I am here in San Francisco covering Microsoft’s annual Build developers conference and had the opportunity to meet with one of the Program Managers on the Cortana team to talk about Cortana and how she can be a part of the Enterprise.
During the Day 1 keynote new features for Cortana, which are arriving this summer in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, were demoed with a focus on the consumer version of Windows.
However, it is not as widely known that Cortana is ready today and can be used in Enterprise scenarios even on machines that are connected to your domain. She has full support for integration with Office 365, PowerBI, Dynamics CRM and your Group & MDM policies.
There are currently several Group and MDM policies listed on the Cortana integration in your business or enterprise page on TechNet that can be used now.
This is what is available for you to use to manage Cortana for your enterprise users:
- Allow Cortana to be used (GP and MDM)
- Automatic Learning (GP and MDM) Note: 1
- Allow Location (MDM)
- Allow search queries on the web and their display in results (GP) Note: 1
- Location aware search results (GP and MDM) Note: 1
- Safe Search Level Filtering (GP and MDM) Note: 2
- Suggest recent queries/prevent history storage in registry (GP) Note: 1
- Allow Start Menu searches to access communications (GP) Note: 1
Notes:
- Cortana does not work if this is disabled
- Only applies to Windows 10 Mobile
Microsoft also understands that the privacy of your enterprise related data is important so there is a massive FAQ about Cortana, Search, and privacy to help you understand how Cortana’s accesses and uses your data.
The good news if you are looking to use Cortana in your organization is that there is much more on the horizon for Cortana and with all the news this week at Build about Cognitive Services and Intelligent Bots the possibilities will grow quickly.
That in turn will allow your users to more effectively use their time and increase productivity.
But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.
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