When will Alexa "Routines" become available?
Does your engineering team have a roadmap or timeline to adopt more of the standard or baseline Alexa functionality, like Routines?
I’m just trying to help people on the forum, I’ve no axe to grind one way or the other.
And I’m not going to get into a competition on who has the most relevant experience with relation to IT or Product Management after 35 years in the business.
Most people buy Sonos products because of the ability to play great music in a multi-room environment. I do find it strange that such a minor issue within a very narrow focused use case can generate such emotion but this obviously is a make or break issue for you. Sorry I couldn’t help.
Who defines what constitutes a minor issue or a very narrow focus? Routines are becoming a core service in smart speakers.
I appreciate you may feel you are trying to help, but by downplaying the importance of the issue on a Sonus forum you are doing exactly the opposite.
I’m just trying to help people on the forum, I’ve no axe to grind one way or the other.
And I’m not going to get into a competition on who has the most relevant experience with relation to IT or Product Management after 35 years in the business.
Most people buy Sonos products because of the ability to play great music in a multi-room environment. I do find it strange that such a minor issue within a very narrow focused use case can generate such emotion but this obviously is a make or break issue for you. Sorry I couldn’t help.
Until this is resolved I’ll keep telling my friends to avoid Sonos. Two friends have gone elsewhere so far and I’ll keep telling others.
the product is hobbled because they don’t prioritis defect fixing.
This isn’t a true defect if Sonos didn’t design the product to have this functionality, more of a design limitation. However, what is the functionality you are looking for? As per my post earlier my Routines output Audio to Sonos devices without issue.
The beam does not operate as an Alexa enabled device should and as other non-Amazon Alexa enabled devices do. You might want to get into a semantic debate about whether it’s a defect or not, but that’s what I am calling it and as someone in Product Management, I’d accept that terminology if it was my product.
I certainly won’t be recommending anybody else buys Sonos.
I want to run a routine without it telling me it can’t do it.
Until this is resolved I’ll keep telling my friends to avoid Sonos. Two friends have gone elsewhere so far and I’ll keep telling others.
the product is hobbled because they don’t prioritis defect fixing.
This isn’t a true defect if Sonos didn’t design the product to have this functionality, more of a design limitation. However, what is the functionality you are looking for? As per my post earlier my Routines output Audio to Sonos devices without issue.
Until this is resolved I’ll keep telling my friends to avoid Sonos. Two friends have gone elsewhere so far and I’ll keep telling others.
the product is hobbled because they don’t prioritis defect fixing.
Has his been logged as an issue yet?
Very frustrating that the features kind of work but then as
https://www.sonos.com/contact/contact-options
When I had the Bose Soundbar 700, it had this exact same problem, and it was simply because Bose had not implemented the new "InteractionModel interface for the Alexa Voice Service". Amazon announced this new interface in August 2018 on their developer blog here:-
https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a1470f4c-8aaf-4d12-b3bc-5cf38820ff82/alexa-it-s-bedtime-routines-for-avs
I informed Bose about this information, both on their forum and via their telephone support around 25th October 2018. They fixed it in their firmware released on 28th Feb 2019.
I've had my Sonos system over six months now, and I informed Sonos about this interface pretty much as soon as I got the system. I assumed Sonos would be able to address the issue in a similar time frame as Bose managed to. But I'm still waiting.
So if this issue affects you, please call your Sonos support center and let them know about this.
What's the best way to report this? Just to support or is there an enhancement request area? It's a pretty annoying limitation.
I really thought it was Amazon! had no clue it’s Sonos being super slow Which is surprising expect more from them tbh,do you know if it’s Amazon that restricts the Amazon also restricts the ability to make phone calls, As I have seen quite a few third-party devices haveing that ability now
I can't find anything relating to voice calls in the Alexa Voice Service API, but I've only had a quick look here https://developer.amazon.com/docs/acm/announcements-acm.html
I found this blog stating that Voice calls are coming in the future, but this was from April 2018
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/-alexa-gadgets-voice-calls,news-27036.html
When I had the Bose Soundbar 700, it had this exact same problem, and it was simply because Bose had not implemented the new "InteractionModel interface for the Alexa Voice Service". Amazon announced this new interface in August 2018 on their developer blog here:-
https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a1470f4c-8aaf-4d12-b3bc-5cf38820ff82/alexa-it-s-bedtime-routines-for-avs
I informed Bose about this information, both on their forum and via their telephone support around 25th October 2018. They fixed it in their firmware released on 28th Feb 2019.
I've had my Sonos system over six months now, and I informed Sonos about this interface pretty much as soon as I got the system. I assumed Sonos would be able to address the issue in a similar time frame as Bose managed to. But I'm still waiting.
So if this issue affects you, please call your Sonos support center and let them know about this.
I really thought it was Amazon! had no clue it’s Sonos being super slow Which is surprising expect more from them tbh,do you know if it’s Amazon that restricts the Amazon also restricts the ability to make phone calls, As I have seen quite a few third-party devices haveing that ability now
When I had the Bose Soundbar 700, it had this exact same problem, and it was simply because Bose had not implemented the new "InteractionModel interface for the Alexa Voice Service". Amazon announced this new interface in August 2018 on their developer blog here:-
https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a1470f4c-8aaf-4d12-b3bc-5cf38820ff82/alexa-it-s-bedtime-routines-for-avs
I informed Bose about this information, both on their forum and via their telephone support around 25th October 2018. They fixed it in their firmware released on 28th Feb 2019.
I've had my Sonos system over six months now, and I informed Sonos about this interface pretty much as soon as I got the system. I assumed Sonos would be able to address the issue in a similar time frame as Bose managed to. But I'm still waiting.
So if this issue affects you, please call your Sonos support center and let them know about this.
1 Open the Alexa App and click on the menu 3 bars in the top;
2 Select Routines in the Menu;
3 Click the ‘+’ sign in the top right corner of the App;
4 Click ‘When this happens’ and then ‘Voice’;
5 Enter ‘audio test’ – it’s still best to not use capitals;
6 Click ‘Add action’ and then click ‘Play’;
7 Type in ‘Ed Sheeran On [Sonos Room Name]’;
8 Click ‘From’ and then select a source;
9 If you need a ‘Timer’ please click ‘Set Time’;
10 Click ‘Save’
This will now work via the command ‘Alexa, Audio Test’
Long story short try adding On... then the Sonos beam device name. I certainly don’t get any messages about unsupported devices... and my routine works fine. Apologies if I’ve missed the point of the issue.
Basically, I'm really hoping I don't have to buy an Amazon Echo to control my Sonos Beam, which would kind of defeat the purpose. But right now I have no way of replicating the core functionality of an Echo or a Dot on my Sonos.
Based on my experience, this is likely a Sonos engineering problem (defect in the codebase or an API issue). I've been a developer for 30 years, and I know you guys are probably held hostage by whatever interfaces or API calls you've been given by Amazon and Google. I presume you're not representing engineering and I know that customer service and QA are seldom consulted when creating product roadmaps... but if we're having this same discussion on Black Friday later this year, I'll have to jump to another Alexa-supported soundbar (because somebody is going to figure this out... and I really hope it's Sonos).
Routines that do involve talk/music: ie, news, weather, sports, reminders, songs, etc most of the time they also work, BUT you will always get the annoying "not supported on this device" lecture first.
Not sure why your success rate is so much lower.
Regarding Alexa "Routines," I have a dozen of these on my iPhone, which combine multiple basic Alexa functionalities, such as: news alerts at a specific time, reminders of appointments, raising the audio volume, playing a particular song, and many others. Whenever I attempt any of my Routines, Alexa always replies, "Audio actions and Routines are not supported on this device."
I've read that some Routines will work on Sonos Beam, even when Alexas says they're unsupported, but I haven't found a single one that works.
Thanks,
David K.
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