I want to have Alexa speak a response to an intent, but by manually invoking the Lambda function that contains the Alexa skill code, rather than by speaking the intent directly to the Echo.
Could you, for instance, send a JSON payload that comprises an intent request to the Lambda function somehow (by AWS-SDK or via a rule on an IoT "thing") and expect the Lambda function to execute and the Echo to play the speech response?
No. If you call your Lambda function, whatever calls it will get the return, not the Echo.
What you are asking for is "push notification". There is a very long thread of people requesting this on the ASK forum. It is the most requested feature for the ASK. But Amazon have never indicated they are considering doing this. But, then, it is their policy not to indicate what they are doing anyway.
Personally I do not think they will ever do this. There are too many security and privacy concerns. Some people have created hacks, whereby the run an agent on a computer hooked to their echo by bluetooth. They push a request to the computer and the computer plays a message over the Echo. That's the closest I've seen.
Related
I am using AppSync with Aurora/RDS.
I would like that in some cases, when a query/mutation is sent to the db, then, after that, I want to send an email and push notification, but this should be detached from the query/mutation, that is, it does not matter if it fails or works.
At the moment I see all these options:
Can you tell me which one I should use?
Create a query that calls a lambda function that sends the
push/email and call it from the client once the actual
query/mutation is done. I don't like this because the logic is in
the client rather than the server. Seems easy to implement, and I
guess it is easy to ignore the result of the second operation from a
client point of view.
A variation of the previous one. Pack both operations in a single
network request. With GraphQL, that is easy, but I don't want the
client waits for the second operation. (Is it possible to create
lambda functions that return immediately, like a trigger of other
functions?)
Attach my queries/mutations to lambda functions instead of RDS
directly. Then, those lambda functions call other lambda functions
for notifications. Seems more difficult to program, but more
micro-services architecture friendly. Probably this is the best one,
not sure.
Use SQL triggers and call lambda functions from those triggers. I
don't know if this is even possible. Researching...
Use pipelines resolvers. The first one is the query/mutation, the
second one is the lambda function that sends the push/email. I would
say this is a bad option because I don't want the client to wait for
the second operation or manage the logic when the second resolver
fails.
Amazon RDS Events: It appears it is possible to attach lambda
functions to specific AWS RDS events.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/services-rds.html It
seems it is about creating DBs, restoring... and that kind of
things. I don't see anything like creating a row, updating a row...
So, I discard this unless I am wrong.
Invoking a Lambda Function with an Aurora MySQL Stored Procedure
CALL mysql.lambda_async ( lambda_function_ARN,lambda_function_input )
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/AuroraMySQL.Integrating.Lambda.html
"For example, you might want to send a notification using Amazon
Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) whenever a row is inserted
into a specific table in your database." That is exactly what I am
looking for. I like this idea, but I don't know if that is possible
with Aurora Serverless. Researching... It seems it is not possible
when using server-less:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/a9szid/aurora_serverless_call_lambda/
Use step functions: No idea about how to use it.
Somehow, attach this lambda notification function to GraphQL/AppSync
instead of the database, but I guess it is not a good idea because I
need to read the database to the push notification token and the
email of the use who is going to receive the notifications.
Which method do you recommend me? I am using amplify cli.
Thanks a lot.
Currently AWS AppSync can only send notifications when the app is active. We are looking into implementation of the non active case.
If you want to send notifications when the app is not active, you can use the push notifications on iOS: silent push/interactive push or push notifications on Android.
If you want to send emails, voice/text message or notifications on phone when the app is not active, you can integrate with Amazon Pinpiont.
My Lex bot has four intents. Suppose a user asks a question at the very beginning of the conversation and this question is not allotted to any of the four intents. Hence no intent will be established. When this happens, I want to call lambda to run an "intent suggestion model" (built using topic modeling) to suggest the user about what the intent of the question might be. Also, lambda will have to store such queries in a database (s3 or RDB) so that if such queries are repetitive, then that intent can eventually be added to the bot and for other analytical solutions.
What you need is a fallback intent but Lex does not support fallback intents as of now.
You can still achieve this if you use a bridge between your chat client and Lex.
Setup an API Gateway and Lambda function in between your chat-client and the Lex.
Your chat-client will send a request to API Gateway, API Gateway will forward this to Lambda function which will be used to call Lex and get response from it. Lex will have one more lambda function as a webhook.
In the Lambda function you used to call Lex, we can check if any intent was matched or we got an error message, if it's an error message and trigger some action like intent suggestion model.
You need to use boto library to call Lex and use post_text() method.
Hope it helps.
I have written and saved a lambda function. I see:
Congratulations! Your Lambda function "lambda_name" has been
successfully created. You can now change its code and configuration.
Choose Test to input a test event when you want to test your function.
Now how do I run it? I cannot see a 'run' or 'invoke' button as I would expect
Note
The lambda doesn't accept any arguments (it's extremely simple - for the purposes of this question, please presume it's simply 2 * 2 so when I run it it should not require any inputs and should return 4).
Also note
I can see a tonne of different ways to run the lambda here. I just want the simplest way (preferably a button in the browser)
Sending a test message via the Lambda console will run your Lambda function. The test message that you configure will define what is in the event parameter of your lambda handler function.
Since you are not doing anything with that message, you can send any arbitrary test message and it should work for you. You can just use the default hello world message and give it an arbitrary name.
It should then show you the results: any logs or returned objects right in the AWS Lambda console.
Further reading here
AWS Lambda functions are typically triggered by an event, such as an object being uploaded to Amazon S3 or a message being send to an Amazon SNS topic.
This is because Lambda functions are great at doing a small task very often. Often, Lambda functions only run for a few seconds, or even less than a second! Thus, they are normally triggered in response to something else happening. It's a bit like when somebody rings your phone, which triggers you to answer the phone. You don't normally answer your phone when it isn't ringing.
However, it is also possible to directly invoke an AWS Lambda function using the Invoke() command in the AWS SDK. For convenience, you can also use the AWS Command-Line Interface (CLI) aws lambda invoke command. When directly invoking an AWS Lambda function, you can receive a return value. This is in contrast to situations where a Lambda function is triggered by an event, in which case there is nowhere to 'return' a value since it was not directly invoked.
I’ve created a Lex bot that is integrated with an Amazon Connect work flow. The bot is invoked when the user calls the phone number specified in the Connect instance, and the bot itself invokes a Lambda function for initialisation & validation and fulfilment. The bot asks several questions that require the caller to provide simple responses. It all works OK, so far so good. I would like to add a final question that asks the caller for their comments. This could be any spoken text, including non-English words. I would like to be able to capture this Comment slot value as an audio stream or file, perhaps for storage in S3, with the goal of emailing a call centre administrator and providing the audio file as an MP3 or WAV attachment. Is there any way of doing this in Lex?
I’ve seen mention of ‘User utterance storage’ here: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/contact-center/amazon-connect-with-amazon-lex-press-or-say-input/, but there’s no such setting visible in my Lex console.
I’m aware that Connect can be configured to store a recording in S3, but I need to be able to access the recording for the current phone call from within the Lambda function in order to attach it to an email. Any advice on how to achieve this, or suggestions for a workaround, would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Amazon Connect call recording can only record conversations once an agent accepts the call. Currently Connect cannot record voice in the Contact Flows. So in regards to getting the raw audio from Connect, that is not possible.
However, it looks like you can get it from lex if you developed an external application (could be lambda) that gets utterances: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lex/latest/dg/API_GetUtterancesView.html
I also do not see the option to enable or disable user utterance storage in Lex, but this makes me think that by default, all are recorded: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lex/latest/dg/API_DeleteUtterances.html
My Amazon Lambda function (in Python) is called when an object 123456 is created in S3's input_bucket, do a transformation in the object and saves it in output_bucket.
I would like to notify my main application if the request was successful or unsuccessful. For example, a POST http://myapp.com/successful/123456 if the processing is successful and http://myapp.com/unsuccessful/123456 if its not.
One solution I thought is to create a second Amazon Lambda function that is triggered by a put event in output_bucket, and it to do the successful POST request. This solves half of the problem because but I can't trigger the unsuccessful POST request.
Maybe AWS has a more elegant solution using a parameter in Lambda or a service that deals with these types of notifications. Any advice or point in the right direction will be greatly appreciated.
Few possible solutions which I see as elegant
Using SNS Topic: From your transformation lambda, trigger a SNS topic, with success/unsuccess message, where SNS will call a HTTP/HTTPS endpoint with message payload. The advantage here is, your transformation lambda is loosely coupled with endpoint trigger and only connected through messaging.
Using Lambda Step Functions:
You could arrange to run a Lambda function every time a new object is uploaded to an S3 bucket. This function can then kick off a state machine execution by calling StartExecution. The advantage in using step functions is that you can coordinate the components of your application as series of steps in a visual workflow.
I don't think there is any elegant AWS solution, unless you re-architect, something like your lambda sends message to SQS or some intermediatery messaging service with STATUS and then interemdeiatery invokes POST to your application.
If you still want to go with your way of solving, you might need to configure "DeadLetter queue" to do error handling in failure cases (note that use cases described here are not comprehensive, so need to make sure it covers your case) like described here.