Alexa News Pulisher

Flash Briefing Skill - Powered By Rocket.Chat

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Let's Get Started

Deploy your Flash briefing skill in minutes using Rocket chat and broadcast messages on both channel and skill in realtime.

Setup

Pre-requisites

• Node.js (> v8.10)
• Register for an Amazon Developer Account
• Rocket Chat Server updated to Release 1.2.0-rc.0 or later.

Enabling Anonymous Read

• Go to Server -> Three Dot Menu -> Administration -> Accounts , and Set Allow Anonymous Read to True.

Note: Requires Admin Access.

Creating A Main Broadcast Channel

• On Server Homepage click on Create New -> Channel

• Set Private Channel -> Public Channel and Enable Broadcast Channel.

• Then give your Channel Name, and click on Create.

• This channel will work as the main channel that tells your flashbriefing from where to gather messages. Make sure you the channelnames in this channel are declared in following way:

Deploying Code

• Clone the repository contents to your server.

• After cloning create a .env file with following environment variables:

  • PORT : Enter The Port number you want server to run on.

  • CHANNEL_NAME : Enter the name of the broadcasting channel we created earlier. Make sure its in lower case with no spaces.

  • SERVER_URL : Enter your current Rocket.Chat server url here. Ex- https://your.sever.chat

• Change cacheTimeout & flashBriefingTitle from index.js as per your requirement.

  • cacheTimeout : It is the frequency of your message update. For example if you want your flash briefing to update data every hour then set the value of cacheTimeout to 3600000 i.e one hour in milliseconds.

  • flashBriefingTitle : The title of the feed item to display in the Alexa app.

• Deploy the code to the server of your choice along.

• Make sure it's working on an HTTPS domain if not then assign a HTTPS domain to it.You can then test your server by sending /ping or /download request.

• After App is deployed we will be using URL/Domain of the server in the next step.

Creating Flash Briefing Skill

• Go Alexa Developer Console.

• Click on Create Skill, give Skill name , Default language and choose Flash Briefing model then click on Create Skill.

• Write Custom Error Message, then click on Add new feed. Fill details as per you requirement.

• Choose Content type as Text.

• In Feed, paste the URL/Domain.

• Upload Photo and hit Add.

• Click on Save and that should complete the complete the process.

Usage

• Flash briefing will use the channel names in last message from the main broadcast channel for broadcasting. It will then gather all the messages from the mentioned channels and present it to the user in the skill.

• Make sure that the last message is a text message.

TODOs

Need community help in the following:

• add a conversation flow to allow an admin to "publish the briefing" daily using the VUI