What Is an Alexa
skill
Alexa is Amazon’s voice service and the brain behind millions
of devices including Amazon Echo. Alexa provides capabilities, or skills, that
enable customers to create a more personalized experience.
There are many ways to start building a skill. You can design
your own custom model or start with a pre-built model. Pre-built models
are interaction models that contain a package of intents and utterances that
you can add to your skill.
SELECTED
Custom
Design a unique experience for your users. A custom model
enables you to create all of your skill's interactions.
Flash Briefing
Give users control of their news feed. This pre-built model
lets users control what updates they listen to.
"Alexa, what's in the news?"
Smart Home
Give users control of their smart home devices. This
pre-built model lets users turn off the lights and other devices without
getting up.
"Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights"
Video
Let users find and consume video content. This pre-built
model supports content searches and content suggestions.
"Alexa, play Interstellar"
Create Skills
Choose a template
Choose
Select a quick start template to get started with a
predefined skill or simply "Start from scratch"
SELECTED
Start from scratch
Design a unique experience for your users and define your
custom model from scratch.
Fact Skill
Provided a list of interesting facts about a topic, Alexa
will select a fact at random and tell it to the user when the skill is invoked.
Includes 1 custom intent, and 4 built-in intents.
Quiz Game Skill
Provided a list of interesting facts about a topic, Alexa
will quiz a user with facts from the list. Includes 1 custom intent with 1
slot, and 6 built-in intents.
High-Low Game Skill
Try to guess the target number. Alexa tells the player if the
target number is higher or lower than their current guess. Includes 2 custom
intents with 5 slots, and 5 built-in intents.
Step 1: Choose Start from scratch
Give your new skill a Name. This is the name that will be shown in the
Alexa Skills Store, and the name your users will refer to. Push Next.
Select the Custom model
at the top of the page to add to your skill and select the Create Skill button at the top right.
Build the Interaction
Model for your skill
a.
On the left hand navigation panel. Select
the Invocation tab. Enter a Skill Invocation Name. This is the name
that your users will need to say to start your skill.
b.
Next, select the JSON Editor tab. In
the textfield provided, replace any existing code with the code provided in
the Interaction
Model (make sure to pick the model that matches your skill's
language), then click "Build Model".
Note: You should notice that Intents and Slot
Types will auto populate based on the JSON Interaction Model that you have
now applied to your skill. Feel free to explore the changes here, to learn
about Intents, Slots, and Utterances open our technical
documentation in a new tab.
Optional: Select an intent by expanding the Intents from
the left side navigation panel. Add some more sample utterances for your newly
generated intents. Think of all the different ways that a user could request to
make a specific intent happen. A few examples are provided. Be sure to
click Save Model and Build Model after you're done making
changes here.
Step 2: Setting
Up A Lambda Function Using Amazon Web Services
1.
Go to http://aws.amazon.com and sign in to the console. If
you don't already have an account, you will need to create one. If you don't have an AWS account, check out this quick walkthrough for
setting it up.
2.
Click
"Services" at the top of the
screen, and type "Lambda" in the search box. You can also find
Lambda in the list of services. It is in the "Compute" section.
3.
Check your AWS region. AWS Lambda
only works with the Alexa Skills Kit in these regions: US East (N. Virginia),
US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo) and EU (Ireland). Make sure you choose
the region closest to your customers.
4.
Click the orange "Create function"
button. It should be near the top of your screen. (If you don't see this button,
it is because you haven't created a Lambda function before. Click the blue
"Get Started" button near the center of your screen.)
5. There are three boxes labeled
"Author from scratch", "Blueprints" and "Serverless
Application Repository". Click the radio button in the box titled
"Serverless Application Repository" We have created a repository as a
shortcut to getting everything set up for your skill.
6. Search for the
application repository named "alexa-skills-kit-nodejs-factskill". You can find it using the
provided search box.
7. Click on the
repository. This
repository will create the Lambda function, add Alexa Skills Kit as it's
trigger, and sets up an IAM role for you. It will also add the code from this
GitHub repo and include it's dependencies to your Lambda function so that you
don't have to upload it yourself.
8. Click the deploy button at the bottom
of the page.
9. Wait for the
status of all resources to change to CREATE_COMPLETE
10. Click the Test App button to go to the
Lambda console.
11. Open the function that was just created by clicking on it.
13. You should see
the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) a unique identifier for this function in the top
right corner of the page. Copy the ARN value for this Lambda function for use
in the next section of the guide.
Step 3:
Connecting Your Voice User Interface To Your Lambda Function
1.
Go back to the Amazon Developer Portal and select your skill from the list. You
may still have a browser tab open if you started at the beginning of this
tutorial.
2.
Select
the Endpoint tab on the left side navigation
panel.
3.
Select the "AWS Lambda
ARN" option for your endpoint. You
have the ability to host your code anywhere that you would like, but for the
purposes of simplicity and frugality, we are using AWS Lambda. (Read more about Hosting Your Own Custom Skill Web Service.)
With the AWS Free Tier, you get 1,000,000 free requests per month, up to 3.2
million seconds of compute time per month. Learn more at aws.amazon.com/free.
In addition, Amazon now offers AWS Promotional Credits for developers who have live Alexa
skills that incur costs on AWS related to those skills.
4.
Paste
your
Lambda's ARN (Amazon Resource Name) into the textbox provided for Default Region.
5.
Click
the Save Endpoints button at the top of the main
panel.
Step 4: Testing
Your Skill
So far, we have created a Voice
User Interface, a Lambda
function, and connected the
two together. Your skill is now ready to test.
1. Go back to the Amazon Developer
Portal and select your
skill from the list. You may still have a browser tab open if you started
at the beginning of this tutorial.
2. Open the Test Pane, by selecting the Test link from the top
navigation menu.
3. Enable Testing by activating the Test is enabled for this skill slider. It should be underneath the top navigation menu.
4.
To validate that
your skill is working as expected, invoke your skill from the Alexa Simulator.
You can either type or click and hold the mic from the input box to use your
voice.
a.
Type "Open" followed by the invocation name you gave your skill
in Step 1.
For example, "Open City Guide".
b.
Use
your voice by clicking and holding the mic on the side panel and saying
"Open" followed by the invocation name you gave your skill.
c.
If
you've forgotten the invocation name for your skill, revisit
the Build panel on the top navigation menu and select Invocation
from the sidebar to review it.
5.
Ensure your skill
works the way that you designed it to.
·
After you interact
with the Alexa Simulator, you should see the Skill I/O JSON Input and JSON Output boxes get populated with JSON data. You can also view
the Device Log to trace your steps.
·
If it's not working
as expected, you can dig into the JSON to see exactly what Alexa is sending and
receiving from the endpoint. If something is broken, AWS Lambda offers an
additional testing tool to help you troubleshoot your skill.
6.
Configure
a test event in AWS Lambda. Now
that you are familiar with the request and response boxes
in the Service Simulator, it's important for you to know that you can
use your requests to directly test your Lambda function every time
you update it. To do this:
.
Enter an utterance
in the service simulator, and copy the generated Lambda Request for the next
step.
a.
Open
your Lambda function in AWS, open the
Actions menu, and select "Configure test events."
b.
Select
"Create New Test Event". Choose "Alexa Start Session" as
the Event Template from the dropdown
list.You can choose any test event in the list, as they are just templated
event requests, but using "Alexa Start Session" is an easy one to
remember.
c.
Type
in an Event Name into the Event Name Dialog box. Delete the contents of the
code editor, and paste the Lambda request you copied above into the code
editor. The Event Name is only visible to you. Name your test
event something descriptive and memorable. For our example, we entered an event
name as "startSession". Additionally, by copying and pasting your
Lambda Request from the service simulator, you can test different utterances
and skill events beyond the pre-populated templates in Lambda.
d. Click the "Create" button. This
will save your test event and bring you back to the main configuration for your
lambda function.
e.
Click
the "Test" button to execute the "startSession" test event.
This gives you visibility into four things:
·
Your
response, listed in the "Execution Result."
·
A
Summary of the statistics for your request. This includes things
like duration, resources, and memory used.
·
Log
output. By effectively using console.log() statements in your
Lambda code, you can track what is happening inside your function, and help to
figure out what is happening when something goes wrong. You will find the log
to be incredibly valuable as you move into more advanced skills.
·
A
link to your CloudWatch logs
for this function. This will show you all of the responses and log
statements from every user interaction. This is very useful, especially when
you are testing your skill from a device with your voice. (It is the "Click here"
link in the Log Output description.)
7.
Other
testing methods to consider:
·
Echosim.io - a browser-based Alexa skill testing tool that makes it
easy to test your skills without carrying a physical device everywhere you go.
·
Unit Testing
with Alexa - a modern
approach to unit testing your Alexa skills with Postman and Amazon API Gateway.
8.
If your sample skill
is working properly, you can now customize your skill.
