"I tried customizing Alexa for telework!"--Details of small and medium-sized enterprises that suddenly introduced telework (56)

Introducing telework in a hurry! the story of

Alexa notifies you of schedules and train delays! Furthermore, automation is also possible by linking with IFTTT...

Amazon's smart speaker "Amazon Echo"

　Before telework started, searches for things like train routes and weather, which used to start at the company, have shifted to being centered at home. Also, it takes more time to get to the meeting place from home than from the company, but the other day there was a delay in the service, so I was late.

……At the time of writing this article, 47 days have passed since the state of emergency was declared in four prefectures.

　At the small and medium-sized company in Shinjuku where I work, each staff member is currently working remotely to the extent possible. Among them, this time I tried to customize the cloud-based voice service "Alexa" that can be used with Amazon's smart speaker "Amazon Echo" for telework.

[Highlights of this time] Notification of delays in trains that you normally use so that you can be reminded 30 minutes before the scheduled time Automate your morning work routine with Alexa [Background]

Emergency declaration issued In April 2020, the company I work for started working from home without any preparation. Since my work environment was "desktop PC + e-mail", I carried data on an external HDD and misappropriated LINE's personal account. After that, we introduced NAS and notebook PCs with subsidies, etc., and gradually improved the telework environment.

[Click here for details from April to the end of August 2020]

Monday, June 7: I tried changing the search conditions on the internet to start from home

　In preparation for the shooting scheduled for this week, I installed the app "Weather I decided to check the weather forecast on the news.

In "Weather News", you can use the "My Weather" function to display the weather forecast for the registered location on the first screen. Currently, I am specifying the address of the company, but it would be better to change it to the address of my home soon.

Change the registered location of "My Weather" in "Weather News" to your home

　By the way, I use the "Yahoo! I have already registered the nearest station to my home and work as the station that can be specified with one click as the starting point etc. With this, you will be able to quickly search for weather and routes starting from your home in the future.

June 8th (Tuesday): Alexa announces schedules in "Google Calendar" by voice

Today I went out for a meeting in the afternoon. As always, check the weather forecast with Alexa. I check the weekly forecast with "Weather News," etc., but if I just want to know today's weather, it's easier to search with Alexa, which can be searched by voice.

"Alexa, what's the weather today?" to check the forecast

　In the company, the speaker was turned off, but at home you can incorporate "sound" into your work. In fact, just playing the ringtone has reduced the hassle of checking emails, so maybe I should use Alexa more.

When it comes to using Alexa for work, the first thing that comes to mind is linking with "Google Calendar". This calendar is synchronized with the company's groupware "Cybozu Office", so if you say "today's schedule", you will be able to check the tasks of the day by voice.

Launch the "Amazon Alexa" app on your smartphone and select "Others" → "Settings" → "Calendar", and Alexa will be able to use your Google Calendar schedule

Of course, you can also add your schedule to the calendar with your voice. It is also possible to If you enable the "Calendar Notifications" option, you can also have Alexa voice-reminders, such as "According to the calendar, ●●● is scheduled in 30 minutes from now."

　The other day, a colleague registered a "scheduled meeting with all relevant members" in Cybozu Office, but I was so focused on the work that I overlooked the notification email. If Alexa reminds me, I can reduce such mistakes.

June 9th (Wednesday): Trying to notify Alexa of train delays and rain forecasts

On the Amazon Alexa app, select "Other" → "Skills/Games" and a new You can search for skills and set valid skills

　To shoot a certain project, I decided to go out tomorrow morning. Being late is absolutely unacceptable, so I decided to register the skill "Yahoo! Route" in Alexa.

　On top of that, open "Yahoo! Route Information" in your browser and log in with the linked Yahoo! JAPAN ID. Register the route to be used in "Route registration for operation information". Now, if there is a train delay, Alexa will notify you.

You can register the route you want to use by operating "My Page/Various Settings/Confirmation" → "Registered Route" in "Yahoo! Route Information"

　In addition, you can register the skill "Yahoo! Weather / Disaster", Open the service site in your browser and register your home address in "Personal Weather". That way, if the forecast for the day is rain, Alexa will notify you.

Search the weather using the address as a keyword on Yahoo! Weather/Disaster. Click the "Add to Personal Weather" button on the displayed screen

　Amazon Echo has a feature called "Do Not Disturb Mode" that allows you to disable notifications during a set period of time. "Yahoo! Route" sends notifications from 6:00 to 8:00 in the morning, and "Yahoo! If you know the weather and train delays when you wake up in the morning, you will be able to prevent delays in advance.

Select Amazon Echo to set from "Device". You can specify the time from "Good night mode" in "General"

　By the way, at home, I have Amazon Echo installed in my room and living room, and I use the "call" function to talk to my family, such as "the meal is ready". ing. However, Amazon Echo, which has notifications, can't respond to "calls", so I got into the habit of checking notifications first when I woke up in the morning. This is the correct flow, so let's stick with it for a while.

June 11th (Friday): Automate schedule confirmation and morning greetings with "standard actions"!

　Teleworking from home since morning. After pressing the time card in Cybozu Office, check the schedule for the day in "Schedule". In addition, send a morning greeting message to the LINE group chat that you use at work.

Then I came up with the idea, "Ah, this operation can be automated." That's because Alexa has a feature called "canned actions," which allows you to perform multiple operations with a single voice command. Since this time it will be an operation when going to work, set the execution condition to "Alexa, go to work" of "Voice". In conjunction with this, we set an action to read "today's schedule" on the "calendar".

Operate "Other" → "Standard action" in the application "Amazon Alexa". Tap the "+" button Enter the name of the fixed action, and set the execution condition to "Voice" → "Alexa, go to work"

On the other hand, for the action to send a message to LINE, use "IFTTT" do. This is a service that automatically executes a specified action by linking web services, such as "●● on Alexa" and "▲▲ on LINE".

　I already had an account with IFTTT, but in order to use Alexa and LINE, it was necessary to link both services with IFTTT. So, first search for "Amazon Alexa" and "LINE" with the IFTTT app, tap "Connect" and register your account information. With this, IFTTT can now automatically operate LINE with Amazon Echo at home as a trigger.

Tap "Explore" on the top screen of the IFTTT application. Enter the service name in the search box and tap the displayed service icon. When the service screen appears, tap "Connect" and enter your Amazon Echo and LINE account information. Tap Create. Select "Amazon Alexa" in "If This" Select "Say a specific phrase" as the trigger and enter "phrase". This time, after registering "go to work", operate "Then That" → "LINE" → "Send message". Enter the company's group chat in "Recipient" and the message to be sent in "Message".

After that, set up a flow that "If you tell Alexa to go to work, send a message 'Good morning' to the LINE group chat." If you add this to the "action" of the standard action, the work is completed.

Set "Calendar" → "Today's schedule" and "IFTTT" → "Come to work" in the "Add action" of the fixed action you were operating earlier

　After this, actually talk to Alexa "Come to work" After reading today's schedule registered in Google Calendar, I was able to send a message to the LINE group chat. However, since messages are sent from an account called "LINE Notify" to group chat, it is necessary to register this account in the group. Additionally, you'll need to put your name on outgoing messages so you know who sent them.

The message I registered earlier was sent from the "LINE Notify" account

　I've been working with Alexa for a week so far, but if I'm going to work from home, it's definitely better to have a voice reminder function. good. After confirming the schedule for the day in the morning, she was reminded by voice at any time, so the schedule was firmly input in her head. Thanks to Cybozu Office, I can complete each task without omission without checking the schedule one by one.

　A long time ago, voice assistants like Siri on the iPhone were called "secretaries" and "concierges", but what Alexa is doing now has something in common with that. It will definitely save labor, so if you have a smart speaker at home, I definitely recommend customizing it for telework.

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