951 results found

1. Make Alexa check for intents *inside* the skill before searching for a native/keyword function

   It's increasingly common and frustrating to have Alexa ignore intents provided by the skill and instead pivot to a native function / keyword function.

   For example, in a cooking skill I've included various intents for calling up the list of recipes offered by the skill. But as soon as Alexa hears the word "recipe", she quits the skill and says, "Sure. I can search by dish name and ingredients. What would you like?"

   Alexa obviously did not check my list of intents, because if she did she would've read the list of recipes in my skill to the user.

   The same problem exists with any intent that includes the word "list". As soon as Alexa hears the word "list" she assumes the user wants to view their Alexa shopping list---even if there are custom intents in the skill to handle user requests with the word "list" in them.

   By default Alexa should always check for a matching intent within the skill first, and only resort to native / keyword functions if she doesn't find a match within the skill.

   It's increasingly common and frustrating to have Alexa ignore intents provided by the skill and instead pivot to a native function / keyword function.

   For example, in a cooking skill I've included various intents for calling up the list of recipes offered by the skill. But as soon as Alexa hears the word "recipe", she quits the skill and says, "Sure. I can search by dish name and ingredients. What would you like?"

   Alexa obviously did not check my list of intents, because if she did she would've read the list of recipes in my skill to the user.

   The… more

   40 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  3 comments  ·  Interaction Model  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

2. Send raw query with request

   Currently all skills must run through Amazon’s Natural Language Understanding and provide a language model to Alexa. While this is helpful for getting started, many more advanced features for Language Processing and response building benefit heavily from having the user’s speech accessible to perform more complex operations like sentiment analysis, conversation reconstruction or custom natural language processing through models on other services. This allows developers to deliver a richer experience to users through the additional processing it makes possible.
   For my use case in specifically it would be acceptable to have an option in the console to disable the language model and only receive the speech transcript in requests, and I think there are other developers who would benefit from this as well. Currently to get access to an approximation of the raw speech requires a basically empty language model, which works but suffers in performance.

   Currently all skills must run through Amazon’s Natural Language Understanding and provide a language model to Alexa. While this is helpful for getting started, many more advanced features for Language Processing and response building benefit heavily from having the user’s speech accessible to perform more complex operations like sentiment analysis, conversation reconstruction or custom natural language processing through models on other services. This allows developers to deliver a richer experience to users through the additional processing it makes possible.
   For my use case in specifically it would be acceptable to have an option in the console to disable the language… more

   40 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   2 comments  ·  ASK SDK  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close
   Received  ·  Alexa Admin responded

   Thanks for the clarification and suggestion! We’ll route this to the appropriate internal team for review.

3. Other e-mails for skill certification.

   Allow developers to add multiple email addresses in the Dev consul under the certification tab to receive feedback pertaining to the skill. In addition place the feedback in the certification tab instead of just having a general message that is of no value to the developer.

   39 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  8 comments  ·  Alexa Developer Console  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

4. Add Flag to PlayVideo() that tells the Video Player to Return to the Skill when Video Ends

   Currently when a video play is initiated by a Video Skill, the video play takes full control of the session and the user has to manually initiate a return to the Skill. PlayVideo() should have a flag that tells the Alexa video player to return immediately to the Skill when video playback ends or is stopped by the user.

   39 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  7 comments  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

5. Allow Changing Endpoints for a Live Skill

   Allow the Endpoints to be changed for a Live skill WITHOUT submitting for re-certification.

   In the new Developer Console for a Live (already published) skill, you can see the endpoint ARNs in textboxes which would indicate that they are editable, but the Save Endpoints button is disabled.

   The following scenarios outline why the endpoints should be editable. The timing and reasons for changing the endpoints shows that they should be done without triggering a re-certification.

   Scenario 1
   The skill's lambda function is hosted in a region that goes down. With a quick change of the ARNs, your skill will be Live again hosted from a different region. No re-certification needed. No changes were made to the skill and the timeliness of getting your skill active again to support users does not fit the timeline for re-certification.

   Scenario 2
   You have already certified and published a skill and you discover a bug that is crashing your lambda. No utterances have changed, no responses have changed, but you want to quickly deploy a hotfix to the lambda function only. No re-certification needed. No changes were made to the skill features and the timeliness of getting your skill active again to support users does not fit the timeline for re-certification.

   Scenario 3
   You are using versioning and aliasing of Lambda functions. You have two aliases: beta & prod. The first time you certified/published your skill, you used the 'prod' alias suffixed to the ARN. Weeks later, it is time to make changes to the interaction model and lambda code. You version and then alias the most recent changes to you lambda with the 'beta' alias. The 'In Development' version of your skill is pointing to the beta ARN. You go ahead and publish the skill and after certification it is the version that has the 'Live' status. But the ARN is pointing to the beta alias. At this point the lambda code is correct, but the alias is wrong. In the Lambda console, you assign the 'prod' alias to the latest version and in the Developer Console, change the ARN to the 'prod' aliased version. Now the beta alias is ready to be used for the next set of changes. The current two-phase (In Development => Live) deployment of skills does not function well with the versioning and aliasing of lambda functions unless you are able to change the ARNs for a Live skill. The fact that the reason for changing the ARN is because of certification it would be skill to require re-certification just for changing the alias portion of the ARN.

   If there are concerns about bait-n-switch (where a skill is certified and then the code is swapped out for other code) then changing the endpoints could put this skill on a re-evaluation list to be checked out and removed if needed.

   Allow the Endpoints to be changed for a Live skill WITHOUT submitting for re-certification.

   In the new Developer Console for a Live (already published) skill, you can see the endpoint ARNs in textboxes which would indicate that they are editable, but the Save Endpoints button is disabled.

   The following scenarios outline why the endpoints should be editable. The timing and reasons for changing the endpoints shows that they should be done without triggering a re-certification.

   Scenario 1
   The skill's lambda function is hosted in a region that goes down. With a quick change of the ARNs, your skill will be… more

   39 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  1 comment  ·  Alexa Developer Console  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

6. Access the web browser in my Echo Show skill?

   I would like to start a bookmarked video or web application by voice in my skill.

   38 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  5 comments  ·  ASK SDK  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

7. allow access skills from another region/language

   More than 1 million Bulgarian immigrants scattered across the globe are struggling to preserve their cultural identity/heritage and to pass it over to their children. There are Alexa skills (like "Bulgarian library" skill) which could help them teach BG-language to their children however currently Amazon does not allow access to this skill from anywhere except US,UK,CA,AU. Most of the world (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc) has no access to it. So, in this case splitting the globe into regions makes no sense whatsoever.

   Would be greatly appreciated by thousands of people IF Amazon allows access to skills which are outside the physical "region" a given person currently resides into (without having to give up all other services tied to that region)

   One way to accomplish this is:
   As part of certification process, in "opt in for auto distribution" to have additional "exempt from local interaction-model requirement" checkbox along with "why you need this ?" text box where basically the developer could ask for a given skill to be distributed (say in Germany) even though only English interaction-model is implemented. This would be rare case anyway and Amazon still keeps the right to allow if reasonable or deny such request.

   Thanks for consideration

   More than 1 million Bulgarian immigrants scattered across the globe are struggling to preserve their cultural identity/heritage and to pass it over to their children. There are Alexa skills (like "Bulgarian library" skill) which could help them teach BG-language to their children however currently Amazon does not allow access to this skill from anywhere except US,UK,CA,AU. Most of the world (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc) has no access to it. So, in this case splitting the globe into regions makes no sense whatsoever.

   Would be greatly appreciated by thousands of people IF Amazon allows access to skills which are outside… more

   36 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  1 comment  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

8. Add support for GIF and Video as background for Display Interface and Templates

   Developers should be able to use GIFs and Videos for the background of their Display Interfaces and Templates including for Echo Spot and Echo Show.

   36 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  3 comments  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

9. Phonic Recognition

   This feature request comes off the back of https://forums.developer.amazon.com/questions/200304/phonic-recognition.html

   The most recognised and adopted method of teaching kids and grownups to learn english is by using phonics.

   Could Alexa also recognise phonics as well as words? This would allow a whole new type of interactive skill that could teach children to read by getting them to practice phonics.

   Reference from the UK government for teaching kids to read with sounds:

   https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/190599/Letters_and_Sounds_-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf

   35 votes

   Vote Vote Vote

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

   Vote

   We’ll send you updates on this idea

   Received  ·  1 comment  ·  Interaction Model  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
   How important is this to you?

   Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

   We're glad you're here

   Please sign in to leave feedback

   Signed in as (Sign out)

   Close

   Close

10. Get the probability for a slot

    Get the probability a slot was selected.

    This would help an experienced developer implement a dialog to confirm with the user or to execute indent directly.

    35 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    0 comments  ·  Built-in Intent / Slots  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close
    Received  ·  Alexa Admin responded

    Thanks a lot for submitting this request. Your request has been received.

11. Add queue for Echo Show VideoApp

    The VideoApp for the Echo Show only supports to play one video. Once this video is started the current skill looses control. Please add a queue to the VideoApp like the AudioPlayer already supports.

    34 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    1 comment  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close
    Received  ·  Alexa Admin responded

    Thanks a lot for posting this request. Your request has been received

12. Enable opening of browser bookmarks on Echo Show by voice

    Being able to launch a bookmark on the Echo Show browsers by voice would bring a whole new functionality to voice interactions on the Echo Show device.

    33 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  4 comments  ·  Alexa App  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

13. Enable developer access to the Show/Spot/Look Camera

    Enable developer access to the Show/Spot/Look camera for both taking a picture or capturing video - bonus: easy integration with AWS Rekognition in ASK would be ideal.

    32 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  6 comments  ·  Other  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

14. alexa.amazon.com media controls for Amazon device

    When using Alexa device to play, for example Spotify, the media controls (pause/play/next/volume) appear on the alexa.amazon.com web site. This happens with a small number of Skills (e.g. Spotify, Amazon Music and TuneIn).
    How about opening this up to all media-playing skills?

    31 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  9 comments  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

15. Proactive Notification template for new content (podcast, blog post, sermon, talk, seminar) available from skill

    Need to be able to notify users that new content has just been made available. Might fit into the Media Content template, but instead of notifying about upcoming content, this would be a notification that the content has just posted and is now available. This Notification would be helpful for listeners of blogs and podcasts and seminars and sermons, etc.

    31 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  0 comments  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

16. Add S3 to ask-cli

    A public S3 bucket is used to host skill icons, audio files, images, and videos for Alexa skills. This feature adds a new deploy target to the ASK CLI.

    Configuration for the bucket name and region would be stored in '.ask/config'
    $ deploy --target s3

    The would sync all files and folders in a known local folder to the bucket at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/

    The first time this is done, the bucket will be created and a CORS configuration applied.

    Calling 'ask deploy' will also sync local folders and files to S3. Because the skill icon can be hosted in the S3 bucket, deploy to s3 will occur before the deploy of the skill.json file.

    Behind the scenes, the following commands will be called:

    make bucket

    aws s3 mb s3://{bucket-name}/ --profile {aws-profile-name}

    set CORS

    aws s3api put-bucket-cors --bucket {bucket-name} --cors-configuration file://.deploy-s3/s3-cors.json --profile {aws-profile-name}

    File: s3-cors.json
    {
    "CORSRules": [
    {
    "AllowedOrigins": ["*"],
    "AllowedHeaders": ["Authorization"],
    "AllowedMethods": ["GET"],
    "MaxAgeSeconds": 3000
    }
    ]
    }

    sync s3

    aws s3 sync ./.deploy-s3 s3://{bucket-name}/ --profile {aws-profile-name} --grants read=uri=http://acs.amazonaws.com/groups/global/AllUsers

    A public S3 bucket is used to host skill icons, audio files, images, and videos for Alexa skills. This feature adds a new deploy target to the ASK CLI.

    Configuration for the bucket name and region would be stored in '.ask/config'
    $ deploy --target s3

    The would sync all files and folders in a known local folder to the bucket at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/my-bucket/

    The first time this is done, the bucket will be created and a CORS configuration applied.

    Calling 'ask deploy' will also sync local folders and files to S3. Because the skill icon can be hosted in the S3… more

    30 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  0 comments  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

17. API for Alexa Voice Profiles

    The Alexa Voice Profiles feature released recently is a great and awesome feature to have. Can you please have API for Alexa Voice Profiles so that we can use it in our Skills to perform a certain action based on the voice of the user and also customize response per user.

    29 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  3 comments  ·  Other  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

18. Ability to Mirror Alexa Screen on connected devices

    It will be great if we get the capability to mirror / extend / cast the content (video and/or Text) shown on an Alexa Spot or Show screen onto a connected (bigger) screen.

    28 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  7 comments  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

19. Session timeout - tell me earlier

    If my session has timed out, please let me know sooner rather than later. Right now, I'm able to keep adding intents, utterances, slot types, etc. but as soon as I click "Save Model" , I lose those changes because I have to refresh/log back in.

    28 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  4 comments  ·  Interaction Model  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

20. Allow changing of invocation name

    Please allow changing/modification of invocation names.

    Having to resubmit a new skill and losing the old users is not really acceptable. We should be allowed to be able to change/tweak the invocation name for various reasons:

    • Invocation name is not responding correctly (despite successful testing).
    • Change of company/business name
    27 votes

    Vote Vote Vote

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close

    Vote

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    Received  ·  5 comments  ·  Interaction Model  ·  Delete…  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    Not at all You must login first! Important You must login first! Critical You must login first!

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback

    Signed in as (Sign out)

    Close

    Close