At the 2017 OmniUpdate Training Conference Hackathon a group created an application that would connect Amazon’s Alexa with OU Campus. The tweet to the right is a demonstration of asking Alexa to check in files for OU Campus. The application will also return the number of files checked out.

The original OU Campus code was written in JavaScript which couldn’t be executed by Alexa. The code has been rewritten into PHP and is on GitHub here.

The next steps will be to add additional tasks which is where I need your help. This post will serve as the official alpha launch and I’m asking for help with more integrations and api-calls.

See below for installation and integration.

Installation

  1. Clone the GitHub repo
  2. Open up dist/constants.php and change the four variables to your information. If you have an OU sandbox, it might be best to start there.
  3. Upload the /dist folder to a server with a secure certificate.

Alexa Developer Portal

Alexa Developer Portal

Navigate to the Amazon Developer Portal and log in with the same credentials as your Alexa device. If you don’t have a device you can still use the test feature in the portal.

After loggin in, click on the “Alexa” navigation item and click on “Alexa Skills Kit”. Click on “Add a New Skill”.

Skill Information

  • Skill Type– Custom
  • Name – Whatever you want.
  • Invocation Name – ou campus, this is the command you will say when asking for something

Interaction Model

Configuration

  • Service Endpoint Type – HTTPS
  • North America – Put in the URL that you uploaded files to. Point it to endpoint.php
  • Account Linking – no

SSL Certificate

  • Certificate for NA Endpoint: – choose the type of SSL certificate you currently have.

Test

  • Service Simulator – under Enter Utterance, type: Alexa, ask OU Campus own many files I have checked out.

Final Thoughts

Next steps will include building out the API as well as creating more tasks. If you would like to help, and know object oriented PHP (or willing to learn), feel free to clone the repository and submit pull requests.

Bugs or integration requests can be submitted in the issues tab.