Please, no. Please let people leave their life when they are not on their devices.

Is there any way to push custom messages to alexa skill from extenal apis? How skills like IFTTT trigger or NotifyMe are doing this?

Agreed with previous comments here on opening up the ProactiveNotificationSource. For example, I'd love to use the EventDetectionSensor interface to be able to proactively notify (Alexa speaks/alerts) upon event detection (user should proactively subscribe to such notifications as is required for all other proactive notifications).

I think I am trying to achieve a similar feature with my skills using the proactive events message alert scheme, but in the end the result is not that good. The problem is that amazon offers very few schemes and they are not much flexible (you can only change some words in a sentence). A customizable proactive message notification scheme would be perfect for lots of things, and indeed, "unlock a massive developer opportunity".

An alternative idea could be using the Timers API. Instead of only letting a Timer be created for < 2 hours in the future, the user should be able to set a specific date and time (possibly recurring?) longer into the future, when Alexa could initiate activity with the user.

This would be great! Please add it.

I don’t think this feature request is the same as using routines. For example, a correspondence chess skill could notify Alexa that the opponent has just moved. How can this be done otherwise ?

+1

any update on this?

It really would help community to develop most engaging skills

Waiting since my first device for years now for this.

Amazon should treat the skill users like adults. If we want notifications - we turn it on. It's between the user and the skill. It's like Firefox would dictate the page format for web applications.

Also the legacy notification beta allowed arbitrary messages, like the Breaking News from the Washington Post.

Its been more than a year, and this still does not seem to be possible. It's a shame.

100%. Users should have the ability to opt in or out of push notifications by skill. Notifications will encourage engagement with the device and the skill.

Please, do not do this!
People attention is so precious, and every app wants a piece of it these days.
I already fed up declining notifications from every second site in the internet (and why is there no button "decline them all" in any of popular browsers?).
I fed up swiping off all these endless Android notifications.
I fed up cleaning SPAM from my inbox and unsubscribing tons of letters.
I want Alexa to work when I ask and to shut up otherwise.

Just imagine a romantic evening with a new girlfriend, and then "Username! you've got a voice message from Bob, saying "hey friend, how's your new chicken?"
or "Urgent news! Tramp and Merkel meet Putin, but decided nothing as usual!"

Oh, amazon, I pray, if this evil feature is unstoppable, at least make it OFF by default and hide it deep inside menus, and to enable it, demand a written permission of everybody, who's living with the patient (coz only a sick person would ask to interrupt him even more)!

I understand that you do not make this feature public at the moment, since it might be abused easily. But it would be cool if at least developers, which have proven to have some knowledge and not to be completely spam (for example 5 active skills) were able to use this feature. If someone of these abuses the feature, he/his skill can be reported and he can not use the feature any longer or for some period or something like this.

Many positive uses cases for push notifications, sensing systems triggering a notification to Alexa has many benefits. If AI is to be response to request and respond.

" Alexa, is my house on fire" might be a bit late, --->" Your Kitchen Fire alarm has gone off" is more relevant.

Lets hope we can put the suitable controls and skills activations so that we can choose the push notifications, start small and build up.

Happy to discuss many uses cases in more detail with anyone at Alexa.

Comments make sense, but this would be a super-valuable enhancement, if implemented correctly and no abused.

For the IoT development, it would be useful as an alarm to notify the user of a process variable at a critical point. Use the rule function in the IoT core to push messages through lambda and into AVS.

Providing Push capability from a skill is really just another way of doing what is already available via Routines - if the user specifically wants pushed responses, they can do it today via all the ways routines support "When this happens...", and then Alexa speaks the prescribed text. It is really the same thing, and is already available today. The team just needs to expand capability to support skills. Thanks!​