Recent update now breaking groups with Alexa

It's a bug that is going to be resolved.

Thanks for the information. Is this an Alexa bug, a Sonos Skill bug? Do you have a link to a confirmation?

From the look of the way the new Alexa screen shows - you can set multiple speakers as the default for a room. So if you always want living room and kitchen to play when you speaker to a specific dot it will group them automatically for you and play. The functionality looks to be there but some bugs to clear up between Sonos/Amazon - which I believe is why they haven't said anything about these obvious changes that are out there.

Grouping in the Alexa App isn't necessarily the answer. I have sonos speakers in six rooms, two Sonos Connects that plug into amps that control another five rooms total (in-wall speakers). One of the Sonos speakers is a Sonos One, which has Alexa built in. I have dots in rooms where there are no Sonos devices, and Sonos devices in rooms where there are no Echo devices. We group and ungroup speakers in the house through the Sonos App occasionally, depending on what we're doing, but the expectation is (and reality used to be) that simply playing and pausing music wouldn't impact those groups. If I had four rooms grouped and asked Alexa to play in one of those rooms, it was always the case that the group would be unchanged, and music would play in all four rooms. I also used to use the command "Alexa, pause Kitchen," which would pause that group. That command no longer functions at all, and the command to play in the kitchen ungroups my sonos speakers and plays ONLY in the kitchen.

One of the early complaints from Sonos/Echo adopters was that there was no ability to group or ungroup speakers using voice commands. The workaround given by both Sonos and Amazon was to group them in the app, and control the music (start, stop, skip, etc.) with Alexa. Now that functionality is gone, and I'm wondering what the purpose of having the two together might be. I invested significantly in both technologies BECAUSE of the integration (selected Alexa over Google home because of this support), and now it's virtually non-functional. Starting music via Alexa requires that you go into the Sonos App and select how you want the speakers grouped, regardless of how you had them grouped a minute ago.

Imagine playing music in the house via Classic Rewind on Sirius XM. You decide to switch over to an Amazon station, or to a playlist, or perhaps to First Wave on Sirius XM. Doing so with your voice USED TO change all of the speakers in that group to the new selection. Now, doing so through Alexa changes only the speaker you name (Kitchen), meaning you have to go into the app and regroup everything.

Not okay. Can someone from Sonos confirm that this is either a "feature" or a bug, and if there's a fix coming? Otherwise, as I said, the integration is no longer usable, and I (and many others) will need to rethink our integrated music strategy, and that strategy will likely not include either company.

Sonos hasn’t even mentioned the changes amazon made. I imagine Sonos won’t comment on until they have their software parts updated in unison. So I would call it a big since amazon sent out their update and as far as we know Sonos hasn’t sent out an alexa Center’s update

My point in before if you ask alexa to play and it ungroups youncan ask it to regroup (via speaker scenes).

How Sonos plans it to really work is a wait and see over next few weeks.

I agree with Chris. What users are currently seeing right now doesn't appear to be the new norm but a work in process. For one thing, my particular system doesn't ungroup sonos rooms by voice command currently. It works as it's always done. It could be that the change hasn't rolled out to me just yet, but I certainly hope that's not the case. Hopefully there will be some configuration to have voice commands work they way you want in terms of grouping. Or better yet, keywords you can use in your voice command so you can keep a group or ungroup as desired depending on the situation.

I imagine Sonos won’t comment on until they have their software parts updated in unison.

Seeing as this seems to be impacting users in a non-trivial way, it would be nice if Sonos would at least comment briefly and let us know they're aware of the issue and are working on a fix.

And this applies to Sonos players that have Alexa built in too, so if you have Living Room and Kitchen (a Sonos One) currently grouped and not playing music. Speaking to the Sonos One "Alexa, Play Music," will cause the Sonos One to remove Living Room from the group and start playing on its own.

Create an Alexa group with your desired speakers and assign your Alexa or Sonos device as the input for that group. Your voice commands will now use that group without needing to say the location name as part of the command.

Thanks for the detailed response. Am I understanding correctly, then, that Alexa on the Sonos One can no longer "natively" play to a group of speakers defined by the Sonos app, but only groups of speakers defined by the Alexa app, and the only way for me to play to speakers grouped as defined by the Sonos app is via the controller (or directly from Spotify)?

While the cloud release is rolling out, some experiences may change. But currently, if it's an active group, meaning something is currently playing on the Sonos One and other speakers (grouped via Sonos), telling it to play music using Alexa should have all of them start playing the new music and not break the group. If it's a group that isn't playing music, or targeting a single room, will break up the group.

Again, these are things that are currently changing, so stay tuned to hear more as they all go live.

If it's a group that isn't playing music, or targeting a single room, will break up the group.

If I may, this is quite unintuitive behavior (Sorry, I'm a UX/Service Designer, so everything is a nail). A new Sonos One user who brings the device home and hooks it up to their existing setup, groups it with other speakers in the Sonos app and then proceeds to ask Alexa to play something, will be confused and possible frustrated when the music won't play in the entire group. I can imagine this will be similarly frustrating for users who create ad-hoc groups for specific situations. Alexa-created groups are intended to be "permanent" (because they're used in scenes, etc). Sonos groups have a much more flexible nature and lend themselves to the way people use multi-audio in their home.

I don't have a solution for this, other than to work with Amazon to allow the Alexa app to mirror grouping created in the Sonos app automatically.