Chapter 11
Sending Events

Usually Alexa keeps to herself, waiting for you to call on her to answer a question, play some music, or interact with some skill. She doesn’t interject in a conversation or randomly make observations. She’ll remain silent unless you ask her for something.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It would be nice if Alexa would notify you when your favorite team scores or let you know when a book by your favorite author is released. You might be able to take it a little slower going to the airport if Alexa were to proactively tell you that your flight is delayed. And you won’t forget to pack the night before if Alexa were to remind you of your trip the day before.

In this chapter, we’re going to look at some ways to enable Alexa to chime in and speak up without it being in direct response to an intent. We’ll see how to have Alexa speak up to remind users of some event at a specific time. But first, let’s look at how an external application can cause Alexa to send notification to its users on demand.