Echo is a new device from Amazon designed around your voice. It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Tucked under Echo's light ring is an array of seven microphones. When Echo detects the wake word, it lights up and streams audio to the cloud, where it leverages the power of Amazon Web Services to recognize and respond to your request. With the release of the Alexa AppKit you can now build your own apps and experiences for Amazon Echo. This session will cover everything you need to know starting off with how to use the Alexa AppKit, how to build your first voice app, and end with the app submission process

1. Building Alexa Skills for Amazon Echo
AMAZON DEVELOPER DAY
DAVE ISBITSKI
PRINCIPAL EVANGELIST, AMAZON
@TheDaveDev
isbitski@amazon.com

2. 10:00am - 10:30am
An Overview of the AmazonDevices and Services for Mobile Developers
10:30am - 11:45am
Building Alexa Skills for AmazonEcho
Noon – 3:45pm
App Hours / Open Hack
3:45pm-4:30pm
Presentations
4:30pm
Raffle
DEVELOPER DAY AGENDA

3. DEVELOPER DAY AGENDA

4. Amazon Appstore Ecosystem
The Appstore is integrated across
the Amazon ecosystem
• Over 400,000 apps in the Amazon Appstore
• Only place for Apps on Fire Tablets, Fire TV,
and Fire phone
• Preloaded on Blackberry10 and millions of
otherAndroid devices, includingHTC, LG,
Motorola, and Samsung phonesto name a
few, as well as Samsung and LG tablets.
By making your app available on the Amazon Appstore, you’ll have the opportunity to
reach millions of Android customers in 236 countries and territories worldwide
Android Phones &
Tablets
Fire phoneFire Tablets
Fire TV &
Fire TV Stick
Blackberry

5. What is Amazon Echo?

6. Alexa, Hello.

9. Amazon Echo App

11. Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) Overview

12. ALEXA SKILLS KIT (ASK)
https://developer.amazon.com/ask

13. ALEXA VOICE SERVICE (AVS)
https://developer.amazon.com/avs

14. THE ALEXA FUND
https://developer.amazon.com/alexafund

15. Alexa is the cloud service used by AmazonEcho
The Alexa Skills Kit allows developers to build new Skills (new
voice experiences) for Echo
ALEXA SKILLS KIT

16. Alexa Architecture
Amazon
Alexa
ServiceGUI cards are
rendered in the
Amazon Echo app
User audio is
streamed to the
service
Audio responses
are rendered on-
device

17. Creating your own
ALEXA SKILLS
Alexa Skills have two parts:
Configuration data in Amazon Developer
Portal
Hosted Service respondingto user
requests

18. Alexa Skills Kit Architecture
Amazon
Alexa
Service
Developer’s
Application
Service
Amazon’s
Developer
Portal
Application, intents, sample
data Developer Service URL
EndPoint
Configured through portal
User intents and
arguments are sent to
the developer service
GUI cards are
rendered in the
Amazon Echo app
User audio is streamed
to the service
Audio responses are
rendered on-device
Text response and/or
GUI card data is
returned

19. Sample Interactions of
ALEXA SKILLS
One and done
“Alexa, start Astrology and get the Pisces
horoscope.”
[Horoscope Provided]
Conversation
“Alexa, start Astrology”
[“What’s your sign?”]
“Pisces”
[Horoscope Provided]

20. Demo
Configuring a new Alexa Skill

21. Building an Alexa Skill
HOSTED SERVICE
• Adheres to ASK service interface
• Uses HTTP over SSL/TLS on port 443
• Must be Internet-accessible
• Presents a trustedcertificate matching
domain name
– Can use self-signed certificate for
development
– Trusted certificate required for
certification

22. Building an Alexa Skill
HOSTED SERVICE
• You define interactions for your Voice
App through Intent Schemas
• Each intent consists of two fields. The
intent field gives the name of the intent.
The slots field lists the slots associated
with that intent.
• Slots can also included types such as
LITERAL,NUMBER,DATE,etc.

23. Building an Alexa Skill
HOSTED SERVICE
• The mappings between intents and the
typical utterances that invoke those
intents are provided in a tab-separated
text document of sample utterances.
• Each possible phrase is assigned to one
of the defined intents.
• GetHoroscope what is the horoscope for
{pisces|Sign}
• GetHoroscope what will the horoscope for
{leo|Sign} be {next tuesday|Date}

24. The Amazon Alexa Service
WILL POST EVENTS
LaunchRequest
Maps to onLaunch() and occurs when the
user launches the app without specifying
what they want
IntentRequest
Maps to onIntent() and occurs when when
the user specifies an intent
SessionEndedRequest
Maps to OnSessionEnded() and when the
user ends the session

25. Demo
HelloWorld Speechlet Alexa Skill - Java

26. Alexa Service
Examining the JSON Requests from

28. Handling Amazon Alexa Service
REQUESTS
• You will need to handle POST requests to
your service over port 443 and parse the
JSON
• You need to check the session variable to see
if the user started a new session or if request
is from existing one
• Requests always Include a type,requestId and
timestamp
• requestId maps directly to LaunchRequest,
IntentRequest and SessionEndedRequest

30. Demo
My Colors Alexa Skill – JavaScript and Node JS

31. 31
http://bit.ly/bmaboston2

32. 32
Building Alexa Skills for Amazon Echo
AMAZON DEVELOPER DAY
DAVE ISBITSKI
PRINCIPAL EVANGELIST, AMAZON
@TheDaveDev
isbitski@amazon.com

33. 10:00am - 10:30am
An Overview of the AmazonDevices and Services for Mobile Developers
10:30am - 11:45am
Building Alexa Skills for AmazonEcho
Noon – 4:30pm
App Hours / Open Hack
4:30pm
Raffle
DEVELOPER DAY AGENDA