Jovo v2.1 is here: Google Transactions, Amazon Pay, Hooks, Messenger, Slack, and more

by Jan König on Mar 05, 2019

Jovo Framework v2.1

Almost 2 months ago, we released Jovo v2, an all-new Jovo that came with a new architecture and many integrations.

Since then, with help from our great community, we've worked on a lot of new additions, including new features for Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, cross-platform improvements, and even some new platforms. You can now find everything bundled togeher in Jovo v2.1.

You can find all new features and improvements below:

Like what we're doing? Support us with a star on GitHub

New Features

Find all the new features in the sections below.

To update to Jovo v2.1, use the following command:

Alexa Skill Features: Amazon Pay, Proactive Events, and more

As of today, you can build any publicly available Alexa Skill feature with the Jovo Framework (for quickly integrating private features, take a look at our new Hooks).

Newest additions to the Alexa platform integration in Jovo include:

Google Action Features: Transactions, Push Notifications, and more

Every publicly available Google Actions feature to date is available in the Jovo Framework.

Recent additions to the Google Assistant platform integration include:

Alpha: Build Bots for Platforms like Facebook Messenger and Slack

Jovo Docs: Dialogflow Integrations

Build a Slack Bot with Jovo

New experimental feature: By using Dialogflow Integrations, you can now bring your Jovo apps to bot platforms like Facebook Messenger and Slack!

Right now, this is an alpha release, so you will only be able to create text responses. Please note that, although they are similar, text based conversational experiences can differ from voice applications. Currently, there is no real difference between tell and ask, for example. We will work towards a clearer designed abstraction in upcoming releases.

However, you can already add custom payloads to the Dialogflow response with this.$dialogflowAgent.setCustomPayload, which can be used for platform specific output.

For example, you can add Facebook Messenger Quick Replies like this:

Extend the Jovo Framework with Hooks

Docs: Hooks

Jovo Hooks offer the ability to customize and extend the Jovo Framework in a lightweight way, without having to build a full-fledged plugin.

This can be helpful if you wan to do quick modifications during certain parts of the request lifecycle. For example, you could add additional JSON output necessary for an Alexa Skill private beta feature before the response is sent put by hooking into before.response.

New Integrations

Besides the larger updates above, we also added and updated some integrations:

And more, including Unit Testing Improvements and Logging

There were tons of smaller updates, but the following ones were among the most anticipated updates:

Interested in all the updates? See the Jovo Framework Changelog for a more detailed overview.

A Big Thank You

Thanks a lot for all your help to the contributors of this release, including Renato Alencar, Matthew Lieder, scouzinier, Dominik Meissner, Kaan Kilic, Alex Swetlow, and everyone else who helped with ideas and feature requests in the Jovo Slack community 👏👏👏.

Any thoughts? Wishes for Jovo v2.2? Let us know in the comments below.


Jan König

Co-founder at Jovo

Comments and Questions

Any specific questions? Just drop them below or join the Jovo Community Forum.

Join Our Newsletter

Be the first to get our free tutorials, courses, and other resources for voice app developers.