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jjaquinta avatar image
jjaquinta asked

Synchronized Alexa User ID with Login With Amazon User ID

Right now the Alexa ID is consistent for the same user, and across all skills deployed from the same developer's account. So too, the ID returned by Login With Amazon is consistent for the same user and applications deployed via the same developer's account. Wouldn't it be nice if the user ID returned from Alexa and the user ID returned from Login With Amazon were consistent for the same user and applications deployed by the same developer account on both systems? Right now we have to do personalized code to synchronize accounts between our Alexa skills and external Web Apps. If the User IDs were synchronized (and, from the format, it looks like they are both using the same back end) it would accelerated development of Alexa skills, improve their quality, and tie developers more into the Amazon ecosystem.
alexa skills kit
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Lucas avatar image
Lucas answered
Thanks for posting that feature request, I was about to do so. Huge +1.
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Matt Kruse avatar image
Matt Kruse answered
+1 Thank you for doing the work to confirm this. Disappointing! Though, I suspect that they made this decision intentionally. They were surely aware of the Login with Amazon functionality, and could not or decided not to connect the two. It seems like something obvious they would have considered. Hopefully that will change. Offering users to connect with LwA is a lot easier solution than passing generated tokens around.
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Nick Gardner avatar image
Nick Gardner answered
Good news! There is now functionality to do account linking through the SDK: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/linking-an-alexa-user-with-a-user-in-your-system. You should be able to integrate this pretty easily with LWA or your own login solution. -Nick
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jjaquinta avatar image
jjaquinta answered
Looks like I have to revise the chapter in my book on account linking. Might have been nice if you gave a head's up rather than just spring this stuff on your developer base.
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Greg Crawford avatar image
Greg Crawford answered
Sheesh. Cut 'em some slack. I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but Echo / Alexa is bigger than our own books and our apps. It's an environment for potentially millions of users and things will certainly happen more slowly and deliberately than we might all want. If it's too much to bear then you are always free to go develop your own system. (I say this as a developer who has no connection at all to Amazon but as a developer who has some understanding of how difficult these big projects can be and I don't believe that being snippy with the folks assigned to help us on these forums is helpful at all. Some empathy goes a long way in this world.)
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jjaquinta avatar image
jjaquinta answered
Sorry, Greg, I feel that Amazon would be better off acting like a business partner rather than a service provider in this area. Business partners work *with* the people adding value to their platform. They let them know the status of their feature requests. They let them know their release schedules. They give them the information so they can plan their work. I don't think you can point to a single skill that's been shown in the market (other than maybe StubHub) that pays for itself. Taking that as indicative of 3rd party work, you've got all us developers spending time and money that adds value to Amazon's product, and doesn't really produce any revenue for us. So we're all doing one big huge favor to Amazon. Essentially we are working for Amazon for free. If this was a service, like AWS, where they had a cut rate product that people had a clear way to make money from, then, sure, the cold shoulder/self service makes perfect sense. But for an area that they are trying to establish and where all the revenues are going in one direction... yeah, I'm not inclined to cut them slack when they could have done something really simple that would make a lot of planning people are doing here really easier. And, as for "being snippy with the folks assigned to help us on these forums", I'm sure they will just pass it on to the feature teams but decline to give any comment on Amazon's future plans. :-|
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Matt Kruse avatar image
Matt Kruse answered
I don't necessarily expect Amazon to tell us what is coming or lay out a roadmap. But I do hope they recognize the value of independent developers in their attempt to improve their product and its reputation in the developer community. Other companies see it, and dedicate entire staffs to roles in developer relations. It's a good business and technical strategy. I'm hoping that Amazon will see the need for a circle of experts in this area and ask me to work for them remotely, dedicated to improving and helping the developer community. That would be fun. :)
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newuser-fa4ea7ff-e339-44c3-bd99-8e3fb6f1bd5b avatar image
newuser-fa4ea7ff-e339-44c3-bd99-8e3fb6f1bd5b answered

I'm seting up my fire stic need my Amazon ID so please send me mine !

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