Linking Your Calendar to Alexa

You can link your calendar to Amazon Echo and then ask Alexa about your upcoming schedule.  She can guide you as to upcoming events and time, for today or a specific day in the future.  For non-specific requests, such as "What's my schedule this week?" or "What's on my calendar?", she'll provide the next few events.

Why do this?  Well, it's certainly not top-of-the-list for usefulness, but it can be easier than pulling out your phone to check.  And if your hands are full, in the middle of something, hands-free can be just the thing.  And, as with all things Echo, for the elderly and disabled it can be a game changer.

First off, you do have to have a Google Calendar with your events.  This is the biggest drawback.  Google Calendar can sync with other calendars, such as your iOS Calendar, but these synced events are not picked up by Alexa in my tests.

Google Calendar is easy to use.  Here is a link to a tutorial.

Assuming you have a Google Calendar (or plan on setting one up shortly), here are the steps to link Echo and your calendar. 

Start by opening your Alexa app. Tap on Settings and choose Calendar.

Note you have no Google Calendar linked.  Tap the Google Calendar white box.

You'll see your name.  Tap "Link Google Calendar account".

Sign in to Google with your Google email id and password.

Tap Allow to give Alexa permission to interface with your Google data.

That's all there is to it!  You can now query your calendar by voice.

Alexa defaults to your Music Library

I was puzzled by my Echo's selection of music when I first started using it.  I wanted to sample the New Age music genre, of which there are dozens and dozens of songs amidst Amazon's Prime Music.  But when I would ask Alexa to "Play New Age", only one song, the same song, would ever play.  How odd.

Then I realized what was happening.  I assumed "Play New Age" meant play new age songs from Prime Music.  But no.  If you have a music library on Amazon (I did) that's the first place Alexa looks unless you tell her otherwise.  I had exactly one New Age song in my music library, and that's what kept playing!  Echo's default, unless you specify otherwise, is your own music.

When I told Alexa to "Play New Age from Prime" she pulled music from the intended place - Prime Music.

Moral of the story: if you have overlapping artists/genres, etc between your library and Prime Music, you may have to add to your verbal request where the music should come from. Otherwise if you have one Adele song, even though Prime may have 99, "Play Adele" will get you pretty sick of your one song...

How to Use Alexa for Amazon purchases

You can make Amazon purchases with your Echo device, merely by telling Alexa what you want. This is a cool feature, but it's hard to find good documentation on how it works. Here's my experience from a few tests.

This feature only applies to reorders -- purchasing again something you have ordered in the past -- i.e. the item can be found in your Amazon Order History.
If you try to order something new this is what happens:

Me: "Alexa, reorder Purple Shoes"
Alexa: "I didn’t find that in your past orders, so I've added Purple Shoes to your shopping list."

First test

To test a valid reorder, I decided to order again this shoehorn:

Me: "Alexa, reorder a Long Metal Shoe Horn."
Alexa: "Long metal shoe horn - the order total is $13.99."
Alexa: "Should I order it?"
Me: "Yes"
Alexa: "OK, order placed. See the Alexa app for more details."

The Alexa app then shows the result of the order, and it will also be in your Amazon order history looking like any other normal order.

Second test

To test a slightly more complicated request, I asked for a reorder of contact lens solution. First, I didn't use the complete product title, only a few words from the title. Secondly, I had multiple orders of this item in my past order history.

Here's the item:

Here's how she handled it:

Me: "Alexa, reorder Optimum Cleaning Solution."
Alexa: "I found several matching items in your order history."
Alexa: "First matching item: order total is $12.24. Should I order it?"
Me: "Yes"
Alexa: "Order placed."

I found this to be a practical, useful Echo function, albeit with the reorder limitation. And if you know what you want, it's quick and easy.