Today we’re excited to announce that device makers can now launch their Alexa-enabled products in Japan. This expansion follows up on our November 2017 launch where we made the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) development tools available for prototyping purposes.

When you have a natural conversation with another person, you might find the conversation can take different directions. Therefore, the context of the conversation can change quite rapidly. With dialog management, you can ensure your skill is able to handle context switching.

Learn how to implement repeat functionality for your skill by including AMAZON.RepeatIntent in your interaction model and Session Attributes in your code to remember the last speech response that was relayed back to the customer.

When I write a new skill, I learn something new every single time. Here are some of the things I’ve learned about writing sample utterances for my intents.

Learn how you can lean on dialog management to simplify collecting a set of required slots that an intent needs to perform its task for the user.

Some Alexa skills require account linking to associate the customer with a user account or device. While account linking can be a complex feature to implement in your skill, it’s critical that it’s done well to create a positive customer experience.

As Alexa expands to more countries, you have more opportunities to create voice-first experiences for customers in multiple languages and regions, and make your skills available to a growing audience.

Alexa devices with screens like Echo Show and Echo Spot have opened up a new world of possibilities for what you can do with voice on devices with display. Discover how visual user interface can be a great complement to a voice-first user experience.

Whether it’s scary music leading up to an intense boss battle, a mimicable grunt, or a characterizing catch phrase, sound effects are an enriching and sometimes crucial add-on to any interactive experience.

Dialog management is a great way to collect the set of required slots that your intent needs to perform a task for your customers, since it greatly reduces the necessary coding required to reprompt for missing slot values. Learn how about how you can leverage the dialog management state machine.

Today, we announced that Amazon Alexa and Alexa-enabled devices are coming to France later this year. You can start using the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) to build skills for customers in France using the new French language model.

Make the interactions of your skill feel more conversational and memorable by adding variety to your responses. Check out our favorite code snippets you can use to surprise and delight your customers with voice.

Here are some tips for updating the way Alexa pronounces certain words to create a more natural voice experience.

You can get meaningful insights about your skill engagement using the JSON data that is sent to your code by Alexa each time a user interacts with your skill.

To drive ongoing engagement with your flash briefing skill, it’s important to continually update and maintain your skill’s content. Follow the tips below to provide a great customer experience by avoiding some of the most common pitfalls with maintaining flash briefing skills.