Would LOVE to be able to send announcements to Alexa/Echo devices via an official, native, supported SmartThings solution.
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I genuinely can’t believe what I’m reading here…
Are you seriously telling us you are going to push thousands of users over to a broken Alexa skill come whatever may?
Surely you can just push it back a couple of weeks until the issues are sorted out and people can select devices again?
…and what about your support services? They are just going to get absolutely flooded with enquiries on top of everything else just going on.
This is an utterly awful decision from ST if true… The current skill is not fit for purpose and certainly shouldn’t be meeting the ‘definition of done’ for any product owner, so why the hard cut-off?
I’ll say it again, please, please, please just listen to your customers and just suspend this forced migration for a couple of weeks until this is sorted.
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Why?
(10 chars minimum, so I’ll repeat: Why?)
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Agreed…no need to move until the skill is fixed.
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Anybody else experiencing this? -
I’m able to control devices connected via Smartthings in the Alexa app, but when attempting to control them by talking to an echo device, it says “The skill linked with ____ is not enabled. Please enable the skill.” The skill is definitely enabled, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to control the device in the app. I’ve even tried disabling the skill, deleting Alexa from my Smartthings connected services, then re-enabling the skill (pain in the butt) but that also didn’t work. Curiously, Alexa routines can control my devices connected via Smartthings, but I don’t want to make a routine for each individual device.
What command are you using with Alexa?
What naming structure are you using?
“Alexa, turn on Sally” This is a smart light bulb named “Sally”
See above.
This is very unlikely to happen any time soon, since Amazon does not have an official TTS API that I am aware of. The Alexa Skill for home automation devices does not support sending TTS requests to Echo devices. This is Amazon’s decision, not ST’s.
Ok, but there must be some mechanism since the Echo Speaks smartapp provided that capability until the arrival of the new Alexa skill.
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EchoSpeaks still provides that capability, and has absolutely nothing to do with the arrival of the New ST Alexa Skill. If your EchoSpeaks instance stopped working recently, it is most like because Amazon forced you to change your password. But, since EchoSpeaks is going away in 7 days, I wouldn’t worry too much about fixing it. Just wait for the EchoSpeaks-Lite version.
EchoSpeaks uses an undocumented, reverse-engineered API to masquerade as a web-client to alexa.amazon.com. Amazon could shut EchoSpeaks down at any time. To be honest, I am surprised they haven’t already considering the amount of excess traffic it must be generating on the amazon servers. SmartThings is not about to use an undocumented API to access Alexa. Thus my skepticism that it will ever happen (unless Amazon opens up an official API. 
)
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Was this only today? There was a SmartThings issue for a few hours in the Americas that caused various problems
I must say, I’m kinda pissed at this. I’m unimpressed ST.
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Exactly, this just reeks of someone just blindly focussed on meeting a deadline even if it’s to the detriment of the customer…
Seriously, just push the deadline a couple of weeks for goodness sake, would it really impact that much?
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No you don’t @JasonM, this is CRITICAL FUNCTIONALITY that involves privacy issues, life safety issues and security issues… You should be pausing the skill migration for it.
@blake.arnold , @jody.albritton , @Lars, @Brad_ST - NOT ACCEPTABLE.
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@nathancu Has any technical publication or social media resource latched on to ST’s decision given how your points are always hot topics nowadays, especially in home automation devices?
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Nah this has been ever since I disabled the Smartthings Classic Alexa skill and enabled the new Smartthings skill - maybe a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t until today that I actually had the guts to try unlinking the service and disabling/re-enable the new skill.
@Lars @JasonM You need to push back decommissioning of the old skill until this is available. Full stop.
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Sigh. I’m hanging on with the old skill hoping for a miracle. I am not concerned with devices being exposed causing duplicates. But seeing too many anomalies like you’re reporting.
One. More. Week.
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I rarely comment on here, but I don’t understand why you HAVE to meet an arbitrary deadline that puts your customer’s privacy and safety in jeopardy.
That literally sounds insane.
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Have you seen any decision/change from SmartThings in the last year that leads you to believe these are important values or play any role in the direction of the platform?
Like many others, i am moving everything that needs privacy or impacts safety and security to other systems.
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