Hands-on Building Alexa Skills

Before you begin building Alexa Skills, you must create an Alexa developer account, learn its ins and outs and how to navigate it. This video walks you through all the key elements of create and using an Amazon Alexa developer account.

   •  Set up an Amazon Alexa developer account

   •  Get an overview of the types of Alexa Skills you can build

   •  Build basic conversations, games, in-skill purchasing, and Alexa-hosted Skills

In this video, you’ll learn about custom skills, flash briefing skills, smart home, and more.

   •  Get a skills overview

   •  See how to navigate the Alexa Developer Console to start building skills

   •  Conclusion

Building a visual-based application is very different than building a voice-based application. This video walks through important steps to creating a meaningful conversation.

   •  Know who your target audience is

   •  Learn what a good user experience should feel like

   •  Write out a demo conversation and put yourself in the user’s shoes

The Alexa Skills store is shaping up to become the next $46 billion app store. Games are a big reason why it is so. But what are the different ways we can build games on Alexa?

   •  See the custom games (from scratch)

   •  Explore Alexa Blueprints

   •  The dos and don’ts of building games

How can developers make money on Alexa? Games are a big way to make money, but how does it actually happen?

   •  Perform in-skill purchasing for games

   •  Offer product sales via Amazon pay

   •  Check out how they both work

How are Alexa-hosted Skills? Is there a preferred or “best” way to host Alexa skills?

   •  AWS Lambda Alexa-hosted Skills overview (Node.js)

   •  AWS Lambda Alexa-hosted Skills overview (Python)

   •  Provision your own backend resources (VoiceFlow example)

Why use a third-party tool to build Alexa Skills? Voiceflow lets you collaboratively design, prototype, and build Alexa Skills and Google Actions, without coding.

   •  Understand why should we use Voiceflow

   •  Preview its capabilities

   •  Create a Voiceflow Account

In this video, learn how to create a Voiceflow account.

   •  Visit Voiceflow.com

   •  Click “Sign Up”

   •  Follow the prompts

Begin to learn and use Voiceflow to build Alexa Skills.

   •  Basic blocks overview

   •  Logic blocks overview

   •  Advanced blocks overview

Voiceflow is more than just a tool to build Alexa Skills. It is a collaboration tool, a prototyping tool, and a way to build Google actions for Google Assistant as well.

   •  Test your Alexa Skill with Voiceflow

   •  Collaborate with others within Voiceflow

   •  Build a Google action

When building software applications, oftentimes project managers, designers, developers, and testers are all in their own separate silos. Voiceflow helps solve those problems when building voice apps.

   •  Developers aren’t off on an island

   •  Explore the many ways to show progress and get help

   •  Conclusion

How will users find your skill? Why will they be intrigued to enable it and attempt to use it? How will you articulate the value proposition of your skill in a concise and effective way?

   •  Consider a clear, concise title and a worthy, well-written description

   •  See the elements of the title and description

   •  Options of where to write your title and description

What visual(s) will represent your skill within the Skill Store and other marketing materials and how will you create and publish it?

   •  Learn how to build it

   •  Learn where it appears

   •  Learn how to upload it

How will people find your skill? Why is categorization important?

   •  See how to categorize your skill

   •  Learn where you can make your selection

   •  See how to change your selection

What are the keywords for your skill and how should you select them?

   •  See what your keyword strategy should be for your skill

   •  See how to add keywords to your skill

   •  Explore what the limitations and guidelines for keywords are

In this video, you’ll learn about how to start building your Alexa Skills using basic blocks (speak blocks and voice blocks). You’ll see that Alexa Skills can be built in Voiceflow using only speak and choice blocks.

   •  Learn what speak blocks are

   •  Learn what choice blocks are

   •  Build skills using speak and choice blocks

This video digs into speak blocks and what they really allow you to do at an advanced level.

   •  Change Alexa’s Voice

   •  Replace Alexa’s Voice

   •  Add effects: tone, emphasis, interpretation, and whisper

How does a user make a choice that connects with the previous question and routes the user to the next piece of content based on their choice? Choice blocks solves these issues.

   •  See what choice blocks does from a technical standpoint

   •  Add multiple choices

   •  Add synonyms

What if the user of your skill doesn’t say the exact thing they were supposed to say to get them to the next step?

   •  Learn what synonyms are

   •  Learn why synonyms are important

   •  Learn about stop flow and help flow

Before building Advanced Skills, it’s important to review and remember the basic conversational voice app principles from earlier lessons.

   •  Basic conversational skill recap

   •  Overview of basic blocks

   •  Introduction into advanced functionality

How does Voiceflow allow you to build higher functionality skills beyond just the basic speak and choice blocks? This video reviews and teaches variables, captures, and set blocks.

   •  Variable overview

   •  Capture block example

   •  Set block quiz example

What “if” you want your user to go down a specific path in your skill based on a set of criteria, set in your variables and set blocks? Scoring a quiz is a great example. This video solves that problem.

   •  Use the “if” block

   •  Explore the numbers and words within “if” blocks

   •  Quiz scoring example

What if you want to send a user down a random path, like a dice roll or raffle type game? This is the purpose for the random block.

   •  See what the random block does

   •  Set up multiple paths for the random block

   •  Use cases for the random block

What if you want to add API integrations to your skill or allow for a video to be played using Alexa Presentation Language? This video teaches you that and more, including building custom intents with utterances to skip users directly to content within your skill via specific voice commands.

   •  Interactions and intends

   •  Streams, APL, and integrations

   •  Flow, code, and exit

How do you know your Alexa Skill actually works? Before continuing to put time and energy into developing it, an important step is to use Voiceflow’s built-in testing tool, which helps use your skill and make necessary alterations.

   •  See how to use Voiceflow’s testing tool.

   •  Example test

   •  Conclusion

Building your skill in Voiceflow is one thing, but how do you actually get it to appear correctly within the Alexa Developer Console?

   •  Log into Alexa Developer Console

   •  Log into Voiceflow

   •  Upload to Alexa from Voiceflow

Testing in Voiceflow is one thing, but you need to make sure all elements of your skill work on the Alexa Developer Console testing tool.

   •  Enter Alexa Test Tab

   •  Invoke your test

   •  Test within the Alexa Developer Console

Alexa Skill distribution is a big step. How do you make your skill live to your audience?

   •  Distribution Tab

   •  Availability (Public or Private)

   •  Conclusion

What does the Alexa Skill approval process look like? What are things you should look out for? How long should you expect it to take?

   •  Validation

   •  Submission

   •  Find Your skill in the Alexa Store and educate users how to enable and invoke it