Slides for my talk about creating Alexa Skills in .NET

1. Fot. http://www.thecinessential.com/aliens-terminator-2-future/

2. .NET, Alexa and me
Perfect voice assistant for .NET dev?
Rafał Hryniewski Amazon Alexa

3. Alexa ...

4. ... and Rafał Hryniewski
@r_hryniewskifb.me/hryniewskinet

8. Agenda
• We’ve met
• Short history of voice recognition
• Here and now
• Why Alexa?
• First contact
• Working with voice
• Session, dialogs and other tools
• Where’s money in that
• Connecting with existing solution

9. History
Fot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_opening_crawl

10. Long time ago in sci-fi realm
Fot. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikrichter/20355251321

11. 1922 – Radio Rex
• Recognized it’s name
Fot. https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/specialprod1/specialprod1_7.html

12. 1961 – IBM Shoebox
• Recognized 16 words (‘plus’,
‘minus’ etc.) and digits.
• Basically voice controlled
calculator
• IBM demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=rQco1sa9AwU
Fot. https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/specialprod1/specialprod1_7.html

13. Few others
• 1976 – DARPA’s Harpy – Recognized 1011 words
• 1990 – Dragon Dictate – Recognized 5000, allowed for
controlling PC with voice
• 2003 – Voice Recognition for Office XP

14. 2011 - Apple Siri 2012 - Google Now
2014 - Microsoft Cortana 2014 - Amazon Alexa

15. Platforms today
• Alexa
• Siri
• Cortana
• Google Now
• Others
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Virtual_assistants

16. Why Alexa?
• Jakis obrazek
Fot. http://hdw.eweb4.com/wallpapers/4257/

17. Devices
Siri Google Now Cortana Alexa
Apple Home
Pod
Google Home
Mini
Harman Cardon
Invoke
Echo Dot
349$ 49$ 99$ 49$

18. Apple Siri
• Programming only in Swift
and Objective-C
• Expensive and not very good
device
Fot. https://giphy.com/gifs/no-cat-nR4L10XlJcSeQ

19. Google Now
• I’m not familiar with Android
Environment
Fot. https://giphy.com/gifs/W5YVAfSttCqre

20. Microsoft Cortana
• No devices by Microsoft
• I’ve trusted them with
Windows Phone before
Fot. https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-imgfave-RddAJiGxTPQFa

21. Amazon Alexa
• I could use C#
• Cloud based
• Easy integration with any
existing app
• A lot of devices
• Growing platform
Fot. https://giphy.com/gifs/people-hd-gifsremastered-10Jpr9KSaXLchW

22. Other Devices
Echo Echo Plus Echo Spot Echo Show
Better sound
quality
Built-in smart
home hub
Small display Better display
and sound
99$ 150$ 130$ 230$

23. And Echo Look
• 200$
• Take pictures and videos using voice
commands
• Allows to categorize your wardrobe!
• Gives fashion advice based on machine
learning!!!

24. Fashion advice. Machine learning.
Fot. https://giphy.com/gifs/whoa-hd-tim-and-eric-xT0xeJpnrWC4XWblEk

25. Where do we start?
https://memegenerator.net

26. You need two things
• Amazon Developer Account -
https://developer.amazon.com
• AWS Account if you’re going to use AWS Lambda -
https://aws.amazon.com
• Hosting for your HTTPS endpoint if you’re not going to use AWS
Lambda

27. Endpoints
• AWS Lambda
• Any HTTPS endpoint

28. Nope, you don’t need device to start
Fot. memegenerator.net

29. Let’s create a skill
Fot. memegenerator.net

30. Alexa Skill Console

31. Choosing Base Model

32. Managing Alexa Skill

33. Required Steps Checklist

34. Creating AWS Lambda Endpoint

35. Configuring AWS Lambda Endpoint

36. Configuring AWS Lambda Endpoint

38. .NET Tooling
• Alexa.NET - https://github.com/timheuer/alexa-skills-dotnet
• AlexaSkillsKit.NET -
https://github.com/AreYouFreeBusy/AlexaSkillsKit.NET

39. Visual Studio Project with Alexa.NET
public async Task<SkillResponse> FunctionHandler(SkillRequest input, ILambdaContext
context) {
switch (input.Request) {
case LaunchRequest r:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell("You've launched your skill");
case IntentRequest r when r.Intent.Name == "MyIntent":
return ResponseBuilder.Tell("You've requested 'MyIntent'");
case IntentRequest r when r.Intent.Name == BuiltInIntent.Cancel:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell("You've requested 'Cancel'");
case IntentRequest r when r.Intent.Name == BuiltInIntent.Stop:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell("You've requested 'Cancel'");
case IntentRequest r when r.Intent.Name == BuiltInIntent.Help:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell("You've requested 'Help'");
default:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell("I don't know what you mean.");
}}

40. Ready to start project available on my repo
github.com/r-hryniewski/Alexa.NET-TalkDemo/tree/template

41. Intents

42. Intents

43. Handling intents
switch (input.Request) {
case LaunchRequest r:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell(“Skill launch request");
case IntentRequest r when r.Intent.Name == "MyIntent":
return ResponseBuilder.Tell(“Intent defined by you”);
case IntentRequest r when r.Intent.Name ==
BuiltInIntent.Cancel:
return ResponseBuilder.Tell(“Built in intent");
}

44. Slots
Set temperature to 20 degrees celsius/kalvins/fahrenheits

45. Slots
Set temperature to 20 degrees celsius/kalvins/fahrenheits
20 – amount slot
celsius/kalvins/fahrenheits – unit slot

46. Slot

47. Using Slots

48. Using Slots
private SkillResponse
HandleTemperatureIntent(IntentRequest r)
{
var amount = r.Intent.Slots["amount"].Value;
var temperatureUnit =
r.Intent.Slots["temperatureunit"].Value;
return ResponseBuilder.Tell(
$"It's {amount} degrees {temperatureUnit}...");
}

49. Publishing to AWS Lambda

50. Testing

51. Working with voice
https://giphy.com/gifs/kimmyschmidt-l0He0B1237tKb5fWM

52. SSML – Markup
• <speak>Entire response</speak>
• Three seconds <break time=“3s”/> pause.
• <s>First sentence<s/><s>Second sentence<s/>
• <prosody volume=“loud” rate=”slow” pitch=“medium”>Controlling
volume, rate and pitch</prosody>
• <say-as interpret-as=“telephone">555 555 555</say-as>
https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html

53. SSML – In code
return ResponseBuilder.Tell(new SsmlOutputSpeech()
{
Ssml = "<speak>Hey there!</speak>"
});

54. Session
• Yes, we have session.
• Sadly, Alexa.NET doesn’t support seamless integration with
Dynamo DB like JS SDK

55. Session - Demo
private SkillResponse HandleIntent(SkillRequest input)
{
if (input.Session.Attributes != null &&
input.Session.Attributes.TryGetValue("AudienceCount",
out var count))
{
return ResponseBuilder.Tell($"There are around
{count} people here.", input.Session);
}
}

56. And since it’s ordinary .NET Code you can...
• Post messages to Service Bus
• Call HTTP
• Fetch and persist to DB
• Do absolutely anything

57. Fot. https://www.ranker.com/list/they-said-i-could-be-anything-meme/robert-wabash

58. Where’s money in that?

59. Business model for single developer
• Every Alexa Skill is available for free (for now)
• You can include paid, premium content in your skills
• Most popular skills in their categories will be awarded by
Amazon
• Developer with at least 1 published skill will receive 100$ for
AWS and additional 100$ per month if it’ll generate any AWS
charges

60. Business model for companies
• Alexa for Business – publishing private skills for companies
https://developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit/alexaforbusiness

61. Connecting with existing solution
• Any REST with HTTPS can be used to expose Alexa Skill
endpoint

62. Other stuff - IFTT
• https://ifttt.com/amazon_alexa

63. Other stuff – Home skills
Fot. https://www.cultofmac.com/436778/win-a-chance-to-wire-up-your-smart-home-with-amazons-alexa-deals/

64. Other stuff – Lists
Fot. https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/80385734/Chris-Jericho-List

65. Other stuff – Echo Spot/Show
Fot. Amazon

66. Summary
Fot. https://benbrookshelflife.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/gladiator.jpg

67. Where to learn
• codecademy.com/learn/learn-alexa - JS
• developer.amazon.com/alexa-skills-kit
• timheuer.com/blog/ - Alexa.NET Author
• facebook.com/AlexaDevs/

68. Samples, links, slides
bit.ly/rh-alexa

69. Questions?
Fot. https://imgur.com/gallery/sFBxW3i

70. @r_hryniewskifb.me/hryniewskinet