Checking The Weather Prediction Is As Easy As Asking Alexa
Germanys’ leading weather forecasting website wetter.com has introduced a new means of weather inquiry for its customers. Wetter.com wanted to build Alexa skill that makes it easy and swift for users to catch their weekly and daily forecasts.
Traditionally Wetter.com was providing inclusive weather reports to the customers via its app, website, and television. Severin Orth, Full Stack Developer at Wetter.com, recognized the possibility of voice technology utilization for customer interaction.
Orth said, “I’m very interested in new technology, and seeing how people were using Alexa in America, I knew this was something we needed to experiment with,” “At the time, Alexa wasn’t available in Germany, but because a voice solution aligned so well with our business goals and the other services we provide, we started imagining what eventually became our skill for Alexa.”
Orth and team developed a working prototype, after setting the goal to provide people weather information as per their need and in the most convenient way.
Orth expressed, “The Alexa Skills Kit has great documentation, and building the skill was very easy.”
The skill works like, “Alexa, ask Wetter.com for the weather today in Berlin,” and Alexa gives the latest forecast during the day for that particular location.
The skill utilizes an API to gather the data to send voice responses for enquiries into weather reports.
Wetter.com hosts its skill on AWS Lambda and it also act as a bridge among its backend and Alexa.
Moreover, for warning delivery Wetter.com’s uses Amazon’s API Gateway like a proxy for two Lambda functions, Amazon CloudWatch for login monitoring, Amazon DynamoDB for delivering and storing weather warnings.
Orth also praised Amazon, “Since Alexa wasn’t available in Germany when we were developing the Amazon Alexa skill, and the Amazon team was incredibly helpful at assisting us in getting the skill live and providing feedback along the way.”
In addition, Wetter.com introduced the new notifications feature that uses users’ locations to send notifications along with weather notice from the German Weather Service.
With this feature customer can also ask, “Alexa, read my notifications,” or “Alexa, what did I miss?”
Wetter.com also plans to improve their skill to comprise features like a card response.
While talking about their next step Orth said, “Our next round of development will include information on pollen counts. So, if a user is allergic to trees or flowers, he or she can simply ask Alexa for their Wetter.com daily pollen flash briefing and know what places to avoid during certain times of the day.”
“Developing this skill has really got us thinking about how we can improve our other services with voice,” “My biggest advice for developers is to just get started. Build a basic skill, test it, and improve along the way.” Orth Said.
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Conclusion
The world is embracing this amazing technology, Alexa Skills and implementing it in more innovative approaches so as to bring convenience in almost every aspect of everyday life.
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