Directive Steps

How do I use the Alexa Directive Steps?

Alexa Directive

Whenever a user speaks to Alexa, it will send a request to us containing useful things such as the intent the user said. We have to send back a response with what Alexa should say back to the user. Within this response we can include directives which prompt Alexa to do additional things besides just talking.

For more info on this, refer to the Alexa Documentation.

Directive Functionality

The directive step will allow you to send customized directives for Alexa features that Voiceflow might not have a block for yet, or even emulate the behaviour of an existing block with more details. Any valid JSON will be included in the directives array in the response sent back to Alexa.

The directive steps often get used for experimental or beta Alexa features that Voiceflow hasn't created a block for yet.

You will often find directive JSON in Amazon documentation or tutorials.

Important Notice: The Account Linking, Permissions, User Info, Reminder, and Purchase step functionality has been discontinued on Voiceflow and is not available for new assistants. We'd recommend using the Directive Step to send customised directives to Alexa. For more info on this, refer to the Alexa Documentation and our Developer Documentation on Directive Steps here.

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Google Directive (Legacy) 

Note: Voiceflow will be sunsetting Google Assistant project types starting May 1st, 2023. As you may already know, Google has announced that they will be ending support for Conversation Actions in June, which we rely on for support the Google Assistant project type. In the meantime, we recommend migrating your Google Assistant projects to a custom voice project using our project converter linked here.

Whenever a user speaks to Google, it will send a request to us containing useful things such as the intent the user said. We have to send back a response with what the Google Assistant should say back to the user. Within this response we can include directives which prompt Google to do additional things besides just talking, like showing cards or even a carousel.

For more info on this, refer to the Google Documentation.

What the Directive Step Does

The directive step will allow you to send customized directives for Google features that Voiceflow might not have a block for yet, or even emulate the behaviour of an existing block with more details. Any valid JSON will be included in the 'prompt' object in the response sent back to Google.

The directive step can be used for interesting Google Action features like the Interactive Canvas.

For a full list of everything possible with the Directive block, check out Google's documentation. Anywhere it provides a code snippet - go to 'JSON Builder' and look at the object inside the 'candidates' array.

This provides the JSON we want to paste in and modify in the directive block. Variables can be used within a directive's JSON to pass in dynamic data.

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