Make your product talk with Amazon Alexa

Agenda

1. Use cases
2. Implementation and distribution
3. Demo
4. Q&A

Use cases

1. Smart home
2. Healthcare
3. E-commerce
4. Use your imagination 😉

Implementation

1. Skill interaction model on AWS Developer Portal
2. Code for handling intent requests

• Any programming language, but AWS provides a lot of Node.js examples
• AWS Lambda is recommended for hosting and running the code, but you can also create a custom web service if this fits your use case better.

Configuration

Create a skill: https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask

Create a Lambda function

Link Alexa Skills Kit with your Lambda Function

Provide the link to Lambda function to ASK

The code

module.exports = {
    canHandle(handlerInput) {
        const { request } = handlerInput.requestEnvelope;
        return request.type === 'IntentRequest'
            && request.intent.name === '<INTENT_NAME>';
    },
    handle(handlerInput) {
        // do any required operations like API calls
        // or just respond
        return handlerInput.responseBuilder
            .speak('Alexa will speak this out')
            // Will keep the session, useful for dialogs
            .reprompt('Alexa will wait for your further input if you add this')
            .getResponse();
    }
}

Testing

Debugging on Lambda

console.log and check Cloudwatch

Name-free interaction

• Hard and to implement, re-certification required, consider doing this as Phase 2
• https://github.com/PaulCutsinger/Sample-For-Can-Fulfill-Intent-Request

Distribution

A small demo

Demo time!