question

Tim Turner asked Mar 5, '16

Output multiple responses from a single intent?

I would like to be able to call response.tell(...) in an intent, and then after a delay, call another response.tell(...) in an AWS Lambda environment. Is this something that is currently possible? You can see a more in-depth version of this question on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35817169/output-multiple-responses-from-a-single-intent

alexa skills kit debugging

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Steve A answered Mar 5, '16

It doesn't look like you are looking for any user input between the responses, is that right? If so, could you have one response with a long pause. Pauses can be up to 10 seconds. See here: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference#break Steve

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Tim Turner answered Mar 5, '16

The delay between the responses will be on the scale of minutes. Basically, I want to create an alarm that will go off X minutes after the intent handler is invoked. I don't need user input between the responses - perhaps there is a way to mimic the behavior of a native timer or alarm?

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Steve A answered Mar 5, '16

Tim, I don't think you can get a several minute pause (and you can't open a session without a user voice trigger, and you don't have any access to native alarms, timers, etc.) The only semi-hacky thing I can think of is to use ssml audio to play back audio (maybe empty?) during that interval. But that'll only get you 90 seconds: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference#audio Steve

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Tim Turner answered Mar 5, '16

Hmm, okay. Thanks for the input, Steve. This Skill might have to be put on hold until (if) we're given more flexibility from Amazon.

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jjaquinta answered Mar 5, '16

I think what you are really looking for is "push notifications". This isn't supported, but is the #1 feature request. You can go find the feature request thread and +1 it if you like. Personally I do not think Amazon will ever implement this due to privacy and legal reasons.

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April L. Hamilton answered Mar 7, '16

Agree w/ jjaquinta, and would add this to the reasons why it may never happen: look how horribly push notifications have been abused in app development, email, and even in terms of auto-play videos on web pages. It seems there are far more [b]abuse[/b] cases than [b]use[/b] cases for push notifications.

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