Flash Briefing Skill API Feed Reference

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This topic lists the requirements for a flash briefing skill feed, describes the supported formats, and gives examples of each of the accepted formats. Each flash briefing skill can have one or more feeds. The accepted formats for a feed are relatively simple, but there are some basic requirements for each supported format.

• Feed Requirements
  • Endpoint Requirements
  • Format Requirements
  • Audio Content Requirements
  • Text Content Requirements
  • Performance requirements
• Updating Your Feed
• Feed Format Details
• JSON Message Examples
  • JSON single audio item example
  • JSON single text item example
  • JSON text multi-item example
• RSS Message Examples
  • RSS single audio item example
  • RSS single text item example
  • RSS text multi-item example

Feed Requirements

Each feed for a flash briefing skill contains either text content that Alexa reads to the customer or audio content that Alexa plays to the customer. Each feed should meet the following requirements:

Endpoint Requirements

• UTF-8 encoded

• A non-password-protected HTTPS endpoint. For example, https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/blog/feed/flashbriefing.rss
  Important: Because of increased security requirements, we recommend that you provide an HTTPS feed endpoint.
• Provide content in one of the following formats:
  • JSON (preferred format)
  • RSS (acceptable format)

Format Requirements

The following are the basic feed format requirements. For more details, see Feed Format Details.

• Provide the format type as a MIME type in HTTP Content-Type header
• Provide between 1 and 5 unique feed items at a time.
  • If more items are provided, Alexa ignores items beyond the first five.
  • Items should be provided in order from newest to oldest, based on the date value for the item. Alexa may ignore older items.
  • Each item in the feed should be unique and should not overlap with content in another feed item.
• The audio content played back by Alexa, whether an audio stream or spoken by Alexa, must be at least ten seconds long.

Audio Content Requirements

For information on normalizing audio content loudness, see Normalize the Loudness of Audio Content.

• An audio item must contain a HTTPS URL to audio content. HTTPS is required for stream URLs.
• The audio content should be 256kbps mono or stereo MP3.
• Content should not exceed 10 minutes in length.
• Program loudness for Alexa should average -14 dB LUFS/LKFS.
• The true-peak value should not exceed -2 dBFS.
• Not lower than -19 dB LUFS.
• Not higher than -9 dB LUFS.
• Do not exceed true-peak guidelines.

Text Content Requirements

• Limit feed items to fewer than 4,500 characters. Your content is truncated to the nearest sentence under 4,500 characters if it exceeds 4,500 characters in length.
• Should be plain text and not contain special characters such as SSML, HTML or XML tags.
• Should be properly punctuated, short, and easily understood when read aloud. Commas (,) and semicolons (;) result in short pauses. Periods (.), question marks (?) and exclamation points (!) result in longer pauses. Avoid using non-standard punctuation as it can cause TTS issues.

Performance requirements

Alexa attempts to cache your content every 15 minutes, and handles scaling for large traffic. For more details, see Performance Tips. You must meet the following requirements.

• Your feed should be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Contact Amazon at content-skill-submissions@amazon.com in the event of a planned outage.
• An endpoint must handle at least 1 request per minute.
• Response latency must be less than 1 second.
• Response size must be no more than 1 MB.

Updating Your Feed

Because flash briefing caches your content, it's important that your content is fully uploaded and available before updating your feed file. To help ensure that new content is available, use the following steps.

1. Upload your content to your server, wait for the upload to complete, and verify that you can reach the endpoint.
2. Update the date element in your feed file to reflect the current date and time. For more details, see Feed Format Details.
3. Save your feed file.

Alexa checks for new content every 15 minutes, and you can expect to hear or see your new content within 30 minutes of updating your feed file.

Feed Format Details

The following table lists format details for each supported format. Each message should contain the HTTP content-type header specifying the format of the payload. The remainder of the items in the following table describe how each item in a feed should be formatted.

Element	JSON Element	RSS Element	Description	Required
HTTP Content-Type Header	application/json	application/rss+xml	Indicates the format of the feed payload.	Yes
Identifier	uid	guid	A unique identifier for each feed item. UUID format preferred, but not required.	Yes
Date	updateDate	pubDate	The date indicates freshness of the feed item, and items should be in date order from newest to oldest. Alexa ignores items with a date older than 7 days. A string in ISO 8601 format, YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ, specified in UTC.	Yes
Title	titleText	title	The title of the feed item to display in the Alexa app.	Yes
Audio content	A streamUrl element with a value of the URL for an MP3 stream.	An enclosure element with a type attribute of audio/mpeg.	The audio that Alexa plays for the customer. An HTTPS URL specifying the location of the audio content. This field is required for audio items.	No
Text content	mainText	description	The text that Alexa reads to the customer. For audio items, this element is ignored, and can contain an empty string ("").	Yes
Display URL	redirectionUrl	link	Provides the URL target for the Read More link in the Alexa app.	Yes

JSON Message Examples

The following examples show how you would format JSON for the flash briefing skill API.

JSON single audio item example

This example contains audio content that Alexa plays to the customer. The title and link display in the Alexa app.

JSON single text item example

The following example contains text content that Alexa reads to the customer. The title and link display in the Alexa app.

JSON text multi-item example

The following example contains multiple text items that Alexa reads to the customer, and plays an earcon sound between the items. The title and link display in the Alexa app.

RSS Message Examples

The following examples show how you would format RSS for the flash briefing skill API.

RSS single audio item example

This example contains audio content that Alexa plays to the customer. The title and link display in the Alexa app.

RSS single text item example

This example contains text content that Alexa reads to the customer. The title and link will display in the Alexa app.

RSS text multi-item example

This example contains multiple text items that Alexa reads to the customer and plays an earcon sound between the items. The title and link will display in the Alexa app.

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Last updated: Oct 13, 2023