I publish a flash briefing skill on Amazon's Alexa. It is a brief news update on a specific topic. I provide the information to Alexa via a json file that is updated every 10 minutes.
I'd like to publish something similar on Google Home devices. However, when I look at DialogFlow, that API appears to be conversational-based. Is that the right API for this type of app? Is there a Template for flash-briefing-like apps (i.e., easy to launch apps that don't require any additional user input after launching)?
No, you don't need a conversational Action for what you're doing.
Depending on the specifics of how you're providing the content, you may wish to look at either Podcast Actions or News Actions. These methods document what Google is looking for to make structured content available to the Google Assistant.
Related
I want to allow my friend using Google Home to access audio posts on a WordPress blog. Can I make it treat my blog as a podcast without registering it with, say, iTunes?
I don't have a Google Home unit, and have not found detailed documentation on Google Assistant, except for writing actions. Is there a simpler way to do what I want without writing an action? Can I get my audio file and then access the existing code that handles operations within a file such as seeking, play, pause, etc. from my action?
You can take a look at content actions to generate a unique feed for your audio posts. In this way, you would be able to effectively create a podcast which can be surfaced by users on Google Homes as well in the Google Podcasts app. This would be a shallow integration.
If you want something more advanced and customized, you can create an Action and make use of the Media Response in Actions on Google.
Even if you don't have a Google Home, you are able to access your Action from other surfaces like a smartphone. You can also make use of the simulator in the Actions on Google console for development.
I want to develop a custom google assistant action that will get a web page, extract a piece of information, and read it aloud.
I'm looking for pointers for relevant sources.
If it's possible through services such as ifttt it's even better (though from what I saw the google assistant support in ifttt doesn't appear to support this scenario).
You're looking to create an Action with the Actions-on-Google API. The easiest way would probably be to create a Firebase Function with node.js that handles the AoG request from Google, makes the call to the web page, extracts the information you need in a form that can be read aloud, and sends that back.
I am developing a Google Assistant app for Google Home, and about to launch the app. I am wondering, once my app is live on the Google Assistant platform, whether I (as a developer) would have access to all of the conversation histories as users interact with my app.
If so, does Actions on Google / Google have some sort of interface to view / download the history? Or, do I have to log and capture the history myself? I thought the history will be really helpful for me to improve my app.
Many thanks!
It depends a bit on how you have built your Action.
If you have built it with one of the templates - then no, you don't have access to the conversations.
If you have built it with the Actions SDK or with Dialogflow, then you will have access to quite a bit of information that is delivered to your fulfillment webhook. If you have intents that do not send anything to your webhook - you will not get that information.
There are tools that help you examine conversation flow, see where users get stuck or fall out of the conversation, or how they're using your Action. Most of them have good integration with the Actions on Google libraries. I use a combination of Chatbase, Dashbot.io, and Google Analytics.
I work for a publication and would like to find out how I can enable our site to be read by Google Home or if there's something I need to do to set that up. I've looked at the Google Assistant SDK but it seems to be geared more towards custom commands to your own device like a Raspberry Pi etc.
Thank you!
You're right, the Google Assistant SDK is for building your own Assistant hardware.
The Actions on Google API is for building Actions that work with the Google Assistant on multiple platforms. With this, you can build an Action that responds to requests to "Hey Google, Talk to your action name". Google also reviews these Actions periodically to find ones that may more directly respond to questions such as "Hey Google, tell me the news".
There is currently no way to explicitly have your audio included as part of Google Assistant's "Good Morning" news briefing list, although Google may use RSS streams or other public feeds to make such content available.
Update
Google just announced formalizing what they call Content Actions, which are the formal way to get specific content such as poscasts, news, and recipes through the Assistant. See the documentation for details, but in your case, they've documented what the RSS feed should look like.
Is there any way to implement a music streaming service for Google Assistant using Action on Google? I have tried SSML simple responses but the limitation is 120 seconds. I would like to play a continuous stream. Google has a streaming service called Podcasts that works with Google Assistant but I cannot find any references in the developer docs to address such applications.
Thanks
No streaming support on Actions on Google yet, but it's coming.
Google just released information on creating a Podcast Action.
In short - you need to have a page that will be found by Google's bot that contains correctly formatted information about a valid RSS2 feed containing the podcast info. From there, it should be picked up and made available in Google's index.