Get rid of okay confirmation

[elmar-hinz]

Feature request

The dialogue should be:

• Alexa: "Do you like dogs?"
• You: "Yes"
• Alexa: "Cool, I like dogs too"

The dialogue is:

• Alexa: "Do you like dogs?"
• You: "Yes"
• Alexa: "Okay"
• Alexa: "Cool, I like dogs too"

Wanted:

An option to suppress the automatic "okay" confirmation, if you want to handle the confirmation yourself. Something like this:

  - service: script.activate_alexa_actionable_notification
    data:
      text: Yes or no?
      suppress_confirmation: True
      event_id: hello_world
      alexa_device: media_player.<Your Media Player>

[elmar-hinz]

Technical considerations

The OK seems to be worded in language_strings.json. Maybe it could be a workaround to temporarily set the value to an empty string.

Better, if ask_sdk_core has an API to control this. I guess the behaviour is originating there. OK is not actively called within lambda_function.py at least.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

This is fixed under the branch. Pending testing @elmar-hinz. If you could also give it a try and let me know if you find bugs

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Im fixing bugs though so might not work yet

[elmar-hinz]

One concern per commit. Please just don't mix bug fixing and features into one commit. It's difficult to track.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Done fixed. Did some refactoring too cuz it was hard debugging the original code.
In my example I call the service like this.

My script looks like this:

alias: Alexa Home Voice Ask
description: Activates an actionable notification on a specific echo device
fields:
  text:
    description: The text you would like alexa to speak.
    example: What would you like the thermostat set to?
  event_id:
    description: Correlation ID for event responses
    example: ask_for_temperature
  suppress_confirmation:
    description: If it should supress the Okay default response confirmation
    example: true
  alexa_device:
    description: Alexa device you want to trigger
    example: media_player.bedroom_echo
sequence:
  - service: input_text.set_value
    data:
      entity_id: input_text.alexa_actionable_notification
      value: >-
        {"text": "{{ text }}", "suppress_confirmation": "{{
        suppress_confirmation }}", "event": "{{ event_id }}"}
  - service: media_player.play_media
    data:
      entity_id: "{{ alexa_device }}"
      media_content_type: skill
      media_content_id: amzn1.ask.skill.87fb0d7f-dd0b-4bd1-92ef-3f59187374ae
mode: single

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Now just need to update docs to reflect this change and should be good to go.

If you could test @elmar-hinz I would appreciate.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

We could also have the option to send a custom response message as well as be able to suppress it

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

@elmar-hinz

[elmar-hinz]

A am gonne check it out this evening.

[elmar-hinz]

I started further testing now. The first problem to solve was how to import a branch as a skill. Would the import use the master branch or the default branch of my fork?

After making the development branch the default branch, the import did call the development branch as source for the import. That simplifies testing.

[elmar-hinz]

@DEADSEC-SECURITY I didn't get the branch running. It doesn't create a response any more. There is no JSON output on the right.

I did call the default launch request:

I will replace lambda_function.py with the version of master, to see if it is running again.

[elmar-hinz]

With the code of the master branch it is working again. This confirms a bug. Did you put too many changes into one pull request? ;-)

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

I did do some refactoring but in my alexa it was working properly.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

@elmar-hinz

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Can you share cloudwatch logs @elmar-hinz

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

[elmar-hinz]

Great, didn't discover it.

Off-topic: Is there any option to set environment variables? Or any .env feature? I don't like the setting at the top of lambda_function.py.

I tried it for node.js, but didn't get anything related to environment variables work in the free account.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

python has a library called python-decouple. Its on of the things I wanted to add too but first want to finish these open prs

[elmar-hinz]

Yes, there are libraries. I have some doubts, that the Amazon cloud will run it. At least anything related to env vars didn't work for node.js. It did work in my local setup.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

python-decouple uses a settings.init file so might work but need to test

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Converted to a discussion, will be better for long threads I guess :)

[elmar-hinz]

O.K. Will give it another try. Not yet, though.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

ok np

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Did you manage to retest and get logs?

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Been a while @elmar-hinz, did we end up finishing testing this?

[SamB-GB]

Looking forward to seeing this implemented as I have found if using Alexa and I have it whispering at a certain time of morning/night the OKAY is back at normal volume so quite annoying.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Hey @SamB-GB the suppression feature is already available in the master branch if you would like to give it a go.

Its not fully tested so any error reports would be appreciated but should work in most common cases.

[SamB-GB]

Is that using the speak_out option?

[SamB-GB]

I wasn't sure if that was the speak_out option or the suppress_confirmation as described earlier in the thread so I updated to the latest master build and I edited my script to the one below:

activate_alexa_actionable_notification:
  description: 'Activates an actionable notification on a specific echo device'
  fields:
    text:
      description: 'The text you would like alexa to speak.'
      example: 'What would you like the thermostat set to?'
    event_id:
      description: 'Correlation ID for event responses'
      example: 'ask_for_temperature'
    suppress_confirmation:
      description: 'If it should supress the Okay default response confirmation'
      example: 'true or false'
    alexa_device:
      description: 'Alexa device you want to trigger'
      example: 'media_player.bedroom_echo'
  sequence:
    - service: input_text.set_value
      data:
        entity_id: input_text.alexa_actionable_notification
        value: >-
          {"text": "{{ text }}", "suppress_confirmation": "{{
          suppress_confirmation }}", "event": "{{ event_id }}"}
    - service: media_player.play_media
      data:
        media_content_type: skill
        media_content_id: "MY SKILL ID"
      target:
        entity_id: "{{ alexa_device }}"
mode: single

Then I edited my service call node (node red)

    "text": "Place a Question Here",
    "event_id": "actionable_notification_event_name",
    "alexa_device": "media_player.livingroom_echo",
    "suppress_confirmation": "true"

This prevented the Okay confirmation.

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Sounds about right @SamB-GB. Is it solved then?

[SamB-GB]

@DEADSEC-SECURITY yes it works for me.

"suppress_confirmation": "true" (works as intended)
"suppress_confirmation": "false" (works as intended)

[DEADSEC-SECURITY]

Great, thanks for the feedback

[Krispkiwi]

Has something changed in relation to this? I'm getting errors in my logs now "Invalid data for call_service at pos 4: extra keys not allowed @ data['suppress_confirmation']"