What's New in the Alexa Skills Kit: June 2019 Release Roundup

Leo Ohannesian Jul 05, 2019
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Release Roundup Advanced SMAPI CLI Dialog Management
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Editor's Note: Our monthly release roundup series showcases the latest in Alexa Skills Kit developer tools and features that can make your skills easier to manage, simpler to deploy, and more engaging for your customers. Build with these new capabilities to enable your Alexa skills to drive brand or revenue objectives. This post has been updated on 8/14/2019 to include the video of Akersh walking you through June's releases. 

 

In this roundup post we share details about the new things released for skill developers last month, including the announcement of the Alexa Conversations Preview along with several other features that can help make you be more productive or build more engaging skills. Check out the entire livestream for more information from Alexa evangelists and code samples.

1. Build dialogs with less effort, less code, and less training data

Alexa Conversations is a new AI-driven dialog manager that automatically generates synthetic training data from sample dialogs. Try it for selection, recommendation, or sales transaction dialogs. This ASK capability is available as a preview for US developers. Check out the announcement here or sign up for the preview here.

2. Access 2,500 new sounds in the Alexa Skills Kit Sound Library to build delightful experiences

You can now access more than 2,500 new sounds in the Alexa Skills Kit Sound Library across various categories including animals, boats, doors, and sports categories. Additionally, you can use the new search bar and smart filters to find the right sounds quickly. The new sound clips, the search bar, and the filters are available for developers in all locales. Check out the ASK Sound Library Announcement here or read about it in our docs. 

3. Manage your skill as a single package using Skill Package API

Skill Package API simplifies skill management by allowing you to create, update, and clone skills using a self-contained deployment package (.zip) format. In-Skill-Purchasing (ISP) files are now part of the package (.zip) file and eTag support now makes it easy for teams to work on a skill. Read about the Skil Package API in our docs.

 

As always, we can't wait to see what you build. As a reminder, learn how to get the most out of the tech docs by visiting the Latest Tips page.