Alexa Routines And Skills: A Tutorial

You can also take advantage of more than 100,000 Alexa Skills to create routines and further customize your smart home and improve its functionality.

How to Create an Alexa Routine

Making a new routine in Alexa is simple. There are three main steps involved. Once you learn how to do them, you can set up all the Alexa routines you want. Take a look.

Open the Alexa app and tap the More tab in the lower-right corner to open the menu. Tap Routines , and then tap the plus sign in the top-right corner. You’ll see a new screen where you have three options:

• Enter routine name
• When this happens
• Add reaction

The first option is self-explanatory. Just name the routine whatever you want, although it’s a good policy to name it something that identifies it at a glance.

The second option is where the fun begins. You can choose for the routine to begin with a specific voice command, on a schedule, after a smart device trigger, when you reach a location, when you set an alarm, after pressing the Echo button, or when you activate Guard mode on Ring, ADT, or other compatible systems.

Choose the command you want to use. In this example, we used the voice command trigger phrase “Game time.”

Once you’ve chosen the trigger for your routine, choose the response. This will be the action that Alexa takes to set your routine in action. There are a series of options to choose from:

• Alexa Says : Alexa will respond with a customized phrase that you set or choose from a list.
• Briefings : Alexa provides a summary of the day’s events and reminders.
• Calendar : Alexa provides a breakdown of the day’s events from your linked calendar.
• Calling : Alexa will make a call through a linked account like Skype.
• Date and Time : Alexa will tell you the current date and time.
• Device Settings : Alexa will stop playing music, adjust the volume, or go into Do Not Disturb mode.
• Drop in Notification : Alexa makes a drop-in call.
• E-mail : Alexa will read your email summary.
• Entertain Me : Alexa will sing a song or tell a joke.
• Fire TV : Alexa will begin to play content on Fire TV devices.
• Good News : Alexa will read good, uplifting news stories.
• Guard : Alexa will activate Guard to protect your home.
• IFTTT : Alexa will run specific the IFTTT applets you have set up.
• Messaging : Alexa will send or receive announcements.
• Music : Alexa will play a song, specific artist, playlist, or station.
• News : Alexa will play the news from your Flash Briefing.
• Skills : Alexa will activate a pre-set Skill.
• Smart Home : Alexa will control a smart home device you choose.
• Sounds : Alexa will play sounds you choose from categories like animals, bells and buzzers, crowds, and more.
• Traffic : Alexa will provide a traffic report.
• Wait : Alexa will set a timer for a time you specify.
• Weather : Alexa will report the weather.
• Custom : Alexa will respond to a question you set.

Almost every option has sub-commands once you select it. To continue the example from above, we chose the Smart Home reaction. This opens another screen that provides access to three options: All Devices , Control group , and Control scene .

Tapping any of these options opens additional commands. To complete the example routine, we chose Control group > Loft . From the final screen, we moved the slider for Power to the “On” position.

This means that when you say “Alexa, game time,” all of the lights in the loft will turn on–and because they are preset to the individual colors, the routine will automatically set the mood for an evening of binging on your favorite games.

Alexa Skills

An Alexa Skill is a bit like an app. It expands the basic functionality of Alexa beyond what it can do by default. Access Skills by tapping More and choosing Skills and Games from the menu.

This opens the Skills and Games Menu where you can scroll through available skills in the Discover tab, search for specific types of Skills from the Categories tab, and view any Skills you have saved through the Your Skills tab. Even if you’ve never chosen Skills before, you might already have some available through devices added to your Alexa app.

For example, if you have LIFX bulbs or an iRobot device you control through Alexa, those skills will already be available in the Your Skills tab. There are almost two dozen categories to pick from, with more than 100,000 different Skills to help you totally customize and control your life through Alexa.

To enable a Skill, choose it from the menu and then tap “Enable to Use.” Once you’ve done this, you have access to any abilities the Skill allows.

Alexa Routines and Skills enable use of Alexa-compatible smart home devices, but there are also other Skills that act as shortcuts . For example, IFTTTrigger grants access to any of the services on IFTTT.com that can be integrated into Alexa routines. This makes it easier to find potential IFTTT integrations than manually searching through the website itself.

In addition to Skills that grant more functionality or enable productivity, you can also play games through Alexa Skills. Most of these games are trivia or quiz-style games, but there are others available to users with an Echo Show. You can also play Skyrim. It’s not quite like it would be on PC, but it just shows that the game really is everywhere.

• How to Create Alexa Skills for Your Business or Employees
• How to Create Skills With Alexa Blueprints
• How to Shop With Alexa for All Your Shopping
• 10 Cool Alexa Tricks to Try With Your Amazon Echo
• How to Change Alexa Language to Spanish and Other Languages

However, you may be looking for something in particular. Maybe you want a trivia game about your family, a fairy tale where your child is the star character or a guide to your home and neighborhood for a houseguest.

Well, guess what? You can make your own skill using Alexa blueprints. Here’s how!

Browse Alexa Skill Blueprints

Select a blueprint to view more details and check out examples. This helps you see how the babysitter blueprint can help when you’re away, or the family jokes blueprint can liven up quality time.

If you find one you want, pick Make Your Own on the skill information screen.

Create a Skill

The steps are the same whether you’re creating a skill with a blueprint on the web or on your mobile device. However, those steps may differ depending on the type of blueprint you select.

For instance, you’ll enter different information for a birthday trivia skill compared to one for flashcards, the pet sitter, or bedtime stories. You can see these steps when you select a blueprint to view its details.

To show you just how easy it is, we’ll create one on each device.

Make a Chore Chart Skill on the Web

For this first example, we’ll use the Chore Chart blueprint to create a skill on the website. This skill helps keep track of household chores and who is responsible for each one.

1. Visit the Alexa Blueprints website, sign into your Amazon account, and choose a blueprint.
2. As described above, select Make Your Own directly below the skill name. If you see a short tutorial for building the skill, choose Start Now when you get to the end.
3. Next, you’ll be prompted to replace the details for the skill with your own. For the Chore Chart, we’ll fill in the names of our household members and chores.

1. Select Next on the top right to move to the next step.
2. Here again, you may be asked to enter more details for the skill. For the Chore Chart blueprint, we assign the chores to the household members. Just keep in mind that the number of prompts and requested details depend on the exact skill and blueprint.

1. Select Next to continue.
2. One step that you’ll find in most blueprints is for customizing the experience. This refers to how you interact with Alexa for that particular skill. For instance, you can enter introduction phrases for when someone opens the skill and then other phrases for when someone completes a chore. These are the phrases Alexa uses for that specific skill.

1. Select Next to finish entering the details.
2. The final step in creating a skill is to give it a name. Try to use something meaningful that you’ll remember but also something simple enough for Alexa to recognize.

1. Select Next one last time to create the skill.

After a few moments to process all the information, your skill should be ready to use!

Make a Whose Turn Skill in the Mobile App

For this next example, we’ll use the Whose Turn blueprint to create a skill in the Alexa app. This skill prompts Alexa to choose whose turn it is to do something.

1. Open the Alexa app on Android or iOS and select the More tab.
2. Pick See More in the top section and choose Blueprints .
3. Browse the options by category, just like on the website. Then, select the one you want to use and tap Make Your Own .

1. Replace the details for the skill with your own. For the Whose Turn skill, we’ll add the names for Alexa’s choices.
2. Tap Next on the top right to continue.
3. The next step for the Whose Turn skill is to personalize the experience. This allows you to customize how Alexa picks a name. After you ask a question, Alexa uses the phrases and sound effects you select in this section. Optionally, you can scroll down for additional customization options.
4. Tap Next to name your custom skill.
5. Select the text on the name line to edit it or enter your own. Again, pick a meaningful name and one that’s easy for Alexa to recognize.
6. Tap Next to create the skill.

You’ll see the progress as your skill is created and a confirmation when the process completes. You can tap the X on the top right to exit when you finish reviewing your skill.

Edit Skills You Create

Once you create a skill using Alexa Blueprints, you may want to make adjustments to it. You can do this on the web and in the mobile app too.

Your Skills on the Web

1. Visit the Alexa Blueprints website and sign in. Select Skills You’ve Made at the top.
2. You’ll see a list of your skills. Choose Details to the right to open the one you want to edit.

1. On the right side, select Edit or Delete . You’ll notice you can also pick Share With Others to make it easy for your family or friends to access or Publish to Skills Store for other Alexa users.

Your Skills in the Mobile App

You can edit your custom skills easily in the Alexa mobile app as well.

1. Go to the Menu tab.
2. Select See More > Blueprints .
3. On the Your Skills tab, select the blueprint you want to edit.
4. Use the buttons at the bottom to make your changes.

Take Advantage of Alexa Blueprints

Even though there are many premade skills you can pick from, creating your own Alexa skills gives you great ways to personalize the experience on your Alexa devices, get tasks done, or have a little fun !

• How to Create Alexa Skills for Your Business or Employees
• How to Shop With Alexa for All Your Shopping
• 10 Cool Alexa Tricks to Try With Your Amazon Echo
• How to Change Alexa Language to Spanish and Other Languages
• Why Alexa Is Flashing Yellow, Green, and What Does it Mean?