Creating different response per device

Question

Is it possible for alexa user to have different responses based on config in the app. For example my skill is returning measurements. Some users may prefer metric and others imperial. I'd like users to be able to specify this (and may be some other things) to give a personalised experience. Can this be configured in the Amazon Alexa app?

I was thinking I might have to have some persistent storage for this (DDB for example) which would mean the app would write to the DDB and the skill would read from it to get the personalised response.

Thanks

Yes, you got it right. You can store it and DB and use it to personalize the experience. — Valerian Pereira, Jan 19 '19 at 17:41
Thanks for reply. Can the app be used to specify the preference? — RNJ, Jan 20 '19 at 17:59
Not quite getting your use case in here? Could you share an example? — Valerian Pereira, Jan 20 '19 at 18:20

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '19 at 18:49

Can this be configured in the Amazon Alexa app?

Unfortunately not in the way which you seem to be suggesting.

If you really wanted users to set preferences through the app, this could be done through account linking. However, it is generally discouraged (Alexa is meant to be "Voice-First") and likely to present additional obstacles if what you're wanting to do is allow users to set preferences for different devices.

However, using persistent storage for user preferences in generally is a good idea and as you've suggested, DynamoDB can do this.

If you take this approach you could ask users what their preferences are the first time they use a skill on a device and store this together with the device ID.

There is some good information about device ID in the Amazon documentation and some helpful tips here:

Get unique device id for every amazon echo devices

Creating different response per device

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