An overview of Alexa skills development. Learn about types of skills possible and components of a typical skill. Also get an overview of "voice user interface" aka "VUI" and its three properties - intents, utterances, and slots. [Note: slides are from a beginner Alexa skills workshop.]

1. INTRO TO ALEXA SKILLS
DEVELOPMENT

2. V0.9

3. SAHIL KHOSLA
SR. SOFTWARE DEV
1 PUBLISHED SKILL ON AMAZON APP STORE

4. WHY ALEXA?

5. Voice is the next big platform, and
Alexa will own it.
— Wired Magazine

6. Amazon Echo is something amazing:
it changes the way we live our
day-to-day lives.
— CTO Informer

7. The Alexa-enabled Echo is a true
unicorn, one of those rare
products that arrives every few
years and fundamentally changes
the way we live.
— Wired Magazine

8. WHAT CAN IT DO?

9. PLAY MUSIC
PROVIDE UPDATES
CONTROL SMART HOME DEVICES
TO-DO AND SHOPPING LISTS
VOICE GAMES
AND MUCH MORE

10. THIS IS JUST THE
BEGINNING

11. BBOT DEMO
Use Alexa to get a beer from the robot. The bartender sees the command from Alexa and loads the robot. Click on Demo to watch the video.

12. RECAP (VIDEO)
Alexa overview video by Amazon

13. WHAT WILL YOU CREATE?

14. AGENDA

15. CONCEPTS:
TYPES OF SKILLS
SKILL ARCHITECTURE
COMPONENTS OF A SKILL
VOICE INTERACTION MODEL
LAMBDAS

16. LAB:
CREATE A LAMBDA
CREATE THE VUI1
CONFIGURE THE SKILL
TEST
1
VUI = Voice User Interface

17. TYPES OF SKILLS

18. SMART HOME SKILLS
FLASH BRIEFING SKILLS
VIDEO SKILLS (FIRE TV)
CUSTOM SKILLS

19. SMART HOME SKILLS
FLASH BRIEFING SKILLS
VIDEO SKILLS (FIRE TV)
CUSTOM SKILLS

20. Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights.
— Smart Home Skill

21. Alexa, give me my flash briefing.
— Flash Briefing Skill

22. Alexa, play a funny video.
— Video Skill

23. Alexa, text my friends I am running
late for the party, order a bottle of
my favorite wine from Amazon fresh
and request an uber for 8:30pm.
— Custom Skill, for sure

24. SKILL ARCHITECTURE

27. COMPONENTS OF A SKILL

28. LET'S LOOK AT A
COMMAND

29. ALEXA, ASK SPOTIFY TO
PLAY TECHNO MUSIC.

30. ALEXA = WAKE WORD

31. IN OTHER WORDS, IT'S THE
NAME OF THE DEVICE.

32. ALEXA, ASK SPOTIFY TO
PLAY TECHNO MUSIC.

33. ASK = ACTION

34. ASK, TELL, SEARCH, ETC.

35. ALEXA, AKS SPOTIFY TO
PLAY TECHNO MUSIC.

36. SPOTIFY = INVOCATION
NAME

37. ALEXA, AKS SPOTIFY TO
PLAY TECHNO MUSIC.

38. TO = CONNECTING WORD

39. TO, THAT, FOR, ETC.

40. SPOTIFY TO PLAY
TELL AMAZON THAT I
SEARCH BING FOR X

41. ALEXA, AKS SPOTIFY TO
PLAY TECHNO MUSIC.

42. PLAY TECHNO MUSIC =
UTTERANCE

43. CAN BE MORE THAN ONE

44. PLAY TECHNO MUSIC
SHUFFLE TECHNO MUSIC
PLAY TECHNO

45. ALL HAVE THE SAME
INTENT

46. INTENT = CORE
FUNCTIONALITY

47. IN THIS CASE, PLAYING
TECHNO MUSIC

48. RECAP

49. COMPONENTS OF A SKILL:
> Wake word
> Action
> Invocation Name
> Connecting word
> Utterance
> Intent

50. COMPONENTS OF A SKILL:
> Wake word = Alexa
> Action = Ask
> Invocation Name = Spotify
> Connecting word = To
> Utterance = Play techno music
> Intent = Play techno music

51. VOICE INTERACTION
MODEL

52. MODEL = INTENTS +
SLOTS3
+ UTTERANCES
3
more on slots later

53. INTENT DEFINITION
{
"intents": [
{
"intent": "PlayTechnoMusic",
"intent": "PlayRockMusic",
"intent": "PlayHipHopMusic"
}
]
}

54. SAMPLE UTTERANCES
> PlayTechnoMusic play techno music
> PlayTechnoMusic shuffle techno playlist
> PlayTechnoMusic launch techno playlist
> PlayTechnoMusic play techno
...

55. WHAT IS A LAMBDA?

56. A serverless compute service that
runs your code in response to
events and automatically manages
the underlying compute resources
for you.

57. A serverless compute service
that runs your code in response to
events and automatically manages
the underlying compute resources
for you.

58. A serverless compute service
that runs your code in response
to events and automatically manages
the underlying compute resources for
you.

59. WHAT IS A LAMBDA
FUNCTION?

60. The code you run on AWS Lambda is
called a Lambda function.

61. LAB

62. FINAL RECAP

63. WE COVERED:
> Why Alexa?
> BBot demo
> Types of Skills
> Skill Architecture
> Components of a Skill
> Lambdas
> Created a Skill

64. I HOPE YOU LEARNED!
#GROWTHMINDSET

65. APPENDIX
> Wired magazine
> CTO Informer
> Fact Skill Tutorial
> Alexa Skills Kit (ASK)
> ASK documentation