Thanks for letting me know. That is frustrating but clearly just a communication thing with the Support team. We have worked very closely with the product team for months.
But yes, the key to success (or one of them) with Alexa is to have very distinct and succinct device, routine and group names.
Iâve learned this the hard way. I have a Sonos device called âPatio Sonosâ and I had a routine called âPatio Sonosâ and the only way to have it fire successfully is for me to open the Yonomi app. I renamed my routine to âOutdoor Sonosâ and now it seems to be working.
Iâve had problems with virtual switches such as one named dinner time, and Harmony Activities (Fox News Channel). It seems if you say the word lights at the end of the phrase it works⌠Turn on Dinner Lights, turn on FOX News Channel Lights. I didnât change any Smartthing labels, just added the work Lights to my Alexa request.
Iâm going to test more.
Now for the good news: echo has added several highly requested phrases to the smart home commands.
You can now say lock, unlock, set, and a few more. 
Awesome! Canât figure out how to use Open Blinds, Close Blinds and Lift Blinds. I can do one of them by creating a group called âBlindsâ and assigning it to a virtual switch that performs one of the cations, but then how do I do the others?
I think it just means that âopenâ will automatically be mapped to âturn onâ and âcloseâ will be mapped to âturn offâ for your switch. I donât know about lift, it might also be mapped to on on a switch.
This doesnât change what a device does, it just changes what words you can say to Alexa in place of turn on and turn off.
So before I would go âTurn on Open Blindsâ, âTurn on Close Blindsâ and âTurn on Lift Blindsâ. These 3 were Alexa groups mapped to virtual switches that have settings such as on, 100%, on, 50% dim and off. I am not sure I am going to be able to use Open, Close and Raise all together.
Right, in your case youâve already included the verb in your group name so itâs not really going to sound natural to say âopen open blinds.â So I donât think itâs going to improve your current use case any. Itâs really for people who have been saying âturn on Blindsâ to open and âturn off blindsâ to close where they just had one virtual switch named âblinds.â
I got it working sort of! FIrst, I changed from my custom Somfy blinds type to @E_Sch device type (nice job!). This basically mapped my Blinds switch to Close properly.
Then I modified @E_Schâs Somfy Blinds code for Closed Blinds setLevel to equal 100 and not zero. The reason for this is if you issue Alexa a command âOpen Blindsâ, it will set the switch On and at the last set level. If that set level is 0 since you closed it last, it wonât work properly. It needed to be 100. I also had to change a few other setLevels throughout the code. (if anyone needs this code, let me know). The only negative with doing this is you can no longer use the slider bar in the Device to open and close blinds. I never did anyway since I use routines/widgets and the buttons in the device type.
Then I created an Alexa group called Tilt Blinds which actually mapped to a virtual switch which dimmed them.
So I have working:
Alexa, Open Blinds
Alexa, Close Blinds
Alexa, Turn on Tilt Blinds
2 out of 3 ainât bad and the tilt blinds, we use the least anyway.
Anyone get Alexa to open/close their MyQ Garage Doors by saying âAlexa, Open Garage Doorâ and âAlexa, Close Garage Doorâ? My open command works, but my close command is accepted by Alexa, but does not close the doors. The garage doors open and close if I issue the Open command which âturns onâ the switch. It just doesnât feel natural to say Open Garage Door to close it 
The device type from @copyninja has the switch capability and the IDE logs show this:
a6c99494-1fbe-4306-a6ca-d85f97dc8ac5 1:14:30 PM: debug Turn off Marcâs Garage Door
a6c99494-1fbe-4306-a6ca-d85f97dc8ac5 1:14:30 PM: debug Marcâs Garage Door does not support hearbeat
a6c99494-1fbe-4306-a6ca-d85f97dc8ac5 1:14:30 PM: debug control, params: [appId:a6c99494-1fbe-4306-a6ca-d85f97dc8ac5, param1:control, param2:11d1f637-479e-4920-9efb-1228038950af, param3:TurnOffRequest, action:[GET:executeSmartAppGet, POST:executeSmartAppPost, PUT:executeSmartAppPut, DELETE:executeSmartAppDelete, OPTIONS:executeSmartAppOptions], controller:smartAppApi, id:11d1f637-479e-4920-9efb-1228d038950af, command:TurnOffRequest], request: [:], devices: [0b593b86-7a0e-4525-a327-3d0afcd620502, 11d1f637-479e-4920-9efb-1228038950af, 4c325989-9778-45d5-ac57-1963dcb70d3e4a, 4c9dd219c3-4d54-499a-9a89-4076875b739f, 6d94171e-2934-477e-9c1d-826b013909d26, 74264804-4fww1e-481c-b4f6-f9a5bdda3f12, 8419e693-9e99-4129-bd6d-dd8a6305d33c, a6c85f3a-08add3-49d1-b1a7-566c708c865a, b9030e62-a093-4f77-851f-ff1ed577548a, eaa0dff5-7c31-4dbe-87f9-02f23ee9a19e, f8f4c002-b4fa-443a-bf34-dd4c21a00a5a, 00a1bcfd9-91f7-4070-a5f3-02cddcc20d3487, 8ea37859-b37a-4d05-dfa763-28dfb82e588e, c6672444-8cc7-4c4b-b3ddfa-39eb1e3f7f83, 13ba9dddba-e7f1-4930-abf7-4356bfd583b9a, dfe667617-a5d0-4fc8-839a-3e70fa9dcc2c, 1c1c669f-a23c-4995-b3a4-7790b8c07e6b] params.id: 11d1f637-479e-4920-9efb-1228038950af params.command: TurnOffRequest params.value: null
There was an Amazon update around May 15 that has fixed some of the problems where Amazon was confused about what was music and what was home automation. This fixes a number of the names that were no longer recognized.
However, it does look like some of them have moved to the reserved word list. In particular, âNetflixâ wonât work as the name of a group or a switch. However, âNetflix switchâ now works just fine, which it didnât last week. So you can say âAlexa, Netflix switch onâ but you canât say âAlexa, Netflix on.â
Still, Iâm glad to get most of the ones back that I had lost previously.
âAlexa, Close Blindsâ is no longer working for me. âOpen Blindsâ is working. Go figure. I am starting to get annoyed that commands are becoming inconsistent with Echo. Ironically, Alexa Close the blinds" works which feels more natural anyways.
Yeah, clearly the desire to allow for natural language is making it difficult for echo to sort out whatâs a home automation request and whatâs a music request. Itâs not an easy problem to solve.
I had to convert all of my harmony commands to âturn on television Nick Jr.â, since âturn on Nick Jr.â Stopped working.
Using the askAlexa skill has eliminated all of the naming works for me.
Has anyone had trouble with âAlexa Close Blindsâ lately?? It used to work and now she doesnât understand me. âOpen Blindsâ works for me.
Prior to the most recent SmartThings meltdown i had a virtual switch named âgarage audioâ. Saying âAlexa, turn on garage audioâ worked fine.
Now it returns âcould not find a device garage in your profileâ. Iâve tried forgetting garage audio in the Alexa devices, removing it from the Alexa SmartApp, re-adding it and discovering new devices and it still isnât recognized.
Not sure what else to try.
Try saying âAlexa turn on garage audio lightâ
If that works, Alexa is having a problem parsing garage and audio in a way that lets it know that this is a home automation device. You might need to rename the switch.
But it worked before⌠for months.