Amazon Alexa custom slot memo

Question

I am creating an Alexa skill that needs to retrieve various things such as Date, File number, etc . I also need it to get the "Description" that a user says to it and be able to retain it.

For example:

"Alexa, description, patent drafting"

so I would need Alexa to be able to retain the "Patent drafting" . I am not to sure how I should go about this and any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use slots to get this piece of information for your skill. You'll need slots like Date (use built-in AMAZON.Date as it's slot type), FileNumber (use AMAZON.Number ), and Description (this would be a custom slot, where you need to provide slot values explicitly).

Now you make all of the slots required in the build section of your Alexa skill builder. And you also need to provide prompts (ie what Alexa will say to ask for the value of this slot) and utterances (ie what user will speak in response to those prompts). The utterances should have the slot variable. For example: "Note the date to {Date}"

Once this is done, you'll need to have a look on Dialog.Delegate Directive. Your skill must return this Dialog, in order to retrieve the input data.

This should not be a problem. But if you face any, comment below and I'll tell the step-by-step procedure and even the code to get this done.

Answer 2

So for the description.. I can only get the values that I predefined within the utterances ? I would not be able to program Alexa to have it retrieve whatever I say? Because there could be a large variety of things that could be said.