In our previous blog, we learned how to create an Alexa skill, We have created intents and added Sample Utterances and Alexa prompts. Our skill is now ready to be published on the Amazon Alexa store but we didn’t cover how to test our skill and publish on Amazon Alexa store.
In this blog, we will show you how to test our skill in a simulator and publish on Amazon Alexa store.
1. Test skill in Alexa simulator
We need to test our skill in Alexa simulator before publishing it on amazon Alexa store. Let’s see how the simulator works in Alexa developer console.
To test our skill we need to select Development in ‘Skill testing is enabled in:’.
As we can see below screenshot, we have to select our skill language and type ‘open <Invocation Name>’ in next textbox. Simulator prompts welcome message of our skill.
To set a welcome message in our skill, we will use Alexa hosted lambda function. As we can see in below screenshot we need to add a welcome message in ‘LaunchRequest’ Handler in lambda_function.py file. And on save & Deploy button to deploy this to our skill.
We can test Sample Utterances as input and receives a message from simulator we have added in Alexa prompts. See below screenshot if a user needs any help regarding our skill user can ask ‘Help’ and simulator gives Help response we have added.
To set Help message in our skill we need to follow the steps we have done for a welcome message. See below screenshot to add help message in lambda function. We can set help message in ‘HelpIntent’ Handler.
After deploying lambda function we can set other intents of our skill and move to further steps for publishing our skill.
2. Publish skill
To publish our skill we need to go to ‘Distribution’ tab, select your skill language and provide Public Name and description for our skill.
Add Sample Utterances that we use to invoke our skill. Upload small and large skill icon.
Select a category for our skill. Keywords, Privacy Policy URL & Terms of Use URL are optional.
Click on Save and Continue below to move at Privacy & Compliance.
In privacy & compliance make a selection as per our skill, Agree to the Export Compliance and Add testing instructions for Alexa team to test our skill. Click on save and continue to move further.
In availability make a selection as per our need and click on save and continue button to move on the certification process.
In the Certification tab, we can check the Validation & Functional Test of our skill. After completing Validation and functional test with zero errors we can submit our skill for review. Click on Submit for Review button to submit our skill.
As we submit our skill we will receive an email from amazon Alexa team about the submission of our skill. Reviewer team will review our skill and they will either approve or reject our submission. If our submission is rejected then they will also provide details about why it was rejected. We can make changes as per the suggestions provided in the email and re-submit the skill again.
Once reviewers team approve our skill we can start sharing it with our friends! Now our skill is accessible worldwide.
Do let us know in comments if you have any further questions.