Alexa Skill - Keep Intent alive for dialogue - node.js

Question

For demonstrations purposes I should devolop an Alexa Skill on a dialogue basis.
All the alexa responses are hardcoded.
The template of the skill is like:
Part 1:
User: Alexa, ask MySkill {Question1}.
Alexa: Hardcoded answer.
Part 2:
User: Alexa, ask MySkill {Question2.1}
Alexa: Hardcoded answer for Question2.1.
User: Alexa, ask MySkill {Qeustion2.2}
Alexa: Hardcoded answer.
I was able to create part 1. But in Part 2 i have some problems.
Do I need seperate Intents for questions 2.1 and 2.2. Or is there a possiblity to keep the skill alive?

Answer 1

I'm going to first assume that you're using the alexa-sdk during your development. If you don't know that that is, please check out this link:
https://github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs
There are multiple ways you can break up questions to your skill in your intent schema. They can either be individual intents, such as "QuestionOneIntent" and "QuestionTwoIntent", or a single intent "QuestionIntent" where the slot values in those intents correspond to individual questions. As the original post hasn't given much information, I can't say which structure would be the best setup.
There are two general types of responses in the alexa-sdk. ":tell" will make Alexa say a response and immediately go back to her idle state (not listening to you). ":ask" will say a response, wait 8 seconds, and follow up with a reprompt message all while waiting for you to give another command.
As for keeping the session alive in a conversation, you could simply emit your response by using
var speechOutput = "This is the answer to Question"
var speechOutputReprompt = "Do you have any more questions?"
this.emit(":ask", speechOutput, speechOutputReprompt)
This will allow for your session to stay open and the user can continue to ask more questions. You will have to make another intent that will close the session if you answer "No" to the reprompt, thus making the shouldEndSession variable true. Here is an example of how I might structure the code:
"QuestionIntent": function(){
var responseName = ""
var slots = this.event.request.intent.slots
for (var slot in slots){
if(slots[slot].value != undefined){
responseName = slots[slot].name;
switch(responseName){
case "QuestionOneIntent":
var QuestionOneAnswer = "Answer to question one";
this.emit(":tell", QuestionOneAnswer);
break;
case "QuestionTwoIntent":
var QuestionTwoAnswer = "Answer to question two";
this.emit(":ask", QuestionTwoAnswer, QuestionTwoAnswerReprompt);
break;
default:
console.log("error");
break;
}
}
}
}

Answer 2

Looks like you are using single-turn interactions (i.e. you don't keep the session open, check shouldEndSession https://www.npmjs.com/package/alexa-app). Regardless, you need to either save the current state in the session object or store it somewhere else (tied to the unique request.userId).
Using different intents may be another solution but its prone to fail if you have similar utterances that may be incorrectly mis-mapped to one another.