Skill Configuration

We'll be working on the Skill Endpoint now. In the left menu, click Endpoint, and select AWS Lambda ARN. ARN here stands for "Amazon Resource Number", which is an internal identifier. Here, we'll see our skill ID and several inputs asking us to provide a service endpoint that our skill will reference. We'll have to use AWS for this.

AWS Lambda

In a new tab, open up aws.amazon.com and sign in. Change your location at the top right to US East (N. Virginia). This is the default server that supports Alexa Skills.

Now, navigate to Lambda by typing it into the search bar under AWS services, then click Create a function to get started.

Build your Lambda Function

Lambda is a really useful tool that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has built to allow you to run a service without provisioning your own servers. Here, we'll be using Lambda to store and run our Skills code.

We'll be creating our Lambda function from scratch. There are some blueprints (or templates) for Alexa Skills that exist, and you can explore these later if you'd like.

For now, we'll need to fill in some information.

• Function name is the lambda function name. You can name this whatever you like.
• Runtime is what we'll be using to run our script. We'll use Python 3.6.
• Execution role is used to specify the permissions function. While we won't be diving into what this is exactly, you can learn more here. For our purposes, we'll be creating a new role with basic Lambda permissions.

Now click Create function.

Configuring your Lambda Function

We need to add a trigger for this function. Select Alexa Skills Kit and we'll need to configure the triggers. Remember the Skill ID from our Alexa Skills developer console? Go back to that tab, copy Your Skill ID, and then paste it into the Lambda window. Lambda should take care of the basic permissions for Alexa.

Once you've input this ID, you'll notice that it says unsaved changes all over the page. Hit the Save button at the top right of the page.