Creating a calendar skill in Alexa

Creating a voice skill for Alexa has been an enjoyably frustrating experience. The concepts seem easy to grasp, however, when attempting to apply the concepts, I am unable to start a conversation with Alexa.

I started with the first two introductory skills a fact skill, and a trivia skill. Both skills were guided walkthroughs on how to create a skill. I just needed to add my utterances to the pre-defined intents. For my next skill, I decided to create a calendar skill that will provide dates, times and locations for events happening on my campus. I created an outline of my project, complete with intents, utterances, and slots. There is even a Git repository with most of the heavy lifting done, for me.

I created my skill in the Alexa Developer Skill Kit, added my intents, slots and utterances. I modified the JSON code to match the one on the Git repository. I figure, if I can get a working skill, I can then work on modifying it for my requirements. I then created the Lambda function and just the NodeJS code that was in the example, same thought process, just get it working. Finally, it was time to test, I said “Alexa start Event Calendar” and Alexa said “Welcome to Event Calendar. Ask for a date …”. When I asked for a date, October 30th, Alexa didn’t say a word, no error code, no “sorry I don’t know that”, nothing. This is where the fun stops and the real work begins, for me.

I’m not upset that the skill is not working (I am a little), but I welcome the opportunity to learn how to overcome this obstacle and become a better Alexa Developer.

To be continued …

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