Microsoft’s new daily Briefing emails from Cortana are arriving to help you prepare for your work day. Cortana is Microsoft’s virtual assistant that performs tasks such as setting reminders. This option has been enabled for all CU Boulder Microsoft Office 365 email accounts, but you can easily opt out by clicking the unsubscribe link included in each email or through your Cortana settings.
Within two hours of the start of your workday (which you can configure in Outlook), an email from Cortana will highlight any relevant items to help you better prepare for the day ahead, including:
- Outstanding commitments, requests, and follow-ups to and from other collaborators in email that might have fallen through the cracks.
- Documents related to that day’s meetings that you might want to review beforehand.
- Suggested focus time you can schedule to help get independent work done.
The insights and actions in the Briefing email are derived from information already available to you in your mailbox and calendar, and is only stored in your mailbox. This does not allow Microsoft to collect or store any additional information about your account. The Briefing protects your privacy in the following ways:
Personal and private - Your Briefing emails are personal and private and are only sent directly in your mailbox, which cannot be accessed by anybody else, including your IT admin or your manager.
Everyone's data is kept private - Briefing emails do not include any new personally identifiable information about anybody else in your organization. The insights and actions are based on information generated by you just by going about your regular workday. Your Briefing emails are based on information that you already have access to but can’t quickly aggregate.
Mailbox security - Briefing email data uses Exchange Online email and calendar data and processes and stores any insights or actions inside your Exchange Online mailbox, so data security is built-in and enforced by Exchange.
GDPR compliant – Microsoft complies with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when providing the Briefing email. Account owners can select "unsubscribe" at the end of any Briefing email to individually opt-out.
More information is always available – Your first Briefing email describes what it is, that your data is kept private, and includes documentation links to get more details. All subsequent Briefing emails will always include informational links and the option to unsubscribe.
Learn more about the Briefing email and how it works. If you have questions about Briefing emails or about Microsoft Office 365 in general, please contact the IT Service Center at oithelp@colorado.edu or call 303-735-4357.
