To add Amazon Alexa as a channel to your Kore.ai assistant, you must extract supported Dialog Tasks of this VA from the Configurations tab and add to your Amazon Alexa’s Skills. Additionally, you must configure your VA’s Webhook URL as your Alexa Skill Set’s Service Endpoint for the XO Platform to receive messages. To enable the Alexa channel, you must have or register for an Amazon Developer account.

Important Notes Alexa as a channel must be enabled for VAs that are specifically built to work on voice-based channels. Review the following constraints before enabling Alexa as a channel: Enterprise assistants that require the user’s authorization to communicate with it are not supported. If your dialog tasks require the user’s authorization to communicate with external systems, then the Platform will push a card with URL information to the Alexa app. Intents and entities of only Published Dialog Tasks can be exported to Amazon Alexa. Ensure that your intents and entities adhere to the naming guidelines of Amazon Alexa. Not all entity types available in the Kore.ai Platform are currently available in Alexa. Verify that your tasks contain Alexa-supported entities for optimal user experience. Ensure that your dialog tasks contain one or more utterances. If you want to display responses as templates on supported devices like Echo Show, you must define channel-specific responses/prompts. Ensure that your dialog tasks contain the Message node as the last node only. Alexa marks a task as completed if a VA message is displayed without expecting any input from the user. Webhook Nodes work asynchronously and are currently not supported. Amazon Alexa executes one task at a time and hence the Hold & Resume functionality is not supported.

Setup Overview

To add the Amazon Alexa channel, you must:

1. Add a New Skill – To enable the Alexa channel to your Kore.ai assistant, create a new Alexa skill in the Amazon developer console.
2. Configure the Interaction Model – Alexa skill can be built in one of the following ways:
1. Dialog Migration to extract the dialog tasks from Kore.ai and import them into Amazon Alexa’s Skills. This will entail re-import for reflecting ongoing changes in the dialog definition. Intent detection and execution are primarily controlled by Alexa.
2. Redirection to create a single intent in your skill with one SearchQuery slot that accepts user inputs and redirects them to your Kore.ai VA. Intent detection and execution are primarily controlled by the Kore.ai VA.
   
3. Enable Account Linking – To access end user’s authentication details to make API calls to external services. This step is optional.
4. Enable Webhook Integration – To integrate Amazon Alexa with your Kore.ai VA, enable webhook integration by copying the Webhook URL provided on the Configurations tab of the Amazon Alexa Channel page in the XO Platform and select HTTPS as Service Endpoint type.
5. Enable Channel – After completing the integration setup, enable the channel.
6. Test Integration – Once the channel is enabled, to validate a successful integration, test any intent utterance using the Test tab of your Alexa Skill and check its responses for the given test utterances.
7. Distribution, Privacy & Compliance, and Certification – You must publish your Alexa Skill on Alexa App and provide details for Privacy and Compliance to enable Skills Beta Testing that allows you to invite your co-developers to test your app. You must also submit your Skill to Amazon for certification to enable your skill to become visible on Alexa Skills on Amazon App Store after it is certified.

Step 1: Add a New Skill

1. Log into your Amazon Developer Portal and click the Alexa tab. Choose Skills from Your Alexa Console and Create a New Skill. 
   
2. In the Create a New Alexa Skill section, enter the required information in the respective fields.
   1. Choose if you want to Sync Locale and select Custom as a model to add to your skill.  
   2. Under Choose a method to host your skill’s backend resources, please select Provision your own.
      
      
3. Click Create Skill at the top right of the page.

Step 2: Configure the Interaction Model 

1. Now, from under the Interaction Model section, select JSON Editor.
   
2. In the Code Editor, define the intents and entities to associate with your newly created skill. For this, follow the steps below in the XO Platform:  
   1. Select the assistant you want to work with.
   2. Go to Deploy > Channels > Amazon Alexa > Configurations.
   3. From under Alexa Skill Definition JSON, download the VA’s tasks as a JSON file to be uploaded into Alexa Skills JSON Editor.
      
      
   4. Upload the JSON file to the Alexa Code Editor, review and ensure that there are no errors, click Save Model, then Build Model.
      
      

      Note: It takes 2-5 mins for the Model to build. Any changes implemented to the built model must be followed by rebuilding the model.

Step 3: Enable Account Linking (Optional)

You can enable the Account Linking feature in your Alexa Skill if your assistant expects end users’ authorization for making API calls to external services. 

1. Within your skill’s Build tab, go to Tools.
2. Click on Account Linking and set up the integration as per the instructions available from Amazon, and as per your requirements. Alexa requests users to provide the required authorization details for linking the accounts. During skill execution, Alexa shares the user access tokens with Kore.ai assistants, which are then used to make API calls defined in Service nodes. 
   
   

Step 4: Enable the Webhook Integration

1. Go to the Endpoint section.
2. Select HTTPS as the Service Endpoint Type. Copy the Webhook URL provided in the Configurations tab of the Amazon Alexa channel page in the XO Platform and enter it in the Default textbox.
3. In the SSL Certificate dropdown, select the option My development endpoint is a sub-domain of a domain that has a wildcard certificate from a certificate authority.
4. Click Save Endpoint.

Step 5: Enable the Channel

Before you can start testing your assistant on Alexa, you must complete the channel setup. Go to the Configurations tab of the Amazon Alexa channel page, review the details and select Yes; click Save to enable Amazon Alexa Channel.

Step 6: Test the Integration

Once done, you can use the Test tab of your Alexa Skill to test your utterances against the integration. In the Test tab, go to the Service Simulator section and provide any intent utterance and click Ask <skill-name> to test the utterance. If you get a successful response then the integration is considered a success.

Step 7: Distribution

Now, go to the Distribution tab and provide all the required details for publishing your Alexa Skill on the Alexa App and Save the details.

Privacy & Compliance

Next, go to the Privacy & Compliance tab and provide all the required details requested and click Save. 

After completing these steps, the Skills Beta Testing option is enabled and this allows you to invite your co-developers to test your app.

When you are ready to submit your Skill to Amazon, Submit for Certification. Your skill will be visible on Alexa Skills on Amazon App Store after it is certified.

After the channel is enabled and all configurations are verified, you can optionally publish the assistant to make it available for end-users, with the new channel. Learn more about Publishing your Virtual Assistant.

To learn more about working with Channels within the Kore.ai XO Platform, please see Channel Enablement.