What is Cortana?

Written By: ESP Projects
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Cortana is your clever new personal assistant. Cortana will help you find things on your PC, manage your calendar, track packages, find files, chat with you and tell jokes. The more you use it, the more personalised your experience will be. To get started, type a question in the search box on the taskbar. Or select the microphone icon and talk. (Typing works for all types of PCs, but you need a mic to talk.)

Here are some things you can say to Cortana:

  • How old are you?
  • Tell me a joke.
  • Show me the latest football scores.
  • How many calories in a boiled egg?
  • Put swimming on my calendar for tomorrow.
  • Change my 3 PM event to 4 PM.
  • What’s happening this weekend?

Try this: Set a reminder

One of the things Cortana can do for you is to give you reminders. For example, type or say, “Remind me to call Alex at 2 PM”. Make the meeting recurring if you want to.
The reminder will appear at 2 PM, along with any information you’ve added to it.

Hey Cortana!

Set Cortana to hear you anytime you say “Hey Cortana”. Select the search box on the taskbar to open ‘home’. Then select the Notebook icon > Settings  and turn on Let Cortana respond when you say “Hey Cortana”.

Cortana is only available in certain countries/regions, and some Cortana features might not be available everywhere. If Cortana isn’t available or is turned off, you can still use search.

Make Cortana yours

Here are some quick ways to make Cortana more responsive to your individual needs.

Cortana’s Notebook

Use Cortana’s Notebook to tell it about your interests, favourite places and things you want to keep up to date with. Add more information about yourself in the Notebook to get better, more personalised help.

Try this: Put your interests in Cortana’s Notebook

Here are some of the categories you can include:

  • Weather. Keep up to date on the weather where you are, or somewhere far away.
  • News. Find out the latest on whatever topic you choose.
  • Travel. Cortana can track flight itineraries from your email and give you your flight status, traffic conditions and the weather at your destination.
  • Getting around. Find out how the traffic is looking on your normal routes and set Cortana to tell you when you’re going to need extra time.

If you want to know more about Cortana or any other IT software, use the contact us page to get in touch!