Add Additional Locales of the Same Language to Custom Skills

About locale clone

To speed up your development, you can clone the existing locale assets of a custom skill. After cloning the assets, you use reuse them as a starting point to configure a new locale in the same language.

For example, if you have already built a custom skill with the en-US locale, you can clone your local assets to extend your skill to another locale in the same language, such as en-CA. This process creates a copy of your skill's manifest data and interaction model. The clone also copies the invocation name, endpoint URL, and specific API usage – such as Alexa Presentation Language (APL) or Account Linking.

You can clone a locale across all languages. However, you can't clone a locale to support cross-language changes. For example, you can clone a locale from en-US to en-GB, but you can't clone a skill from en-US to es-ES. The cloning process copies over all manifest data and interaction model values as-is, without any regional overrides.

Use locale clone

When you clone a locale with the developer console, first you find the existing custom skill that you want to clone, and then you find the primary locale that you want to clone. You can also use this feature with the equivalent ASK CLI commands or SMAPI APIs.

To use the Locale clone feature with the developer console

1. Go to https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask.

2. Click Skills.

   The developer console opens and displays any skills you have already created.

3. From the list, find the custom skill that you want to clone, and then click to select that skill.
4. In the top-left corner, from the drop-down menu, select Language Settings.

5. Find the primary locale that you want to clone, and then click Clone.

   The section expands with additional locale information that you must select in the next step.

6. From the list of the secondary locales, select the check boxes of the locales that you want to clone.

7. Click Clone.

   For example, the following screenshot shows how to clone the AU, CA, IN, and UK locales.

   

8. If the locale that you try to clone already exists in your skill, a pop-up window asks you for permission to overwrite the existing locale.
   • If you agree, Click Overwrite.
   • If you don't agree, click Cancel.

   The clone locale workflow starts.

9. Under Clone in progress, view the ongoing progress of the workflow.

   After the clone process finishes, the message Clone successful appears.

   Important: For best results, don't navigate away from this page while the clone is in progress. In addition, don't perform any parallel actions on the skill, such as updating the skill or modifying any other skill parameters. If your clone process encounters an error, the developer console displays an error message. Follow the instructions in the error message to help solve your issue.

About automated locale distribution

To use automated locale distribution, you must opt-in first. When you opt in, we assess whether your skill is eligible for distribution to all locales of a given language. If you want to further control the distribution of your skill, you can specify the countries to make your skill available in. Otherwise, we will default to distributing the skill to all countries for the given language. For more details about specifying countries, see Select Countries and Regions for the Skill.

• We don't distribute your skill to additional languages. For example, we won't distribute an en-US skill to countries that don't support English, for example France.
• Make sure to update your privacy policy and terms of use for your skill to meet the requirements for all countries and regions where your skill will be available.

Use automated locale distribution

You use the developer console, ASK CLI, or SMAPI to opt in to automated locale distribution.

To use the developer console to opt into automated locale distribution

For details about using the developer console to opt in to automated locale distribution, see Define Skill Store Details for Publication.

To use ASK CLI or SMAPI to opt in to automated locale distribution

1. In the skill manifest, under SkillManifest_PublishingInformation specify the automaticDistribution object. The automaticDistribution object is optional. If you specify the object, provide all of the following parameters:

   Field	Description	Type
   isActive	If true, indicates that you want us to distribute your skill in all locales for all languages that your skill supports. If you later set this value to false, the updated setting does not revert any locales to which we previously distributed your skill.	boolean
   sourceLocaleForLanguages	List of items pairing a language with a primary locale. Required if isActive is true. For each language that your skill supports, you must use this array to specify which locale to use as the source for the language. There cannot be more than one instance of the same language in the array.	array
   language	In the sourceLocaleForLanguages array, two-letter string representing the language to which to distribute the skill, for example en.	string
   sourceLocale	In the sourceLocaleForLanguages array, locale from where to copy the metadata and model, for example en-US. The locale must already exist in the skill.	string

2. Use ASK CLI or SMAPI to deploy your skill.
3. Use ASK CLI or SMAPI to resubmit your skill.

Example

Let's say that you specify the countries US, France, and Australia for distribution of your skill, and you create en-US and fr-FR variants of the skill. Then, you opt in by updating the skill manifest as follows:

"automaticDistribution": {
    "isActive": true,
    "sourceLocaleForLanguages": [
     {
        "language": "en",
        "sourceLocale": "en-US"
     },
     {
        "language": "fr",
        "sourceLocale": "fr-FR"
     }
    ]
   },

We evaluate whether the skill is eligible for distribution. Let's say that the skill is eligible for the en-CA, en-IN, fr-CA and en-AU locales. We will expand the distribution of your skill to add only en-AU, because you indicated that the skill can only be distributed to the US, France, and Australia.

Additional examples

The following example is for an English-language skill where you specified all countries and regions, and you created your skill for en-US. The example shows how to distribute the skill to all English-speaking locales and use en-US as the primary locale for the distribution.

"automaticDistribution": {
  "isActive": true,
  "sourceLocaleForLanguages": [
    {
      "language": "en",
      "sourceLocale": "en-US"
    }       
  ]      
  },

The following example is for an English-language and French-language skill. The example shows how to specify that you want to distribute your skill to all English-speaking locales using en-US as the primary locale, and also distribute your skill to all French-speaking locales using fr-FR as the primary locale.

"automaticDistribution": {
    "isActive": true,
    "sourceLocaleForLanguages": [
     {
        "language": "en",
        "sourceLocale": "en-US"
     },
     {
        "language": "fr",
        "sourceLocale": "fr-FR"
     }
    ]
   },

The following example shows how you might expand the distribution of a skill that has already implemented the locales en-US, en-CA, es-US, fr-FR, and it-IT. The example uses en-US as the primary locale for English. You might alternatively specify en-CA as the primary locale.

"automaticDistribution": {
    "isActive": true,
    "sourceLocaleForLanguages": [
     {
        "language": "en",
        "sourceLocale": "en-US"
      },
      {
        "language": "es",
        "sourceLocale": "es-US"
      },
      {
        "language": "fr",
        "sourceLocale": "fr-FR"
      },
      {
        "language": "it",
        "sourceLocale": "it-IT"
      }
    ]
   },