Microsoft pushes ahead with 'Office Now' work assistant

Microsoft officials have demonstrated that Cortana is going to get smarter about work in the not-so-distant future. But exactly how Cortana will be able to help users with tasks like finding files in OneDrive for Business has been a bit murky.

On May 22, more tidbits about "Office Now," an application which seems like it's the renamed "Work Assistant" app we first learned about in February 2015, leaked to the Web. "Walking Cat," also known as @h0x0d on Twitter, published some information about some of the functionality in Office Now. And Brad Sams published screen shots of the Office Now image assets, plus some additional details, about the Office Now application.

A quick recap re: Work Assistant. Back in February -- shortly after Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he was involved in some forthcoming "Personal Assistant" technology under development at Microsoft -- an internal test build of a new Microsoft app for Windows Phones called "Work Assistant" leaked out. (Microsoft has since pulled information from the Windows Phone Store about Work Assistant.)

Work Assistant, from what my contacts have said, is a helper app, designed to enable Cortana and Bing to do work-specific tasks, such as find a PowerPoint deck a user last accessed a week ago.

I've included in this post a couple of screen shots of Work Assistant shared with me a couple months back by a contact who asked not to be named...



Read more: Microsoft pushes ahead with 'Office Now' work assistant | ZDNet
 
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