Detecting when user unlinks alexa skill

Question

I'm implementing an Alexa Smart Home skill and I want to know if a user is still using the app after a while.

Google Home, for example, sends a request when I unlink my app from the Google Smarthome app. I need to know it to disable sending updates to Amazon Alexa gateway if a user isn't using the skill anymore.

What the best way of doing it? Alexa documentation doesn't talk about it.

Can I rely on just checking if the user has a expired OAuth tokens? E.g. if expired for more than a day, mark user as inactive.

Another thing I'm going to test out tomorrow is just see the gateway response after having unlinked the skill. But for my case it wouldn't be good option anyway, as I will only know the user state after a physical change and trying to submit it and have it possibly fail. Which can happen after days or weeks, so it isn't that reliable.

Christina Christina · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-19T06:08:06

You can integrate with Alexa Skill Events and get notification when user disables the Skill. https://developer.amazon.com/docs/smapi/skill-events-in-alexa-skills.html#skill-disabled-event.

The SkillDisabled event only contains user_id (i.e. no access token). So you would also need to listen for the SkillAccountLinked event so you can link that user_id with your own user identifier.

Your Smart Home Skill manifest should look like this:

{
  "manifest": {
    "publishingInformation": {
      "locales": {
        "en-US": {
          "summary": "...",
          "examplePhrases": [
            "Alexa, ...",
            "Alexa, ...",
            "Alexa, ..."
          ],
          "keywords": [],
          "name": "...",
          "smallIconUri": "...",
          "description": "...",
          "largeIconUri": "..."
        }
      },
      "isAvailableWorldwide": false,
      "testingInstructions": "...",
      "category": "SMART_HOME",
      "distributionCountries": [
        "US"
      ]
    },
    "apis": {
      "smartHome": {
        "endpoint": {
          "uri": "arn:aws:lambda:..."
        },
        "protocolVersion": "3"
      }
    },
    "manifestVersion": "1.0",
    "permissions": [
      {
        "name": "alexa::async_event:write"
      }
    ],
    "privacyAndCompliance": {
      "allowsPurchases": false,
      "locales": {
        "en-US": {
          "termsOfUseUrl": "...",
          "privacyPolicyUrl": "..."
        }
      },
      "isExportCompliant": true,
      "containsAds": false,
      "isChildDirected": false,
      "usesPersonalInfo": false
    },
    "events": {
      "endpoint": {
        "uri": "arn:aws:lambda:..."
      },
      "subscriptions": [
        {
          "eventName": "SKILL_ENABLED"
        },
        {
          "eventName": "SKILL_DISABLED"
        },
        {
          "eventName": "SKILL_PERMISSION_ACCEPTED"
        },
        {
          "eventName": "SKILL_PERMISSION_CHANGED"
        },
        {
          "eventName": "SKILL_ACCOUNT_LINKED"
        }
      ],
      "regions": {
        "NA": {
          "endpoint": {
            "uri": "arn:aws:lambda:..."
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Detecting when user unlinks alexa skill

1 Answers