Aliases in Assist

Configuration Voice Assistant
1

I thought I’d got to grips with Assist and its foibles :grin:, but the Aliases I’ve applied to certain entities don’t seem to be working. Either that, or I’ve completely misunderstood the way Aliases work.

I have an Area called En-Suite Bathroom within which I have a switch switch.en_suite_switch_left that has the name “En Suite Light” and controls the light in the En-Suite Bathroom. The first time I asked Assist to “turn off the en suite light” it happily turned off the correct light. However, on multiple ocassions, if it doesn’t quite catch what I’m saying, it responds by making reference to the E-N suite. So I applied the alias “on suite light” to the switch entity and Assist still refers to it as the E-N suite. Would I be right in thinking that it is getting that name from the Area name and I would therefore need to apply a suitable alias to the Area?

2

It should be getting the name from whichever entity you have exposed to Assist - presumably the switch. I don’t think the area would come into it.

You may have run foul of the fact that “en suite” is actually French so it doesn’t recognise the phrase. To make it toggle the right switch you could add another alias “E-N switch”.

I’m not sure what you can do about the reply, though. Assist seems to have a few blips like this - mine can’t pronounce the word “partly” (as in “partly cloudy”) - it always comes out as “part-lie”.

3

Alexa tts is the same. I templated it to change “partlie cloudy” to “partlay cloudy”