Launch my app from Google assistant if it is capable

4
votes

The requirement is to launch my Android app if the user commands GA to find nearby restaurants of McDonald' where McDonald is the app name. Since the user is not mentioning that s/he wants to search in McDonald app it is not an explicit intent which the app can handle with a defined intent filter. I want to understand which component should I use to get this done.

There will be another use case that user wants to order some food item that has the name, McDonald. This suggests that ideally, I have to define action sets(set of templates) although the app doesn't converse with the user hence DialogFlow is not usable.

I contacted the Google action team after going through this Question, their response was that Invoking an Android application from an AOG app is not an available feature at this moment, this could be achieved using Google Assistant

What is the option left for this use-case?

My findings

Open app with Explicit intent

Perhaps the same use-case

Voice action

2
androidactions-on-googlegoogle-assistant-sdk
I think you are asking for something that requires a relationship with Google so that Google Assistant can access your company's data like the ride share apps listed in this blogpost: blog.google/products/assistant/book-ride-google-assistant The alternate is to use a Action on Google implicit intent where Google may or may not refer the user to your AoG cloud based app when user uses a matching phrase. – Morrison Chang
Also realize that you reference the google-assistant-sdk tag which is for hardware makers to create Google Assistant type devices, rather than for apps built upon Android. – Morrison Chang
Thanks Morrison for giving your thoughts, I saw this video youtu.be/lu3L6DxUBRA and realised that actions is the way2go. Checked the official site developer.android.com/guide/actions and it says actions are not available for development as of now. – hardik9850
Also there is no google-assistant tag for Android specifically, hence I used it. Suggest any proper tag if you have, will replace it – hardik9850

2 Answers

0
votes

You will want to sign up for the app actions developer preview, which will expose intents in your app to be opened from the Assistant.

0
votes

At Google I/O 2019, some updates were posted about App Actions. However, the current developer launch does not include the ability to implicitly call through to an app. The user will need to explicitly call out the app to use.