Routines with multiple triggers
Right now a routine is triggered by a voice command or specific time. However, some routines are to be triggered by voice and time.
For example:
Alexa, good night. Will turn of the lights, etc.
But you want this routine to run at certain time, say 22:00, in case you forgot or because you don’t want to say even the command, etc.
Currently to achieve this you would have to recreate the entire skill by hand, as were is no copy function either, but this time change the trigger. This is extremely annoying and worsens as the actions in the routine increase in count.
Alternatively, a solution to this problem would be to be able to run routines from inside other routines, so that the setup for the second routine, as stated before, would be much quicker and easier.
Oskar Lorenz
shared this idea
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Vladimir Shevchenko
commented
This would a small change that would greatly improve UX. Often I cannot remember the exact phrase, and I would like to include a similar phrase (ex. "Break Time" and "Snack Time"). Right now you have to just keep replicating the routines - which is time-consuming. Also, the routine page is now becoming too long and confusing - (ex. Break Time 1, Break Time 2, Break Time 3).
Lastly, when changes need to be made to a routine, it is very tedious, as you need to find all the routines and then go ahead and change them individually. -
Steve Draper
commented
I have been asking for this (as have many others online) for years - it seems so simple to do, but for some reason the Alexa Team keep ignoring this request.
I would extend it to ask if we can have multiple spoken phrases to trigger the same routine (without having to recreate another identical routine from scratch)? For example, "Turn off downstairs lights" = "Switch off downstairs lights" = "Turn downstairs lights off" = etc, etc...
Or at the bare minimum, the ability to duplicate a routine so a change to the trigger phrase can be made without taking ages creating a virtually identical routine.