Actions in the Alexa Conversations Description Language

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In Alexa Conversations Description Language (ACDL), an action represents some aspect of a skill's behavior. For example, an action could be a response to a question by saying or displaying some information, a request to fulfill a task by invoking a back-end API, and so on.

You declare action signatures in ACDL, but you implement the actions themselves outside of ACDL, such as in AWS Lambda.

You use your declared actions in dialog samples to represent the invocation of the corresponding skill behavior.

• Declare an action
• Related topics

Declare an action

You declare the type signature of an action by using one of the following syntax patterns.

action ReturnType <action_name>()
action ReturnType <action_name>(Type arg)
action ReturnType <action_name>(Type arg1, Type arg2, ...)
action ReturnType <action_name>(Type arg = <default_value>, ...)

For details about using actions, see Use Actions in ACDL.

Related topics

• About Alexa Conversations Description Language
• Use Actions in ACDL

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Last updated: Nov 27, 2023