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In a bid to bring more features to its Alexa Blueprints initiative, Amazon on Wednesday announced it’s making all user-created Alexa Skills shareable via varied means. The company introduced Blueprints last month to allow users with limited or no coding knowledge to create custom skills for their personal use. The use of such skills was previously limited to the Amazon account they were created with, but after yesterday’s announcement, users will be allowed to share them through email, messages, or any social media platform. The company notes that the new sharing ability will let users share flashcards with their study groups or send Father’s Day wishes to their dads using an Alexa Skill, for example.
From the sender’s end, Skill Blueprint has a rather straightforward handling process that includes heading to the ‘Skills You’ve Made’ section on the dashboard to select the desired skill. Then, tap ‘Share With Others’ under the Skill Actions section to select a sharing method from the provided list. Amazon says a link will be sent to the recipient, along with a personalized message from the sender, that will direct them to an Alexa Blueprints page containing details of any sent skill. At this point, the recipient can choose to enable it on their Amazon account as well by hitting the ‘Enable Skill’ button. Having said that, altering the skill will result in the changes being shared with all previous recipients. At any point in the future, the skill creator can choose to bar the recipients from accessing the skill by switching the setting to ‘Just Me’ from the Access menu. A Blueprint’s name cannot be changed after it has been shared.
Amazon introduced the Alexa Skill Blueprint feature in April with a set of 20 templates. These simple-to-use blueprints allowed users to make the Alexa experience more personal by creating skills with custom responses. These personalized skills are intended to perform some basic actions and are not meant to compete with full-fledged Alexa skills that can accomplish much more complex tasks. Amazon recently added a handful of blueprints to its portfolio to commemorate Father’s Day on June 17.