Microsoft is making a serious attempt at Cortana's smart home skills with further partnerships

Microsoft recently started rolling out a new Connected Home feature for Cortana across Windows 10, Android, and iOS. The feature allows users to control their smart home devices from their Windows 10, Android, or iOS devices by connecting Cortana to their Internet of Things devices. Cortana’s Connected Home feature also works on the new Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, and it’s one of the headline features of the device.

Right now, Cortana’s Connected Home feature supports smart home devices from SmartThings, Philips Hue, Nest, Wink, and Insteon. Cortana is, therefore, able to control all types of smart lights, thermostats, switches, and other devices from these companies. But Microsoft wants to add support for smart home devices from more devices in order to offer the ultimate smart home hub features through Cortana on smart speakers like the Invoke.

Redmond says the company is working with Honeywell, Ecobee, TP-Link, Johnson Controls, Geeni, Iris by Lowe’s, iDevices and other companies to integrate support for their smart home products into Cortana. In addition to these services, Microsoft is also working with IFTTT to bring support for the service to Cortana, which will allow you to set up automated tasks with thousands of other services. IFTTT would effectively enable you to automate services that aren’t available on Cortana yet, and if you have the time to setup and configure these tasks, you will really be able to benefit from the IFTTT integration on Cortana.

Microsoft isn’t saying when exactly the company hopes to ship support for more smart home products on Cortana, but we’ll let you know when they are available.