New ways to create your Alexa Skill and publish for everyone

Starting today, Amazon will enable anyone to publish their skills created using Alexa Skill Blueprints to the India Alexa Skills Store. Skills are like apps for Alexa. Using Skill Blueprints, you can use over 30 templates to create your own personal Alexa skill in minutes. Choose from a variety of categories including Fun & Games, Learning and Knowledge, At Home and Storyteller to create custom games, unique stories, or household lists.

“With today's announcement, we are excited to launch four new Skill Blueprints built specifically for content creators, bloggers, and organizations, so they can reach anyone with an Alexa-enabled device - with no coding required”, says Dilip R.S., Country Manager for Alexa Skills, Amazon India. “Being able to publish a blueprint skill allows customers and content creators to share their passions, creativity, and interests with anyone even though they may not have a technical background”. 

Four new Skill Blueprints built specifically for content creators, bloggers, and organizations:

• Content creators will be able to use the new Flash Briefing blueprint to publish and share their latest updates on the Alexa Skills Store. Customers will be able to add the content into their Flash Briefing just as they do for other Flash Briefing skills.
• Bloggers who use WordPress can deliver their posts as audio through Alexa with the Blog blueprint.  
• Universities and religious organizations can use the new University and Spiritual Talks blueprints to make their live and recorded audio content accessible on Alexa-enabled devices. 

In addition to the new templates, anyone can use the existing blueprints to publish skills for a variety of customizable scenarios, for example: 

• Budding authors can share their talents for the written word and publish their short stories or poems with the Storytelling blueprints such as Fable or Fairy Tale.
• Tutors can use the Trivia blueprint to help students use Alexa to help them learn new concepts when playing a game. 
• History buffs can use the Quiz blueprints to create a fun and interesting quiz for their community. 

Customers can create a personal skill for just their household, share one with friends and family, or publish their blueprint skill to the Alexa Skills Store. Personal skills that are limited to a customer’s local device do not go through a certification process since they aren’t published to the Alexa Skills Store. Skill Blueprints that are submitted for publishing on the Alexa Skills Store need to abide by our Content Guidelines, not contain material that is inappropriate for customers of Alexa and must go through the skill certification review. Once the skill is published, users can review and rate the skill up to 5 stars like any other skill on the Alexa Skills Store.