Create A Google Assistant App That Use Your Server

The Google Assistant give users their own personal Google that helps them find, organize, and get things done in their world. The main way users interact with the Google Assistant is by carrying on a conversation with it. You can extend the Google Assistant by building apps that let users get things done with your products and services.

In this post, we are going to build a new app for the Google Assistant that will give us the current bitcoin price. The main idea here is to show how to use external services from an Assistant app.

If you prefer a video, you can watch the one below:

and I also wrote a code lab so you could test it on your own with code.

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How to Build a Google Assistant App?

Apps for the Google Assistant are the gateway for your users to engage with your services through Google Home, Android phones, iPhones, and in the future, through every experience where the Google Assistant is available.

Actions On Google – GDD Europe

Google Developer Days (GDD) are global events showcasing the latest developer products and platforms from Google. It’s like Google I/O but not in California. It was a fun event and we had the chance to meet many developers and talk about interesting challenges and opportunities.

We just finished this talk on “Actions on Google – Why? What?” at Google Developer Summit and you can find the slides and the video recording below.

 

 

Like with any new platform, the first question you might have is why?
In this case, it will be something like “Why do I need an assistant app? I already have a native and a mobile app”, right?

Here are few points to keep in mind:

How To Pass The Google Assistant App Review?

After you build your Assistant App it is time to submit it for review and publish it to the world. You should test your app and make sure that it’s ready for prime time.

When you submit your app, Google’s reviewers use and test it to find issues, bugs, or policy violations. To ensure a quick approval, you should use this checklist and… keep reading.

In this post, we will focus on 4 aspects that are important to ensure your app will pass the review quickly and be a success story.

Natural Language Processing Tools

The powerful thing we got these days is the option to choose the best tool for the job. When it comes to building our new Google Assistant App or any other type of bot, we should use a natural language processing (NLP) tool.

Here are the tools I found for NLP:

• API.AI – This tool give users new ways to interact with your product by building engaging voice and text-based conversational apps. It also use machine learning to understand what users are saying (NLP) and it got a very nice set of integration you can leverage. You can deploy your bot to: Google Assistant, Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Skype, Viber, Kik, Cortana, Alexa and Facebook Messenger.

Ether Info – A New Google Assistant App

What is an Assistant App?

In case you aren’t familiar with assistant apps, it is Google’s conversational software for helping you get things done in your world.

It is the culmination of all of Google’s research in AI, ML and NLP. It runs on various devices, including the Google Home, as well as many Android and iOS devices.

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a digital currency invented in 2013 — a full 4 years after the release of Bitcoin. It has since grown to be the second largest digital currency in the world by market cap — around $20 billion, compared to Bitcoin’s $40 billion. Btw, here is a short intro video I made on Bitcoin.

Ethereum uses its blockchain to record state transitions in a gigantic distributed computer. Ethereum’s corresponding digital currency, ether, is essentially a side effect of powering this massive computer. To put it another way, Ethereum is literally a computer that spans the entire world. Anyone who runs the Ethereum software on their computer is participating in the operations of this world-computer, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Because the EVM was designed to be Turing-complete, it can do almost anything that can be expressed in a computer program.

Resources For Action On Google Developers

Here is a list of good resources you can use if you are building a new assistant app or any other Action on Google.
If you love to jump into code and try it for yourself, jump to the code labs section below or just browse (and clone) our samples on Github.

Google Home and Google Assistant	Google Home Google Assistant
Videos about Conversation Actions	Building Assistant Actions using API.AI Introduction to Conversation Actions and building your first assistant app
Documentation and tools	Actions on Google documentation Resources for designers and how to improve you voice design API.AI – Start with this tool that will save you a lot of work with its NLP capabilities. Web simulator – When it’s time to test your new app, this simulator will help you a lot. It’s easy to use it and you can try to talk (and not just type) to it and see what will be the results in the real world. Code samples – You can take some ideas and best practices from these examples.
Ask Questions	Stack Overflow (actions-on-google) – We have a great community in Stack Overflow. They are true expert and it’s a great place to ask for help. Actions on Google Developers G+ Community – This is a growing community (~3k members). You can share knowledge and keep yourself updated on the rapid changes we see in this technology platform. @actionsongoogle – Yes! We are on twitter as well. Please don’t be a stranger.
Code labs	https://bit.ly/aog-bitcoin-codelab – A code lab that will show you how to leverage API.AI and your own servers (with web hooks). You can also try the code. https://bit.ly/aog-animal-codelab – A code lab that is short and sweet and as a bonus you might find some good jokes. https://codelabs.developers.google.com/?cat=Assistant
Samples	Actions on Google at GitHub with lots of NodeJS examples.

Building Conversational Experiences With Actions On Google

Here are the slides that I used this week in two events. It gives you a good overview of what can be done these days with Assistant Apps.

What is an Assistant App?

The Google Assistant is Google’s conversational software for helping you get things done in your world. It is the culmination of all of Google’s research in AI, ML and NLP. It runs on various devices, including the Google Home which launched in 2017, as well as many Android and iOS devices.

Actions on Google is the third-party platform for the Google Assistant, allowing you, the developer to manage a conversation between your service and the user.

An interesting times!