amazon alexa | The Blog Pros

May 26, 2020

3 Ways to Continue Using ASK CLI 1.x With the New ASK CLI 2.x

At the time of this writing, the ASK CLI 2.6.0 has just been released. Along with it comes a fair bit of breaking changes the extend of which can be seen in this migration guide.

This has caused a fair bit of challenge in the community especially for developers who have multiple skills prior to ASK CLI 2.x being introduced. A lot of automation tools would also have to be rewritten and some even have no viable workarounds when using 2.x. The VSCode extension functionality that allows convenient ASK CLI support is also broken.

April 2, 2020

Alexa Proactive Notification Java Client Sender

This article aims at simplifying sending proactive events to an Alexa Skill from an external Java process.

Based on the video, From Zero to Hero, Part 13: Proactive Events Notifications by German Viscuso, and the Github project by Luca Rosellini written in NodeJS. I have created a Java client so that it is easy to send notifications from any Java/Kotlin-based backend or, for example, from any Android device.

March 18, 2020March 20, 2020

How to Create Alexa Custom Slot Types

The usability of the skill directly depends on how well the sample utterances and custom slot values represent real-world language use.

As Alexa best practices say:

February 7, 2020

Innovative IoT Hardware and the Fight for Privacy

You've probably heard the comment that if you want your privacy, then stay away from IoT. It's easy to suggest not using such products at all. But what if they provide great convenience and you really like them?

In exchange for that convenience, tech companies expect us to sacrifice our privacy. They expect us to invite always-on microphones into our living rooms, our kitchens, and even our bedrooms. They store our recordings indefinitely, hire human subcontractors to listen in, and sell our data to third parties. That’s a deal we’re not willing to take. We love our smart speakers, but we demand control over when they’re listening and what they hear. In short, we want both convenience and privacy.

April 12, 2019

Connect Your Own AI Chatbot to Amazon Alexa

More and more chatbots are being created every day, basically covering every automatable use case. Most of these chatbots are textual, and we can interact with them on Messenger, SMS, website chat, etc. They’re very accessible and easy to use, but I’m sure you’d love to be able to speak to them, as well as write to them.

Sometimes, speaking is the most natural and easiest way to interact, say, when you’re at home cooking or reading. I’ve got some news for you: you can build your own Alexa bot backed by SAP Conversational AI. We made this integration very easy, so let’s dive in, step-by-step.