How to use API Failure with Conversations

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matthewp asked · Jul 28 at 11:55 AM

How to use API Failure with Conversations

None of the example apps use API Failure and it's unclear to me what it's for or how to use it.

These docs suggest that you can use it when your API is unable to process a request, for example when there is no weather data for a city.

But how do you do it? Do you have an API Success and API Failure in the same dialog? Or do you create separate dialogs for these? If separate how does it know when to trigger the successful dialog vs the failed dialog?

It would be nice if one of the example apps used API Failure so we can see how to use it. The weather example doesn't use API Failure, but rather uses APL in the success response to fallback to a message when there is no weather data.

dialog model alexa-conversations

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swarajs933 · Jul 28 at 01:31 PM

Thanks for sharing it

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Answer 1 · 2020-08-01T01:01:11Z

KirkC@Amazon answered · Aug 01 at 01:01 AM

Hi matthewp. To try and answer this I created an Alexa Conversations skill which calls a real weather service API. Now, since the Alexa Conversations API succeeding vs failing seemed like two distinct scenarios, I created two separate dialogs.

The second dialog, representing a failed API call, end with Alexa telling the user "Sorry, weather is currently unavailable." This turn is associated with the "API Failure" dialog act and a new "return_weather_fail" response that I also created.

The skill's interaction model built and I sought to replicate a "failed" API call by commenting out the bit of my code that returns an Alexa Conversations response. Here was the interaction:

Me: Alexa, launch 'weather skill'
Alexa: For what city?
Me: Seattle
Alexa: Something went wrong

The problem here though is that I didn't define "something went wrong" in my "return_weather_fail" response. I have therefore escalated this question internally to the appropriate engineering team.

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How to use API Failure with Conversations

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