Microsoft has a ton of productivity-related announcements today, specifically focusing on mobile devices. The news includes the new Microsoft Lens branding for the app previously known as Office Lens, but also a ton of new features for other Microsoft apps.
For starters, Microsoft is announcing new capabilities for Cortana in the Outlook app. Soon, you'll be able to talk continuously to Cortana to schedule meetings, send emails, or search. In one go, you can start creating an event, and then make changes to the time, add participants, change the event name, and more using natural language. It can even interpret roles such as "my manager" to identify who the user is referring to. Cortana is also getting some improvements in Teams. For users in the U.S., the assistant will soon support natural language queries, but it's also becoming available in Australia, Canada, India, and the UK as previously announced.
Speaking of Teams, Microsoft is adding a new feature that's apparently powered by Microsoft Lens. You'll soon be able to record short videos from within Teams and then edit them by adding text, emoji, ink, or filters to it. This will be available in preview by the end of the quarter.
The Office mobile app is also getting a handful is improvements, starting with making it easier to find files using natural language, at least for those with work accounts on Android. It will also help users organize their scanned images and pictures automatically, and business users will soon be able to search for images based on the content of the image, not just the title. These features are coming to Android "in the coming weeks" and iOS will get them later. The Office mobile app is also getting improved PDF annotations with notes, shapes, and timestamps. Finally, the unified Office app is coming to iPad with multi-tasking support.
Microsoft also highlighted a ton of other smaller features for multiple apps. You'll soon be able to set mandatory sensitivity labels in Outlook for mobile devices, as well as send emoji reactions to emails, similar to how they work on social networks. The calendar section of the app will also show a weather forecast soon. Meanwhile, To Do on iOS is getting an update to add a new home screen widget at some point this month.
2 Comments - Add comment