3 Reasons It's Worth Turning On Cortana Even If You Don't Like Voice Assistants

Although Spanish-speaking users still cannot interact with Cortana in Spanish, it is possible for us to access all the functions of the wizard in English by changing the system regional settings. Even so, some may not like that idea, either because of difficulty pronouncing commands in English, or because they don't find the idea of ​​a voice assistant itself attractive.

Well, in this article I will give you 3 reasons why it is worth changing the regional settings to have Cortana in EnglishThese are 3 Windows Phone 8.1 features that depend on Cortana (i.e. you can't use them if Cortana is disabled), but we can use without having to enter voice commands , and to tell the truth, they are tremendously useful. Let's see what they consist of.

Quiet hours and close circle

"

I start with what I consider to be the most essential feature of Cortana: Quiet Hours . This is Do Not Disturb mode>intelligent exceptions to such blocking."

These exceptions start with our inner circle: a group of contacts defined by us that we can allow to contact us during quiet hours. It is important to emphasize what we can allow, since if we want, calls and messages from the close circle can also be blocked.

Another useful exception is the receiving calls from anyone who calls us 2 times in a row within 3 minutes, implying that they want to contact us about something very urgent. Likewise, we can ask Cortana to deliver an automatic response SMS to all those people who tried to call us during quiet hours. Unfortunately the message is not editable and is in English:

"

And analogous to the 2 calls within 3 minutes, Cortana can send another SMS saying that if they want to contact us for something urgent, they can reply with a message saying knock knock>the SMS will break through the blockade and receive an alert."

To crown the versatility of this function, we have that it is possible to program it according to calendar events. For example, I have a calendar in Outlook with all my classes and exams from the University, and Cortana allows me to establish that every time an event on that calendar starts (class or exam) are automatically activated Quiet Hours

"In short, Quiet Hours is one of those features that makes you wonder how I ever lived without it until now?, and by itself I think it&39;s reason enough to activate Cortana. "

Reminders

This is another leap forward from Windows Phone 8.1, which unfortunately is only available if we activate Cortana. By now most of us know that we can issue commands like ">

One thing that not everyone knows, however, is that it is possible to use the reminders feature almost as if it were a stand-alone application, managing reminders manually, without resorting to the voice. To achieve this we must open Cortana, go to the ">reminders application, which we can even pin to the home screen.

Cortana's reminders feature can be used as a standalone app

From there you can create new reminders associated with a time, person or place without using any voice command, and therefore, being able to write in Spanish (Cortana in English is configured to only understand English, so we should not expect anything logical or coherent to come out when dictating sentences in Spanish). You can even edit or delete previously created reminders, all very conveniently

Alerts according to travel time

To conclude, we have the famous alerts of the type ">does not require the use of voice and works outside the United States, as long as we enter the full addresses in the calendar events. But since this is also a bit cumbersome, we can resort to a shortcut: add favorite places in the Maps app (the native app, not Here Maps) and assign them short names, which we can then use instead of full addresses.

For example, the address ">can be added as a favorite place when to leave from where we are to arrive at the time where our friend is.

Travel time alerts work as long as we indicate the location of the events correctly

It is also convenient for us to tell Cortana the addresses of our home and our work (those that correspond to special favorite places), and also the time of entry to it, because that is how we will be notified every morning time at which we have to leave home depending on traffic conditions (thus preventing traffic congestion from catching us by surprise).

Cortana even allows us to choose if we want the transfer time to be calculated according to trips by car, or public transport, although whether this option is available will depend on the availability of Bing Maps data in our area . In areas where Cortana/Bing has information about bus and train departure times we can even ask you to let us know when the last bus/train will leave home , to avoid being left without transportation.

Cortana, we are waiting for you in Spain and Latin America

As an aside, I think after reviewing these features it becomes clear how urgent it is for Cortana to reach more countries and languages These features, along with others that require the use of voice, or are not available due to language barriers (for example, the detection of events and trips in emails), imply a significant leap in the experience of Windows Phone user, and a necessary differentiation for the operating system to stand out from the competition and begin to gain market share.

It is also clear how important it is for Bing to expand its geographic coverage as data availability for certain countries is crucial in determine whether or not certain features work, such as calculating travel time from one place to another, but also others linked to the voice assistant itself.For example, commands of the type ">.

We already know that Microsoft is working on both, but it never hurts to put their foot on the accelerator a little more .

In Xataka Windows | How to activate Cortana if I don't live in the United States