Current Skills

For a more user friendly list of our skills and a list of upcoming skills check out our ReadMe!

List of Current Intents for Boston

• SetAddressIntent - This is used to set and get the address for the current session. This intent has an address slot and takes the given address information and stores it for the current skill session. The address that is set here is used in the ArcGIS requests of the other intents and is the address about which information will be provided.

• TrashDayIntent - This is used to find trash and recycling pickup and collection days. It expects the current skill session to have an address or will need to be given on in order to complete the task successfully. It can get information about recycling, and trash days (or both).

  • We use the ReCollect API to get this information: https://recollect.net/api/places

• SnowParkingIntent - This is used to find snow emergency parking. It also requires an address to work. The snow parking intent finds the nearest Snow Emergency Parking lot (using ArcGIS) and returns the address of the parking lot and how far away it is to the user. It may also return the number of parking spots, the fee for the lot, and a phone-number for the lot if that information is available.

  • Uses the FinderCSV to process the CSV at http://bostonopendata-boston.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/53ebc23fcc654111b642f70e61c63852_0.csv

• GetAlertsIntent - This is used to getting any alerts regarding the following services:

  • street cleaning
  • trash and recyclying
  • city building hours
  • parking meters
  • tow alerts

  The alerts come from scraping the main page of https://www.boston.gov which has 5 primary things it provides status updates on. If any of them have alerts for the day on which the intent is queried then the intent will communicate those alerts to the user. It does not require any input/use any slots.

• Latest311Intent - This is used to get the latest 311 requests to the City of Boston. 311 requests are how citizens can report non-emergency issues to the city (traffic lights being out, potholes, etc). This skill does not require an address to work but does take an optional "slot" of how many of the latest 311's a user would like to hear. If a number is given the skill will default to giving the 3 latest 311 requests.

  • This skill gets 311 data from the following url https://data.boston.gov/api/3/action/datastore_search

• CrimeIncidentsIntent - This is used to find recent and nearby crime incidents as related to an address. It requires a working Boston address to work as that is a required slot.

  • Uses the following SQL page to request information https://data.boston.gov/api/3/action/datastore_search_sql

• FoodTruckIntent - This intent gets near-by food trucks for the given or stored Address. It only returns food trucks within 1-mile and returns the first 5 food trucks that it finds within that range to the user as well as the time-period that the food truck is expected to be at that location.

  • Uses the following ARCGis to get the data https://services.arcgis.com/sFnw0xNflSi8J0uh/arcgis/rest/services/food_trucks_schedule/FeatureServer/0/

• FeedbackIntent - This is used to provide feedback about the skill, including bug reports and suggestions for new intents. If a user triggers this they will be asked to leave a short bit of feedback. It does not require an address or any other arguements. However, a skill session must be active so that Alexa knows a user is talking about the Boston Info Skill or a user must specify that they want to give feedback for our skill. Alexa mostly handles this for us and it does not pull data from anywhere.

• UnhandledIntent - This is used to deal with all unhandled intents. Basically creates an error state if Alexa is confused.

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