Cortana reminds you of the important stuff – even when you forget to ask

Cortana is your personal assistant, always there to remember things, so you don’t have to. Today, we’re introducing another, even smarter way for Cortana to help make sure nothing slips through the cracks with suggested reminders.

Cortana* already gives you reminders for people, places and times, and helps you make and manage to-do lists so you don’t forget a thing. Now, Cortana can help you remember things you’ve said you would do in your emails—without you even having to ask.

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We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve promised to do something in email, like send your boss a report by end of day, or purchase tickets to the movies for your date night. But the day goes on, emails pile up, and you quickly forget. Now Cortana has your back. Using machine learning technology developed in partnership with Microsoft Research, Cortana automatically recognizes when you make a commitment in email messages and will proactively suggest a reminder to you to follow through at just the right time.

Cortana does all the work in the background making this helpful feature incredibly easy to use. To get started, simply send emails as you would normally and when you’ll do something, Cortana will recognize that and save the details in a suggested reminder for you. If you’ve specified a deadline in the email, Cortana will ping you before it’s due and save it in the action center. Other suggested reminders will be in the Cortana home. No need to copy her on the email or change how you do things today, she will adapt to you.

Cortana’s suggested reminders are available in the U.S. on Windows 10 with support coming to iOS and Android in the coming weeks. The feature will begin rolling out today and currently supports Outlook.com and Office 365 work and school email addresses with support for other email services   coming soon.

To check the feature out for yourself, make sure you’re signed in to Cortana, and have given communications consent. Then check that either an Outlook.com or Office 365 work or school account is connected through the connected services section in your Cortana notebook. Try emailing yourself a commitment like “I will send you the report by Friday” and look out for that suggested reminder from Cortana.

For those of you that got to experience this feature as part of the Windows Insider program, you’ll also notice some improvements like the ability to link to the email that the reminder is coming from and notifications ahead of a deadline. We’ve also worked to improve our models for identifying the commitments you’ve made so Cortana’s suggestions are even more accurate.

Helping you keep tabs on your commitments is just one of the ways we’re making Cortana more useful for the things you need to remember every day.

Try it out and continuing sharing your feedback.

*Cortana available in select markets.