Amazon Alexa

Integration published by Jovo | 13,117 downloads

Build apps for Amazon's Alexa assistant platform

Alexa Visual Output

Learn more about how to build Alexa Skills with visual output using the Jovo Framework.

Introduction to Visual Ouput

Visual output is used to describe or enhance the voice interaction. This ranges from simple cards, Echo Show and Echo Spot Display Templates to displaying a video.

Cards

Cards are used for the most basic cases of visual output. They can be used to display plain text and images or to ask for certain permissions (Account Linking, to-do/shopping lists, etc.) in addition to the speech output.

Simple Card

The simple card can only contain plain text, which is split up into a title and content.

Official Amazon reference.

Standard Card

The standard card allows you to add an image in addition to the plain text, which has to be provided in two different sizes.

Official Amazon reference.

Display Templates

Display Templates can be used to include content on the screen of the Echo Show or Spot. There is a variety of templates, each having a different composition and features. You can find the official Amazon reference here.

To be able to use display templates for devices like Echo Show, add the following configurations to your project.js:

Then, use the Jovo CLI to deploy to the Amazon Developer Portal:

Alternatively, you can enable it in the Interfaces tab in the Amazon Developer Console:

Alexa Console: Enable Display Interface

You can check whether the current device supports the Display interface using the following helper method:

Body Templates

Body templates are only capable of displaying images and text. There are multiple body templates, each having a different composition.

BodyTemplate1:

BodyTemplate2:

BodyTemplate3:

BodyTemplate6:

List Templates

The list template is used to display a set of scrollable and selectable items (text and images).

ListTemplate1:

ListTemplate2:

Alexa Presentation Language

Tutorial: Using the Alexa Presentation Language (APL) with Jovo

With Jovo, you can also use the Alexa Presentation Language (APL). To add APL directives, use the following method:

You can either directly add documents and data sources, or require them from JSON files:

To enable APL, add the following configurations to your project.js:

Then, use the Jovo CLI to deploy to the Amazon Developer Portal:

You can check whether the current device supports the APL interface using the following helper method:

Video App Interface

To launch videos on an Echo Show you can use the VideoApp interface:

You can also optionally add a preamble message that Alexa will read before the video plays:

Find the official Amazon reference here.

To enable the video app interface, add the following configurations to your project.js:

Then, use the Jovo CLI to deploy to the Amazon Developer Portal:

Amazon Alexa Changelog

Jovo Marketplace | GitHub | npm

Current version might be higher than the latest changes displayed below because of updates of dependencies.

2021-10-27 [3.5.5]

2021-02-22 [3.5]

  • #901 Move setResponse from response to after.response middleware (@aswetlow)
  • #901 Route Alexa.Presentation.APLA.RuntimeError requests to ON_ERROR (@aswetlow)

2020-11-10 [3.2.1]

2020-08-21 [3.0.30]

3.0.17 (2020-05-13)

🐛 Bug fix

  • jovo-platform-alexa Fix http status in ReminderAPI

Committers: 1

3.0.13 (2020-05-04)

💅 Enhancements

  • jovo-platform-alexa #734 Add getPermissionIsCardThrown (@rmtuckerphx)
  • jovo-platform-alexa Add types for skill event body objects

Committers: 2

3.0.11 (2020-04-06)

  • Updated Typescript to 3.8.x
  • Updated Prettier to 2.x

Committers: 2

2.x

Find the 2.x changelog here.

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