Having troubles with Amazon Echo (Alexa) and SSML

Question

I'm trying to handle better phonetic pronunciations and pausing with Alexa+Lambda+Javascript. I see from the docs: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference that you are able to do so using Speech Synthesis Markup Language. However, when I build and send the Javascript object so Alexa may speak something, I receive error messages.

This is the attribute I'm sending Alexa to speak from the Lambda log files:

{ outputSpeech:  { type: 'SSML', ssml: '<speak>This output speech uses SSML.</speak>' } }

Any ideas of what exactly I'm missing?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Make sure you updated your buildSSMLSpeechletResponse. I added a new function to use with the callback so that I can use the SSML output for the right areas.

function buildSSMLSpeechletResponse(title, output, repromptText, shouldEndSession) {
    return {
        outputSpeech: {
            type: "SSML",
            ssml: output
        },
        card: {
            type: "Simple",
            title: "SessionSpeechlet - " + title,
            content: "SessionSpeechlet - " + output
        },
        reprompt: {
            outputSpeech: {
                type: "SSML",
                text: repromptText
            }
        },
        shouldEndSession: shouldEndSession
    };
}

Answer 2

you can simply use SSMl tags in your speechOutput variable where you are storing your response. This way also works.