Alexa built-in intents

Alexa provides a library of built-in intents. These are intents for common actions that you can choose to implement in your custom skill without providing any sample utterances.

For example, the built-in AMAZON.HelpIntent is automatically mapped to common ways of requesting help from a skill. If you choose to use this intent, users can invoke your skill, say something like “help”, and BotTalk will handle this intent approprietly.


Obligatory built-in intents

There are three obligatory built-in intents that every BotTalk scenario should have:

  • AMAZON.CancelIntent
  • AMAZON.HelpIntent
  • AMAZON.StopIntent

The reason for this is simple: no skill will pass Amazon certification process without those intents.

That is why when you create a new scenario in BotTalk (either from scratch or from a template) - BotTalk will always automatically generate those 3 intents and also connect them to the two corresponding steps: Help and Exit:


    - name: Initial step
      actions:
        - sendText: 'Welcome text'
        - getInput:
      next:
        AMAZON.CancelIntent: Exit
        AMAZON.StopIntent: Exit
        AMAZON.HelpIntent: Help


Stadard built-in intents

In addition to the obligatorz built-in intetns, you can use the standard built-in intents provided by Alexa. For example: AMAZON.YesIntent or AMAZON.NoIntent.

To implement a standard built-in intent, include the intent in the Intents section of the BotTalk editor:

---
intents:
  enroll_for_course:
    - 'enroll me for the course {course_name}'
    - 'enrollment for {course_name}'
    - '{course_name} enrollment start'

  AMAZON.YesIntent:
  AMAZON.NoIntent:

Note, that you don’t need to provide any sample utterances for these intents. As opposed to the custom intent enroll_for_course. Just the name of the intent followed by the colon will suffice.

You can now use the built-in intents in the Scenario section of BotTalk:


- name: Begin Enrollment Question
  actions:
    - sendText: 'Hey, do you want to begin the enrollment process?'
    - getInput:
  next:
    AMAZON.YesIntent: Enroll Step One
    AMAZON.NoIntent: Exit

Here is the list of the Alexa standard built-in intents supported by BotTalk:

Intent Common Utterances Purpose
AMAZON.LoopOffIntent loop off Lets the user request that the skill turn off a loop or repeat mode, usually for audio skills that stream a playlist of tracks.
AMAZON.LoopOnIntent loop, loop on, keep playing this Lets the user request that the skill turn on a loop or repeat mode, usually for audio skills that stream a playlist of tracks.
AMAZON.NextIntent next, skip, skip forward Let the user navigate to the next item in a list.
AMAZON.NoIntent no, no thanks Let the user provide a negative response to a yes/no question for confirmation.
AMAZON.PauseIntent pause, pause that Let the user pause an action in progress, such as pausing a game or pausing an audio track that is playing.
AMAZON.PreviousIntent go back, skip back, back up Let the user go back to a previous item in a list.
AMAZON.RepeatIntent repeat, say that again, repeat that Let the user request to repeat the last action.
AMAZON.ResumeIntent resume, continue, keep going Let the user resume or continue an action.
AMAZON.ShuffleOffIntent stop shuffling, shuffle off, turn off shuffle Lets the user request that the skill turn of a shuffle mode, usually for audio skills that stream a playlist of tracks.
AMAZON.ShuffleOnIntent shuffle, shuffle on, shuffle the music, shuffle mode Lets the user request that the skill turn on a shuffle mode, usually for audio skills that stream a playlist of tracks.
AMAZON.StartOverIntent start over, restart, start again Let the user request to restart an action, such as restarting a game, transaction, or audio track.
AMAZON.YesIntent yes, yes please, sure Let the user provide a positive response to a yes/no question for confirmation.

You can learn more about the standard built-in intents in the official Amazon Documentation page.


Written by Andrey Esaulov on 12 March 2019

Updated on 12 March 2019