Yes / No action prompts with Alexa and Voice Monkey

Have you ever wanted Alexa to ask you something and respond based on your answer? You can, with a Voice Monkey Flow and its Question node.

Imagine this

At 8pm every evening, Alexa says: “It’s 8pm. Shall I turn on the lights?” You say: “Yes” and the lights turn on. On an Echo Show you can tap Yes instead.

Before you start

You’ll need:

1. The Voice Monkey skill enabled and a Speaker for the Echo that should ask the question. Follow Add a device to create one, and check it can make a text-to-speech announcement.
2. The Hobby or Ultimate plan if you want Voice Monkey to run the Flow on a schedule, as in Step 3. On the free plan you can start it from an Alexa Routine instead (see the tip at the end).

How to do this

Step 1 — Create the action

The action is what happens when you say Yes. Alexa Routines are what switch your lights on, and a Voice Monkey Routine Trigger fires a Routine on demand.

In the console, open Routine Triggers and add a new trigger.

Name it after what it does, such as “Smart Lights Trigger”, and click Create Trigger.

Voice Monkey then shows you how to wire the trigger into an Alexa Routine. In the Alexa app, create a Routine:

• When this happens → Smart Home → Alexa Voice Monkey v3 → VM Routines → Smart Lights Trigger
• Add action → Smart Home → {your smart light} → Power On

Save the Routine, then click Test in the console to check the lights come on.

Step 2 — Create the Flow

Open Flows and click Create Flow. Give it a name, such as “8pm Lights Prompt”.

Click Question under Control in the Nodes list. Connect the Start node’s output dot to the Question node, then click the Question node to open its settings. By the end of this step your Flow will look like this:

Set up the question:

• Speaker: the Echo that should ask.
• Question to ask: for example “It’s 8pm. Shall I turn on the lights?”
• Voice: Alexa’s default voice, another Alexa voice, or on the Hobby and Ultimate plans one of your own.
• Answer Type: Yes / No. The node gets a Yes and a No output, plus a No answer output for when nobody replies.
• Screen devices: leave Speak and show answer buttons selected, so Echo Show devices also show Yes and No buttons you can tap.

Now click Routine Trigger under Action to add a second node, and set its Routine Trigger Device to “Smart Lights Trigger”. Drag from the Question node’s Yes output to the Routine Trigger node to connect them.

If you leave No and No answer unconnected, the Flow simply ends there. You could connect a Speech node to No that says “OK, I’ll leave them off.”

Click Create Flow to save, then click Trigger at the top of the editor to test it. Your Echo should ask the question straight away.

Step 3 — Schedule the Flow

Open Schedules in the console. A regular schedule runs inside an Active Hours window, which sets the days it runs on. If you don’t have one yet, click Add Active Hours and create a window that covers 8pm on the days you want, such as every day from 09:00 to 21:00.

Then click Add Schedule, choose Regular schedule, and fill in:

• Name: for example “Lights prompt at 8pm”.
• Flow: 8pm Lights Prompt.
• Active Hours: the window that covers 8pm.
• Trigger Time: 20:00.

Click Create. The Flow now runs at 8pm on every day in that window, in the timezone set for your account. Answer “Yes” and the lights come on.

Tip: no schedules on your plan? Let Alexa do the timing instead. Click the Flow’s Start node to find its 4-digit Request Ref. In the Alexa app, create a Routine with When this happens → Schedule set to 8pm, add a Custom action with ask voice monkey to start flow 1234 (using your Request Ref), and pick any Echo under From.

In summary

Yes/No prompts have two components: the action (what happens when you say Yes or No) and the Flow (which asks the question and triggers the action). Swap the lights for anything an Alexa Routine can do, or try answer types such as First Name or Color, which give you one branch per answer. See Question branches for every option. What will you build with it?