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Yippee!…yesterday I passed the AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty exam and today I’ll be sharing my thoughts and experience on the said exam certification.
For those planning to get AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty, please note that this certification is expiring. If you already purchased an exam voucher you have until March 22, 2021 to get the exam. The reasons I took the exam is first I’m studying the Alexa Skills as I will be having a project to my current employer which is very exciting “Alexa for Residential” and Ill be maintaining the existing published Alexa Skills. Second, I want to complete all AWS certification (currently 6 out of 12). And lastly I’m an enthusiast of Chatbots and one of them is Alexa.
My preparation for it was 3 weeks, just after my 8AM to 5PM work, I’m reading the documentation. But I do have experience for the last 3 years working on Alexa Skills which i used both for Hackathons (hANGAThon 2019, HR Global Johnson and Johnson 2019, BreakTheFake Manila Hackathon 2019, Accenture TechXplore Hackathon 2019, AngelHack Manila 2019, AWS Hackdays Philippines 2019) and some talk/presentation (AWS User Group PH, Far Eastern University Makati, etc). I do have Echo Show 1st Gen and Echo buttons which I bought to Amazon US.
I took the exam thru Pearson Vue (Online from my home or office). In my rating the exam, the exam was very difficult. It’s not just an objective exam like fill in the blanks or terminology but you really need an experience or you have tried running it on an echo device with screen. You need as well to check Alexa App which is the Alexa mobile app. Unfortunately we don’t have that yet in Philippines but in your IOS mobile phone like iPhone you can change your region to U.S. then start installing it. I tried or run the following which is very important that you try when getting this certification.
- JSON Response Input and Output.
- Dialog for multiple and required slots.
- Presentation Language (APL). I tested this on screen with touch button.
- Customer Profile API
- Customer Address API
- Different slot types like 4 digit i.e. AMAZON.FOUR_DIGIT_NUMBER, date entries, time, phone number etc. And custom slot.
- Alexa hosted vs. Your own hosted skills i.e. Lambda and HTTPS
- Built-in Intents and custom Intents.
- FAQ of Lambda, DyanmoDB, S3, Cloudwatch and IAM. Check default limits specially for Lambda.
- ASK CLI and SMAPI. Common command and common parameters.
- Check the required fields for distribution, certification, linking accounts, etc.
- Types of Skills, make sure to check Flash Briefing, Video, Audio and List Skills.
- Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML). Like for example for “break” maximum of 10 seconds.
- In Skill Purchase, Amazon Pay, Consumables etc.
- Policies (child, PII etc.).
- No need to be good in NodeJS or Python or Java.
- Debugging and testing Alexa skills app.
- Game engine.
So really its very hard considering I already took some AWS exams like the Associates and Professional. The hardest part on my end was the Audio Intents, I was not able to create that kind of Alexa skills but for custom, video, flash briefing, and reminder skills I was able to develop or tested on my own. 65 questions for less 2 hours. Time is too long I guess anyone can finish early.
Good Luck for all those getting the AWS Certified Alexa Skill Builder – Specialty.