What you need to know
- Cortana voice assistance is now generally available in Microsoft Teams displays.
- Cortana "daily briefing" is now generally available for Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers.
- Play My Emails is coming to more markets inside Outlook for iOS and Android.
- Cortana for Windows 10 now supports searching documents and composing quick emails.
Microsoft has today announced a new roadmap for Cortana features across Microsoft's three big productivity platforms; Windows 10, Microsoft Teams, and Outlook. Cortana is Microsoft's "productivity assistant" inside of Microsoft 365, after it pivoted Cortana away from being a traditional virtual assistant like Siri and Google Assistant.
Cortana voice assistance is now generally available in Microsoft Teams displays, a new category of all in one Teams devices that offer hands-free experiences to join a meeting, make a call, send chat messages, share files, and more. Voice assistance is rolling out this month in English in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. This same voice assistance feature will also be made available later this year as part of Microsoft Teams Rooms devise, offering touchless experiences to join and end meetings in shared spaces, coming first to the United States in English.
Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers can also expect to see Cortana's daily briefing feature be made generally available this month, with more updates coming in the next few months to streamline meeting preparation, integrate with Microsoft To Do, support planning for the week ahead and offer specialized people insights.
Play My Emails inside of Outlook for iOS and Android is rolling out to more markets in the coming months. These new markets are Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India in English. Coming later this month, users will soon be able to interact with their inbox while their phone is in their pocket via Cortana inside Outlook, including the ability to initiate a call with a sender, play emails from a specific person, and more.
Finally, Cortana for Windows 10 is getting a few updates. To begin, Cortana for Windows 10 now supports searching for documents and composing quick emails, and can now also be invoked hands-free with the "Hey Cortana" command in the United States and United Kingdom. In addition, more updates are coming to Cortana early next year to streamline meeting preparation features.
So that's all the Cortana news coming out of Ignite this year. What are your thoughts on Cortana? Let us know in the comments.
