any of the buttons work while the phone is locked. I could see that being a feature they put off as a "we need this but getting her to work properly while in use is a higher priority".

You can do that now...from Lock screen, long press the search button. Voila!
 

Gr8Lord

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I'd like to see some resemblance to bing at least for consistency, If cortana could have the bing background that would be perfect.:smile:
 

philharmonik

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I would like Cortana to be able to set my Alarm for Monday through Friday at 5:30 am. Here is how it went down last night. Me: Wake me up at 5:30am Monday through Friday, (even tried saying on Weekdays). Cortana: Ok, Alarm is set for 5:30am. She wasn't able to set it go off Mon-Fri. I still had to manually go into my alarm settings and check box Mon-Fri. Has anyone else tried this with success?
 

hs k

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I would like Cortana to be able to set my Alarm for Monday through Friday at 5:30 am. Here is how it went down last night. Me: Wake me up at 5:30am Monday through Friday, (even tried saying on Weekdays). Cortana: Ok, Alarm is set for 5:30am. She wasn't able to set it go off Mon-Fri. I still had to manually go into my alarm settings and check box Mon-Fri. Has anyone else tried this with success?

Nope, i tried that, she set it for once whereas I had asked for a week. Had to manually change that.
 

Nick Derrico

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Since Cortana is just Beta, that implies that we, as users, as supposed to offer recommendations. Is there an official channel to make legitimate suggestions to improve Cortana?

One of the biggest thing for me is for Cortana to have a spot in my notebook where I can phonetically input correct pronunciations of names throughout my whole address book (first names, last names, company names). My last name is D'Errico, pronounced Duh-Ree-Co, but naturally Cortana has no clue when I try to dictate it. I would also love to add nicknames to people outside of my inner circle; I want to be able to call or text "my boss" but I definitely don't want him calling me during quiet hours!

Hell, between you and me, I'd pay a few bucks to have MS listen to me and add my features lol
 

NonYah

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The ability to REMOVE it from MY COMPUTER.
I have no use for it and could use the resources it sits on in idle for things I don't need somebody else to think for me to do.
 

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