14 DAY TRIAL // Digital assistant Cortana, currently available on Windows Phone but soon to arrive on Windows 10 desktops as well, can perform quite a lot of essential tasks, including sending messages, setting reminders, and providing driving directions to user-defined locations.
And still, people expect Microsoft to add even more features in future updates, including the possibility to answer your calls on Windows Phone.
Is this a thing that can be done? It certainly is, but in some cases, having your calls automatically answered by Cortana can become really annoying, not to mention that answers might not be quite appropriate for some contacts.
More than 5,000 votes right now
At this point, this particular feature request has more than 5,000 votes in the Windows Phone UserVoice thread, even though it's not yet confirmed whether Microsoft wants or at least considers adding such an option to Cortana.
The user who first requested this feature, and who obviously started the whole craze, also has a scenario on how Cortana answering phone calls actually works:
James: "Cortana, when mum calls, tell her that I'm busy and will call back later."
Cortana: "Hello, James is busy at the moment and will call you later, do you want me to pass a message to him?"
Mum: "Yes, tell him that we need to talk about dad's birthday."
Cortana can then play back the conversations stored in the phone's memory or let you know whenever new messages are available, just like a typical voice mail service.
Desktop version currently in the works
Of course, such a feature would only make sense on devices running Windows Phone, so it's unlikely to see it going live on Windows 10 desktops as well.
Microsoft is currently working on making Cortana available on the desktop too and the present Windows 10 build 9901 preview that's up for grabs on file-sharing websites is living proof that the digital assistant is set to arrive on PCs very soon.
At this point, the feature is still in its very early days on the desktop, so many options are still missing, but there's no doubt that they would all be available in the future for PC users as well in order to create a seamless transition from phones to the desktop.
Calling and messaging features, however, wouldn't make much sense on a desktop, so expect part of its functionality to be unavailable when Cortana hits the desktop in stable form.
