Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex: Create custom conversational and voice interfaces for your Amazon Echo devices and web platforms

✍ Scribed by Sam Williams

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 254
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Build artificial intelligence (AI) powered voice and text conversational interfaces with Amazon

Key Features

• Develop Alexa Skills to create a working voice user interface (VUI)
• Integrate Amazon Lex chatbots into Facebook, Slack, and text messages
• Learn to use AWS Lambda, Alexa Skills Kit, and Amazon Lex

Book Description

Have you ever wondered how Alexa apps are made, how voice-enabled technologies work, or how chatbots function? And why tech giants such as Amazon and Google are investing in voice technologies? A better question is: why should I start developing on these platforms? Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex covers all features of the Alexa Skills kit with real-world examples that help you develop skills to integrate Echo and chatbots into Facebook, Slack, and Twilio with the Amazon Lex platform.

The book starts with teaching you how to set up your local environment and AWS CLI so that you can automate the process of uploading AWS Lambda from your local machine. You will then learn to develop Alexa Skills and Lex chatbots using Lambda functions to control functionality. Once you've come to grips with this, you will learn to create increasingly complex chatbots, integrate Amazon S3, and change the way Alexa talks to the user. In the concluding chapters, we shift our focus to Amazon Lex and messaging chatbots. We will explore Alexa, learn about DynamoDB databases, and add cards to user conversations.

By the end of this book, you will have explored a full set of technologies that will enable you to create your own voice and messaging chatbots using Amazon.

What you will learn

• Create a development environment using Alexa Skills Kit, AWS CLI, and Node.js
• Build Alexa Skills and Lex chatbots from scratch
• Gain access to third-party APIs from your Alexa Skills and Lex chatbots
• Use AWS services such as Amazon S3 and DynamoDB to enhance the abilities of your Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex chatbots
• Publish a Lex chatbot to Facebook Messenger, Twilio SMS, and Slack
• Create a custom website for your Lex chatbots
• Develop your own skills for Alexa-enabled devices such as the Echo

Who this book is for

Hands-On Chatbot Development with Alexa Skills and Amazon Lex is for developers who are interested in building conversational bots and Alexa skills with Amazon. Prior experience with JavaScript programming is required.

Table of Contents

1. Understanding Chatbots
2. Getting Started with AWS and Amazon CLI
3. Creating Your First Alexa Skill
4. Connecting Your Alexa Skills to External APIs
5. Building Your First Amazon Lex Chatbot
6. Connecting a Lex Bot to DynamoDB and SNS
7. Publishing Your Chatbot to Facebook, Slack, Twilio and HTTP
8. Improving User Experience for Your Bots
9. Review and Continued Development

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Understanding Chatbots
What are chatbots?
What makes up a chatbot?
Intents
Slots
Utterances
Designing conversation flows
Starting with the perfect conversation diagram
Conversation flow diagrams
Creating a conversation flow diagram
User stories
Best practices
Handling errors
Missed utterances
External APIs
Errors in your code
Tone of voice
Identifying suitable use cases
Designing the information for the delivery method
Amazon Alexa and Lex
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Lex
Summary
Questions
Chapter 2: Getting Started with AWS and Amazon CLI
Technical requirements
Creating an account
Setting your region
Navigating around AWS
Creating a Lambda
AWS Console
Setting up the Lambda
Writing your Lambda function's code
Triggering Lambdas
Methods for working with Lambdas
Method 1 – Lambda Console
Method 2 – Cloud9 editor
Method 3 – Local editing
Creating the best local development environment
Choosing an IDE
Installing Node and NPM
Folder structure
Setting up AWS CLI
Creating a Lambda using AWS CLI
AWS CLI build script
Git
Local development setup
Summary
Questions
Chapter 3: Creating Your First Alexa Skill
Technical requirements
Alexa Skills Kit
Creating a Lambda to handle the request
Creating handlers
Building and configuring the Lambda
Finishing skill configuration
Testing your skills
Troubleshooting your skill
Creating a more useful skill
Conversational flow diagram
Creating the Alexa Skill
Creating an Intent
Internal Slots
Finding the Skill ID
Creating the Lambda
Handling the whichCar Intent
Amazon S3
Accessing our S3 data
Adding S3 permissions
Dealing with our data
Testing our Lambda
Finishing the Alexa Skills Kit Configuration
Testing
Launching your skill
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 4: Connecting Your Alexa Skills to External APIs
Technical requirements
External APIs
Open Weather Map API
Creating our weather skill
Conversation flow design
Creating the skill on Alexa Skills Kit
Building Lambda to handle the requests
Making an API request
Final setup and testing
Improving user experience
Error-handling our API calls
Session memory
SSML
Testing
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 5: Building Your First Amazon Lex Chatbot
Technical requirements
Creating an Amazon Lex chatbot
Setting up the chatbot
Creating an Intent
Testing your chatbot
Publishing your bot
Using Slots
Creating an FAQ chatbot
Setting up Lex
Gathering the data
Creating the Intents
Creating the Lambda Handler
Creating a response
Lambda fulfillment
Building and testing
Lex responses
elicitSlot
elicitIntent
confirmIntent
close
delegate
Summary
Questions
Chapter 6: Connecting a Lex Bot to DynamoDB
Technical requirements
Designing the flows
Perfect conversations
Flow diagrams
Building the chatbot
Product find
Creating the Lambda
Creating the data
Lambda testing
Completing the intent
Add to cart
Creating the Lambda
DynamoDB
Adding Dynamo permissions
Testing
Checkout
Creating the Lambda
Testing
Saving our cart
Creating the Lambda
Dynamo changes
Testing
Retrieving a saved cart
Creating the Lambda
Testing
What's in my cart?
Creating the Lambda
Testing
Testing the whole bot
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 7: Publishing Your Chatbot to Facebook, Slack, Twilio, and HTTP
Technical requirements
Integrations
Facebook Messenger
Creating and connecting a Facebook Messenger app
Slack
Creating and connecting a Slack app
Twilio
Creating and connecting Twilio
HTTP endpoint
Creating the Lambda
Testing
Connecting API Gateway
Testing
Building the API
Web user interface
HTML
Creating our script
Styling the frontend
Summary
Questions
Chapter 8: Improving the User Experience for Your Bots
Technical requirements
Response cards in Amazon Lex
Creating a card
Using cards in chats
Alexa search queries
Google Cloud Platform
Continuing Lambda building
Rebuilding the skill and testing
Lex utterance monitoring
Summary
Questions
Chapter 9: Review and Continued Development
What we've learned
Conversation design
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Alexa
Amazon S3
Using APIs
Amazon Lex
Dynamo DB
Publishing Lex chatbots
Advanced features
Continuing your learning
Alexa
Amazon Echo Spot and Amazon Echo Show
Building a library of functions
Lex
Alexa and Lex
Improving the build process
Integrating more AWS services
Integrating other APIs
The future of chatbots
Language understanding
Working with spoken interactions
Improved device interaction
Connected devices
Unique voice-based systems
General Artificial Intelligence
Improving people's opinions
Summary
Appendix A
Appendix B
Debugging
Debugging Alexa Skills
Check the utterances
Save and build your model
Check your Endpoint
Added Alexa as a trigger for your Lambda
Debugging Lex chatbots
Check your utterances
Check the intent response
Save intents, build, and deploy
Check your connected platform
Check your Lambdas are working
Debugging Lambdas
Install all of the required packages
Check your permissions
Correct your Lambda code
Check external services
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Index