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by Edward Muldrew
As a voice developer I rely on much of the community to help solve niche problems, communicate with and discuss feasibility. Therefore I felt a blog dedicated to some great online resources when developing voice apps appropriate.
I shall discuss some great resources I have found and use to this day. Call it the one stop shop for great resources all voice developers can use.
APL Ninja
APL Ninja is great resource for those Alexa developers who are interested in animation, multi-modal design and APL. Hundreds of APL templates are available to be used by other developers to add to their 3rd party apps. With a social media style interface. Contributors have the opportunity to upload their APL, comment and like on other submissions.
Further to this users can pick specific tags to filter the APL templates by. Tags include Zooming, Video, Sprite Graphics, Bar Chart, etc.
“APL Ninja is a social platform for Alexa developers, in particular enthusiasts and learners of the Alexa Presentation Language (APL). Anyone can publish their documents, get feedback and inspiration from others. Over time, this platform will evolve as a repository of APL best practices and hacks.”
Bespoken
Although I have not tried this site out personally, I have heard of other developers using it to test their apps. Testing 3rd party voice apps have always been difficult as their hasn’t been a recognised test suite. As is the way with voice, the inputs in to the system can be varied therefore manual testing often becomes the go to.
This is where Bespoken comes in to play, an online automated testing tool specifically for Alexa and Google Actions. For the free version of the product you can use unit testing with CLI commands. However some of the more premium features can be pretty expensive. The platform seems more appropriate for corporate teams or bigger software houses. However a useful tool none the less.
“Perform automated testing for Alexa skills – no speaking out loud necessary. Tests are automatically run against Alexa Voice Service (AVS) and your skill.”
https://bespoken.io/blog/automated-testing-alexa-skills/
Voice Devs
Voice Devs provides a multitude of features with a great community looking to help voice developers out. Topics ranging from VUI Design, Monetization, Feedback and more.
What I personally have found most helpful is the number of events provided on Voice Devs. There are always online conversations to be had with other professionals. A great way to network and discover more within the community. The chat feature allows you to talk to some professionals with vast experience in industry. A great place to network.
“We bring together developers to learn how to create profitable Alexa Skills and Google Actions so that we can achieve financial freedom, work on cutting edge tech, and improve the lives of people around the world through voice technology.”
Voiceflow
Voiceflow is the first of it’s kind allowing a drag and drop visual style of building voice apps. This platform is perfect for rapid prototyping and would allow entrepreneurs to quickly build proof of concepts and minimal viable products. Moreover independent developers can quickly build an app to get feedback and build from there.
With their “Build once, deploy everywhere” philosophy, Voiceflow allows your app to be deployed to both Alexa and Google Assistant. Furthermore it allows team collaboration by inviting other users on to projects. Despite not using this platform, I would imagine their would be limitations when voice apps need to bespoke and customised to a particular use case.
However I see this as a great solution to rapid prototyping 3rd party apps within voice. The product comes at an affordable price with its’ pro package costing $40 a month. As well as offering a free starter package.
“Collaboratively design, prototype and launch voice applications for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. No coding needed”
Jovo
Jovo’s mission is to enable anyone to create voice experiences across platforms. Providing a central codebase to work across various voice platforms. Jovo provides a CLI with many commands to aid within your development. Jovo can be used at all points of the project lifecycle. I specifically noticed their ability to create unit tests.
“Jovo enables businesses to build and run voice experiences, including Alexa Skills, Google Actions, and more”
https://www.jovo.tech/docs/quickstart
Everyday tools
I wasn’t sure if to include these or not as for most developers they already use them. However I thought I should shed some light anyways. I describe these tools as helpful aids when developing. They are not necessarily specific to voice development but I have found them useful when making my apps.
I am sure many of you will be familiar with Reddit already. However Reddit can be used to help market, find help and connect with the voice community.
Subreddits such as /r/GoogleAssistantDev/ and /r/Alexa_Skills I have found to be of particular use when trying to promote and app or seek advice on voice specific development problems.
JS Fiddle
I personally develop my apps using node.js so having a JavaScript playground is great to experiment with samples of code without having to run my whole application.
https://jsfiddle.net/
Postman
Postman is a popular API client that makes it easy for developers to create, share, test and document APIs. If your application is used to connect to external APIs. Postman is the perfect tool to help verify your calls are correct. As well as providing code examples which you can integrate in your codebase.
https://www.postman.com/
Conclusion
To summarise this blog was really to give a portfolio of resources to aid the voice developer. To bring light to some great platforms which others may find useful. If there is anymore resources you use as a developer, please share with me in the comments.
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