What's New in the Alexa Skills Kit: January 2020 Release Roundup

Leo Ohannesian Feb 18, 2020
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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.

In this roundup video we share details about the new things released for skill developers last month, including live skill updates. 

1. Select updates to live Alexa skills can now be made almost instantly

You can now update slot values and sample utterance to your live skill in a matter of few minutes. A “Live update” to your skill executes an automated skill publishing process for iterative changes. Read the blog. See the documentation. 

2. Receive notifications about Alexa skill development events with the Skill Development Notifications Service (SDNS)

Get notifications about your skills, skills built by your organization, or skills built on your tool with SDNS. It currently supports four events - skill manifest updates, interaction model updates, certification updates, and skill publishing. Read about it in our documentation. 

3. Announcing Alexa Knowledge Skills (Preview): Query Your Organization's Data Without Writing Code or Invoking a Skill Name

You can now sign up to preview Alexa Knowledge Skills, a new skill type that enables users, such as employees and customers, to ask questions about an organization’s spreadsheet data without invoking a skill name. Read the announcement here.