Open invocation name - Not working for first launch

Question

My expectation and experience with most skills in the store is that I should be able to choose a skill that I've never used or enabled before, and simply speak "Open " to launch the skill on an Alexa device.

I've recently deployed a skill, and I'm finding that I can use it only via the:

"Enable «skill invocation name» skill" phrase

However, it's not opening via the:

"Open «skill invocation name»" phrase

Is it possible that it takes time for Alexa to index the name for this shortened "Open «skill invocation name»" invocation phrase for users who have not previously enabled or invoked a skill?

Answer 1

Open "<< skill invocation name >>"

should work fine out of the box. As far as I know it is only one shot invocations that can take some time to train after a Skill has been recently deployed/updated.

Ask "<< skill invocation name >>" to do X

Not an answer but I guess you can try all possible variations to launch a Skill from this list https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/understanding-how-users-invoke-custom-skills.html#no-intent and see which works/don't work for you.

Is your Skill name difficult to pronounce so that Alexa misunderstands the Skill name? If so, you can look at what Alexa thinks you are saying in the Alexa app, for instructions, see https://help.xappmedia.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032800651-Checking-your-Utterance-History-in-the-Alexa-App.

Answer 2

I had the same problem/question about a year ago and asked the Alexa developer support. Their answer was basically that a user always needs to enable a skill for the first time via voice or in the app. The shortcut of using "open" directly for the very first invocation is not guaranteed to work. I think of it as an undocumented feature under test that is not available all of the time.