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Create and Manage In-Skill Products

To sell premium content in your skill, you need to define one or more in-skill products and associate them with your skill. An in-skill product defines the type of purchase and details such as pricing. You can use the developer console to add in-skill products to your skill.

Prerequisites

To create in-skill products in the developer console, you need to create a custom skill in a locale that supports in-skill purchasing:

  • English (US)

View the in-skill products for a skill

To view the in-skill products for a skill:

  1. Edit a custom skill in the developer console.
  2. Go to the Build page and select a locale that supports in-skill purchasing .
  3. Under Skill builder checklist, click In-Skill Products (ISP). This displays your in-skill products already associated with the skill, and any you have created that are not yet associated with the skill.

The In-skill products page displays products in two tables:

  • Linked to this skill lists the products that are associated with the skill and can be tested and sold to customers after the skill is published. You must fill in all required fields for the product to link it to the skill.
  • Available to link lists all products that are not yet associated with any skill. This includes any products you chose to unlink, and any products that do not contain valid data in all of the required fields. You can link completed products to the skill with the Link action.

Each product has a Status:

  • Incomplete – The product is missing data in one or more required fields.
  • Complete – All required fields are complete. If the product is not yet linked to your skill, you can link it to a skill and test purchasing. If the product is already linked to the skill, Complete indicates one of the following:
    • The product has not yet been certified and published.
    • You have made changes since the product was published, so you need to re-submit to publish those changes.
  • In Review – The product is currently in certification review.
  • Published – The product has been published as part of a live skill. Customers can purchase the product.
  • Deactivated – The product has been discontinued and is no longer available for purchase. However, customers who previously purchased and are entitled to it continue to have access to the product. See Discontinue a product in a live skill, later.
In-skill products page
In-skill products page

Create and edit in-skill products

The following sections describe how to create and edit in-skill products in the the developer console. Alternatively, you can use the ASK CLI to manage your products. See Create and Edit In-Skill Products with the the ASK CLI.

To add an in-skill product in the developer console:

  1. Edit a custom skill in the developer console.
  2. Go to the Build page and select a locale that supports in-skill purchasing .
  3. Under Skill builder checklist, click In-Skill Products (ISP). This displays your in-skill products already associated with the skill, and any you have created that are not yet associated with the skill.
  4. Click Create in-skill product.
  5. Provide the Reference name for the product.
  6. Select the type of product: subscription, one-time purchase, or consumable.
  7. Click Create in-skill product.
  8. Fill in the Distribution information and click Save and Continue. For details about these fields, see Distribution fields.
  9. Fill in Pricing information and click Save and Continue. For details about these fields, see Pricing information.
  10. Fill in the Testing Instructions and click Save and finish. For details, see Testing.

  11. When prompted to link the product to your skill, Link to Skill.

    If any required fields are incomplete, you can save the product, but you can't yet link the new product to the skill. It is displayed on the In-skill Products page, under Available to Link. Complete the remaining fields to make the product ready to be linked to a skill.

Edit a product

You can edit in skill products for skills that are in the development stage. To edit an in-skill product in the developer console:

  1. Edit a custom skill in the developer console.
  2. Go to the Build page and select a locale that supports in-skill purchasing .
  3. Under Skill builder checklist, click In-Skill Products (ISP). This displays your in-skill products already associated with the skill, and any you have created that are not yet associated with the skill.
  4. Click the Edit link to open the product.
  5. Edit the fields as needed.

Delete a product

You can delete a product from a skill in the development stage, as long as the product has never been available in a live version of the skill.

To delete a product from a skill in development:

  1. Edit a custom skill in the developer console.
  2. Go to the Build page and select a locale that supports in-skill purchasing .
  3. Under Skill builder checklist, click In-Skill Products (ISP). This displays your in-skill products already associated with the skill, and any you have created that are not yet associated with the skill.
  4. If the product is linked with the skill, find it in the Linked to this skill list and click Unlink.
  5. Find the product in the Available to link list and click Delete.

Discontinue a product in a live skill

Once a product is published live, discontinuing that product can cause a negative customer experience. Avoid the need to discontinue a product by designing your premium products carefully according to best practices before you publish them to customers.

If you do have a strong reason to discontinue a live product, you can deactivate the product. This change requires you to submit the skill for re-certification. Consider this carefully and avoid any changes that will break the experience for your existing customers.

Deactivating a product has the following affects:

  • Customers can no longer purchase the product.
  • For a consumable or one-time purchase, existing customers who previously purchased the product continue to have access to it. Your skill should continue to support these users.
  • For a subscription, existing customers who previously subscribed continue to have access to the product for the remainder of the subscription term. The subscription does not automatically renew at the end of the term.
  • The product remains associated with your skill. Therefore, it is still included when you retrieve products with the in-skill product service. A deactivated product returns NOT_PURCHASABLE for the purchasable property.

To deactivate an in-skill product in the developer console:

  1. Edit a custom skill in the developer console.
  2. Go to the Build page and select a locale that supports in-skill purchasing .
  3. Under Skill builder checklist, click In-Skill Products (ISP).
  4. Find the product in the Linked to this skill list and click Deactivate.

Re-activate a discontinued product

You can reactivate a discontinued product to make it available for new purchases again.

To reactivate an in-skill product in the developer console:

  1. Edit a custom skill in the developer console.
  2. Go to the Build page and select a locale that supports in-skill purchasing .
  3. Under Skill builder checklist, click In-Skill Products (ISP).
  4. Click the Reactivate link for the product.

In-skill product fields

The following sections list all of the fields you need to fill in for an in-skill product.

Distribution

These fields collect information used to provide users information about the product.

Product ID
(Read only) Displays the product identifier. This is guaranteed to be unique. You can reference this ID in your code when initiating product offers and purchases.
Type
(Read only) Displays the type of product: Subscription, Entitlement, or Consumable
Reference Name
The canonical name of the in-skill product. This name is used when referring to the product in code.
Display name
The name for the product. This name is included in purchase confirmation prompts, Alexa app purchasing cards and email receipts. The name is specific to the selected locale for the product.
One sentence description
A short description that describes the product and what the customer can do with it. You can access this description in the summary property when you retrieve an in-skill product with the In-Skill Product Service.
Detailed description
A full description explaining the product's functionality and any prerequisites to using it.
Example phrases
Up to three example phrases that illustrate how users can ask for and interact with your product. You must include these phrases in your interaction model as sample utterances.
Small product icon / large product icon
An icon representing the product. Provide both large and small versions. Because the image is rounded when displayed, use 75px padding on all sides. You can reuse the icon associated with your skill, or provide a unique image to represent the product.
  • Small Icon: 108 X 108 PNG with transparency. Recommended 75px padding on all sides.
  • Large Icon: 512 X 512 PNG with transparency. Recommended 75px padding on all sides.
You can use the Alexa Skill Icon Builder to create your skill icon to these specifications. Within Icon Builder, click Download to save a zip file containing png files in both the small and large sizes. Then upload these .png files to the in-skill product.
Keywords
Keyword phrases that describe the product offering. Use spaces or commas between each keyword.
Purchase prompt description
The description of the product a customer hears when they make a purchase or cancel a subscription.
  • Include the product name. Use "{PREMIUM_CONTENT_TITLE}" as a token for the display name. Do not use "{" or "}" anywhere else in the prompt.
  • Include what is unique about this product
  • Be as brief as possible
  • Do not include any pricing information, as Amazon automatically appends the price in the purchase flow.
  • Avoid repeating the same phrases customers may have heard in the previous step

Purchase confirmation description
A description of the product that displays on the skill card in the Alexa app. This can also include the placeholder {PREMIUM_CONTENT_TITLE} for the product display name.
Privacy policy URL
A URL to the privacy policy.

Pricing

The Pricing section collects details about the list price of your product.

Pricing marketplace
Describes where the product is offered for sale. Currently, amazon.com is the only option.
List price
List price for the product.
  • For entitlements and subscriptions, the list price can be between .99 and 99.99 inclusive.
  • For consumables, the list price can be between .99 and 9.99.
Billing frequency
(Subscriptions only). Indicates how often the customer is billed for the subscription. Can be Monthly or Yearly.
Trial period
(Subscriptions only). Indicates the duration of the trial period, in days.
Release date
Date when the product will become available to customers. You cannot change this date once your skill is published live.
Tax category
The tax category for the product. Select the category that matches the nature of your product:
  • Information Services – Content of an informational nature, e.g. stocks, weather, news, or financial data.
  • Newspapers – Newspaper content, regardless of the format (video, audio, scrolling graphics, etc.)
  • Periodicals – Periodical content (magazine or non-newspaper), regardless of the format (video, audio, scrolling graphics, etc.).
  • Software – Interactive game content.
  • Streaming Radio – Audio content in the form of streaming radio, including pre-recorded & live content.
  • Video – Streaming video content, including pre-recorded & live content.

Testing

The Testing page collects details about how the certification team should test your product.

Testing instructions
Instructions that explain how to test this product in the skill. Include information such as test account credentials and details about how to discover the product when interacting with the skill."

Implement in-skill purchasing: