I'm trying to restrict an echo dot to allow only my skill to be invoked on the device. This is a publicly available device so I don't want users making Alexa repeat what they say or set alarms, or basically just using any other skill than the ones I allow. How would I go about restricting access to all other skills?
I've tried going into my Amazon account to see if there were any settings I could manage, but I had no luck. Is it simply not possible to do this right now?
Thanks for any help.
For this use case you may want to look into Alexa for Business: https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/
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I have created an Alexa custom skill that I am using to control various devices in my house. I am using a custom skill rather than implementing the smart home skills as I want to be able to support non-standard utterances. For instance, I can ask
Alexa, ask [invocation] what is the brightness of the porch lights right now?
Everything with the custom skill works really well, except that I don't want to have to say the invocation name. I'd prefer to interact with porch lights as if they were a discovered smart home skills device, like:
Alexa, what is the brightness of the porch lights right now?
This seems to be purpose of the canFulfillIntent. I have implemented this interface in Python (perhaps incorrectly), but Alexa always responds: "Sorry, I didn't find a device named porch lights".
Is what I am asking possible? And if it is, does anyone have a Python example? My reading is that while this is the purpose of canFulfillIntent it does not function like this yet (thus the reason why there are two ecobee skills, for instance).
It is not possible. Every time you ask for brightness and other things it will assume that you are referring to a smart home device and the skill will not be invoked. Thus the 2 ecobee skills. This video might help you if you go for a smart home skill.
It is possible to use Alexa skill with custom NLU without using Alexa ones? I needed it because Alexa doesn't provide context, which is crucial for my business needs. For example, I can be satisfied if I will be able to get user input from the skill.
It is up to the developer to provide context. Check out the AttributesManager in the SDK.
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs/manage-attributes.html
You can set session or persistent attributes to "remember" the context. For example, I use session attributes and set a variable called "last_asked" to store which Yes or No question they were last asked, so the skill has the context of those generic answers.
I don't know what you exacty mean with "User Input".
If you want to have
the audio what the user is speaking - No it's not possible
the complete text what the user was speaking (speech to text) - Yes this is possible. Use a Custom Slot Type with some variances.
What do you mean with "doesn't provide context" exactly? If you know the user already in your system you could use "account linking".
I was asked to write a Skill in which users have to ask for a specific product.
Examples:
Alexa, what is the price of the Fujifilm Instax Mini 7S Camera?
Alexa, how many TOSTITOS® Tortilla Chips are left?
Question: Can I add custom brands / product names to Alexa's vocabulary?
I guess Amazon can recognize some products, but how about new brands that amazon hasn't seen yet?
If this can't be done, it makes no sense of building that Skill.
Is there any alternative? Did Google solve this problem in Google home?
Thanks!
Alexa skills has some predefined slots which could help you https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/slot-type-reference.html#list-slot-types, I'm not sure how specific you need it by your example Fujifilm Instax Mini 7S Camera, but still it would be the easiest way.
If you need more, or different, brands you can also check in that link how to have a slot with custom values, pretty much you define that in the developers console where you configure your Skill
Is it possible to restrict and AVS device (a device running Alexa) to a single skill? So if I built an AI skill and have it running on a device, is it possible to keep the experience inside the custom skill so I don't have to keep saying Alexa, open
One trick you can do with AVS is to prepend every single request with a sound clip equivalent to: "ask to ..." It's definitely a hack, but I was able to use it with some success.
See my write-up here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adding-context-alexa-will-blaschko-ma
The relevant parts (in case the link goes away).
Regular voice commands don't carry my extra information about the
user, but I wanted to find a way to tack on metadata to the voice
commands, and so I did just that--glued it right onto the end of the
command and updated my intents to know what the new structure would
be.
...
In addition to facial recognition, voice recognition could help
identify users, but let's not stop there. Any amount of context can be
added to a request based on available local data.
“Find frozen yogurt nearby" could silently become “Alexa open Yelp and
find frozen yogurt near 1st and Pine, Seattle” using some built in
geolocation in the device (phone, in this case).
I also use something similar in my open source Android Alexa library to send prerecorded commands: https://github.com/willblaschko/AlexaAndroid
I think you are looking for AWS Lex which allows you to write Alexa like skills without the rest of Alexa feature set.
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lex/latest/dg/what-is.html
Is it possible to launch an Alexa App with just its name? This is similar to when you ask it what the weather is.
"Alexa, weather"
However I would like to be able to say
"Alex, weather in Chicago" and have it return that value
I can't seem to get the app to launch without a connecting word. Things like ask, open, tell would count as a connecting word.
I have searched the documentation but can't find mention of it, however there are apps in the app store that do this.
It is documented in the first item here.
I've verified that this works with my own skill. One thing I've noticed is that Alexa's speech recognition is much worse when invoked in this manner presumably because it requires matching against a greater set of possible words. I have to really enunciate in a quiet room to get Alexa to recognize my invocation name in this context.
When developing a custom skill you have to use the connecting words e.g. Alexa, ask your invocation name to do something.
If you want to pass a variable, you have to specify the sample utterances:
OneshotTideIntent get high tide
OneshotTideIntent get high tide for {City} {State}
Then you handle cases in your code when user does not provide these values. For examples see https://github.com/amzn/alexa-skills-kit-js
When writing the example phrases you use the following construct:
"Alexa, [connecting word] [your invocation name], [sample utterance]". As far as I have noticed she is rather picky and you have to be exact when invoking custom skill (the voice recognition works way better with built in skills)
EDIT: launching skill without connecting word is possible when developing "smart home" skill