Most people used to use IFTTT to control harmony activities, but now that the full two-way harmony/SmartThings in a integration has been released to all members, you actually don’t need the IFTTT step. So it’s a little simpler with a little bit less lag.
Here’s the step-by-step FAQ for that:
And here’s the FAQ for using virtual switches to have echo change modes or run routines. You can use exactly the same approach to have echo trigger a harmony activity.
The IFTTT channel is still very useful for a lot of things, I use it all the time, but with echo and harmony it’s just a little simpler now to use the built-in harmony integration.