Grouped room being broken apart by Amazon Alexa

psilver1
I've had my Sonos speakers for many years, and I was also in the beta test for when Amazon Alexa was being tested. I understand that the Alexa Play Multi room feature was removed due to issues that needed more work, however I've always been able to get around that, as stated 9 months ago in the community discussion, by having my Android app previously select all rooms. Then when I say, Alexa, play blah in bedroom, it would play it on all my speakers. I've noticed over the past few weeks now that Alexa ignores my Sonos app speaker group setting and only plays in the specific room I tell it. Anyone else having this issue?
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Best answer by Edward R 25 September 2018, 13:00

Hi, psilver. This should not be the case, as far as I am aware. What is the exact command you are giving? Be sure to check this thread that advises how to resolve Alexa issues. If those tips don't work, not to worry, we can certainly get to the bottom of this for you. Following an occurrence of this issue, please submit a diagnostic and respond with the confirmation number. This way we can identify the cause. Many thanks in advance.

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20 replies

Edward R
Userlevel 6
Badge +18
Hi, psilver. This should not be the case, as far as I am aware. What is the exact command you are giving? Be sure to check this thread that advises how to resolve Alexa issues. If those tips don't work, not to worry, we can certainly get to the bottom of this for you. Following an occurrence of this issue, please submit a diagnostic and respond with the confirmation number. This way we can identify the cause. Many thanks in advance.
Try searching our articles for help with your question: https://www.sonos.com/en/support
mfc63
I am having the exact same issue and the Amazon Echo forum shows that others are also. I believe the most recent Alexa skill update of a week ago introduced this bug. I hear that Alexa will soon allow Sonos speakers to be included in their speaker groups, so maybe this is a prelude to what’s coming?
JFM
Badge
I am having the EXACT SAME ISSUE ... a move backwards, not forward! Hope they fix it soon or tell us different commands to give to avoid the problem.
UKMedia
Userlevel 6
Badge +20
JFM wrote:

I am having the EXACT SAME ISSUE ... a move backwards, not forward! Hope they fix it soon or tell us different commands to give to avoid the problem.



First step is to open the Alexa App and remove the Sonos Skill and then re-Enable. Please let us know how you get on.
Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :) Sonos One (x2 - Stereo Pair), Play 1 (x5 - 2 Stereo pair and 2 Surround for Playbar), Playbar (x1), Play 5 (x2), Connect (x1) Spotify, Amazon Prime, Echo Dot & Google Home.
yaketycats
I'm also having this issue (since around the same time as OP). Saying "Alexa, play (Pandora Station) on (one member of a group)" used to start play on the group but now breaks the group and starts playing on the one member instead. I will try the basics of removing/re-adding the skill and rediscovering, but this is a deal-breaking functional regression for Alexa integration.
UKMedia
Userlevel 6
Badge +20
yaketycats wrote:

I'm also having this issue (since around the same time as OP). Saying "Alexa, play (Pandora Station) on (one member of a group)" used to start play on the group but now breaks the group and starts playing on the one member instead. I will try the basics of removing/re-adding the skill and rediscovering, but this is a deal-breaking functional regression for Alexa integration.



This isn't working as designed and so if this happens again please submit a diagnostic within 10 mins and post the number in this thread.
Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :) Sonos One (x2 - Stereo Pair), Play 1 (x5 - 2 Stereo pair and 2 Surround for Playbar), Playbar (x1), Play 5 (x2), Connect (x1) Spotify, Amazon Prime, Echo Dot & Google Home.
Surfer
Badge +1
1510847849, there's mine
yaketycats
This was after disabling and enabling the Sonos skill and rediscovering. Then I grouped 2 rooms in the Android app, then asked "Alexa, play A Little More Conversation by Elvis on AGroupedRoomName."

With the Sonos app open, I watched the previously-created group break and the song began to play in AGroupedRoomName only.

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arcadelt
Badge +3
I had the same issue, but seem to have fixed it by disabling and re-enabling the skill in Alexa. Interestingly, I noticed that Alexa is now group aware. While I grouped the zones in the Sonos app, Alexa is showing exactly which speakers are being played to even though I only asked Alexa to play to one speaker in the group.

yaketycats
Confirming this is still an issue for me after removing/readding the Sonos skill.
Avanhall
I am having the exact same issue. I deleted the Skill, then "forgot" all the speakers in Alexa, installed the skill, did a search for new devices, then grouped them in the Sonos app and asked Alexa to play an album in one of the grouped rooms. Immediately all the speakers separated.
thetimallen
Userlevel 1
Badge
This started happening to me this morning. Everything was fine yesterday, but now when I pause one Sonos node, it drops that node out of the group and then the group continues playing without it.
Frustrating.
mahonj
I have the same issue only started in the last couple of days, I have removed the Sonos skill, reinstalled and it still won’t work and only plays on one speaker ignoring the groups set in Sonos, please fix this otherwise Alexa is useless with Sonos
Lovebryan
Same here. Been using Sonos on Alexa (mostly) successfully for over a year. Now the group breaks up every time. No luck with disable/enabling the skill. My diagnositic is 94414782.
Chris
Userlevel 7
Badge +22
We don't know all the functionality yet as things seem to be rolling out ahead of time that Sonos hasn't announced. It appears to me Sonos hasn't been able to announce anything until Amazon rolls out their part and appears Amazon now started rolling out their part - so shouldn't be long before Sonos announces their part and what all is happening. Remember Alexa integration is considered BETA so we are going to have times where it is going through a development cycle that things are going to get squirrely!

One thing you can do now though is autogroup. If you setup a room group in the Alexa app with your alexa and then for default speakers pick say 3 different speakers that you always want grouped when you ask that alexa. Now you can tell Alexa to play music (you won't have to give room name anymore) and it will actually create a group with those 3 speakers before playing.

So if your problem is you always have 3 zones grouped together and Alexa is breaking that group. Go into alexa app groups create a group with that alexa device....put those 3 speakers in the default music. Then alexa won't break the group and will actually create the group if it was broken previously.

For more dynamic grouping you can use www.speakerscenes.com to create specific permanent groups in your house that you can then tell Alexa to group on the fly as needed.
Respect the Queue (2)Beam (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (3)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (3)Connect (1)Connect:Amp (3)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings
1994mx5
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I'm also having this issue. Has probably been happening for a month or so I guess. Previously, the way it worked: From within the Sonos app I would group all 6 Sonos Speakers. They would play as a group from the Sonos app as expected. If I asked Alexa to "play music on Den", music would play through all 6 Sonos Speakers (since Den was one of the Sonos Speakers that had been grouped via the Sonos app). Now, this does not work. Now, although I have the same 6 Sonos Speakers grouped from within the Sonos app, when I ask Alexa to "play music on Den", not only does she only play music on Den, but she breaks up the Sonos grouping. I visually see the group break up from within the Sonos app when she begins to play music on Den. I've already tried multiple iterations of disabling the Alexa Sonos skill, removing and rediscovering the Sonos Speakers, etc... No luck.
1994mx5
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My diagnostics number is 828179666.
1994mx5
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Continuing to research and see this relatively new post: https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588. Although this does seem to work, it also seems to have some bugs. I'll head over to that thread and discuss further. But in my opinion, Sonos and Amazon have finally moved past the old way of grouping Sonos Speakers. Thank you (finally)!
UKMedia
Userlevel 6
Badge +20
1994mx5 wrote:

Continuing to research and see this relatively new post: https://en.community.sonos.com/announcements-228985/sonos-now-playing-with-alexa-groups-6817588. Although this does seem to work, it also seems to have some bugs. I'll head over to that thread and discuss further. But in my opinion, Sonos and Amazon have finally moved past the old way of grouping Sonos Speakers. Thank you (finally)!



I've tried to explain in this post: https://en.community.sonos.com/amazon-alexa-and-sonos-229102/an-overview-and-explanation-of-the-new-support-for-alexa-grouping-6817788/index1.html#post16298346
Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :) Sonos One (x2 - Stereo Pair), Play 1 (x5 - 2 Stereo pair and 2 Surround for Playbar), Playbar (x1), Play 5 (x2), Connect (x1) Spotify, Amazon Prime, Echo Dot & Google Home.
budgetman
Chris wrote:

One thing you can do now though is autogroup. If you setup a room group in the Alexa app with your alexa and then for default speakers pick say 3 different speakers that you always want grouped when you ask that alexa. Now you can tell Alexa to play music (you won't have to give room name anymore) and it will actually create a group with those 3 speakers before playing.



This is a cool workaround and got me at least back to my old functionality, if not a bit more. It's still a bit finicky (I noticed that if you're already playing music somewhere you have to stop that music first as it doesn't like to regroup while playing) but I think this is a good workaround until they actually bring this integration out of beta (where it's been for ... 2 years plus?) Thanks, Chris!

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