Alexa Skill An exception occurred while dispatching the request to the skill

Question

Firstly, If I use the Simulator on the alexa app development page everything works fine, although the request looks some what different. If I say to my Alexa Device "Ask appName {x} and {y}" then my web service gets called with a error message "An exception occurred while dispatching the request to the skill". {X} and {Y} are my intent slots.

This only happens when talking directly to Alexa and again the Simulator works perfectly.

Below is the request I receive when I talk to my Amazon Echo.

{
    "version": "1.0",
    "session": {
        "new": false,
        "sessionId": "amzn1.echo-api.session.6a13f2db-a9f6-43a9-bc4d-x063b86905b6c",
        "application": {
            "applicationId": "amzn1.ask.skill.ef8bd603-cc39-406e-bed8-a8f9xc94abba2"
        },
        "user": {
            "userId": "xxx"
        }
    },
    "context": {
        "AudioPlayer": {
            "playerActivity": "STOPPED"
        },
        "System": {
            "application": {
                "applicationId": "amzn1.ask.skill.ef8bd603-cc39-406e-bed8-a8f9c94abba2"
            },
            "user": {
                "userId": "xxxx"
            },
            "device": {
                "deviceId": "xx",
                "supportedInterfaces": {
                    "AudioPlayer": {}
                }
            },
            "apiEndpoint": "https://api.eu.amazonalexa.com",
            "apiAccessToken": "xxxx"
        }
    },
    "request": {
        "type": "SessionEndedRequest",
        "requestId": "amzn1.echo-api.request.2a993410-e7a8-4f37-87d7-a5063ef185b5",
        "timestamp": "2017-12-22T00:11:45Z",
        "locale": "en-GB",
        "reason": "ERROR",
        "error": {
            "type": "INVALID_RESPONSE",
            "message": "An exception occurred while dispatching the request to the skill."
        }
    }
}

Below is my intent Schema

{
  "intents": [
    {
      "intent": "StartGameIntent"
    },
    {
      "slots": [
        {
          "name": "playerOne",
          "type": "AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME"
        },
        {
          "name": "playerTwo",
          "type": "AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME"
        }
      ],
      "intent": "PlayTheGame"
    },
    {
      "intent": "StopTheGame"
    },
    {
      "slots": [
        {
          "name": "damage",
          "type": "AMAZON.NUMBER"
        },
        {
          "name": "player",
          "type": "AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME"
        }
      ],
      "intent": "PlayerTakesDamage"
    },
    {
      "slots": [
        {
          "name": "health",
          "type": "AMAZON.NUMBER"
        },
        {
          "name": "player",
          "type": "AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME"
        }
      ],
      "intent": "PlayerHeals"
    }
  ]
}

It works fine if I ask an Intent without any slots. Why is it not finding my intents when they have slots?

I'm running this app with Language UK.

Answer 1

I ended up creating two languages, UK and US, and then I used the new skill builder making sure I saved and built model after I'd finished editing/adding my intents and sample utterances.

I also used a different slot type, instead of AMAZON.US_FIRST_NAME I used AMAZON.GB_FIRST_NAME .

Below is a screenshot of the settings of my skill builder page I used to get my Alexa skill working

Just to point out this was a problem with the interaction mode, the new builder which is currently in beta seemed to resolve this for me.