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davidkozlowski
Contributor II
May 28, 2019

When will Alexa "Routines" become available?

  • May 28, 2019
  • 67 replies
  • 12558 views
I love my Sonos Beam w/ Alexa, but it really sucks that a lot of baseline Alexa functionality doesn't work w/ Sonos. For example, I want to set a Routine that shuts off my TV, dims the lights, and plays Jazz music from Pandora at volume 10. I can easily setup this Routine on my iPhone, but Alexa on Sonos doesn't support it at all, which is incredibly annoying.

Does your engineering team have a roadmap or timeline to adopt more of the standard or baseline Alexa functionality, like Routines?
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    CovertDirt
    Enthusiast II
    May 6, 2020

    Lastly, I think it's important to remember that we do not have anything to do with features both supported and unsupported on this platform. As Alexa voice service is owned by Amazon, supported features and services would be decided by Amazon.

     

    However Bose had this same issue with Routines and they actually have fixed it? Why is it that you are saying it’s not a Sonos issue and it’s an Amazon issue? It does appear to be something that could be fixed - there are many posts on Reddit and elsewhere that explain Bose fixed Alexa Routines a year ago on their integrated smart speakers, so it does beg the question why Sonos don’t see this as their issue or as something they can fix?

      Molodax
      Lyricist II
      May 7, 2020

      Actually, routines stopped working on Sonos at all quite recently, see here

      Molodax
      Lyricist II
      May 9, 2020

      Greetings everyone,

      We do not have any timeline to share on when or if these changes will be made.

      This sounds more like a definitive answer that Sonos is not going to implement the routines which is a huge drawback.

      CovertDirt
      Enthusiast II
      May 11, 2020

      Basically this means to get maybe 20% of the “now with Alexa” functionality on the box and in the advertising from Sonos you effectively have to buy an Echo.

       

      If I set up a routine in Alexa for “Good Morning” to turn on my lights, tell me the weather, read me the news headlines and then play a playlist it immediately fails on the Sonos One.

       

      Sonos responds “audio not implemented” for the playlist, and then says “here’s you flash briefing” and nothing plays.

       

      Oh but the lights come on so yeah 1 out of 4.

       

      For anyone invested in the smart speaker ecosystem, routines would rate absolutely crucial. I’d love to see many real world use cases for the current Alexa implementation (or lack thereof) on Sonos.

       

      It is a massively hobbled implementation, and it effectively drives users who do want smart speaker integration to buy an Amazon Echo or Show to get it. That seems crazy to me. Don’t encourage your users to buy the competition product.

        a.dziubak
        Lyricist II
        June 9, 2020

        S2 OS is still affected with this bug.

         

        @Sebastien D.: when can we expect you would fix it and provide the advertised functionality?

         

        Note, that this is most probably issue on your end. As mentioned earlier by @danellisuk Bose has managed to fix it very quickly.
        Check the link provided by him:

        https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/a1470f4c-8aaf-4d12-b3bc-5cf38820ff82/alexa-it-s-bedtime-routines-for-avs

          CovertDirt
          Enthusiast II
          June 9, 2020

          It’s sad to hear the new app and the new upgrades done to the speakers when you upgrade to S2 still doesn’t fix this.

            daniel_ware
            Lyricist I
            June 13, 2020

            I have called Sonos UK support today to see if there is any progress for Alexa Routines, they were very polite and apologetic, but unfortunately they still have no development plan to support this.

            Just a reminder that Bose implemented support for Alexa routines in their Feb 2019 firmware, after being notified about the issue in October 2018.

            If you read the post right above yours, you’ll see there’s a work around.

            Is there? Are you talking about the FllT workaround or adding the room name into the audio section, I did the latter and I still get the annoying not supported messages then it plays the audio from the routine

            daniel_ware
            Lyricist I
            June 13, 2020

            Greetings everyone,

            We do not have any timeline to share on when or if these changes will be made. While routines may or may not run as expected, they are still considered unsupported and when I mean by unsupported, that doesn’t mean it won’t work, it is that we cannot effectively troubleshoot it.

            Lastly, I think it's important to remember that we do not have anything to do with features both supported and unsupported on this platform. As Alexa voice service is owned by Amazon, supported features and services would be decided by Amazon.

            Come on get it fixed

              CovertDirt
              Enthusiast II
              June 13, 2020

              Yet Sonos can use the Amazon and Alexa logos, and proudly put on the box and all the marketing “works with Alexa”. To me that’s embarrassing for Sonos to keep claiming they can’t fix this when other players like Bose can and have.

               

              happy to claim it works with Alexa...just not happy to actually make it work. Sad.

              Fofer
              Collaborator II
              July 11, 2020

              This lack of elegant compatibility with the full Alexa feature set is annoying. Is this also the reason Sonos speakers don’t show up as devices that are available to set up as “actions”  in the Alexa app’s Routine section?

               

              I have an Alexa motion sensor and I was hoping I could set it so that the Sonos speaker in that room unmutes only when there is motion.  And mute again 5 minutes after there is no motion.  Is that possible with Alexa and Sonos currently or do I need to integrate a Smartthings hub (or similar) to make this happen?

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