Navigation Management for Alexa Skills

You can design Alexa skills for use with devices like Echo Auto, so that your skill can be used in a car while the car is in motion. For more information about designing skills for use in a car, see Best Practices for Designing Alexa Skills for Automotive. If the user has a Alexa-enabled device that supports navigation, your skill can provide navigation-related capabilities.

• Presence of the Navigation interface in a request
• SetDestination directive
• CancelNavigation directive
• Related topics

Presence of the Navigation interface in a request

Your skill service can determine if the user's Alexa-enabled device supports navigation. Check to see if a request to your skill includes Navigation in the devices.supportedInterfaces object. If Navigation is present, your skill can use the SetDestination and CancelDestination directives to manage navigation. For more information about AudioPlayer, see AudioPlayer Interface Reference. For more information about Geolocation, see Location Services.

Example device object

"device":
{
  "deviceId": "amzn1.ask.device.",
  "_deviceType": "<string>",
  "rawDeviceId": "<string>",
  "supportedInterfaces": {
    "AudioPlayer": {},
    "Geolocation": {},
    "Navigation": {}
  }
}

SetDestination directive

The SetDestination directive enables Alexa to set a destination on a user's navigation-capable Alexa device. The customer can then start navigating to the destination location. In addition, if the device has display capability, it can display the navigation information along with the destination location. Your skill response that uses the SetDestination directive also includes specific location information about the destination.

For more information on response parameters, see Request and Response JSON Reference.

If included, outputSpeech, card, and reprompt cannot be empty, but each can be omitted.

Example Navigation.SetDestination response

{
  "outputSpeech": {<outputSpeech_object},
  "card": {<card_object>},
  "reprompt": {<reprompt_object>},
  "shouldEndSession": true,
  "directives": [
    {
      "type": "Navigation.SetDestination",
      "destination": {
        "singleLineDisplayAddress": "2121 7th Ave Seattle, WA 98121",
        "multipleLineDisplayAddress": "2121 7th Ave\nSeattle, WA 98121",
        "name": "Example Corp.",
        "coordinate": {
          "latitudeInDegrees": 47.608013,
          "longitudeInDegrees": -122.335167
        }
      },
      "transportationMode": "DRIVING",
      "metadata": {
        "hoursOfOperation": [
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "MONDAY",
            "hours": [
              {
                "open": "12:30:00-8:00",
                "close": "1:00:00-8:00"
              }
            ],
            "status": "OPEN_DURING_HOURS"
          },
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "TUESDAY",
            "hours": [
              {
                "open": "12:30:00-8:00",
                "close": "1:00:00-8:00"
              }
            ],
            "status": "OPEN_DURING_HOURS"
          },
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "WEDNESDAY",
            "hours": [
              {
                "open": "12:30:00-8:00",
                "close": "1:00:00-8:00"
              }
            ],
            "status": "OPEN_DURING_HOURS"
          },
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "THURSDAY",
            "hours": [
              {
                "open": "12:30:00-8:00",
                "close": "1:00:00-8:00"
              }
            ],
            "status": "OPEN_DURING_HOURS"
          },
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "FRIDAY",
            "hours": [
              {
                "open": "12:30:00-8:00",
                "close": "1:00:00-8:00"
              }
            ],
            "status": "OPEN_DURING_HOURS"
          },
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "SATURDAY",
            "status": "CLOSED"
          },
          {
            "dayOfWeek": "SUNDAY",
            "status": "CLOSED"
          }
        ],
        "phoneNumber": "+12065551212"
      }
    }
  ]
}

directives

directives.destination

directives.metadata

The metadata object is optional. If present, then certain fields may be required, as shown in the following table.

The open and close hours are expressed in ISO-8601 time with this timezone format:

partial-time = time-hour ":" time-minute ":" time-second ± time-zone-offset

Time is represented in UTC+offset. The offset converts the time to the standard time of the location's time zone with no consideration of daylight savings time.

For status, the following options are possible:

• OPEN_DURING_HOURS – Location is open during the listed hours.
• OPEN_24_HOURS – Location is open the entire day, and no hours are listed.
• CLOSED – Location is closed for the day, and no hours are listed.
• HOLIDAY – Days that may modify the location's schedule. Should display the available schedule along with a note that "hours may vary".
• UNKNOWN – Default, if no hours and no other status is present, or if an unrecognized status field is present.

If hoursOfOperation are present, and status is UNKNOWN, then the user's Alexa device should display the hours with a ?, to indicate that there is uncertainty in the schedule.

CancelNavigation directive

A skill user who has a navigation-capable Alexa device can cancel navigation via a voice command, if the skill service has set up navigation with the SetNavigation directive. When Alexa receives a user request to cancel navigation, then Alexa sends back the following directive in the response.

Example CancelNavigation directive

{
  "directive": {
    "header": {
      "namespace": "Navigation",
      "name": "CancelNavigation",
      "messageId": "<<(String) unique id that represents this message>>"
    }
  }
}

Related topics

• Best Practices for Designing Alexa Skills for Automotive
• Automotive Property for Alexa Skills