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Know How... 345: Alexa Flash Briefings

4,388 views · Published 18 September 2017 · 44:58 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: Hands-On AI · 2017 · Howto & Style

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Amazon Alexa Flash Briefings

--Flash Briefings are for quick news and content delivery via Amazon's Alexa devices.
--Can do two different types of Flash Briefings: Text and Audio

Steps to set up Flash Briefing:

--Sign up for Amazon developer account at https://developer.amazon.com/
--Under "Alexa", go to "Alexa Skills Kit" and click "Get Started".
--This lists your current skills. You probably have none, so click "Add a New Skill".
--Select "Flash Briefing Skill API", language, and enter a name for your skill.
--Under "Configuration", enter your error message in case it doesn't work.
--You also add your RSS or JSON feed URL here, but we'll come back to that later when we have one.
--Under "Test", set it to "Yes" while you're testing. You'll be able to load up the skill on your Alexa, but others can't.
--Under "Publishing Information", select a category and sub-category.
--Testing instructions, you can just enter something like, "This is a Flash Briefing that will ____." There are no real testing instructions necessary for Flash Briefings.
--Can select countries/regions the skill should be available.
--Enter (public) skill descriptions, keywords, and upload 108x108 and 512x512 icons.
--In "Privacy & Compliance", check the options (likely "No") and optionally link to privacy and terms of use pages.

Can test Alexa skills without an Echo by going to https://echosim.io
Flash Briefing feeds must:

--be served via HTTPS
--be in JSON or RSS format
--be UTF-8 encoded
--include 1 to 5 unique items.  (If you include more, only the first five are used...newest to oldest.)
--be able to handle at least 1 request per minute with a latency of under 1 second.

Text-To-Speech Flash Briefings

--Items limited to 4,500 characters.
--Must be plain text with no special characters, SSML, HTML, or XML.
--Should be properly punctuated. Commas and semicolons result in short pauses. Periods, question marks, and exclamation points result in longer pauses.

Audio Flash Briefings

--Require HTTPS URL to audio content.
--256kbps mono or stereo MP3
--Under 10 minutes

Walk through sample JSON fileAdd JSON file to Developer page and test

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--Join our Google+ Community.
--Tweet at us at @PadreSJ and @Anelf3.

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