Podcast Episode 271: How To Publish An Alexa For Business Private Skill & Invite Manage Users - Data Driven Daily Tip 350

I love Alexa for Business. You just need an AWS account to deploy Private Alexa Skills to employees of your organization. You can also use it to manage company-owned devices and which company private skills can be used on personal employee devices.  What you'll need:  1. An Alexa Skill built and ready to deploy for your organization/employees/specific private group. Note: this can be for a private podcast, piece of content or experience between a group of people. It doesn't have to be limited to businesses. But it's GREAT for businesses, which is why it's called Alexa for Business.  2. An AWS Account.  We'll use the Alexa Blueprint Console as the example for this piece of content but the same thing can be accomplished when building an Alexa Skill from the Alexa Developer Console ASK (kit).  Here are the steps:  1. Go to the Blueprints Console to Skills You've Made - blueprints.amazon.com/skills  2. Click "Manage Access" under your Alexa For Business skill.  3. In a separate browser tab, open your AWS account (it doesn't need to be the same username/password as your Alexa account, but it can be). Under the Services dropdown, find Alexa For Business and click on it. Enable it.  4. On the left hand side menu, click "Skills"  5. On the Skills screen, click the Private Skills tab, and click "Show IAM ARN" number  6. Copy the full alpha-numeric number and paste it back into the Manage My Access section into the tab with your Blueprint Skill in it.  7. Click Add and Finish, and you'll get a confirmation message.  8. Refresh your other browser tab with your AWS account, and you'll see your Private Skill under the Private Skills tab.  9. You should see your Skill and the Status should say "Waiting on Review." Click Review.  10. Add the Skill to a Skill Group. Go to the Skills tab on the left hand menu of AWS, and under the Enabled Skills tab, check the box on the left. This will make the "Add to skill group" button orange and clickable.  11. Create a Skill Group by finding "Skill groups" on the left hand side menu under "Configuration."   12. Find orange "Create skill group" button and click it.  13. Name it, give it a description and click "Create."  14. Invite Users. Configure the details of you user invitation by clicking the User Invitation Page link in the lefthand side menu.  15. Add a contact name and email from your organization and customize your welcome message.  16. Click "Users" on the lefthand side menu. Put in First Name, Last Name and Email address and click "Send invite."  17. Click on User Invitations under "Settings" on lefthand side menu to check status of users accepting their invite.  Statuses include "Invited" and "Enrolled."   Enrolled means they've enabled the skill.