How to Name your Alexa Routines

I noticed recently in my Alexa app, that Amazon has enabled the ability to name your routines!  This functionality was somehow lost in the first releases of the software and made organization of the routines a nightmare.  All of the routines would just list in a haphazard way showing you the same trigger events for all of them.  As of app version  2.2307017 though, you can now give your routines a meaningful name in the app.  This means when you go back to edit or create a new one, you will see the naming field along with triggers and actions.

Such a small enhancement but gives a ton of functionality into routines.  I use Home Assistant for almost all of my Home Automations but I still use some routines for actual device control.  One great example of that is to control the volume of the Echo devices based on time.  This way speaking with Alexa at night doesn’t return with a blaring response from her.  So at 9am, we change the default volume from 3 to 6 and then at 9pm, we lower it back down to 3.  Of course we can still use whisper mode for REALLY late nights but in general the house is quieter as the night stretches on so this type of time based volume management is useful.

Happy Automating!
–Carlo