Alexa Skills Spanish Variants Migration FAQ

To make your existing Spanish language skill available to Spanish-speaking customers in other countries, Amazon is planning a language migration (copy over) of your existing live Spanish language skill to create an identical target Spanish language variant. See the following frequently asked questions (FAQ) for information about the upcoming migration and please contact us if you have additional questions.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What does migration mean?
To make your skill available to Spanish-speaking customers in other countries, Amazon is planning a language migration (copy over) of your existing live Spanish skill to create an identical target Spanish language variant. Your skill will be available to ES and MX customers in the Spanish (ES) and Spanish (MX) languages subject to content policy guidelines.
Q: What will happen to my skill as part of the migration?
Amazon will create a target Spanish variant of your existing Spanish skill by copying all skill details, endpoint information, publishing information, and intent schema. Amazon will then publish the multilingual skill to Spanish-speaking customers. You will not receive any certification feedback on your skill as part of the migration.
Q: Is the migration going to create a new skill in the target Spanish language?
No, Amazon will add a target Spanish language variant to your existing Spanish skill.
Q: Is Amazon planning to migrate and create non-Spanish variants of skills?
No. The migration plan is limited to copying Spanish skills to create the target Spanish variants.
Q: Are all skills going to be migrated?
No, the migration will be applicable only to custom skills that a) do not use account linking, b) smart home skills c) do not use the Alexa Skills Kit built-in library in their intent schema, d) do not contain the target Spanish variant in development, certification, or live status, e) are eligible to be distributed to the target country, f) have skill endpoints that support the target Spanish locale, g) do not contain multiple APIs, h) are not built using the skill builder, and i) are not built using dialog management.
Q: Why isn't Amazon migrating custom skills that use account linking?
Amazon isn't migrating custom skills that use account linking because Amazon believes that developers of those skills would want to provide a more localized or custom experience for customers in the target Spanish language, and will manually migrate their skills as necessary.
Q: Why isn't Amazon migrating smart home skills?
Amazon isn't migrating smart home skills because the skills implement account linking. Amazon also believes that developers of smart home skills would want to provide a tailored skill experience in the target Spanish variant for their respective customers.
Q: What if my skill went live post the migration cutoff date and therefore isn’t included in the migration?
If your skill is eligible, Amazon will include it in the next round of migration. Future communications will include details about the skills to be migrated.
Q: How can I opt out of this migration?
Provide your skill ID and skill name to help Amazon identify the skills you would like to exclude from the migration. Opting out of the migration means that you will need to manually create a target Spanish variant and submit your skill for certification to make your skill available to the Spanish-speaking customers. Please contact us if you would like to opt out of this migration.
Q: Are there any technical reasons/considerations to opt out of the migration?
One reason you might decide to opt out is if you will not be able to support increased traffic to your skill endpoint as customers interact with your skills in the target Spanish languages. Another consideration might be if your skill endpoint includes logic to check for existing live Spanish locale (language) attribute value at runtime before providing responses. In this case, your skill might not work as intended when the runtime locale (language) is set to target Spanish language. In this case, you can manually create the target Spanish variant of your skill and update your skill endpoint as needed.
Q: Will the migration cause any adverse impact to the existing live Spanish skills?
No. The migration will not have any impact to the existing live Spanish version of your skill.
Q: Do I have to do anything to my existing skill endpoint to support the migration?
No, Amazon will use your existing endpoint when creating the target Spanish language variant of your skill. However, you should expect and plan to support increased traffic to your skill endpoint as customers interact with your skills in the multiple Spanish languages. If you believe your skill endpoint cannot support such increase in traffic, please contact us to opt out of this migration.
Q: What if I manually create a target development Spanish variant of my skill prior to the migration?
If you manually add the target Spanish variant to your skill in the developer console and submit it for certification, your skill will be excluded from the migration. However, if you haven’t submitted your skill for certification with the newly added target Spanish variant, you can delete the Spanish variant from the development version of your skill and contact us prior to the communication cutoff date to be included in the migration.
Q: Can I update the existing Spanish and/or target Spanish language variant of my skill after the migration?
Yes, after your skills have been successfully migrated, you can continue making updates to your Spanish variants of your skill and submit your multilingual skill for certification. Amazon also recommends optimizing the sample utterances in the intent schema for your skill to enhance the experience for customers interacting with your skill in the target Spanish language.
Q: Will the migration affect any changes that I have made to the development version of my existing Spanish skill?
No. Amazon will not make any changes to the development or live versions of your Spanish skill.
Q: What will be the state of my skill after migration has been completed?
After Amazon has migrated your skill, the live and development versions of your existing Spanish skill will continue to exist as-is. As part of the migration, Amazon will create live and development versions of the target Spanish variant in your skill based on the information from the existing live Spanish version.
Q: What happens if I use the ASK CLI or SMAPI to deploy updates to my skill?
The skill metadata and interaction models in the development console have been updated to support a new locale. Therefore if you try to use the ask deploy command to deploy updates to the previous version of your skill you will get this error: "The local stored [skill] eTag does not match the one on the server side". If you try to use the ask deploy --force command (ASK CLI v1) or the ask deploy --ignore-hash command (ASK CLI v2), you will not have the migrated locale on your server side. You must first use the ask clone -s SKILL_ID command to retrieve an updated version of the skill metadata and interaction models. You can then update your skill and use the ask deploy command to deploy it to the development console.
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Last updated: Nov 28, 2023