Building Public and Business Alexa Skills [Aug 2019]

This was an introductory presentation on how to build Amazon Alexa Public and Private Skills.

5. ●Invocations, Intents and Slots
●Lambda vs HTTPS Endpoints
●CloudWatch for Logs and S3 for Storage
●SSML for Speech Markups
●Persisting data for Session and Multiple Invocations
●Business Skills
●Enhancing Alexa VUI with GUI
●Testing and Deployment
Key Points

6. Invocation, Intents and Slots
●Configure Wake word for your device
●Invocation name to initialise your skill
●Intents are initializing a Controller of you skill
●Can combine invocation with intents
●Slots are variables in a Controller, for example POST /user/{userId}

7. Lambda vs HTTPS Endpoint
●With an Alexa-hosted skill, you can get started quickly using Alexa-hosted
AWS resources to power your skill. An Alexa-hosted skill works in conjunction
with a code editor in the developer console to edit and deploy changes to your
AWS Lambda code. You can also use the Alexa Skills Kit Command Line
Interface (ASK CLI) to edit and deploy an Alexa-hosted skill.
●You can build a custom skill for Alexa by implementing a web service that
accepts requests from and sends responses to the Alexa service in the cloud.
You can build your web service using any programming language, as long as
the service meets the following requirements.
○Accessible over the Internet
○Must accept HTTPS requests
○HTTPS Certificate must be using Amazon-trusted certificate (Self-signed allowed for
Testing)
○Must verify the incoming requests

8. Alexa Hosted Service Limits
Usage is limited to the AWS Free Tier. The following limits apply to each account.
AWS Lambda: 1 million free AWS Lambda requests and 3.2 million seconds of
compute time per month.
Amazon S3: 5 GB of Amazon S3 storage, 20,000 get requests, 2,000 put requests,
and 15 GB of data transfer out per month.
AWS CodeCommit: 50 GB-month of storage and 10,000 Git requests per month.
Once your usage passes the limit of the AWS Free Tier, you have 30 days to bring
usage below the limit by moving at least one of your skills to a personal AWS
account or other cloud services account.

9. Speech Synthesis Markup Language
<speak> I want to tell you a secret. <amazon:effect name="whispered">I am not a real
human.</amazon:effect>. Can you believe it? </speak>
<speak>Here is a number spoken as a cardinal number: <say-as
interpret-as="cardinal">12345</say-as>. Here is the same number with each digit spoken
separately: <say-as interpret-as="digits">12345</say-as>. Here is a word spelled out: <say-as
interpret-as="spell-out">hello</say-as></speak>
<speak>Here is how I sound in Indian accent <voice name="Aditi">I am from
India.</voice><say-as interpret-as="interjection">balle balle</say-as></speak>
<speak>This is how train sounds.<audio
src="soundbank://soundlibrary/vehicles/trains/train_01"/></speak>

10. Business Skills

11. Business Skills

12. Business Skills

13. Resources
●Free Course by A Cloud Guru https://acloud.guru/series/alexa-devs/view/101
●http://alexa.design/
●SSML Reference
○https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-mark
up-language-ssml-reference.html
●Alexa Sound Library
○https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/ask-soundlibrary.html
●Alexa for Business
○https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/features/
●Account Linking with OAuth
○https://developer.amazon.com/docs/account-linking/account-linking-for-c
ustom-skills.html