alexa-aftership

Unofficial Alexa Skill for AfterShip Shipment Tracking Platform

Disclaimer

The is an unofficial skill meaning it should only be used for personal usage. I do not have any affiliations with AfterShip or Amazon.

Introduction

This skill provides package tracking information using the AfterShip shipment tracking platform API. The information provided is location-aware based on the Echo device configured location country and postal code. All of the location information is normalized via the Google Maps Geocoding API.

It is leveraging the Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (ASK CLI) to streamline the deployment process.

Prerequisites

You need an AWS account and an Amazon developer account to create an Alexa Skill.

In order to use the ASK CLI features to automatically deploy and manage your Lambda skill, ensure that you have AWS credentials set up with the appropriate permissions on the computer to which you are installing ASK CLI, as described in Set Up Credentials for an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Account.

You will have to install the latest ASK CLI, and then configure it:

npm install -g ask-cli
ask configure

By default, the ASK CLI deploys the skill resources in the us-east-1 region. You will need to change your deploy region based on the skill language you are planning to use. You should refer to the table below, based on the smart home multi-languages development guidelines:

Skill Language	Endpoint Region	Deploy Region
English (CA), English (US)	North America	us-east-1
English (UK)	Europe	eu-west-1
English (IN)	India	eu-west-1
English (AU)	Far East	us-west-2

To change your deploy region, update the awsRegion skill infrastructure user config parameter in ask-resources.json.

Credentials

AfterShip

It is important to note that AfterShip has moved the tracking API functionality behind a paywall. That functionality requires at least the Essentials plan unless your existing account was migrated to the legacy Starter plan.

To get tracking information, you need to generate a AfterShip API Key associated to your account.

Google Maps

Access to Google Maps API requires to setup a key. This access is necessary for the skill location features. The total number of requests for this skill should easily be covered by the free tier level. To set this up, please follow these instructions:

1. Create a project or use an existing one on your Google Cloud Resource Manager Console. If this is your first time using this service, you will be prompted to setup your account by agreeing to Google Cloud Platform's terms and conditions and provide billing information.

   

2. Once the project is selected, enable the Google Maps Geocoding API and Google Maps Time Zone API services.

   

3. Create an API key credentials by clicking the "Create credentials" blue button and selecting "API key" from the dropdown menu.

   

   The new API key created will show in a popup window as displayed below. Click on the restrict button to customize it.

   

   In the key restrictions section, add the two APIs services enabled above in the API restrictions tab. Unfortunately, there isn't much that can be done to restrict the key even at the application level though Google is strongly recommending to do so.

   

Deployment

1. Configure the deployment parameters in ask-resources.json:

   • Required Parameters

     Parameter	Description
     AfterShipApiKey	Your AfterShip API key.
     GoogleMapsApiKey	Your Google Maps API key.

   • Optional Parameters

     Parameter	Description
     LambdaDebug	Set to true to enable debug mode
     LocationDefaultCountry	Set your country if not located in the United States.
     LocationDefaultTimezone	Set your time zone TZ name if not located in the US/Eastern time zone.
     AfterShipDaysPastDelivered	Number of days since delivered packages are still included in results. (Default: 1)
     AfterShipDaysSearch	Number of days since tracking created search query limit. AfterShip only stores data up to 90 days. (Default: 30)
     AfterShipNoteTagging	Filter tracking items based on specific tag(s) part of the AfterShip note field. This can be a regexp. (Default: disabled)
     AfterShipTrackingCountLimit	Maximum number of tracking items returned per query. (Default: 20)
     NotificationMuteFootnotes	Mute skill location related error notifications at the end of the speech output. (Default: disabled)
     NotificationScheduleRate	Proactive event notification check schedule rate in minutes. (Default: 30)

2. Deploy the skill and all AWS resources in one step:

   ask deploy

3. In your Alexa app, go to More > Skills & Games, find the AfterShip List Sync skill under Your Skills > Dev tab and enable it. Make sure that the "Device Country and Postal Code", and "Alexa Notifications" permissions are granted.

4. That should be it! Now, just say to your favorite Echo device: "Alexa, ask aftership where's my stuff". If you have any errors, please check the lambda function logs. If necessary, you can enable the function debug mode, to increase the log verbosity, by setting the LambdaDebug deployment parameter to true.