The designation is based on the computer game series Halo, in which there is the AI Cortana character. On Windows Phone Cortana is only an animated icon and not a female character as in the Halo games. The approach of Cortana is a similar virtual personality as with Apple's Siri. Moreover Cortana collects data from Bing, Foursquare and other services in order to offer comparable performance to Google Now.
The user will thus find all relevant information in Cortana to simplify his use of Smartphones. A sub- function of Cortana is called notebook and is used to control the data flow with matching privacy settings. The user should therefore be set in the notebook, which data sources may use Cortana. So Cortana can on location information, personal data, reminders and contact access. In addition, the function can monitor the user behavior and show based on that information or make suggestions.
Depending on the chosen notebook settings to the Windows Phone Assistant noted the information in question. The user should edit later stored within the notebook information or delete, so that a privacy setting in the base can be changed at any time later. Moreover Cortana can be used to remove the user tasks. For example, if a message comes is asking in for a meeting at 19:00 clock, offers the wizard to create a matching calendar entry.
In addition, a Do Not Disturb mode is scheduled to appear in the notifications. The user may specify a specific user group, which is not affected by the Do Not Disturb mode. News of these individuals appointment would then continue to appear. It is expected that a first preliminary version of the update version will be come to the market only at the beginning of April 2014 is shown at Microsoft's Build conference. When Smartphone owners will get the update is still not known.
