Is it possible for alexa user to have different responses based on config in the app. For example my skill is returning measurements. Some users may prefer metric and others imperial. I'd like users to be able to specify this (and may be some other things) to give a personalised experience. Can this be configured in the Amazon Alexa app?
I was thinking I might have to have some persistent storage for this (DDB for example) which would mean the app would write to the DDB and the skill would read from it to get the personalised response.
Thanks
Can this be configured in the Amazon Alexa app?
Unfortunately not in the way which you seem to be suggesting.
If you really wanted users to set preferences through the app, this could be done through account linking. However, it is generally discouraged (Alexa is meant to be "Voice-First") and likely to present additional obstacles if what you're wanting to do is allow users to set preferences for different devices.
However, using persistent storage for user preferences in generally is a good idea and as you've suggested, DynamoDB can do this.
If you take this approach you could ask users what their preferences are the first time they use a skill on a device and store this together with the device ID.
There is some good information about device ID in the Amazon documentation and some helpful tips here:
Get unique device id for every amazon echo devices
Related
I'm working in a company which has multiple international websites and I wanted to asked you if it's more interesting to have just on Google Analytics 4 account for all the websites or should I keep an account for every website ?
We have currently 12 websites and it will grow this year so I want to setup the best things before all of this.
Thank you,
I tried to do an unique account for two websites but i can't split the metrics and the events were not working.
You may create one analytics google profile using this link https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/provision/#/provision
BUT, I would create a separate account for every website. Otherwise it will probably create problems in the future reading data from API ( I mean in the back-end coding system), analysing the retrieved data since every time you need to filter based on the domain etc.
Plus, there are limitations for creating the customised dimensions and metrics. Of course, I suppose you are talking about separate businesses or better say, different clients.
Thank you for your answer.
I already have an account for every website and so a property = a website.
But what I wanted to know if it's better to have an unique property for all my website to have all datas in one property.
Thank you,
This may be an extremely basic question, but I am not able to find the answer. Even if you can point me in the direction of documentation, I'd be grateful.
I have set up AlexaPi on a Raspberry Pi and am trying to code a bunch of skills for local use (a bit like the example here though not precisely that).
What I am not able to understand is how I ensure that my skill does not become "public" and end up being used by accident by thousands of people. This is particularly the case because some of the skills are interactions for my kids. The Alexa documentation doesn't seem to clearly state how one limits the devices on which a skill is used. It talks of "private skills" but these are only for Alexa for Business users.
Am I missing something clearly elementary?
You skill is never public until you publish it. Then it goes to a certification queue and, if approved, it will be live. Your skill is by default only visible to devices that have been configured with the account that you used to develop the skill at developer.amazon.com/alexa
You can safely use your skill privately in devices configured with that account and the sill will never be public (until you explicitly go to the Distribution tab and publish it)
If you don't want the public to use don't publish it. keep it in dev skills. The only problem of this is you need to pair the Alexa with the same account where you created the skills
My understanding is that Amazon ASK still does not provide:
The raw user input
An option for a fallback intent
An API to
dynamically add possible options from which Alexa can be better
informed to select an intent.
Is this right or am I missing out on knowing about some critical capabilities?
Actions on Google w/ Dialogflow provides:
raw user input for analysis: request.body.result.resolvedQuery
fallback intents:
https://dialogflow.com/docs/intents#fallback_intents
An APi to dynamically add user expressions (aka sample utterances): PUT
/intents/{id}
These tools provide devs with the ability to check to see if the identified intent is correct and if not fix it.
I know there have been a lot of questions asked previously, just a few here:
How to add slot values dynamically to alexa skill
Can Alexa skill handler receive full user input?
Amazon Alexa dynamic variables for intent
I have far more users on my Alexa skill than my AoG app simply because of Amazon's dominance to date in the market - but their experience falls short of a Google Assistant user experience because of these limitations. I've been waiting for almost a year for new Alexa capabilities here, thinking that after Amazon's guidance to not use AMAZON.LITERAL there would be improvements coming to custom slots. To date it still looks like this old blog post is still the only guidance given. With Google, I dynamically pull in utterance options from a db that are custom for a given user following account linking. By having the user's raw input, I can correct the choice of intent if necessary.
If you've wanted these capabilities but have had to move forward without them, what tricks do you have to get accurate intent handling with Amazon when you don't know what the user will say?
EDIT 11/21/17:
In September Amazon announced the Alexa Skill Management API (SMAPI) which does provide the 3rd bullet above.
Actually this should be better a comment but i write to less at stackoverflow to be able to comment. I am with you on all.
But Amazons Alexa has also a very big advance.
The intent Schema is seeming to directly influence the Voice to Text recognition. Btw. can someone confirm if this is correct?
At Google Home it seems not to be the case.
So matching of unusual names is even more complicated than at alexa.
And it sometimes just recognize absolute bullshit.
Not sure which I prefer currently.
My feeling is for small apps is Alexa much better, because it better match the Intent phrases when it has lesser choices.
But for large Intent schemas, it get really trouble and in my tests some of the intents were not matched at all correct.
Here the google home and action SDK wins, probably? Cause Speech to text seem to be done before and than a string pattern to intent schema matching is happening. So this is probably more robust for larger schemas?
To get something like an answer on your questions:
You can try to add as much as possible that can be said to a slot. And than match the result from the Alexa request to your database via Jaro winkler or some other string distance.
Was I tried for Alexa was to find phrases that are close to what the user say. And this i added as phrases to fill a slot.
So a module in our webpage was an intent in the schema. And Than I requested To say what exactly should be done in that module (this was the slot filling request). The Answer was the slot filling utterance.
For me that was slightly better working than the regulary intent schema. But it require more talking so i dont like it so much.
Let me go straight to answering your 3 questions:
1) Alexa does provide the raw input via the slot type AMAZON.Literal but it's now deprecated and you're advised to use AMAZON.SearchQuery for free form capture. However, if instead of using SearchQuery you define a custom slot type and provide samples (training data) the ASR will work better.
2) Alexa supports FallbackIntent since I believe May 2018. The way it work is by automatically generating a model for your skill where out-of-domain requests are routed through a fallback intent. It works well
3) Dynamically adding slot type values is not feasible since when you provide samples you're really providing training data for a model than will be able to then process similar values beyond the ones you defined. If you noticed when you provide a voice interaction model schema then you have to build the model (in this step the training data provided in the samples is used to create the model). One example, when you define a custom slot of type "Car" and you provide the samples "Toyota", "Jeep", "Chevrolet" and "Honda" then, the system will also go to the same intent if the user says "Ford"
Note: SMAPI does allow to get and update the interaction model, so technically you could download the model via API, modify it with new training data, upload it again and rebuild the model. This is kind of awkward though
Is there a way to block compete.com or alexa from getting the traffic on my website? For competitive reasons, I don't want anyone knowing that info. I don't have advertising, just a paid-only site....would blocking compete.com or alexa in anyway affect my search engine rankings?
Is there a way to block compete.com or alexa from getting the traffic on my website
As far as I know, Alexa and Compete.com both use user-installed toolbars that analyze what sites the user visits (similar to how TV Ratings are done; see e.g. the Wikipedia article on the Alexa Toolbar). They do not fetch your traffic numbers as such; they estimate their own.
To mess with their counting process, you would have to block users with the Alexa Toolbar installed. While that may be possible, it's foolish in the extreme: You would be locking out innocent users, and decrease your Alexa ratings, which wouldn't affect them in the slightest.
Yes you can do it easily and automatically without having to contact them.
For Alexa, you can do it using robot.txt
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
The toolbar plugin is used to monitor traffic.
I don't have details for the others, but I've just found some information about robot.txt for Compete, Quantcast and Alexa: look a the end of this article for practical details.
Please note that by adding that in your robot.txt it will also force them to remove all data they gathered retroactively.
This is useful for websites like archive.org (linked to Alexa, in fact ia in ia_archiver stands for Internet Archive). They explain the process here: http://www.archive.org/about/exclude.php
Please note that in most countries, being able to remove your data from databases is a legal right.
Is it possible in Google App Engine to get resource usage by each user.
Basically, the app is to be used by each user separately. There is no data thats shared between users (Simplifying a bit here, as its projects which are separate, to which users belong). I dont want to blindly charge users the same value, but rather find out the actual usage of resources by each of them, and charge them for the same. How could this be done in Google App Engine.
Also, lets say I create an app in App Engine for Google Apps Marketplace. And, I want each of the companies to pay for there usage of app. Does the problem remain the same in this context also ?
Clarification:
The resource usage by each user might vary a lot. It might even be, that most of the resources are being used by a single user (ex: heavy usage doesnt mean abuse of app, just that one would have to pay for the usage). Thats why I am trying to find per user resource usage.
Having separate apps for each user/project is an option (as suggested below). But then updates to the apps wont be easy.
You can assess some of this using the quota API. This only records CPU used in your app, not in API calls, however. Appstats is capable of recording CPU usage for API calls, so with some work you could reverse-engineer that for your own purposes. For other quotas - bandwidth in and out, data stored, and emails sent - you'd need to record these yourself, manually.
A much simpler option would be to bill your customers per user, or per active user. Simply set those prices at a threshold where you make a reasonable profit off typical users. Your customers will probably thank you, too, as it's much easier for them to predict costs this way.
for your second question you can create a diffrent APPID for each comany and deploy the app exclusively.