Test Your Skill

This document describes the steps to test your skill during development.

• Ways to Test an Alexa Skill
• Minimum Skill Configuration
• Deploy Your Skill Code
• Test Your Skill in the Developer Console
• Intent Debugging
• Test on an Alexa Device with Your Developer Account
• Related Topics

Ways to Test an Alexa Skill

During development, there are multiple options for testing a new skill:

• Use the utterance profiler to test your custom interaction model. You can enter utterances and see how they resolve to the intents and slots before you write the code for your service.
• Use the simulator provided on the Test page in the developer console. This gives you access to most Alexa Skills Kit features without a device. You can interact with Alexa using either voice or text.
• Test with an Alexa-enabled device.
• Use ASK CLI to test the skill from the command line. You can test your skill using ASK CLI commands such as invoke-skill and simulate-skill. See ASK CLI Quick Start for more information about managing skills from the command line.
• Use the skill testing features of the Skill Management API.

Regardless of how you test, you need to provide the minimum configuration data and deploy your skill service.

Minimum Skill Configuration

To enable your skill for testing, you need to complete the minimum required configuration for the interaction model included in your skill. All of these settings are available on the Build page.

Custom Model Minimum Configuration

You can test your custom interaction model with the utterance profiler after you successfully save and build your model. You do not need to configure an endpoint for this testing.

For full end-to-end testing, complete the configuration described below.

Depending on your skill and what you need to test, you may also need to fill out these sections on the Build page:

• Custom > Interfaces: If your skill uses any of the device interfaces, enable them on this page.

• Account Linking: If your skill uses account linking, configure it here.

  Note that the full account linking configuration is not required to test intents that do not require authentication. However, it is required to test any intent that returns a LinkAccountCard or that requires authentication.

• Permissions: If your skill uses any permissions (such as for the Device Address API), enable them here.

Pre-built Model Minimum Configuration

Deploy Your Skill Code

Before you can test your skill, you must configure the minimum required data for the skill in the developer console and deploy the code for your cloud-based service. How you deploy your service depends on the interaction model included in the skill:

Test Your Skill in the Developer Console

The Test page includes a simulator that lets you test your skill without a device. When you are ready to test the skill, navigate to the Test page.

If testing has not been enabled for this skill, then you will see Test is disabled for this skill, with the drop-down selection set to Off. From the drop-down list, select the desired skill testing stage, which will be either Development or Live.

If testing has been enabled already, then from the Skill testing is enabled in: list, select the desired skill testing stage, which will be either Development or Live, or select Off to disable testing.

A skill can only be in one stage at any time. For example, if you enable your skill for testing in the Live stage, your development skill will be disabled for testing, and your live skill will continue to be available in the developer console, SMAPI, ASK CLI and your devices that are signed in to your developer account. As part of this enablement in the developer console, the page will be redirected to the live stage URL and all session and context information will be reset. If you have any information you want to preserve, save it before proceeding. This activity will also generate a new User ID and can be used to simulate a first-time user experience. If your live skill is configured with a live lambda version, that live version will be used as part of this stage enablement.

You can use the Test page to test most functionality in a skill, including dialogs, progressive responses (with limitations), and entity resolution.

The page provides three tabs on the left for different types of testing.

Use the Alexa simulator with custom and smart home skills

You can interact with the simulator with either text or voice. Note that the skill session does not time out the way a device would, to give you more time to enter your responses while testing. If your skill keeps the session open, you can close it with "Alexa, stop."

Enable Skill I/O to see the JSON sent to your skill and the JSON returned to Alexa for each turn of the conversation. Note that the JSON is only available for custom skills. Click on a speech bubble to see the JSON related to that turn.

Enable Device Display to see an approximation of how the skill displays on devices with screens. See Test on different devices with screens, later for more details.

Enable Device Log to see the events sent to Alexa and the directives sent to the device during the skill interactions. See Intent Debugging.

Enable Alexa Smart Home (Beta) to see the ChangeReport events that the skill sends to the Alexa event gateway. This option is only available to smart home skills. For more information, see Understand State and Change Reporting and Debug Your Smart Home Skill.

When you test a custom skill with the simulator, the context.System.device.supportedInterfaces property reflects the interfaces you have selected on the Custom > Interfaces page. For example, if you selected AudioPlayer and Alexa Presentation Language, a request sent to your skill from the simulator includes this context object, indicating that the request came from a device that supports both of these interfaces (full set of properties excluded for brevity):

{
  "context": {
    "System": {
      "device": {
        "deviceId": "amzn1.ask.device.1",
        "supportedInterfaces": {
          "AudioPlayer": {},
          "Alexa.Presentation.APL": {
            "runtime": {
              "maxVersion": "1.4"
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Test on different devices with screens

You can select different types of devices from the drop-down list below the Skill I/O section. The selected device determines the data provided in the context.Viewport property in the request sent to your skill.

The available devices correspond to the viewport profiles available in the viewport profiles package for use in an Alexa Presentation Language (APL) document:

• Small Hub (Round)
• Small Hub (Landscape)
• Medium Hub
• Large Hub
• Extra Large TV

For more about the properties of these viewports, see Alexa Viewport Profiles Package.

You can also create custom device profile for testing. This is useful for testing how your skill looks on other types of devices. You can also use a custom profile to test how your skill works on a device with a screen that does not support video playback.

To create a custom device:

1. Click the drop-down list to open the list of standard viewports.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list and click Add Custom Device.
3. Change the properties of the viewport that you want to view. You can set the Shape, Pixel Width, Pixel Height, and Pixel Density. You can also select the specific Video Codecs the device supports, or Disallow Video to create a device that does not support video playback at all.
4. Click Apply.

The custom device remains available during your current browser session. If you close the browser and then later re-open the authoring tool, you need to re-create the custom device.

Alexa Simulator limitations

The following limitations apply to voice and text testing on the Alexa Simulator tab.

Intent Debugging

In the Alexa Simulator, the Device Log shows the consideredIntents returned in the JSON response, so you can see the intents that were considered and discarded. You can use this information to perform intent debugging and determine how to use additional samples to train your model to resolve utterances to their intended intents and slots.

Test on an Alexa Device with Your Developer Account

To test with an Alexa-enabled device (such as an Amazon Echo), register the device with the same e-mail address you used to sign up for your developer account on the Amazon Developer Portal. You can then invoke your skill with the wake word and your invocation name: "Alexa, open <invocation name>."

If your device is set up with an account other than your developer account, reset the device and then re-register it with your developer account. See the help for your specific device for details:

• Reset Your Echo Device
• Support for Amazon Echo
• Device Support

If you want to add back a non-developer account as a user of the device, you can do so by using the Household feature.

Related Topics

Custom:

• Test and Debug a Custom Skill
• Host a Custom Skill as an AWS Lambda Function
• Host a Custom Skill as a Web Service

Flash briefing:

• Tips to Create a Great Flash Briefing Skill
• Flash Briefing Skill API Feed Reference

Smart home:

• Smart Home Skill API Message Reference
• Smart Home Skill Publishing Guide
• Debug Your Smart Home Skill

Video:

• Video Skill Testing Guide

Developer console:

• Manage Skills in the Developer Console
• Create a Skill and Choose the Interaction Model
• Build Your Skill
• Define Skill Store Details and Availability
• Test and Submit Your Skill for Certification
• View Skill Usage Analytics
• View Your Payments and Earnings