Build an Alexa skill without coding in 5-minutes
Yes, 5-minutes… ish.
Alexa is one of the fastest growing technologies out there, and just like smartphones having smartphone apps, smart speakers like Alexa have smart speaker apps. On Alexa, they are called ‘Skills.
Cool right?
And we’re about to build our first one together in 5-minutes.
What kind of Alexa skill are we building?
Most of the ‘building’ is actually going to be just setup. But! Our very basic skill will have us controlling what Alexa says to us. Of course you can do a ton more with Alexa skills, and even build a voice business using Alexa skills.
But! Let’s start small, and get started.
Step one: Signup for Voiceflow
Voiceflow makes it easy to build Alexa skills without coding, and is free to get started. The best part about Voiceflow is it’s easy to get started, but as powerful as custom code once you get the hang of it — without needing to code.
You can signup here: https://creator.getvoiceflow.com/signup
Once you sign-up, you’ll be asked a few quick questions. Get through thodr and you’ll be brought to the Dashboard screen with a nice graphic, but no skills.
Step two: Setting up our skill
Click on the Create Skill button to get started creating your skill. When asked, enter the name of the skill you would like to create.
Use a short, pronounceable name as it will be spoken to open the skill on your Alexa device. Something like ‘Apple Adventure’ or ‘Meal Planner’.
Once you have chosen the name, you’ll be brought to the Voiceflow canvas where you’ll be building your skill. This is the area you’ll be working in to build your skill.
You’ll see the block menu open on the left with all your building blocks. We can drag these blocks out from the menu to build our skill. There are a ton of blocks & features you can use in Voiceflow, but we’ll only be using the first block — the blue Speak block.
On the canvas, there will be a small starter template with a bunch of basic blocks.
But! We want to start with a completely blank canvas, so let’s hold the shift key, and then click and drag to select all of the blocks currently on our canvas.
Once we have selected all of our blocks, we want to hit delete to clear the canvas and be left only with the start block.
Great! Onto the next step… dragging in a speak block to build our skill.
Step three: make Alexa speak
On the left block menu, drag out the first block — the Speak block. You’ll want to drag the block to the right of the Start block. Once you’ve done this, click on the Speak block to open that particular block’s settings. You’ll see the block settings slide out on the right.
Within the block settings, you can type to make Alexa speak.
Lets type ‘Hi, how are you?’ into the Speak block.
Great! When Alexa reaches the Speak block, she will say ‘Hi, how are you?’.
Now, let’s connect the Start block & Speak block together.
To connect your Start block and Speak block together, simply drag out the connector from the output square on the Start block.
And now let’s connect them:
Nice!
The Start block is the block that your Skill starts on, with the ‘flow’ of your conversation starting there. Alexa open the skill, and the connection will bring the user to the Speak block where Alexa will speak to the user.
Last step… let’s test!
Step four: testing our skill on Alexa!
If you don’t have an Alexa device to test on, you can use the Voiceflow testing tool found at the top of the skill.
If you do have an Alexa device, you can test on your own device easily! The first step is to hit ‘Upload to Alexa’ in the top right of the canvas.
If this is your first ever skill, and your first time uploading the Alexa — there are just a couple extra steps. 2-minutes, max!
You’ll be prompted to ‘Login with Amazon’. This will try to login with your Amazon Developer account. If you don’t already have an Amazon developer account, login with your normal credentials and you’ll be directed to sign-up as an ‘Amazon Developer’. Don’t worry, this is free and only takes a minute. Fill out the Amazon form.
Be sure to use the same information as your normal Alexa account (your Amazon account) so that your existing Alexa account will be linked with your new Alexa developer account. This will allow your Alexa device to test your skills.
Once you are logged in with your existing, or new Amazon developer account, return to the Voiceflow page and hit ‘confirm’ upload.
Hit ‘confirm upload’.
Once your skill is successfully uploaded to Alexa, there’s only one more step.
You only need to do this once per skill, but hit ‘Test on Alexa simulator’, and login to the Alexa developer console. Then, flip the switch to ‘enable testing’ for your skill.
You only have to do this once to enable your skill for testing. This allows your skill to be tested.
That’s it! If you’re in the USA, you can now test your Alexa skill on your device and easily make changes by hitting ‘Upload to Alexa’.
To test your skill on your device, say:
“Alexa, open *name of your skill*”
If you are having trouble testing your skill, you can check to see what the ‘invocation name’ (the name used to launch your skill) by checking the publish page.
To make changes in real-time and retest, simply save and hit ‘Upload to Alexa’ again each time to commit your changes.
Have fun!
Not in the USA?
If you’re not in the US, there’s only ONE more step to get testing. Sorry for the pain!
Simply go to your Alexa app on your phone and change your testing device language to US English.
Go to ‘Devices’, click on the device you want to test on to open device settings, go to language near the bottom, and change the language to US English.
Why did I have to do this?
All skills by default before they are published to the Alexa store are built in US English. When you eventually publish your skill to the store, you can change the language you want to test in.
Want to build something more complex?
Now that you have built your first Alexa skill, you can see what others are building by joining the Voiceflow Community on Facebook. Or, jump right into other tutorials on Voiceflow University.
If you have any questions, send me an email!
Braden@GetVoiceflow.com
