The Talking App: Beyond the Basics of Developing Alexa Skills

In this example-driven session, we'll go beyond basic Q&A with Alexa and learn how to take skill-development to the next level, including dialog management and multimodal (e.g., visual) skills. We'll also look at ways to make Alexa's responses feel more natural and more human by defining multiple prompts and leveraging SSML to give her voice a bit more zing!

It's easy to think of voice applications as short, question and answer sessions with Alexa. But there's a lot more to Alexa than meets the eye. On some devices she can display additional visual content, proving more information than she would be expected to speak. And when conversation goes beyond a simple question and into a multi-turn discussion, she can handle the back-and-forth using dialog management to handle slot elicitation, validation, and confirmation, making the conversation feel more natural.

About Craig Walls

Craig Walls is a Principal Engineer, Java Champion, Alexa Champion, and the author of Spring AI in Action, Spring in Action, and Build Talking Apps. He's a zealous promoter of the Spring Framework, speaking frequently at local user groups and conferences and writing about Spring. When he's not slinging code, Craig is planning his next trip to Disney World or Disneyland and spending as much time as he can with his wife, two daughters, 1 bird and 2 dogs.

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