IntentRequest triggered by Response - without user-invocation

0
votes

lets say i have a skill with 2 custom intents, 'FirstIntent' and 'SecondIntent'. SecondIntent also has a required slot, 'reqSlot'.

Now, i would like to sequence my intents. After my skill sent the FirstIntent-response, i would like Alexa to send a request with SecondIntent and a directive to elicit reqSlot, without the user to invoke it.

They say here, at the parameter 'updatedInted': "Note that you cannot change intents when returning a Dialog directive, so the intent name and set of slots must match the intent sent to your skill."

Is this generally possilbe or did anyone figure out a workaround for this scenario?

Thanks :)

2
alexaalexa-skills-kitalexa-skill

2 Answers

1
votes

There are ways to handle this.

You can try:

When you send your first response it must set the shouldEndSession flag to false.

The end of your first response's output speech should lead the user into invoking the second response. For example: 'Say telephone number followed by your number'. This way the user doesn't need to explicitly invoke your skill to get to the next intent.

0
votes

It is not currently possible to cause Alexa to start speaking without a user first having spoken to it.

So for example, I cannot create a skill that will announce to my wife that "Ron is on his way home" whenever I leave work.

I can however, create a skill that my wife can ask "Is Ron on his way home", and it can respond with the answer.

Also, the new notifications allow a skill to post a notification, but this just causes the Alexa to light up its circular ring to indicate that a notification is waiting. A user must still ask Alexa to read it. In the example I cite above, that might be ok.

A lot of us would love for Alexa to be able to spontaneously start talking, but Amazon has not enabled that. Can you just imagine the opportunity for advertising abuse that functionality might enable? Nothing like sitting down watching TV and having Alexa start talking, "Hey, wouldn't some Wonder Popcorn taste great about now? We're having a sale..."