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

Leo Ohannesian May 08, 2020
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Release Roundup CLI News Localization
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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 features and tools released for skill developers last month, including the CLI V2, Alexa Speaking Styles, and the Education Skills API.

1. Create engaging voice experiences with a new Alexa speaking style, speaking styles in Amazon Polly voices and additional Polly voices

Starting today, you can use a new long-form Alexa speaking style to create a more natural and engaging experience for content such as news articles or blogs. We are also extending the availability of speaking styles to select Amazon Polly voices. You can use the news and conversational speaking styles for Amazon Polly Matthew and Amazon Polly Joanna voices, and the news speaking style in the US Spanish Amazon Polly voice, Lupe. You can also use 10 additional Amazon Polly voices to enrich your skills. Read the blog or see the documentation. 

2. Efficiently Manage Skill Resources and Automate Tasks with CLI v2.0, now GA

The ASK CLI lets you manage skill resources and automate tasks from a local environment. ASK CLI v2.0 adds support for deployment using AWS CloudFormation so you can now manage your skill infrastructure from a CloudFormation template. Read about it in our blog or check out the documentation. 

3. The Alexa Education Skills API is now generally available

With the Education Skills API, choose from six pre-built interfaces to create top-level skills for grades, coursework, and school communications, without having to design the voice interaction model or manage complex multi-turn dialogs. Read the documentation here. Visit our website here.