Blog Tag: Google Actions developer

Google Assistant has been widely used nowadays and has become an integral part of our lives. These progressions in technology aim to make our lives simpler and more manageable. Google Assistant is similar to Amazon Echo or Alexa and has been around for quite some time in the market. However, Google keeps on extending its platform and adding additional features to support a more extensive set of Google Actions developers worldwide.

In addition to Google’s Dialog Flow tool for building conversational interfaces that support the newly introduced languages, translating the Actions is simplified by letting the developers export their directory listing in a file format. Additionally, all Google action developers can create a deep link to an Android app using Google Assistant Actions.

What are Google Actions?

Actions performed on the Google development platform for the Google Assistant to react or respond known as Google actions. It permits the third-party creation of “actions”—applets for the Google Assistant that offer comprehensive functionality. Simply put, Google Actions is Google Assistant’s version of Amazon skills.

What do Google Actions do?

The actions platform backs “direct” actions and “conversational” actions for complicated applications. Advanced developers can develop against the API directly, and a Node.js SDK is also accessible.

As of April 2020, there are 33,299 Actions available for Google Assistant, and it is ever increasing. 

Highlights of Google Actions Developer Tools

Google supports the developer ecosystem as they create the best experiences for Android phones and Smart displays. Here are some of the Google Assistant Developer tool highlights offered by Google.

• Integrating Android mobile Apps with Google Assistant and creating fresh experiences for Smart Displays
• New App Actions built-in intents that allow Android developers to integrate Google Assistant with their apps
• Discovery features like shortcuts and suggestions that help users discover and engage with Android apps effortlessly
• New developer tools and features like testing API, frameworks, and voices for game development to support building high-quality native experiences for smart displays
• Discovery and monetization enhancements to enable users to discover and take part with the developers’ experiences on Assistant.

Now, with the above highlights, all Android Developers can take along Google Assistant to their apps. Finding what the Android app developers are looking for can be made easier for them and their users. It fast-forwards into the app’s key functionality by using only voice. With App Actions, leading app developers like Fandango, Yahoo Mail, and ColorNote, are presently developing engaging and natural user experiences. It is done by mapping their users’ intents to a particular functionality inside their apps. It eliminates the need for navigating through every app in order to get tasks completed. The users can say “Hey Google,” and they require like “find party songs on Spotify” by using their voice alone.

Google App Actions Best Features

• Open and search quickly within apps having common intents

  People tend to ask Google Assistant every day to open their favorite apps. The OPEN_APP_FEATURE intent helps to open particular pages within apps, and GET_THING intent performs a search within apps. It offers many ways to connect users to your app easily through Assistant. Many top brands like eBay and Kroger are using these intents. Implementation is also easy as you can declare the actions in your Actions.xml file to begin. One can use a deep link for searching and opening pages.

• Vertical specific built-in intents

  For in-depth integration, vertical-specific BII – built-in intents can be used that allows Google to handle all the NLU- Natural Language Understanding. Initially, it was piloted in prevalent app verticals like Finance, Food Ordering, Ridesharing, and Fitness. It currently covers over 60 intents across ten verticals with new groups like Social, Travel, Games, Productivity, Communications, and Local Shopping.

• Custom Intents to high spot distinctive app experiences

  Every app is unique and has its own capabilities, features, and purpose. Sometimes it may not match with the available App Actions built-in intents. For such cases, One can create a custom intent like BIIs. These intents obey the actions.xml schema and link the points between your defined needs and the Assistant. Snapchat and Walmart have custom intents to spread out their app’s functionality to Google Assistant.

A glance into the Future

Looking ahead, Google doubles down on supporting Google Actions developers and partners to create inordinate experiences for Google Assistant and reach the users at home and on the go. Further improvisations the Google Assistant experience will continue to simplify integration for Android developers between their Android app and Google Assistant. Also, one can anticipate ways to help developers achieve success through monetization and discovery.

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The growing interest for Voice User Interface and with Actions on Google expanding to more languages from various countries has made it easier and accessible. Proper tools are essential for VUI designers and Google actions developers. The majority of the information available on the internet on designing for VUI makes it a point, to begin with, a simple hand-drawn blue path. Then manually test it among the people you know. However, user-assistant conversations need much more than that to move forward, make quick iterations, and change the words and their order. It will ultimately help to design the entire use cases and intents flawlessly.

The Actions on Google lets you extend the conversation to other platforms like mobile phones or Google Home Hub. With some useful tools at hand, you can save more time and increase the output quality.

Dialogue and Popped.app

The Celtx script provides both mobile and desktop apps. But if you want something more to reflect the Actions on Google interface on mobile phones, Dialogue: Screenplay Writer is a great app. It is available only on the App Store. Popped.app can be used by the Android users, which is the app’s web counterpart. The only major disadvantage is that although both applications are a single product, it lacks synchronization among mobile and desktop systems. The workflow is different; movement between the two platforms is slightly constricted. 

Otherwise, here’s how Dialogue can help you.

• You can use the application during the beginning stages of developing your voice assistant.
• It can be used to create the initial fundamental flows, its corresponding intents, and interactions that can happen between the assistant and the user.
• You can segregate your scripts into scenes, which can be a discrete use case for intents.
• The scenes can be used for early-stage UAT with your friends or colleagues.
• The test can be run as and when required. Your phone is sufficient for testing, and also your notes can be stored within the app.
• Custom-made avatars can be created for your assistant or user according to your preference.

Celtx for Game Writers

Celtx provides a wide variety of products for creative writers. The basic celtx script can be used like Popped & Dialogue apps. It is a dedicated solution for game scriptwriting with Interactive dialogues and dynamic visualization. The interface offers more advanced features that might be of utmost help while designing the best Actions on Google for any Google actions developer.

Here’s what Celtx has to offer.

• The app helps to create the entire flow for your action, including all the user-assistant interactions.
• It allows writing more complex dialogues having several branches, but it effectively offers a general overview of the entire flow.
• Dynamic visualization can be customized in terms of graphical depiction. It helps to cover all the paths in a single diagram.
• For every single intent, both blue and red paths can be created for easy identification. For complex diagrams with more branches can always be moved as per your convenience. Else, a new sequence can be created for a new intent and shift it away from the initial one.
• It allows collaboration, which is the most significant advantage. The general flow and intents can be shared with copywriters and Google actions developers to do their part of the job.

Botsociety

Next up is Botsociety. It is an excellent app for performing custom Google actions as it effectively gives you the nearest real-life assistant experience. The creators say that this tool makes your chatbot or voice assistant sound more humane by providing voice tones, possible interactions, and anything else that could aid in making your bot more human.

Let’s see what makes Botsociety best to develop an easy to use solution and cover much of VUI designers’ requirements.

• Sketching flows seem natural, like a regular conversation.
• The user’s voice can be recorded to get a transcript.
• The dialog option lets you add new paths for the conversation.
• As far as the Google Actions development is concerned, you can select the voice for your assistant, emphasize particular words, or alter the voice’s pitch.
• Conversation reviews are generated automatically depending on the conversation written.
• Several export options are available, including exporting a video of a selected path.
• Finally, team members’ or clients’ collaboration and leaving comments on particular dialogue portions is possible.
• Moreover, you can collaborate with the Google actions development team by using Botsociety’s API. The API can be integrated with Google Dialogflow to develop intents and other variables for them to use.

If your focus is only on voice responses, then Botsociety is apt, as far as Action on Google is concerned.

Final thoughts

With the help of the above said three tools, your Actions on Google projects could be taken to another notch by making your work much more comfortable and speed up the course of creating your action.

If you are looking to hire Google Actions developers or need some help with getting started with your voice assistance projects, reach our experts.

Google Actions is the functionality offered by Google Assistant, wherein you use a conversational interface to perform specific actions. The commands can range from a quick instruction like switching off the lights to a conversation like playing a game of trivia.

Google Assistant came into existence in May 2016 as one among the features of the Allo app – a messaging app. It is an Artificial Intelligence embedded virtual assistance that can engage in effective two-way communication and perform actions that align with its function. They have been in usage for a couple of years now. It is still improving and expanding the way of bidirectional communication to appear more natural. Expansion into various platforms has made it accessible to more developers, in addition to its features, to be available in the native tongue of its users.

Language support

The most important and exciting update was that it is now available in seven new languages – Dutch, Danish, Hindi, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Thai. These join the existing languages English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese. They offer full support for developers.

Custom Actions

One of the latest and exciting features is the capability to build a deep link from Google Assistant Actions to the android app. Sometimes the user can benefit from very interactive or convoluted situations with the help of custom Google Actions.

The main difference between Alexa skills and Google Actions is that amazon uses a barebones web form to create skills for Alexa. In contrast, Google had bought API.AI specifically for building Google Actions, just before it released Home.

How to create an action

To create an action for Google, any developer has to use this platform, API.AI. To start with, you need to create a sign-in account to proceed. It’s quite simple, and deploying is all the more simplified. Here are the following steps simplified to start creating your actions with google.

• Create an account in API.AI – The google API.AI account must be the same as your device login credentials so that you can test on the actual device.
• Create agent and choose a name – Click ‘create agent’ tab and name your bot, without any spaces, as this is the conversational name on behalf of you (your company) to the client or customer. The agent type can be left ‘public’ and add a description that is optional and ‘save.’
• Specify a welcome intent – the intent is like figuring out what you have said. It lets you say what you want, and then the system fetches the answer from most matching keyword.
• Create a new intent – Click on the intents. You can see ‘default fallback intent ‘and ‘default welcome intent.’ Click the upper right corner to ‘create intent.’
• Input’ user says’ content – Input what the users would need to say to trigger the intent ‘user says’ area and ‘save.’
• Define your action – Now, to gather all the words, the action has to be created. The action occurs when a related intent is triggered.
• Creating the response – Here, you can input the words that would be the response.
• Testing – you can now test your action.

Integrate with google actions

To perform the actions via google, click on the integration at the top right corner. You can make use of Google’s Dialog Flow tool to build conversational interfaces in various languages. To ease the process of translating actions, Google lets developers export directory listing as a file.

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Google action is a technological sensation that is present ubiquitously from your home services to reach your customers in business. It is a voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant that has many capabilities for the best customer experience by exclusive customizations.

Take a look at some of the full applications in various business fronts that might apply to your business, or at least provoke your imagination.

Listed questions and answers (FAQs)– The most apparent situation is where the knowledge sharing and answering questions about your services or products is done by an FAQ bot like Pringles, Visa Guru.

Online Orders— Placing an order at the cafe place, pizza hub, booking a cab, or even flowers is now something you can do quickly! Some of the popular ones are Uber, Starbucks, Domino’s Pizza, 1–800-Flowers.

Making Reservations— Dining, activities, entertainment, beauty, and fitness — the Reserve with Google service enables your consumers to schedule appointments. There are also many services currently that provide appointment scheduling facilities. You can use whichever is suitable to allow your client’s land to your business without you having to write the actions. Some Examples are TripAdvisor, MINDBODY, Appointy, Tiqets, Booksy.

To Buy— By using only your voice or screen interface, you can buy groceries, tickets, and what not! These Businesses might ring a bell, Asda, Fred Meyer, Ticketmaster, Fandango, eBay.

Providing Information— Booking flights or checking status, the weather or movie recommendations, directions, latest news, and updates can be done on the go using voice interface. Examples are Singapore Airlines, World Air Quality Index, AccuWeather, Itcher.

Prompt Customer service— A virtual assistant can help your call center, staff, or even banking system in some of their duties, like Bank of America, AGL, Mr. Spring, U. S. Bank.

To-Do Lists and notes— to make shopping lists, calendars, work trackers, notes, and reminders, Google Assistant can be the fastest and most effortless way to complete your note-keeping. Widely used examples: Todoist, Evernote, Trello, Timesheets Companion.

Instructions— You can give instructions on almost everything to your users. The most commonly searched would probably be cooking guides and workouts sequences. But assistant can quickly assist you with swift, hands-free guides for even hair coloring/makeup or newborn care. Here are some Businesses in this segment: Tasty, Fitness Buddy, Clairol Color Expert, Johnson’s.

Multimedia— You can select your music, play, and control your audio and video streaming services. Moreover, you can choose from audiobooks, children’s stories, background music, or even meditation! Best Examples: Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, Google Play, Disney, StoryCastle, Headspace.

Communication & Social media— Emails can be quickly sent and received, adding posts on your social app, or even find a date is now much more comfortable with the voice-activated assistant. Best Examples are WhatsApp, Twitter, Viber, Sonus Mail, Only One.

Location— Finding the restaurants nearest to you, branch offices, wedding banquets, hospitals, events happening, or dog shelter, all you have to do is write the specified action that directs clients towards your business. Some of whom you can draw inspiration are Petfinder, OCBC Bank, MetLife Hipster Cat, Sunfish Events.

Smart home— Voice becomes the most natural interface to control your smart home appliances like lighting, entertainment systems, heating, cleaning robots, and more. But it doesn’t cease here with home smart devices. Many automobile brands, like Mercedes, or Volvo, give integrations that enable users to verify fuel levels or control heating remotely.

What you have read is just a glimpse of what you can do with Google Assistant voice communication. If you can think of any scenario within your service where users can interact with your business, it is a burning issue waiting to be addressed!

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