Build Talking Apps for Alexa

Enabling Flexibility with Synonyms

If you were to ask anyone who is even vaguely familiar with astronomy to list the planets in our solar system, they would probably give you the names of the nine planets that we’ve provided as the values in our custom type. But some of those planets have nicknames. Mars, for example, is colloquially known as “the red planet.” Some might refer to Saturn as “the ringed planet.” Even Earth has a few nicknames, including “the third rock from the sun.”

In order to make conversations with Alexa feel more natural, it helps if she can understand these nicknames and interpret them to mean the more formal name. This can be done by adding synonyms to the values in the custom type. For example, have a look at the following ...