Skill works in Voiceflow but not Alexa (echo or ADC)

elle · January 31, 2020, 5:50pm

Hi so,

I’m when testing my skill in voiceflow it works fine but once I uploaded it to Alexa, I noticed now of my changes were uploaded. When I tried to invoke my skill I got a response “There was a problem with the requested skill’s response”, refer to screenshot below:

I’m getting close to getting my skill finished but I’m stumped since I’m not able to test it anymore in Alexa.

I was reviewing a similar thread (Works on Voiceflow, but doesn't on Alexa/Echo Dot) and someone mentioned “Alexa has some limits per “response” as above” - what are the limits? Could this be my problem? Is there anything else I should look out for?

I create a new skill from scratch, that was very basic with one speak block and I wasn’t able to invoke it in Alexa, but I could test in Voiceflow, I’m just wondering why that might be?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

elle · February 1, 2020, 3:09am

Ah I think I figured it out prosody SSML tag was causing the issue. (I just removed this to fix my issue)

elle · February 1, 2020, 3:10am

Also, i think I found a bug. When I added audio URL link to the speak block it wouldn’t work when I tested it in Alexa’s echo/ADC. But if I dragged and dropped the audio file, the audio file worked fine, and tested fine, so I just went with this method.

kun432 · February 1, 2020, 5:15pm

it’s not a bug. if you use audio by URL, that audio file must be formatted as Amazon says.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#audio

by uploading audio file with drag & drop, voiceflow automaticallly convert its format suitable for Alexa’s use.

elle · February 3, 2020, 5:24pm

Okay good to know!

Just to note: the same file play fine in the stream block but not the speak one. ( i think, it’s been a few days so not sure if I’m remembering correctly)

kun432 · February 4, 2020, 3:21am

also this might be help.

Giubi · February 18, 2020, 1:17pm

Speak Block: inserted audio link.
In alexa developer console test it goes wrong (There was a problem with the requested Skill response), it seems to write this wrong:

(adds slash and backslash).

kun432 · February 18, 2020, 3:02pm

it’s ok because

whole text is enclosed by double quotes. for using double quotes inside double quotes, escape(backslash) is needed.
Audio tag doesn’t need closing tag like “”. Instead of that, opening tag itself need “/”(slash) like “

kun432 · February 18, 2020, 3:17pm

One thing to add. There’s only a few case using audio files on Google Drive successfully, I think it’s because of Google Drive.

I recommend to use Amazon S3 or Dropbox.

even if you use audio file in Dropbox, default URL for sharing doesn’t work and you need change URL like this.

From:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xxxxxxxxxx/sample.mp3?dl=0

To:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xxxxxxxxxx/sample.mp3

NOTICE: not sure if works 100%.

Giubi · February 18, 2020, 3:20pm

OK thanks, I will test.