Known Issues of Alexa Conversations

Alexa Conversations has the following known issues.

For a list of recent improvements that we made as a result of your feedback, see Recent improvements.

Current issues

Alexa Skills Kit feature support

Alexa Conversations currently doesn't support the following features of the Alexa Skills Kit:

  • Built-in AudioPlayer and VideoApp directives. You can send AudioPlayer and VideoApp directives alongside an Alexa Conversations response, but not built into it.
  • In-skill purchasing, shared slots, and features to update live skills.
  • Echo Buttons (GadgetController and GameEngine).
  • CanFulfillIntentRequest.
  • The addition of Alexa Conversations to skills that use slot elicitation, slot confirmation, or intent confirmation.

User interface

  • If you see that built-ins slot(s) (without extensions) are no longer surfaced under Slot Types in the left navigation, no action is needed because the build will still succeed as long as the built-in slot(s) are supported by Alexa Conversations. For a list of supported slot types, see Slot types.

Interaction model

  • Your skill must have at least one custom intent with at least one sample utterance in the interaction model. Otherwise, the skill session might end prematurely during runtime.

Naming

  • Using the same name for an API definition and a response causes the build to fail.

Testing the skill

  • You can't enable testing and test your skill in the Alexa Simulator until at least one full build of the skill model is complete.

Dialog acts

Some dialog acts currently have limitations. For details, see Dialog Act Reference for Alexa Conversations. Additional issues are as follows:

For API Success and API Failure:

  • Argument names for the selected API to invoke must match the argument names for the selected response.

For Confirm API:

  • Argument names for the selected API to confirm must match the argument names for the selected response. Using arguments beyond those in API to confirm is not supported.

For Offer Next API:

  • If this dialog act is stand-alone, the value only works if the name of the response arguments is the same as the Arguments of API to Offer. Complex values are not supported.
  • If this is a secondary dialog act, complex values are supported. The value can be any response argument and complex values are supported.

For more details about dialog act limitations, see Dialog Act Reference for Alexa Conversations.

APIs

  • Alexa Conversations currently doesn't support APIs that take multiple list arguments. (Each API can have at most one list argument.)
  • The use of a single user utterance to try to invoke two APIs that use the same type of arguments is not supported.

Slots

  • Alexa Conversations supports all built-in slot types except for AMAZON.SearchQuery.

  • You can't use "true" and "false" for slot values in example dialogs. Use "yes" and "no" instead.

Response templates

Dialog annotation

  • You can't edit the annotated variable name and slot types of a list slot in dialog annotations. As a workaround, delete the entire annotated line and annotate it again.

Delegation

  • Alexa Conversations context is maintained and not cleared when delegating from the interaction model to Alexa Conversations.
  • You can't pass formatted slot types such as AMAZON.Date, Amazon.PostalCode, AMAZON.Duration,AMAZON.Time from the interaction model to Alexa Conversations. For example, if you send a postal code as "21740", the slot is empty. However, if you send words instead ("twenty thousand seven hundred forty" or "two one seven four zero"), the slot is filled correctly. The workaround is therefore to transform the value to words before you send it.

Recent improvements

For a list of improvements since the public beta launch of Alexa Conversations, see What's New in Alexa Conversations.

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Last updated: Jan 26, 2024