...

/

Intro to Utterances, Intents, and Slots

Intro to Utterances, Intents, and Slots

This lesson provides an introduction to basic concepts like utterances, intents and slots.

Utterances, intents, and slots will be some of the most important concepts to know about as an Alexa developer. Let’s take a closer look at some of these concepts.

Wake Words

How do users interact with our Skill? As discussed earlier, the first thing users need to do to start talking to Alexa is call it by name. The default wake word is “Alexa.”

A wake word is a special word or phrase meant to activate a device when spoken.

Invocation Name

The next step is for users to open our Skill. Say, for example, we want to visit a website. We would typically type in the website address into our browser and navigate there. However, we don’t have the convenience of a web browser on a voice-powered device.

For users to open our Alexa Skill, they need to use the Skill’s invocation name. The invocation name is something that we set as a developer. We will see this again when we start on the projects.

An invocation name is a name that the users will use to start interacting with our Alexa skill.

Utterances

There are different ways a user can ask our Alexa skill the same thing. Whatever the user says to or asks Alexa is an ...