Tuesday, August 4, 2020

AI and Cortana in Microsoft 365 put people at the center

This week at Ignite, we’re showing you how Office.com/setup 365 puts people at the center so you can do your best work. Artificial intelligence (AI) in Office.com/setup 365 is leading this approach, with intelligent, natural, and personalized productivity experiences that help you amplify skills, transform collaboration, and find information. ​

AI in Office.com/setup 365 is driving a significant shift in how people interact with Office.com/setup 365 applications. Our experiences adapt to you, help you, and amplify your abilities. We’re moving past the legacy model where you had to adapt yourself to the way an application wanted you to work. And we’re delivering transformational AI-powered experiences in Office.com/setup 365 through Cortana, your personal productivity assistant, as well as in AI experiences embedded in Office.com/setup 365 applications. Cortana is now a natural part of Office.com/setup 365 and shipping first in Outlook mobile.

Importantly, we embraced the responsibility to handle your Office.com/setup 365 data securely, privately, and in compliance with relevant regulations. Your data is in your control; we handle it as laid out in the Microsoft Trust Center and Online Services Terms.

This week at Ignite, we’re taking significant steps toward putting you at the center and in control. Here are some of the highlights.

Cortana helps you get time back

Time is our most valuable resource, and we’re committed to helping you use it well by helping you stay on top of what matters. Whether you’re driving to work, riding the metro, cooking, or just taking the dog for a walk, Cortana in Outlook mobile can help you stay organized and in control of your day with a voice-forward way to engage with your emails, so you have more time to focus on other important tasks.

We’re pleased to announce that we’re starting to roll out Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS. With a natural voice, intelligent read-out, and language recognition, Cortana can read out your new emails and share changes to your day—so you can catch up and act on emails even when your hands are busy with other things.

We’re also excited to share that a masculine voice option for Cortana will roll out with Play My Emails. We’re happy to offer you more choices in how you interact with Cortana with this voice alternative. You’ll find the new voice as a setting in Outlook for iOS for Play My Emails. Both our voices have been upgraded to use Neural Text to Speech capabilities making them sound even more natural thanks to deep neural networks that match the patterns of stress and intonation in spoken language.

Play My Emails is the first Cortana-related capability aimed at workers and under the umbrella of Office.com/setup 365, where Cortana has met specific requirements set out in the Office.com/setup 365 section of the Office.com/setup Trust Center and Online Services Terms.

Play My Emails is rolling out in Outlook for iOS starting today, with Android planned for spring 2020. Initially, Play My Emails will be available to customers in the U. S. To get started, you’ll see an invitation for Play My Emails at the bottom of your inbox, or you can turn it on in Outlook for iOS settings. Then, just connect your headphones or another audio device and press the Play button.

Cortana, Outlook on mobile devices

Cortana helps you manage your calendar and commitments

Cortana in Office.com/setup 365 can also help you stay on top of your schedule and commitments. We’re previewing personalized experiences to remind you of important commitments and schedule meetings.

Cortana can help you prepare for your day and keep track of the commitments you’ve made in the email. Cortana can send you a Briefing email with the promises you made along with a convenient way to mark them as “done” or book focus time to get them done. Your Briefing email also includes a summary of your meetings and relevant documents for your day. A briefing email will be available in preview for tenants in the U.S. in early 2020.

Cortana, Outlook on a laptop and phone

Cortana can also help you schedule meetings, saving you the time and hassle of coordinating schedules across meeting participants. With Scheduler, you can easily hand off meeting scheduling to Cortana. Simply include Cortana in your email to participants, and let Cortana know what you need in the body of the email using natural language—similar to the way someone might loop in their assistant. You can tell Cortana the duration, timing, and location of the meeting, or simply write “Find time for us.” You can even ask Cortana to book a conference room or a call. And Cortana will respond to your recipients’ emails 24/7, even when you’re busy.

If you have access to your participants’ calendar availability, Cortana will book the meeting when everyone is available. If you’re meeting with people outside of your organization, Cortana will email them a few possible meeting times and broker a time that works for everyone. Meeting participants simply reply to Cortana’s email using natural language to accept the suggestion or propose new times. Once a meeting time has been found, Cortana will send out an invite to everyone for you. The scheduler is in preview today and we expect to make it generally available in early 2020.

Be your best self at work

We’re also using AI in Office.com/setup 365 to help you do your best work, improve work best practices, and plan time away from work.

Today, we announced that Excel now supports natural language queries, allowing you to ask a question of your data and get quick answers without having to write a formula. Available to Office Insiders, this new natural language ability helps make data insights and visualization more approachable and accessible. Last month, we also released Presenter Coach to public preview in PowerPoint for the web to help you become a more effective presenter.

Our research shows that habits like scheduling regular 1:1 time, limiting late-night emails, and giving regular feedback set the top managers apart. New leadership insights in MyAnalytics are designed to help managers build these habits and keep their teams engaged. We’ll show insights like the frequency of 1:1 meetings or after-hours communication with direct reports. New manager insights will be available in preview for Office.com/setup 365 customers with MyAnalytics and Workplace Analytics in early 2020.

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