Can I give others access to my Alexa Skill while in development before publishing it?

Question

I have an Alexa Skill under development. I would like to grant other people at my company access to the skill in order to test it. Is there a way to do that?

So far I've found the following: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/testing-an-alexa-skill#h2_register and http://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#help/node/201628040

I would rather not give others access to my household. Any other options for doing this?

Answer 1

Sort of.

There is no simple, safe way to publish your skill to a limited set of users for beta testing, but there is a highly rated feature request that would address this:

https://forums.developer.amazon.com/content/idea/40726/allow-a-channelmechanism-for-privatelimited-releas.html

You can however, add other users to your Amazon Developer account, and this will give them access to your skill (and other stuff, unfortunately). In your situation - co-workers at the same company - this option might be suitable. More info here:

How to Add Beta Testers to Your Skills Before You Publish
https://developer.amazon.com/public/community/post/Tx2EN8P2AHAHO6Y/How-to-Add-Beta-Testers-to-Your-Skills-Before-You-Publish

[update]
2017-04-18 Amazon has announced a better way to do what you want. See the following Amazon blog post:

Improve Skill Quality with the New Beta Testing Tool for Alexa Skills
https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/42e7de5c-f7ef-4e3e-8391-c61fe24f6caa/improve-skill-quality-with-the-new-beta-testing-tool-for-alexa-skills-beta

Answer 2

Yes, it can be done. However, consider that the other person must have an email already connected to an Amazon Developer account.

1. Go to your Amazon developer account and select the Skill you want to share.
2. Click on "Distribution" in the top menu.
3. Ensure all the required fields on the locales under "Skill Preview" and "Privacy & Compliance" have been completed. Otherwise, you will get an error The skill must be ready for submission before beta testing can be enabled.
4. Click on "Availability" in the bottom side menu, and then Beta Test.
5. Insert the email of the person you want to send this Skill.
6. The person who receives the email will see the option 'Enable Alexa skill "name of the skill" ' - on their smartphone with the Alexa account active.
7. You will be redirected to another page. Click on the option "Open in Alexa"
8. Alexa app will open and all left to do is click "Enable to use"

If you are into creating Alexa Skills or are in need of creating one, I can suggest ipervox.com, which is an online platform that allows creating custom Alexa skills with just a few steps.