question

Arden Kolodner avatar image
Arden Kolodner asked

Can any Alexa Skill be the target of a Skill Connection?

I'm working for a company making wearable tech. A feature we're considering trying to add would let the user bind an Alexa command to a control button on the device. For example, if the device has a joystick and the user wants to use that to control a smart bulb's brightness, the joystick input would cause a message to go to our Alexa skill, which would then form a connection to the skill that control the smart bulb, telling it to change its brightness. (This would likely have to be set up in advance so the user can give permission for the skill connection, of course.)

The problem is that I can't find enough documentation on Skill Connections. (I've never worked with Alexa before, maybe I'm missing something obvious!) Can you make a skill connection to ANY skill? Or does that skill have to have implemented a custom callback for when a skill requests a connection?

alexa skillsskill connectionsskillmessage
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Andy Whitworth avatar image
Andy Whitworth answered

The "receiving" skill must have implemented support for some task events (effectively your custom callback(s)). So you can't just invoke any target skill, that target must have implemented the required task(s).

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/custom-skills/understand-skill-connections.html

However, Amazon seem to have gone quiet on skill connections, and I note the developer preview link in the above docs doesn't work anymore.

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Arden Kolodner avatar image
Arden Kolodner answered

Well that's disappointing. Thank you very much! Glad to have a quick and definitive answer on that :)

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