Implement AVS Notifications
The Notification feature informs Alexa users about new content associated with their Alexa Voice Service (AVS) enabled device. For example, the LED ring on an Echo device glows yellow when a user receives a new message in their Alexa inbox indicating that Amazon has delivered a package.
Implement the Notifications interface to support Notifications in your AVS implementation.
Available Notification indicators
The Notifications interface exposes two directives that instruct your product to set and clear visual and audio indicators:
SetIndicator
– TheSetIndicator
directive instructs your client to render visual and audio indicators when new content is available to be retrieved. It does not include the notification content.ClearIndicator
– TheClearIndicator
directive instructs your client to clear all active visual and audio indicators.
Additionally, your product must communicate the state of its notification indicators to AVS by including IndicatorState
as a context
object with applicable events.
For all products, the end user must be immediately informed when a SetIndicator
directive is received, even during an ongoing interaction such as Alexa speech or media playback. This is because notifications map to the Alerts channel in the AVS Interaction Model.
The directive payload includes two boolean values that instruct your client to persist a visual indicator and/or play an audio file. persistVisualIndicator
is a global value, if true your product must continue to inform the user that notifications are available until they are retrieved by the user, the product receives a new notification with persistVisualIndicator
set to false, or receives a ClearIndicator
directive. playAudioIndicator
lets your product know whether to audibly inform the user that a notification is available. If true, a URL is provided and must be played immediately. In the case that the audio file is unavailable, your product should play a locally stored new notification audio file as a fallback.
Sequence Diagrams
These diagrams illustrate the typical flow of directives and events for setting and clearing notification indicators.
Scenario 1: Notifications Available
In this scenario, a notification is delivered to an AVS-enabled product.

Scenario 2: Retrieve Notifications
In this scenario, the user sees a the yellow LED pulse on their AVS-enabled product, and asks, "Alexa, what are my notifications".

Enable the Quote Maker Skill for Testing
The Quote Maker skill is a development tool that allows developers to create notifications in real-time, and trigger the sending of SetIndicator
directives to all Alexa Built-in devices associated with a user account. Learn more »
Next Steps
- Review the directives and events available via the Notifications Interface.
- Make sure your product meets the functional requirements provided in our Functional Requirements for AVS.
- Read the UX Design Overview.
Last updated: Jan 26, 2021