What is Cortana and how to configure it?

What is Cortana?

Cortana is more than a search feature on Windows 10. It is a personal assistant like Siri on the Apple devices. You can set up Cortana by enabling your privacy settings on Speech, Typing and Inking. You will also have to allow Cortana access your location (for use of maps etc). Note: Cortana stores shared information on a cloud platform as her memory base, thus you should avoid using Cortana if you do not want to share speech patterns, personal history, contacts or events.

Features

Cortana becomes your personal helper in delivering weather, sport scores, news, event reminders as well as navigation. Cortana can be accessed via the taskbar. Once voice commands are active, the Cortana app does not need top be open for your you use her.

Some of Cortana’s features:

• Let you add reminders that can be sorted and managed.
• You can send your dislikes, likes and ideas to Microsoft to help Cortana ‘learn.’
• Provide full navigation capabilities including multiple route combinations.
• Cortana can be configured according to your own requirements for example requiring passwords for financial information or travel itinerary data.
• Current or weekly weather.
• Information and facts pulled from the web.

Configuring Cortana

• You can configure the general settings of Cortana by a toggle of On and Off.
• There is a link to manage Cortana’s cloud data via the app.
• Cortana can be activated using your voice, rather than clicking and typing your question to Cortana. To do this, open Cortana. Click into Notebook (the icon underneath the Home button in Cortana’s side menu). Click Settings and scroll to find the Hey Cortana toggle switch and turn it on.
• Here you can also configure the Bing search settings at the bottom.