Public Skill Name versus Invocation Name

What you name your voice app and how users invoke or interact with your skill are critical to your success. It’s important to understand what Skill and Invocation Names are and how they work differently between Alexa and Google Home.

Alexa Skill Public & Invocation Names

There are two important items that affect people finding your skill and using it:

1. Public Skill name. e.g., EmailMonkey

This is the name of the skill that will be displayed to users in the Alexa app. It can be different from your invocation name and must be between 2-50 characters.

Users of your Alexa Skill “enable” your skill to work with their device(s) by this name. This skill name is different from the invocation name.

2. Invocation name. e.g., “EmailMonkey”

This is what people say to invoke your skill once they’ve enabled it. For example, after the skill is enabled, the user can say “Alexa, open EmailMonkey” or “Alexa, ask EmailMonkey to send an email to Lisa.”. With Alexa, the Invocation Name does NOT need to be unique. In other words, other Alexa Skills could share the invocation name with your skill.

Note that the invocation name can be different from the skill name, but we don’t recommend it because it can confuse people. If you need some help, try “Hear it from a Skill Builder: How to Pick a Skill Invocation Name“.

Actions (Skills) for Google Assistant & Invocation Names

The “skill” name (Google calls them Actions) and the invocation name need to be the same. Unlike with Amazon, users don’t explicitly “enable” a Google skill or action because all Google Action names are unique. There are some exceptions.

Google names are like web domain names in that they MUST be UNIQUE. First come first served. And, Google does not allow people to reserve a lot of names, or even change them often.

If your Google skill name contains what Google terms “branded” names, they mandate you prove you own the name. This is generally done by showing them that you own the web domain name of the same.

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Alexa Skill & Google Action Best Practices

These basic fields are required for all Alexa Skills and Actions for Google Assistant.

One Sentence Description

A quick at-a-glance sentence that describes the skill or what customers can do with it. This will display in the skill list in the Alexa app. For example, “This Assisted Living Community voice application is to enhance residence life of the clients of Dual Path.”

Detailed Description

A more comprehensive description of this skill. Include information about any prerequisites like hardware or account requirements and detailed steps for the customer to get started. This description displays to customers on the skill detail card in the Alexa app.

Example Phrases

Sample utterances that will appear on the skill detail card in the Alexa App. These phrases will help users get started and enable them to access your skill’s core functionality.

Category

The category that best describes your skill. This helps customers find your skill quickly and easily.

Keywords

Simple search words that relate to or describe this skill. This helps customers find the skill quickly and easily in the Alexa & Google app. Use spaces or commas in between each search term.

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Skill Artwork / Icons

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A voice application (Alexa Skill or Google Action) is just like a website and has to fulfill certain legal requirements. Both Amazon & Google require a Privacy Policy outlining what information is collected about the user, and how this information is used and shared. Make sure you have your act together – Amazon & Google actually read and evaluate these policies during certification.

A link to your Privacy Policy must be associated to your skill, and we suggest including a Terms of Service as well.

Privacy Policy & Terms of Service

According to Amazon’s Developer portal, Amazon looks for trademarks, intellectual property, branding, advertising, violence, religious and other issues. Source: Amazon’s Policy Testing For An Alexa Skill.

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