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I would like to make my Google Assistant (Google Home & Android Smartphone) a little bit smarter by adding simple small-talk intents and (last but not least) usefull "Ok Google, do whatever" or "Ok Google, tell me when ..." intents.

For now I only own an Echo Dot with Alexa and I really hate their conception of skills due to their strict invocations. I have read somewhere that Google is going to come around this nightmare by using implicit invocation. However what I have done so far is not even close to good.

With implicit invocation, Google Assistant can find the correct action by searching for intents. This is good and I can add a simple phrase that Google detects correctly. However, instead of invoking that intent, Google asks me if it should ask appname to do so.

Of course this is not really an option if we want to make digital assistants smarter, since this not only destroys any kind of smartness, but also prevents us (at least me) from writing usefull actions at all (because it would be annoying to develop and to use it). They should be able to react to specific phrases and intents instead of requiring to specify the App. This makes it impossible to create simple intents like "Say goodnight" or "Ask my girlfiend when she will be here".

My question is not only if this is currently possible, but also what we can expect regarding this problem in the future? Is there any good news? Or do we have to wait, until we can help the existing assistents to evolve their real power?

K. D.
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    If you want simple intents that will work for your account only, you can go to the Shortcut settings in the Google Assistant. That will allow you to make certain phrases you say, like "Say goodnight" to a longer intent, such as "turn all of my lights off". – Nick Felker Dec 11 '17 at 20:30

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You can add custom trigger phrases that will open or deeplink into your skill. With query pattern in action.json.

Action.Json Query Pattern (Google Doc)

But the amount is limited. And I am not sure if you can completely avoid that google ask some stupid stuff like should i really open it... or i am opening now...

And maybe you have also to say ok, google to make it start listening at all.

marc_s
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shortQuestion
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Nick Felker's answer is better than mine. To expand on it a bit:

In the Google Home app on your phone tap the hamburger menu icon (three horizontal parallel lines) in the upper left, then go to "More settings", then "Shortcuts" (near the bottom), then press the little blue "+" button in the lower right to set up your custom shortcut.

Another option for extremely simple intents "Say goodnight" for example, is to use IFTTT, which has lots of integrations out of the box as well as the ability to pass along the message to a webhook which you could write yourself. Important caveat: IFTTT isn't "smart" itself, so that first layer of integration only does simple string matching (and I mean simple; it seems to be case-sensitive).

lukedavis
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  • Cool! But how are they doing it? I mean if they can tell Google to understand custom phrases, _we_ should be able to do so as well, right? – K. D. Dec 14 '17 at 17:56
  • To answer your question K.D. IFTTT (and a few other companies) have a special partner relationship with Google that gives them access to an expanded set of functionality. – lukedavis Dec 15 '17 at 16:18