How to make alexa ask a list of questions one by one and get response from a predefined set of responses.

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Sambhav asked · Jun 13, 2018 at 02:34 AM

How to make alexa ask a list of questions one by one and get response from a predefined set of responses.

How to make Alexa ask a list of questions one by one and get a response from a predefined set of responses.

Hello,

I am developing an Alexa Skill to fill out a survey. Following are the components of the survey.

1. list_of_persons: We have a list of persons who can fill this survey.
2. list_of_questions: The survey has a set of questions which need to be answered by a person selected from the "list_of_persons"
2a. list_of_responses: Each question has a set of valid responses, a person(user) must select from this set of responses for a given question.
e.g. There are 10 questions and each of them has their own set of responses.

I have the following REST APIs which will fetch me the required list.
/persons : will get me the list_of_persons
/questions: will get me the list_of_questions
/questions/{id}/responses : will get me the list_of_responses for a question with given "id"
e.g: /questions/7/responses: will get me the list of responses associated with the question with id 7.
/questions/10/responses: will get me the list of responses associated with the question with id 10.

/survery : This is a POST API which will post the "person_name", "question" and its "response" to the backend(db).

Sample interaction:

#Currently working
# Invoking the skill
User: Alexa open survery skill
Alexa: "Welcome to the Alexa Survey Skill ....etc "

User: get list of persons
Alexa: 1. John Doe, 2. Jane Doe, etc...

#Req1: This is pending#
User: Start survey for John Doe with id 1.
Alexa: Ok, lets start!

Alexa: Here is a list of questions
Alexa: Question 1: How was your day?
Alexa: Here are the valid set of responses for Question 1
Alexa: 1. It was amazing
2 It was good
3 It was ok
4. It was bad
Alexa: Choose a response or response id
User: 1
or
User: It was amazing.

Alexa: Alright, moving to next question.
Alexa: How do you feel about your daily work routine?
Alexa: Here are the valid set of responses for Question 2.
Alexa: 1. It's perfect, well balanced.
2. It's slightly challenging, but manageable
3. It's hectic and needs improvement.
4. It's terrible and I need a break.

......etc

This should continue for all 10 questions. And at the end Alexa should read out all questions and the selected response to get confirmation and submit the "survey" for that person using /surveyAPI

How do I manage the Req1 transaction with Alexa, I have my lambda function in Python 3.6 and have read about dialog directive but I have no clue how to tie/connect all of this together.

Please help.

I can share my lambda_function if required.

alexa voice service how-to response dialog model dialog directive

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Answer 1 · 2018-06-13T05:47:02Z

Anand@Amazon answered · Jun 13, 2018 at 05:47 AM

Hello Sambhav,

Thanks for posting !!!

I understand you are trying to create skill in specific design so let me explain here how Alexa skills works here. Whenever you provide any voice commands Alexa generate request response send it to your skill which will respond to your request with response which contains data which Alexa will speak out. Another feature is dialogue model in which it will work as conversation between user and your skill. You can't send two responses from your skill to user i.e. question and then another response for type of answer you can provide to your skill. But there is two way to do this in your skill.

1) As per the question you are trying to get the list of acceptable responses from your API which you are thinking of providing to user as example. In this case you can query the database and get the valid response data and then formulate a single Speech output text which contains your question and after some seconds break in same response add different type of response user can provide to your skill.

2) Another option is to provide re-prompt to user when there is no response from user for 8 seconds once you asked the question. Then in re-prompt you can ask provide more data to user to different types of responses acceptable for your skill.

Check this link for more details.

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Sambhav · Jun 13, 2018 at 08:46 PM

Thanks for the info. Following up on your tip, how do I introduce delay in Alexa's speech output? Also, what are my option to develop a skill using Java , is Alexa Skill Kit for Java the way to go or can I write a standalone lambda_fuction like I have done in this case (using Python).

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Anand@Amazon ♦ Sambhav · Jun 14, 2018 at 10:34 AM

Hello Sambhav,

Thanks for sharing details.

Check break ssml tag for pause between the lines for speechOutput to Alexa. In my opinion if you want to create skill then do it in either JAVA or Node.js.

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How to make alexa ask a list of questions one by one and get response from a predefined set of responses.

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