Unable to set Sonos Era 100 as Alexa-enabled device in room/group using Alexa app

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R

Not a big social media guy.  Among other reasons, folks on social media believe everything is up for debate, often with an unquenchable need to “enlighten” a deluded or misinformed lost soul, like myself :-).  Well, don’t you sound like a lawyer for Sonos.  Interpreting from thin air limitations implied by the advertised “enabled” Alexa compatability.  Because no such limitations are either stated or implied in the description of the “enabled” capability in Sonos documentation.  In fact there is at least one, if not more than one document avainable online that describes how to include the ERA in an Alexa group of Alexa speakers.  Which, again, does not work. Thanks, but I I needed no “clearing up” of my understanding.  I’m quite comfortable with my understanding of my issue. Something Sonos says works, doesn’t.  You got a fix, great.  I’m responding because your uncolicited comments were so off base.  If you feel a need to weigh in with the last word, please do so. I have nothing more to say.

melvimbe

Not a big social media guy.  Among other reasons, folks on social media believe everything is up for debate, often with an unquenchable need to “enlighten” a deluded or misinformed lost soul, like myself :-).  Well, don’t you sound like a lawyer for Sonos.  Interpreting from thin air limitations implied by the advertised “enabled” Alexa compatability.  Because no such limitations are either stated or implied in the description of the “enabled” capability in Sonos documentation.  In fact there is at least one, if not more than one document avainable online that describes how to include the ERA in an Alexa group of Alexa speakers.  Which, again, does not work.

 

 

Can you provide a link to the document you found online?

 

 

Thanks, but I I needed no “clearing up” of my understanding.  I’m quite comfortable with my understanding of my issue. Something Sonos says works, doesn’t.

 

 

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/alexa-smart-home-device-groups-and-sonos

 

 

 You got a fix, great.  I’m responding because your uncolicited comments were so off base.  If you feel a need to weigh in with the last word, please do so. I have nothing more to say.

 

Danny
Ken_Griffiths

@RussPAnton,

I was just speaking about the Sonos and Alexa Group interaction, as briefly outlined in the Sonos Support documentation here…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/alexa-smart-home-device-groups-and-sonos

Sonos (or any other 3rd-party speaker manufacturer) has not ever worked with the Amazon Alexa ‘Everywhere’ Group, or those user-created groups in that area of the Alexa App - they’re exclusively used by/for Amazon manufactured products only.  

That said, had you have been a little more polite here, I might have given you a way to achieve the outcome you were looking for, to play all your Sonos and Amazon devices ‘together’ around the home, but I will just leave you to carry on with your own research on this topic, but just to add it has nothing to do with the topic that’s being discussed in this thread.

Ken_Griffiths

Our posts crossed, but thanks (Danny) @melvimbe for your detailed post and referring to the Sonos support link too.👍 

P

So glad I found this thread, but a little frustrated because I bought my Era 100 specifically because it is Alexa-enabled. Hoping for a resolution!

My diagnostic number is 1733313870. I am in the United States. Screenshots and detail below.

My Era 100 is named “Office Sonos” and does appear in the main Echo & Alexa list, along with my other Alexa-enabled devices.

 

If I select Office Sonos from my Echo & Amazon list, an additional device called seems to be displayed.

 

Selecting that device displays the device settings that you expect to see in an Alexa-enabled device. Note that this item originally appeared as “planigan’s Sonos Era 100” but I renamed it for clarity. I was able to rename directly in the Alexa app.

 

However, when I look at the Devices tab, I actually see these two devices listed separately for my Office Sonos. One displays with a speaker icon. The other displays with a generic device icon.

 

The device settings screen for the “Office Sonos” device just displays generic information when accessed from the devices tab.

 

When I try to add my speakers to my Office group, neither the Office Sonos device nor the Office Sonos Era 100 device appear in the list of Alexa-enabled devices. 

 

The Office Sonos device does appear in the regular devices list. However, selecting the checkbox does not persist across saves (i.e., I can select the box and hit save, but the device appears unselected the next time I return to the screen. The device never actually gets added to the group.) 


Despite all of the above, I am actually able to choose the Office Sonos device as the speakers to play for the Office group, even though the device itself is not in the group.

 

 

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

@planigan,

I was initially a little confused by your screenshots, but think I have most of the detail now. There are two components for your Era 100..

  • Office Sonos - which is the actual speaker device itself
  • Office Sonos Era 100 (which I assume you renamed yourself) - this is the Alexa component part of your Era 100 speaker.  Renaming it did slightly confuse me - I tend to rename mine too, but would have personally called it "Sonos Office Alexa” to show it was the Office Alexa component. 

Anyhow, it is correct that the Alexa component is embedded within the speaker device in the Alexa App, although there are now options in the new Alexa App to change views and see the Alexa device list in a variety of different ways, which perhaps adds to the complication.

I don’t think your Era Alexa  ‘control’ for a group is correctly working here, but what would help is to provide a screenshot first of all showing all your Alexa groups… to do that see the photo below:

 


It would be helpful to see all the groups you have in the Alexa App. Just carry on then and go into each group and just make sure that "Office Sonos” is not enabling/controlling any of your groups that you have… If it is, then remove it from the group.

Note you are looking for the speaker component only here, not the Alexa component that you called ‘Office Sonos Era 100’ because that is embedded inside the speaker component.

So, if found, remove "Office Sonos" from the first ‘enabling’ section of any group and then see if it will appear as an Alexa enabling device that you can then add to your Office group. If it still will not let you do that, then try removing/reinstalling the ‘Sonos Skill’ in the Alexa App and then give it another go.

Finally, if after doing these things it still will not work for you, then it maybe best to submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to resolve the matter… and refer them to your post here too.

Hope the above assists.👍

P

Ken,

Thanks for the suggestions! I just had a long reply typed out with screenshots and everything, but the site errored when I hit send and lost everything. Rather than re-type all the details, I’ll just summarize.

I checked each of the Groups in the Alexa app, and neither “Office Sonos” nor “Office Sonos Era 100” were selected as an enabling device in any of them. You’ll just need to take my word for that 😉

I then went ahead and removed the Sonos Skill as suggested. In order to ensure a clean slate, I also:

  • Removed the Amazon Alexa voice assistant integration via the Sonos app
  • De-registered all of my Sonos speakers via the “Manage Your Content and Data” portal in my Amazon account

With all traces of my Sonos speakers removed, I re-added them via the Alexa app. During that process I was also able to successfully add the Office Sonos speakers to the Office group. Small win!

I returned to the Sonos app to re-enable the Alexa Assistant integration, which completed successfully as well. My Era 100 played a cheerful “Hello” from Alexa, and I’m able to control it with my voice. 

Back in the Alexa app, “planigan’s Sonos Era 100” (default name this time) is again listed in the Devices tab and the Echo & Alexa page. However, neither “Office Sonos” nor “planigan’s Sonos Era 100” are available as Alexa-enabled devices in the Office group or any other.

It seems like me and the rest of the Yanks might be stuck without proper Alexa integration, at least until Sonos develops a fix.

Ken_Griffiths

@planigan,

Oh well it was worth trying those things. I could see from you initial screenshots that ‘Office Sonos’ was not enabling the group, but hoped that checking/removing it from all your groups and removing/reinstalling the ‘Sonos Skill’ might have perhaps corrected the issue. Looking at your last post you’ve done all you can, but I would still report this to Sonos Support with a diagnostic report and a reference to your posts here. I suspect it’s more-likely down to Amazon to resolve this issue so it maybe worth reporting the matter to them too, but see what Sonos Support say first.

Anyhow, I hope it gets resolved for you and everyone else affected by the issue aswell.

S

Still not addressed in the US

U

Hi Everyone

If you are still experiencing this issue (which we believed had stopped happening outside of Germany) please submit a support diagnostic and post the given number along with a screenshot of the Alexa app showing a lack of Era units under “Alexa-enabled Devices”, as above. Thank you.

Like so many others I’m having the same issue in the US with a new Era 300. Has there been a solution yet? Diagnostic number: *************. The Era300 works with Alexa, but it’s not showing up in the Alexa app as an “Alexa-enabled device” in the Alexa app so I can’t say general commands for the room/group like “Alexa turn on the lights” I have to use the room name. Has this been solved yet? Screenshots below.

When listing all devices in the Alexa app it shows the Era 300 twice. The first is a default name I didn’t make with the wifi logo, and the 2nd is the era 300 named “New Master Bedroom”

 

  Neither device name for the Era 300 shows up for Alexa Enabled devices: 

 

But the Speaker does show up so I can add it as the speaker in the room/group, just not the Alexa enabled device in the room.

Moderator edit: diagnostic recorded and removed

I

This is such a crazy limitation (that also exists for the Move 2). It really undercuts Sonos’ Alexa integration story, to the point where you should really market these products as being only somewhat compatible on the Sonos website, so that people understand the limitations before spending quite a bit of money on something being somewhat falsely-advertised.

It’s mind-boggling that Sonos doesn’t have the ability to escalate to Amazon to fix something like this. I understand that it takes some time but this thread was opened almost a year ago at this point. Many of us, myself included, have gone all-in on Sonos in large part due to the Alexa integration. It seems like partnership is unsupported at best, and really hard to assume will continue to exist.

Please help make this right.

P

Joining the group here to say I am also experiencing this problem in the US. Haven’t pulled a diagnostic ID, but I have my office Arc showing up as an Alexa enabled device whereas my living room and master bedroom Era 100s are not. 

P

Just added an Era 300 and it has the same issue. Calling into Sonos support and will be returning all my Era speakers if this can’t be solved. Bummer because I love them otherwise.

D

Unfortunately this still is a problem for me. My Sonos Roam works perfectly, but none of my Era 100s show up as Alexa enabled devices. 
 

Diagnostic ID: 1751975722

 

J

Diagnostics ID: 1265494006

Have the same issue in the US today.  I have updated the firmware on first setup to make sure everything is updated.  I have also reset the device to factory and tried the setup from scratch with the same result.

Era 100 entry in Alexa app doesn’t show any built-in speaker capability whereas Beam does.  This is what I found to be the main difference that’s causing inability to add Era 100 (its speaker equivalent is Main Bedroom whereas Beam’s speaker equivalent is Family Room in the app) as an Alexa-enabled device.  See screenshots.

 

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

@jslin,

If you select the exclamation icon next to the Sonos entry in the ‘Alexa-enabled’ devices list, does it throw up a dialog box that states “Echo devices can only be in one group” - if so, then you simply need to remove the Sonos echo component device from the ‘other’ group and then go onto add it to the desired group. 

That said, it seems that some users in U.S. & Canada have reported issues with Sonos products not enabling/controlling Alexa groups, but that’s not something anyone here in the Sonos community can help with. You would be best to perhaps speak to Sonos Support, or more likely Amazon Customer Support Staff to resolve the issue, that’s if the Sonos component is not already enabling an(other) group in the Alexa App.

1 Attachment
J

@Ken_Griffiths I was responding to this pinned post by Sonos staff member @Corry P : 

 

As to your question, the “Family Room” speaker is for Beam which is working as intended.  It is added to Family Room.  I was trying to add Era 100 to “Main bedroom” but it’s not showing in the list of Alex-enabled devices; it does show up as a standalone speaker though.  

It looks like Sonos does not have a support email but only has a chat service, so I’ll try their chat on a weekday.

Ken_Griffiths

@Ken_Griffiths I was responding to this pinned post by Sonos staff member: 

 

As to your question, the “Family Room” speaker is for Beam which is working as intended.  It is added to Family Room.  I was trying to add Era 100 to “Main bedroom” but it’s not showing in the list of Alex-enabled devices; it does show up as a standalone speaker though.  

It looks like Sonos does not have a support email but only has a chat service, so I’ll try their chat on a weekday.

Have you checked that the Era-100 is not already enabling a group - it defaults to its own group on install and you may need to delete it from that group to add it to your Main bedroom group.

A device can only enable one Alexa group only, at any one time. If it’s not that, then you can call Sonos Support Staff via the link here (during opening hours)…

https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

Hope that assists.👍

J

@Ken_Griffiths thanks for your reply too.  Yes, I’ve made sure that it didn’t already get added to a group I may not know of.  I will contact Support on the weekday and see if they can help resolve this.  Beam was really good experience, and I had hoped for the same experience with Era 100 as well and thinking of 300 if all goes well.  Now having doubts on the entire Era line of speakers since I’ve seen Era 300s are also having similar issues.

J

Just an update to my post: 

 

Contacted Sonos support.  They have no idea what they are doing either.  Asked me to set timezone; asked whether I have reset it and re-setup; asked me to disable and re-enable Sonos skill in Alexa app (oblivious to the fact that Sonos Beam Gen 2, which is working fine for me, is using the same Sonos skill).  In the end, they ran out of idea and just straight out said controlling lights using Alexa on Era 100 is not supported, only music and asking for time and weather.  

There are many things wrong here:

  • Support has zero knowledge of existing Era 100 issues being reported here and elsewhere
  • Support makes a disclaimer that is not found on the Era 100 product page (there’s nothing that say Era 100 only supports playing music with Alexa and asking for time)
  • This issue has been being widely reported for over a year, yet Sonos failed to make any announcement regarding the status of the issue nor supported Alexa capabilities of Era 100 (or 300) speakers. 
  • Sonos continued to advertise Era speakers as Alexa compatible devices w/o caveats

Not knowing whether I am the only few remaining ones who are affected by this, or if this is still a widespread unresolved issue caused me to lose trust in Era line of speakers altogether, and by extension, in Sonos brand itself.  I had high hopes but not anymore.  I will be returning the device at this point and will go with another brand.

Ken_Griffiths

@jslin,

Just to very quickly add, I have both Era 100 and 300 speakers and each can control/enable Amazon Alexa groups here for controlling Philips Hue lights, TP-Link Smart Plugs, Louvolite Blinds etc. and grouping/ungrouping/playback of Sonos speakers. That said I’m based in the U.K. so I’m not too sure if that makes a difference🤔?

My thoughts are to perhaps go on and raise your issue with Amazon customer services. 

Just a minor point too, Sonos advertise their products as being Alexa ‘enabled’ devices and clearly not every echo feature is included in that description, but I can say for a fact that controlling Alexa groups via Sonos has always worked for me in our Home.
 

I have posted a video in the past showing Alexa on Sonos products controlling lights, performing music playback etc. whilst this video uses a Sonos Move, as part of the demo, rather than an Era 100/300, I can assure you that things works here in exactly the same way with the Sonos Era products.

Here’s the link to the previously shared video that you can maybe show to Amazon CS and see if they can resolve the issue for you and perhaps even refer them to my community post here.

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0S5QDa3dQsgw3

I hope the above goes some way in helping you to resolve your issue.

 

S

Like so many, I finally invested and upgraded my various Dots to Era 100’s. Unlike my Arc, which is added to my Alexa group to control only that room’s capabilities, the Era 100’s are not able to be added to Alexa groups. Instead, they are only able to be set as the default music speaker. 

I suspect Amazon is not eager to fix this, as doing so renders their own hardware unnecessary, but it is Sonos’s responsibility to manage this relationship with Amazon and deliver the product they promised to their customers.

Diagnostics code ***********

Moderator edit: Diagnostic number recorded and removed (identifying info)

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