I want to create a skill that's a simple game, where first the user launches the skill with its invocation name and then Alexa asks a question, "Shall I roll the dice?" If the user answers "Yes," it rolls the dice, and says the result. Then Alexa asks again, "Shall I roll the dice?" If "Yes," do the same thing. This is the main loop I'm talking about, and it'll continue until the user answers "No" or "Quit" to this question.
I just can't figure out how to add the loop, or where it should go. I've looked at tutorials and videos and whatnot and just nothing I've found mentions a loop which I find really odd. But I'm a noob at this.
Any help would be awesome. I've been wanting to do this skill for so long but just am stuck on this loop thing.
I recommend you to take some time to understand how a skill work and then I recommend you to develop a quiz skill from this doc
You will then have a better understanding of how a request is made to Alexa service and how a response is returned. The logic behind Intent, how does a slot work, ...
An Alexa Skill is like a card game. The player can select any card at any time. Each card has its own function and is triggered by a voice.
So when the skill first asks the user for Shall I roll the dice?, the user will say either yes or no.
If the user says yes, it will then go to your AMAZON.YesIntent,
If the user says no, it will then go to your AMAZON.NoIntent.
But you also need to make sure that the user can also say:
Stop > Amazon.StopIntent
Anything else, such as, cheese > FallbackIntent
By doing the quiz skill cited above, you will understand how to build your interaction model effectively.
A loop is straightforward. If the user replies yes, then in your intent handler for AMAZON.YesIntent, you will need to trigger the same function that will inject, in the response builder the prompt: Shall I roll the dice ?.
Keep in mind that a user can also ask to repeat. Imagine a skill being a personal assistant. It's not a voice mail. There are many other ways to say Shall I roll the dice? to not sound like a robot. Try implementing different response values possible to have a great customer experience overall.
Related
I have a skill that elicits a U.S. state and county from the user and then retrieves some data. The backend is working fine, but I am concerned about how to structure the conversation. So far, I have created an intent called GetInfoIntent, which has two custom slots, state_name, and county_name
There are about 3,000 U.S. counties with many duplicate names. It seems silly to me that I am asking for a county, without first "narrowing down", by states. Another way I can think of to do the conversation is to have 50 intents, "GetNewHampshireInfo, GetCaliforniaInfo, etc. If I did it this way, I'd need a custom slot type for each state, like nh_counties, ca_counties. etc.
This must be a pretty generic problem. Is there a standard approach, or best practice, I can use?
My (not necessarily best practice) practice tips:
Single slot for single data type. Meaning only have one slot for a four digit number even if you use it in more than one place for two different things in the skill.
As few intents as you need
no more no less. You certainly can and should break up the back end code with helper code, but try and not break the intents into too many smaller pieces. It can lead to difficulty when Alexa is trying to choose the intended intent.
Keep it voice focused. How would you ask in a
conversation. Voice first development is always the way to go.
For the slot filling I think it is fine to ask both state and county.
If the matching is not correct ask for confirmation.
Another option is to not use auto filling within the Alexa skill and use the dialog interface. Ask the county first and then only when it has more than one state option and is ambiguous continue the dialog to fill the state.
Even if you did have 50 separate intents you really never want to have two slots that can be filled by the same word. For example having a mo_counties and ky_counties that Clack satisfies both is ambiguous and can cause unneeded difficultly.
So for someone looking for the "best practice" I have learning that there isn't one yet (maybe never will be). Do what makes sense for the conversation and try and keep it as simple as it needs to be and no less on the back end.
I also find it helpful to find a non-developer to test your conversation flow.
This wasn't really technical and is all opinion, but that is a lot of what Alexa development is. I would suggest Tuesday Alexa office hours at https://www.twitch.tv/amazonalexa very helpful and you can ask questions about stuff like this.
I am trying to make a mock interview skill on Alexa where the skill asks the user a question for example: "tell me about your background and experiences".
The user would give an answer, and when the user is done answering, he/she can say "next question" to get the next question.
So "next question" is really the only intent the app is waiting to hear. The problem is when the user is giving an answer for example:
"My name is Bob, I am from New York, I studied biology, etc.",
the session is still live, and Alexa obviously doesn't understand the intent so AMAZON.FallbackIntent gets triggered.
Is there a way to just return an empty string when AMAZON.FallbackIntent gets called so the mock interview session doesn't get disrupted?
Thank you!
It sounds like you need to control the session and constrain the user.
IMO Alexa has a lot of trouble with long user utterances. The problem really stems from the interaction model and the unpredictability of what a user will say. This blog post sheds some light on VUI issues (https://medium.com/hackernoon/lessons-learned-moving-from-web-to-voice-development-35daa1d301db). tl;dr - you have to maintain state and context.
One approach you can take is to ask the user specific questions. "What is your name?" should map to one intent and update the session/persistence with the slot value. Then you respond with the next question you want the user to answer(i.e. "Where do you live", "what university did you attend") , having another intent ready to handle that slot value. You have to realize that users can say anything at any point in your Alexa Skill session and your skill has to handle it.
Here's an Amazon Developer blog post that can help you better understand dialog management and slot confirmation: https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/3a23c045-b568-4a6a-8a8c-fd5511a08053/build-advanced-alexa-skills-confirm-what-customers-want-with-dialog-management
I have a skill in Alexa, Cortana and Google and in each case, there is a concept of terminating the flow after speaking the result or keeping the mic open to continue the flow. The skill is mostly in an Http API call that returns the information to speak, display and a flag to continue the conversation or not.
In Alexa, the flag returned from the API call and passed to Alexa is called shouldEndSession. In Google Assistant, the flag is expect_user_response.
So in my code folder, the API is called from the Javascript file and returns a JSON object containing three elements: speech (the text to speak - possibly SSML); displayText (the text to display to the user); and shouldEndSession (true or false).
The action calls the JavaScript code with type Search and a collect segment. It then outputs the JSON object mentioned above. This all works fine except I don't know how to handle the shouldEndSession. Is this done in the action perhaps with the validate segment?
For example, "Hi Bixby, ask car repair about changing my tires" would respond with the answer and be done. But something like "Hi Bixby, ask car repair about replacing my alternator". In this case, the response may be "I need to know what model car you have. What model car?". The user would then say "Toyota" and then Bixby would complete the dialog with the answer or maybe ask for more info.
I'd appreciate some pointers.
Thanks
I think it can easily be done in Bixby by input prompt when a required input is missing. You can build input-view to better enhance the user experience.
To start building the capsule, I would suggest the following:
Learn more about Bixby on https://bixbydevelopers.com/dev/docs/dev-guide
Try some sample capsules and watch some tutorial videos on https://bixbydevelopers.com/dev/docs/sample-capsules
If you have a Bixby enabled Samsung device, check our marketplace for ideas and inspirations.
lets say i have a skill with 2 custom intents, 'FirstIntent' and 'SecondIntent'. SecondIntent also has a required slot, 'reqSlot'.
Now, i would like to sequence my intents. After my skill sent the FirstIntent-response, i would like Alexa to send a request with SecondIntent and a directive to elicit reqSlot, without the user to invoke it.
They say here, at the parameter 'updatedInted':
"Note that you cannot change intents when returning a Dialog directive, so the intent name and set of slots must match the intent sent to your skill."
Is this generally possilbe or did anyone figure out a workaround for this scenario?
Thanks :)
There are ways to handle this.
You can try:
When you send your first response it must set the shouldEndSession flag to false.
The end of your first response's output speech should lead the user into invoking the second response. For example: 'Say telephone number followed by your number'.
This way the user doesn't need to explicitly invoke your skill to get to the next intent.
It is not currently possible to cause Alexa to start speaking without a user first having spoken to it.
So for example, I cannot create a skill that will announce to my wife that "Ron is on his way home" whenever I leave work.
I can however, create a skill that my wife can ask "Is Ron on his way home", and it can respond with the answer.
Also, the new notifications allow a skill to post a notification, but this just causes the Alexa to light up its circular ring to indicate that a notification is waiting. A user must still ask Alexa to read it. In the example I cite above, that might be ok.
A lot of us would love for Alexa to be able to spontaneously start talking, but Amazon has not enabled that. Can you just imagine the opportunity for advertising abuse that functionality might enable? Nothing like sitting down watching TV and having Alexa start talking, "Hey, wouldn't some Wonder Popcorn taste great about now? We're having a sale..."
I have seen some references to the Auto-learn function of Watson Dialog but I can't find coverage in any of the documentation. Can you point me to a source of information on how best to use Auto-Learn?
Thank you for your feedback, we are always working to improve our documentation.
For your immediate benefit, auto-learn is a bit of a misleading name for a feature t, but the name has stuck.
Autolearn has become the "did you mean..." with four bullet points that shows when a user sends an input that has no direct matches.
A little history...at one time, we thought that if a user typed something, saw the did you mean... and clicked a link, their intial input must have meant the same thing as the one they clicked, the system should automatically remember that.
Imagine this:
"What are your credit card fees?"
Did you mean... 1. apply for a credit card 2. cancel a credit card 3. pay your bill
click apply for a credit card
The user was simply interested in that, but obviously the two DO NOT have the same meaning. So we realized thats a bad idea, the system will learn incorrectly. However, we still call it auto learn.