Alexa: Using the Skills Feature

Hello, my name is Ricky Enger, and today we’re going to get a quick intro to using skills with our Alexa Amazon Echo digital assistant. That statement probably makes no sense right now, but it will by the end of this workshop. By the way, if you’re not yet familiar with how to use your Echo device, check out the first couple of workshops in this series to get up to speed.

Okay, so we have our awesome little digital assistant, and we’ve been able to accomplish so much just by asking it to do things for us. We’ve asked for things that our assistant already knows about, right out of the box. But what about things that our assistant doesn’t know yet? That’s where skills come in. We’re going to be teaching our assistant new things, or skills, to really expand what it can do for us. If the idea of actually teaching a piece of technology to do something sounds like a really weird and overwhelming thing to do, it sounds way more complicated than it is. So, let’s dive in and see how this works.

First, it would be really useful to find out what our assistant already knows. So as always, we’re just gonna ask a question, phrased in a really natural way.

Alexa, give me a list of skills.

Alexa: All right. Which would you like: sleep, relax, sounds, music, or games? Or you can ask for more options.

Ricky: Great! And we’ll cancel.

So, that was interesting. We asked for skills and got a whole list of categories to choose from. That approach makes sense actually, since there are literally hundreds of thousands of skills that our assistant can access. It would take a really long time to go through every single one. Oh, and by the way, it would be really annoying to hear the responses from my assistant, and the responses from any assistants you have set up as well. For that reason, I’m not going to say our assistant’s name anymore throughout the workshop. I don’t wanna wake up your assistant unnecessarily. Just remember that when you’re ready to try each command yourself, be sure and speak the assistant’s name or wake word first.

So, we just got this great list of skills categories, which are pretty broad. Let’s see what happens if we narrow it down a little. I think there are music skills, which could cover a really wide variety of things. Let’s get a little more specific and see if there’s a metronome for keeping time. So, we’ve got our name:

What skills do you have for metronome?

Alexa: I've got one called Acoustic Metronome. Want to try it?

Ricky: No.

Alexa: Do you want to try Music Metronome?

Ricky: Yes.

Alexa: Great. Here's Music Metronome. Welcome to Music Metronome. I can start a metronome between 60 and 220 beats per minute in 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8 time. What would you like to do?

Ricky: 120 beats per minute in 4/4 time.

Alexa: Starting a metronome at 120 bpm in 4/4 time. [sounds of metronome]

Ricky: Okay great. We’ll address our assistant and tell it to stop.

That was really cool! And now that we know the name of that skill, Music Metronome, let’s just get right to it instead of asking for a list of skills first. So, we’ll do our name:

Music Metronome.

Alexa: Welcome to Music Metronome. I can start a metronome between 60 and 220 beats per minute in 3/4, 4/4, or 6/8 time. What would you like to do?

Ricky: And we’ll cancel.

So, we learned two things there. First, we can just say the name of a skill if we happen to know it already. Second, we learned that there are actually multiple skills available for a particular thing. That’s gonna be true whether we’re in our music category, or for any other skills category we’ve selected, like games for example. These are developed by users other than just Amazon. The reason that matters is that as we explore different skills, we may discover that we like some skills in a particular category way more than others. Each person or company who develops a skill will do so with their own style, so have fun exploring multiple skills in a category to find ones you like best. Let’s just briefly go through how to do that, one more time.

So, our wake word:

What skills do you have for crossword puzzles?

Alexa: Sure, crossword puzzles. Do you want to try NPR Puzzle Fan? Or you can ask for more options.

Ricky: More options.

Alexa: Would you like words? Or you can ask for more options.

Ricky: More options.

Alexa: I have one called The Daily Connection that is rated 4.0 stars by over 100 people. Would you like to try it?

Ricky: And we’ll cancel.

So, we went through a list of potential crossword skills, and we actually heard a rating for one of them. We’ll find skills with great ratings, and some that are not so great. That doesn’t necessarily mean the skill is bad, but it does mean that several people didn’t seem to enjoy it much. So anyway, for any of these skills in that list that we wanna come back and try, we can just say the name of that skill and get directly to it.

Now, maybe you’re thinking about things that you wanna do that weren’t mentioned in that initial list of skills we heard at the beginning of the workshop. Chances are that whatever you’re thinking about does have a skill for it, so just try asking your assistant to do something and see what happens. You know, we didn’t hear anything about news yet, but surely our assistant can do that, right? Let’s go ahead and ask.

We’ve got our name:

Give me news from CNN.

Alexa: From CNN. [CNN music begins]

Ricky: And we’ll stop.

And that’s how we do it. We’re able to ask for news from a particular source, and our assistant grabs the headlines. When it comes to large news organizations like CNN, the BBC, NPR and so on, our assistant knows exactly what to do when we ask for news from that source. You can try asking for your local news too. Sometimes that’s gonna work in a really straightforward way, and sometimes you may have to do some research to see exactly what you need to say to get a particular news source.

So, this is a really quick intro to skills, and there’s a lot more to learn about if you’re interested. For example, we can browse skills inside the smartphone app for our assistant, or from the website we used to set it up initially. We can create kind of a playlist of news sources that we care about too, and these are called Flash Briefings. Also, it’s possible to use skills to control certain devices in our home, just by talking to our assistant. Maybe you’ve heard people talk about telling their assistant to adjust the thermostat or turn off the lights. It's a really great feature, and you can check out the resources section of this workshop to get an idea of what’s possible and how to get started.

I’m Ricky Enger, and I’m glad you could spend a little time with me today, learning about skills for the Alexa Amazon Echo. Contact a learning expert if you have questions about anything in this workshop, or if you have your own tips to share. We’d love to hear from you! See you next time.