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TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Welcome to "Assistant On Air,"
where we have conversations about building
for Google Assistant.
I'm Toni, and I'll be your host today.
I'm a Developer Relations Engineer for Google Assistant.
And today, we'll be chatting with Jessica,
who is also a Developer Relations
Engineer for Google Assistant.
So welcome Jessica.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Hi.
Thanks for having me, Toni.
I'm excited.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Great to see you.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yeah, likewise.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Definitely an exciting day.
We've had some big news come through for the Assistant.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yeah.
Yeah, we've had some really big news.
And I would say not everyone was expecting it necessarily.
I know some folks were.
And something that's I think really future forward looking,
which is exciting.
But ultimately, the news is that we're
pivoting from Google Assistant into working
closer with our Android, kind of, ecosystem world.
That way it makes it easier for folks, specifically
developers and users, to use Google Assistant.
And so the big news, of course, is
when it comes to Conversational Actions,
we'll be sunsetting them in a year from now.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Gotcha.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: And Conversational Actions
are all of those Voice applications
that are voice only, that has no display, has no phone
or has no devices tethered to it,
or a Voice application that is on our smart displays,
so generally using Canvas as a web application to show images.
So those type of Conversational Actions, those
will be sunsetted unfortunately.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Yeah.
And you did mention that's going to be a year from now.
So--
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Correct.
Yeah, we want to make sure we gave enough heads up and notice
for folks.
Because I know when it comes to Voice applications
and building them--
I've built several of them.
It's a lot of work, and it's complicated and it's hard.
But we want to be able to give enough notice so then
folks can educate their users, we're moving to something else,
ideally to App Actions and have that experience in App Actions,
or just be able to sunset them gracefully too.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Right.
Yeah, that's a big change, so definitely good thing
to share out early and often.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Exactly.
Yeah, we wanted to make sure that we
were transparent with our developers
as well and our users that we are making this pivot,
and we're going to put a lot of energy
into the Android experience when it comes to Voice.
And we want to make sure that people
know where we're going, too, because we
want to make sure that we provide a great experience
for everyone.
And Voice is still really new.
We're still in the early stages.
So I think this is something that's really exciting
to be able to pivot over to.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: So could you talk a little bit more
about where we are pivoting to.
What is this App Actions thing that you're talking about?
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yes, this App Actions thing alluding to.
So App Actions is how Android developers can integrate
with Google Assistant.
And so you can say a command and a trigger
and do an Android deep link into the application.
So then what's really nice is you can pass parameters
from the user's verbiage.
So if they say, hey G, start pizza order, the application
will be able to open up on an ordering of the pizza,
and so now it makes it easier for users to kind of fast track
into the application, as well.
And this is just the beginning too.
So I like to let folks know, if you're
coming from the conversational or Voice side,
this is a single shot experience when it comes to Voice, where
a user says something and they get
their fulfillment immediately with all the parameters passed
over to it.
So again, this is still really early stages,
but we're really excited where this could go.
Because Android, within their ecosystem,
they're pivoting over and expanding more
to make it easier for multiple devices to support Android too.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Right.
Yeah.
And the Android ecosystem is huge.
There are so many different device types.
So could you talk a little bit more
about how this is going to benefit developers and users
with that larger ecosystem?
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yeah.
So with-- as an Android developer,
you can build an application, and then you can expand it
so then it could be on Wear.
So you can have it where it's on watches and other items.
Or you could expand it and build out an Android application
for cars.
So Android for cars is another way that you could do that.
And you're still keeping the core functionality,
and now you're just expanding that to make
those experiences available on those different devices.
And again, this is still early days where we're at right now,
this is where we're venturing, but we
imagine this is going to go even further out.
And what this means within Google Assistant
is that an Android developer now just needs to identify,
what functionality do they have?
What are the Voice comparables?
And we call those built-in intents within the App Actions
world.
Identify those built-in intents that work for the Android app,
put that into their manifest, and then
figure out where they want to have their Android intent open
up the Android application, passing
any of those parameters.
So it's a small extra work to add in Voice in there
without the Android developer necessarily
having to learn all the NLU and machine learning when
it comes to Voice development.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Yeah.
And conversational design is a very deep pathway to learn,
and it can be really complicated.
So definitely benefits developers
not having to go super deep into that to be able to scale this,
right?
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Right, exactly.
Yeah, this makes it a lot scalable
for the Android application.
So now they're only having to build things once
and then just figuring out where they want to pipe things
through.
But then from the user's point of view,
it's also really nice, because now they're
not having to learn, oh, is this experience--
do I have to say it this way within this context?
I'm in the car, do I have to say it differently?
It doesn't matter.
The application will be able to support it and figure out, OK,
you're in this context.
Cool, we're going to do it this way.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: So it's the same consistent experience
for users.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Exactly.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Gotcha.
So if a developer still wants to build with the Assistant,
how can they do that now?
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yeah, of course.
So we still have, of course, that App Actions pathway
or developer pathway with that.
We also have our Smart Home actions.
And so Smart Home is all about hardware and connected
to Google Assistant.
So you can say things like, hey Google, turn on the lights, hey
Google, do x, y, z, and it will affect something out
in the world that's hardware.
And within those two developer development paths
for App Actions Smart Home, we actually
have a learning pathway for each of those.
So let's say you have zero experience within Google
Assistant and Voice applications.
You can do these pathways and there are videos and code labs
that will walk you through from zero knowledge to building out
your first application with Voice, which is really lovely.
And then at the end, there's a quiz.
And of course, once you pass the quiz, you get a reward.
So--
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Of course.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: --you get a developer badge
in our Google Developer ecosystem that we have.
So if you have a profile, you get a badge saying
that you've done this as well.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: That's great.
And what about for folks who are more interested in media stuff?
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Totally.
Great question.
When it comes to TV and radio, we
have our Media Actions that are available.
So if somebody has one of those two or both,
they can apply to be part of our Media Actions program
that we have.
And you just have to go to our developer docs to sign up,
and that way, they get additional support.
Because when it comes to TV and radio,
they're slightly different user experiences
and we want to make sure that those are handled well.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Gotcha.
That's great.
So yeah, a lot of changes that are happening.
If I'm a developer or just a really curious user,
how can I stay up to date with all of these
and just be aware as things are changing?
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Right.
Of course.
Like with any sunset, there could
be things that happen between now and a year.
A year is a long time.
And so I know I always like to stay up to date as well.
We actually have in our developer
docs a page, a resource all about the sunset.
And so it goes into which actions does this apply to,
what are the different developer paths that you can do,
commonly asked questions, as well.
So it really is a great resource.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: That's great.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: And you can access it through our short
link as well, which is goo.gle/ca-sunset.
And so that's all in the developer docs.
So anything that you want to know, it will be listed there.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Awesome.
And what about the community support pages?
There's a lot of different areas where Google Assistant has been
talked about in the community.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Totally.
Yeah.
Google Assistant, we've been available for developers
to build onto for about five years now,
and so we have a really rich ecosystem.
And of course, our Twitter account
is going to stay available, our Reddit community
is going to still be there.
We'll still be supporting our GitHub
and all of those resources.
We're pretty much still continuing
as is, except for the exception of our conversational actions
will be sunsetted.
So from our point of view, we're still really invested
in the Voice space.
We're still going to be supporting developers.
It's just now with this refocus on how
do we have this Voice capabilities within our Android
world.
And so it's really bringing in our Android
world and our Google Assistant world
and having them play well together.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Better together.
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yes, exactly.
Definitely better together.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: Great.
That's awesome.
Well, thank you for giving all of us that information
and sharing that out.
And yeah, thank you so much for coming to join us today.
And for everybody, we hope that you like today's show.
And of course, if you have any suggestions for future episodes
of "Assistant On Air" that you'd like to see,
please leave a comment below.
And as Jessica mentioned, we still
are going to have our Twitter page.
So follow us there for updates and new episodes.
And then we also have a newsletter
you can sign up for as well.
So--
JESSICA EARLEY-CHA: Yeah, that's still going strong.
TONI KLOPFENSTEIN: And you can find the link
for that in our docs.
So thanks for joining us.
And I've been Toni.
And we'll chat with you next time.
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