For my project is ideally suited Smart Home Skill from Amazon. Tell me please, can I add additional commands (eg turn left, close door, show last video etc.) or only commands which are presented on this page (link) is available to me?
I have in the lambda function my commands but Alexa only recognizes standard. I have studied the documentation, but I did not find the information about how to Smart Home Skill, can add additional commands. But also I didn't find the information that it cannot be done.
Through the Smart Home Skill, only the designated actions are available.
To create an expanded feature set, create a custom skill. It will require the user to use the skill name (e.g. Alexa, ask my service to turn left) as part of the activation.
Note, depending on your use case, you could do both to cover all needs.
Update triggered from comment:
With this approach, you are building two skills. A Smart Home skill and traditional Alexa Skill. They will each have their own entry points into your code. The Smart Home Skill is usually a subset of features in your Alexa skill.
The Home Skill requires implementation as an AWS Lambda, so it would probably be easier to build the ASK front end for both skills in AWS. My solution started as an ASK skill prior to the availability of the Home Skill so my architecture is different.
For me, I route all Home skill requests through the AWS Lambda (mostly just the sample shell code) and then to my hosted service that performs the actual function and builds the appropriate ASK response. So, the Lambda logic is mostly just a proxy/wrapper for my code hosted elsewhere.
The number of "directives" available through the Smart Home Skill API is regularly increasing. At this time only Amazon can create new directives, but, as noted this list is growing.
Three weeks ago Amazon completely revamped the developer documentation for the Alexa Smart Home Skill API (and added new directives). You can find the updated landing pages with overview info here:
https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/smart-home/build
Updated reference material is here:
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/smarthome/smart-home-skill-api-message-reference.html
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Alexa is able to find service providers and also call them. Is it possible to use this capability from an Alexa skill. For example could an Alexa skill find and call a near-by doctor upon request?
The direct calling and search features of Alexa are not available currently within a custom skill, however you could achieve this your by using 3rd party APIs.
For example you can look up local businesses using the Yelp API and connect and connect a call using a Twilio API. You may want to register the user’s mobile number for this particular example.
It should also be noted that the features available in the Amazon SDK are always being updated. So it may be added in the future.
I have built a Alexa Skill, but for now it only works for Alexa Device.
I wonder if that is possible I can deploy/reference the Alexa Skill in my website (only text or voice part)?
One use case:
User can say "i am born in xx/xx/xxxx", and Alexa can capture the intent "CaptureBirthdayIntent", so that my website code (Python) can address the intent.
I found many CMS (e.g. Wordpress, Drupal) can do this: https://medium.com/#OPTASY.com/how-to-integrate-alexa-with-your-drupal-8-website-a-step-by-step-guide-5a76c1d74a88. But I am not using those CMS.
It also seems like Alexa Voice Service can do this.
Can anyone give me some reference?
In most cases, you'll need to use Account Linking, which is an API where the customer links their account at your website and their account with Alexa, and then you'll have a unique ID for the customer that is the same in both your skill and your external app (and is unique to that link between them), so you can sync data between them using a database.
https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/account-linking/understand-account-linking.html
You can create your own unique OAuth 2 provider at your web app or use Login with Amazon, Login with Google, Facebook, AWS Cognito... Having your own OAuth provider can make it way easier to get a customer linked and not have them give up, because adding in third parties (LwA, Google, FB, AWS) adds extra logins/authorizations to complete the process.
You can use Dialogflow to do this. Make a chatbot with similar intents and map the endpoint to Alexa endpoints and should work. I am sure you can easily work it out if you have made an Alexa skill.
I have a music application. I have built all the custom skill for my music application and it is working fine in amazon echo device. My question is how do i integrate it with alexa app. I can see spotify, pandora, saavn etc in the music section of alexa app and any song playing from this 3rd party application will appear in playqueue and now playing section in alexa app. So how to integrate? Any ideas or link regarding this will help me a lot.
Read and follow this: Submitting the Skill for Certification
When your skill is ready for publication, you can submit it to Amazon for review. The Submit for Certification button becomes available once all required fields are completed.
So make sure you meet all Certification Requirements.
When you submit your skill to the Alexa skills store, it must pass a certification process before it can be published live to Amazon customers. Before you submit your new skill for certification, you should perform your own quality assurance testing.
First, Policy Testing.
The following list shows specific examples that we look out for when evaluating whether a skill can be made available on Alexa.
Second, Security Testing.
To protect customer data, the cloud-based service for your skill must meet Amazon’s security requirements.
Third, Functional Testing.
The functional tests verify that: The skill’s basic functionality matches the information displayed on the skill’s detail card in the Amazon Alexa app. ...[And] the skill’s core functionality works and provides useful home cards to the Amazon Alexa app.
Fourth, Voice Interface and User Experience Testing.
Voice interface and user experience testing focuses on: Testing the user experience to ensure that the skill is aligned with several key features of Alexa that help create a great experience for customers. [And] reviewing the intent schema, the set of sample utterances, and the list of values for any custom slot types you have defined to ensure that they are correct, complete, and adhere to voice design best practices.
It's my first few hours today to use Alexa so please bear with me for now.
I followed a tutorial that I found and was able to configure Alexa skills upto the Lamdba function. I was able to use the Test section inside Lamdba service and it worked really well. It can pull data from the external api. I was able to click the Listen button too.
However, I can't figure out how I will deploy this so that I can call the utterances using my real physical Alexa device. Not sure what to do next. And is it possible that I'll be the only one to use it?
You don't have to publish it to use it on your physical alexa device. As long as the alexa device is configured with the same Amazon account that you use to configure your skill then you can use the skill 'live' on your device.
In the configuration, I believe you must have progressed to the 'test' tab, but you don't need to fill in the publishing info to test the skill both virtually and on the device.
I want to use amazon alexa api for my website/ mobile application. I would like to know if it is possible to use and how to integrate alexa, given that I develop my custom skill.
You can use the Alexa Voice Service. You will need to collect the user's audio and then submit it to Amazon. The voice snippet does not need to contain the hotword (e.g. Alexa). You should be able to use most features that don't involve the device and aren't asynchronous. For example, you can utilize the alarm or timer features nor the music streams.
It sounds like you are asking how to allow the user to talk to your website or mobile app.
An Alexa custom skill is something you create to extend Alexa's vocabulary, so to speak. It isn't an alternative to using a mouse or keyboard with an existing app.
A website and a mobile app are, or can be, two different ways for a user to access the functionality you provide. Think of an Alexa skill as a 3rd way to access that functionality. A user could ask the Alexa device (Echo, Dot, iPhone Lexi app, etc) to get or perform the same things that your website does.
So for example, if your website explains how your widgets work, then you could create a widget Alexa skill that would allow Alexa user's to ask about your widgets.
The Alexa Voice Service is something entirely different. It is an API to enable adding Alexa voice to a different piece of hardware. For example, my friend Thaddeus created an Alexa Voice Service app called Lexi that runs on an iPhone. This allows a user to talk to Alexa using their iPhone. However, it doesn't add any new capability to Alexa. It only allows me to do things on my iPhone that I can already do on my Echo.