TONY: It's the end of the year, and we've
been working really hard.
MIKE: Yeah.
I'm glad we get a chance to relax and to look back and make
some cookies.
JESSICA: Great.
Let's get started.
Let's get our cookie recipe by saying,
hey Google, show me a sugar cookie recipe
from Jessica's baking app.
Fantastic.
Let's get all the ingredients together.
So being able to open an Android app with Google Assistant
is super fun.
A lot has happened this last year, especially
in the world of App Actions.
App Actions actually made a pivot this year
to be part of the Android framework.
TONY: That's a neat feature, Jessica.
Can you tell us more about it?
JESSICA: Yeah, of course.
So Capabilities is a new Android framework API
that allows you to declare the types of actions
users can take to launch your app
and jump directly into performing a specific task.
So now you can actually use Capabilities for App Actions
by creating shortcuts to XML file resources
and defining your Capabilities.
You can think of Capabilities as having two parts.
The first part is all about how it gets triggered
and the second part is what to do once it's triggered.
And to add a capability, you'll need to select a BII,
or Built In Intent, which is a predefined and prebuilt intent
that provides all the natural language understanding
that it's mapped to a user's input
to that individual fields.
And so, when a BII or Built In Intent
is matched by the user's request,
your capability will be triggered and Android
the intent that will deliver the understood field to your app
so then you can determine what to show as the response.
So the user will actually be able to see inside your app.
MIKE: Oh, that's really cool.
I heard that App Actions can show up when my users say,
hey Google, show my shortcuts.
JESSICA: Yeah, totally.
So when a user does say that, when they say,
hey Google, show my shortcuts, you'll
be able to see all of your personalized shortcuts, which
can include App Action shortcuts.
For a developer to be able to do that,
you'll need to use the Google Assistant or the Google
shortcut integration library to push your dynamic shortcuts
to the assistant.
Assistant can suggest relative shortcuts to your users
at contextually relevant times.
And did you know that we have a code lab that walks developers
through pushing dynamic shortcuts to Assistant?
TONY: Of course I didn't.
Didn't we work on creating a whole learning pathway
for App Actions developers?
JESSICA: Yeah, we totally did.
You're right, Tony.
So we built out an App Actions pathway that takes developers
from zero to implementing their first capability
to pushing dynamic shortcuts with our videos and code labs.
MIKE: So what's something that you're
excited about with all these new changes?
JESSICA: Oh gosh.
I think I'm really, really excited
about how Assistant can use Android widgets When
a user needs to handle things that are hands-free.
Kind of like baking, or when you're
in the car with Android Auto.
You can integrate your widgets to be responses
for the situations when users need a simple answer
or a quick interaction.
My favorite part is that since it's
for hands-free experiences, you can actually add text-to-speech
to your widget.
And then in that space, there's a lot or a few conversation
design principles that could help
Android developers to provide a great voice
experience to their users.
Let's see.
Oh, it looks like this is the last bit of sugar I have.
So hey Google, add some sugar to my shopping list.
TONY: Oh, this isn't a no bake cookie recipe.
Better heat up the oven.
Hey Google, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
MIKE: Hey, speaking of device control,
what's new in Smart Home?
TONY: Well, we're going to be launching a new developer
center for developing smart device integrations.
This will enable developers to quickly onboard
their matter-compatible devices once the matter spec launches
next year.
JESSICA: That sounds really neat.
And exciting news for tools available for developers?
TONY: Oh yeah, definitely.
So we have the new Google Home Playground,
which will help you set up a virtual environment to test out
different device types and traits,
which is really great for beginners
or if you haven't played around with it much.
You can change the attributes of the devices
and see how these interact in Home Graph.
And once you're ready to actually start coding,
you can use the Google Home IDE to develop your smart device
integration, view the Cloud logs,
and use the Google Assistant Simulator
all from a single place.
[BEEP]
Oh, the cookies are done.
Hey Google, turn off the oven.
That reminds me, we've also been making sample utterances
available in different languages in our Docs
to help with testing your smart devices.
There's a bunch of additional new tools from this year as
well, including app discovery, better monitoring dashboards,
BLE seamless setup, and more--
including follow-up responses for some traits.
You can find out more about all of this in the Docs.
JESSICA: There's lots of news in the world of assistant
and smart home this year for sure.
But what about conversational actions?
MIKE: Definitely.
We had a busy year over here too.
Hey Google, show me videos about decorating cookies.
We rolled out an updated Actions for Families program
for conversational actions, which
is meant for developers building family-oriented actions
like games, stories, or educational apps for kids.
Back in May at Google I/O, we shared some tips on things
to consider when you're putting together a marketing
plan for your conversational actions.
We also heard from folks across the voice tech ecosystem
each month on the Webby award-winning talk
show, "Voice Talks."
We had great segments from experts across the industry,
including many Googlers who work on Assistant.
TONY: We also rolled out some features
for developers of conversational actions
to take advantage of, right?
MIKE: Yeah, we sure did.
We recently released the Interactive Canvas DevTools.
This is a browser extension designed
to help devs speed up their workflow
when building the web app portion of Interactive Canvas
actions.
You can find the DevTools in the Chrome Web Store.
Or if you really want, you can compile and install them
yourself from the repo in GitHub.
Let's see.
What else?
In addition to some updates to the NLU
that powers Assistant's voice recognition,
we added support for several new SSML features
within conversational actions.
For example, you can now fine-tune the pronunciation
of specific words within your actions
or change languages mid-sentence.
It's pretty cool.
[NON-ENGLISH].
Well, [LAUGHS] I'm certainly not an expert cookie decorator yet.
But this is a start maybe?
JESSICA: I hear you.
I'm with you, Mike.
No worries.
[LAUGHS] We did a lot over this last year.
And if only there was a really convenient blog post
that people can check out to get all of the resources
that we've mentioned today and even more info.
TONY: Luckily, there is.
Can check out the link in the description below
to get the blog post.
We'll see you in the new year.
MIKE: Happy holidays.
JESSICA: Happy holidays.