Microsoft's Cortana Wants You to Be Up to Speed With Your Commitments

Jan 26, 2016 07:01 PM EST

Living in the digital age means we are supposedly more efficient in our dealings with everyone else, as we have the necessary and relevant tools at our fingertips all the time. Most of us happen to own a smartphone or tablet of sorts, and these will no doubt carry at least one personal email that has precious content which Microsoft's Cortana digital assistant would like comb through in order to make sure that you are a (wo)man of your word by urging you to keep to your commitments.

This emphasis on making life more efficient is expected to happen from today onwards, although there are other efforts being worked out to ensure that Cortana will be further enhanced in the next Windows 10 update. Several additional features are being tested out publicly - including the aforementioned commitment option in Cortana for Windows 10.

Just in case you were wondering what commitments are all about, it is not too different from the current flight and delivery tracking in Cortana, although this time around it has been modified to figure out the various nuances in your emails, including promises that you made in digital writing. For instance, you might have given your word to your group of project managers that you would carry out a meeting with them on a particular date and time.

In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft's Marcus Ash shared, "Cortana will look for emails where you've said you're going to do something." For instance, should you send over an email to a friend or colleague with specific content such as "I will call you before the week is over" or "You should receive the proposal in your inbox by noon today," Cortana will get to work by generating a card so that you will be reminded.

Similar to flight reminders, the email scanning will be done locally and just in case you are paranoid about security information, no data will be transferred to Microsoft's servers - not at least until you agree to add a reminder for the concerned card. There is also the option to disable this particular feature if you do not want a digital assistant to start nagging on your habit of procrastinating since you already experience that more than you would like in real life with your better half and family members.

Microsoft is also working on a different feature as to how Cortana manages calendar invites. This time around, Cortana will provide you with an alert should you be on the receiving end of a meeting request that does not fall within the standard times where your meetings are normally held, making it a perfect assisting tool if you happen to fail to check your email on the latest office developments and yet do not want to make a hash of things by missing out on an important meeting that was scheduled outside of your regular times.

Microsoft intends to roll out both features to everyone who are rocking to Windows 10 soon, although, at this point in time, the new features will be limited to just Windows 10 testers.