Business Strategy

17 Alexa Skills To Jump Start Your Productivity

placeholder

17 Alexa Skills To Jump Start Your Productivity

 

If you already have Alexa, you’re probably using it for playing music, setting alarms, checking the weather or asking random questions. But did you know that there are Alexa skills that can boost your company’s productivity? Let’s start!

Web design White Echo Dot Amazon

 

  • Manage Your Emails With Astrobot

Astrobot helps you manage your Gmail or Office 365 email by telling you how many new priority emails you have and helps you read, reply to and manage your inbox.
If you’re in a hurry, you can ask Alexa to categorize your emails into Priority Inbox, which includes emails from people you interact with. When you ask Alexa to read only emails from Priority Inbox, you avoid spending time listening to newsletters and promotional mails.

The idea of Astrobot is to also give quick responses to emails – just say a short phrase from the list of Quick Replies, and Astrobot will confirm the response and send an email. For example, if you say “running late”, Astrobot will respond with: “Sorry, I’m running a little late. Be there shortly”. This is a list of quick replies that are available at the moment:

-“Yes”

-“Sounds good”

-“No”

-“Thanks”

-“Out of the office”

-“On my way”

-“Running late”

-“Running 15 minutes late”

-“End of day”

-“Back to you”.

 

If you’re in a hurry, but you want to reply to some email later during the day, you can just say Snooze or Star. Also, if you don’t want to get back to some email, you can say Delete or Archive.

 

  • Real-Time Data Briefing with Voice Metrics

Voice Metrics connects your data and apps with Alexa to make your information available by voice, anywhere and anytime. You’re interested about your business results for today? Just ask.

Voice Metrics takes real-time data briefing and customizes it to whatever business data you want to know about today. The skill can be integrated with Google Sheets, Slack, or any other data source. If you want to know more about sales, orders, customers, inventory status or department updates – just ask. Convenient, you must agree.

 

  • Conference Manager by Vonage

 

Vonage built the Conference Manager, an Alexa skill that syncs with Google Calendar to identify your next conference call and save you the hassle of dialing it. Conference Manager scans your calendar, dials the conference number, enters your meeting or participant code, and then calls you through your Alexa-enabled device. All you have to do is say: “Start my call”.

 

  • Add Events to Your Google Calendar with Quick Events

 

QuickEvents allows Alexa to add events to your primary Google Calendar. It checks for conflicting events, and asks for confirmation before adding your event. When scheduling events, you can provide relative dates, such as “tomorrow” or “next thursday”, or you can provide a specific date. If you don’t specify the length of event (“at 9:00 p.m. for three hours” or “from 8:30 a.m. until 11:00 a.m.”), events will be scheduled for 50 minutes. QuickEvents can also support multi-day events or all day events.

QuickEvents is very flexible, so you can provide all the information about your event at once: “Alexa, tell QuickEvents to add a meeting with Tom Brody tomorrow at 9 a.m.”

If you don’t provide all the information needed to schedule the event, Alexa will ask you for it. Here’s the example of a conversation:

 

You: “Alexa, launch QuickEvents.”

Alexa: “What would you like to add to your calendar?”

You: “Add meeting with Tom Brody.”

Alexa: “For what day should I schedule the event?”

You: “For Tomorrow.”

Alexa: “At what time should I schedule the event?”

You: “At 9:00 p.m.”

 

QuickEvents will save you the trouble of checking and organizing your Google Calendar daily. You know you need this in your life.

 

  • Manage Your Tasks with Task Master

 

Do you use Wunderlist to manage your tasks? Than you’d want to have a Task Master skill for Alexa!

Quickly review your task lists, find out what is due and add tasks. Wouldn’t it be nice to just ask: “Alexa, ask Task Master what is due today” and get the answers instantly?

 

  • Chat Bot for Slack

 

While the popular collaboration app doesn’t have an official Alexa skill, a Chat Bot for Slack is a decent replacement. Once enabled, the skill allows you to post to Slack by simply saying our message and the channel into which you want your message to be posted. For example, “Alexa, tell Chat Bot I want to post ‘I’m running late’ to the #status channel.”

 

  • Edit Google Documents with Edit Docs

 

Another app that doesn’t have an official Alexa Skill, but with Edit Docs you can add brief ideas to a Google document. It also has the ability to list your last ten used files and create a file. Edit Docs needs to sync with your Gmail account and Google Drive.

Do not let all those bright ideas go to waste, just tell them to Alexa and you will have them on your Google Drive forever!

 

  • Manage Notifications on Your Phone with Mastermind

 

Mastermind is probably one of the most useful Alexa skills available at the moment. It allows you to:

-Send and receive SMS text messages,

-Make Phone calls,

-Find your phone,

-Get Caller ID,

-Read and manage all app notifications whether they come from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Email, Netflix, YouTube or any other app,

-Cast to Chromecast,

-Get phone battery charge, data usage stats and app usage stats,

-Turn on Wifi, Bluetooth and Do-Not-Disturb,

-Launch Mobile Apps,

-Start Google Maps navigation,

-Send articles from your phone and personal computer to Alexa to read aloud,

-See your phone’s notifications, text messages, and phone calls on your personal computer and more.

Due to high demand, the skill is currently in closed beta. When you enable the skill, you will be added to a waitlist. Worth waiting for, we’re sure!

 

  • Post to LinkedIn with CheckedIn

 

If you work in marketing or in recruitment, you will love this skill! If there’s anything that you want to tell your Linkedin contacts, but you have your hands full with something else, just ask Alexa to do it for you. With CheckedIn, you can ask Alexa to update your feed with new insight, status change or a quote.

 

  • Real-Time Website Updates with Web Analytics

 

Visiting your website analytics page repeatedly to see how many visitors your website or blog is getting? This Alexa skill is your solution!

Web Analytics uses information from Google Analytics to tell your website’s visitor traffic information. You can ask Alexa to give you real-time website visitor traffic as often as you need it.

 

  • Manage Expenses with Expense Tracker

 

Expense tracking is paramount for every business, and the Expense Tracker skill creates a financial overview and manage expenses. At this point, it’s more personal than business-focused – for example, you can track expenses for clothes, food, fun, household and work. If you want to track something specific, you can easily create a new category.

Alexa can also give you a summary of all your spending per category, just say: “Alexa, ask Expense Tracker for my report.”

 

  • Manage Your Logistics with Rhino Fleet Tracking

 

Do you have a business that deals with the logistics of drivers, deliveries and shipment tracking? Rhino Fleet Tracking skill will save you a lot of time! You can ask Alexa for the locations of your vehicles or drivers. You can also use this skill to assign drivers to vehicles and to search for drivers that are on specific locations.

You can ask things like:
– “Alexa, ask Rhino where are my devices?”

– “Alexa, tell Rhino to list my drivers.”

– “Alexa, ask Rhino where Steve is.”

– “Alexa, ask Rhino where Jeep is.”

– “Alexa, ask Rhino who is at the Office?”

– “Alexa, ask Rhino to assign driver Steve to device Jeep.”

 

  • Manage Your E-Commerce Store with Shopify

 

If you have an e-commerce business that uses Shopify to sell products, then you can easily get an Alexa skill that will help you manage the shop. Currently, the store lets you ask for:

-Business summary,

-Orders and sales,

-Information about your orders,

-List of products that need to be fulfilled,

-A summary of your best selling products,

-The average value of your orders over a period and

-A breakdown of your store visitors.

Some of the questions you can ask:

– “Alexa, ask Shopify to tell me about my store this month.”

– “Alexa, ask Shopify for my order.”

– “Alexa, ask Shopify which products need fulfillment.”

– “Alexa, ask Shopify what my best selling products are this month.”

– “Alexa, ask Shopify for my analytics.”

 

  • Create Notes with Daily Log

 

If you’re watching Suits, then you know that Louis Litt would use this Alexa skill a lot! Daily Log is a dictation assistant that allows you to dictate one sentence at a time, and saves all those sentences in a single log entry. If you want to create notes, journal entries or just quickly capture ideas, then you should get this skill.

Speak each sentence or phrase, then pause for a breath while Alexa “writes it down”. When she’s done, you’ll hear a subtle “beep”, meaning that you can now continue.

 

  • Track Your Time with Work Time Tracker

 

Do you use hourly rates to bill your clients? Or maybe you’re tracking time to increase the productivity of your processes? Use the Work Time Tracker skill to track your time by asking the skill to start tracking your work and to stop when you are done. If you want to know how much time you spent working on a project, just ask Alexa for the sum of all tracked work units.

 

  • Find services with Intently.co

 

As a business owner, you never know when you might need an electrician, a plumber or any other service. With Intently.co skill, you can have access to more than 1 million service providers. Just ask Alexa for a handyman, and it will connect you with qualified service providers in your location within minutes.

 

  • Learn new skills with Skill Finder

 

And lastly, the best way to increase productivity with Alexa is to search for Alexa’s newest and top skills. When you enable the Skill Finder, Alexa will tell you about the new Skill of the Day. Other than that, you can ask about the newest skills and the top skills in Alexa catalog.

Web design Amazon White Echo dot

Recommended

Get weekly marketing tips and guides.

user
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more