Alexa Portal —> in need of backup capability **UDI

[dbwarner5]

I recently had an issue with the portal/polyglot/Isy communication whereas I had to delete my ISY from the Portal and re-add it. As a result in this whole process I lost close to 100 verbal Alexa commands from the portal.NOT A GOOD DAY.

This has led me to the discovery that there is no decent way to export and reimport your “Alexa file”, putting at risk the key interface I now use with Isy. 

My ISY is the BACKBONE of my home automation, however Alexa has become the daily user interface for it. I have seriously not touched a light switch, fan switch, stereo switch, fireplace switch etc, in months. To not be able to back up this part of my automation system is a serious hole, that I just learned the hard way to deal with. I cant stress the importance that Alexa has become to my successful ISY interface and therefore why backup of this link is SO CRITICAL to have. 

Likewise, I also use a large amount of “Routines” in the Alexa app. When the Isy/Alexa interface went away, any Isy related calls from these routines also went away and had to be redone. This is yet another but  different hole in my whole automation process that is Amazon based. 

**UDI, @Michel Kohanimcan you add to your improvement list, a way to export a users Alexa / google home / etc settings from the portal, in a way that they can be re-imported? You currently have a CSV export which I have done now to at least have a manual list to reference. 

For others who may find themselves in this land of purgatory of a lost Isy on the portal, this was the process I finally figured out to recover my Alexa commands. Starting from zero would have been weeks of “remembering” all the things I had done. 

Process for recovery:

1)open the Alexa web page interface on a browser and do a copy from Alexa web page and paste into  a spreadsheet. Do this for both scenes and devices. This will give you the total list of “devices” and spoken commands that Alexa has, of which any Isy related ones wont work.

2) use this list to reenter them into portal. The list has Isy addresses so confirmation of the same scene / switch is easy.

3)once the new ones are in the portal,  delete the old ones from Alexa’s web page via web browser BEFORE doing any discovery. This makes it easy as ALL the Isy related items need to be deleted

4) After all the old ones are deleted, then ask Alex to re-discover and all the “new” commands from the Portal will go back into the Alexa.

5) lastly, any routines in the Alexa app on your mobile device will need to be revisited. Ones that relied on an Isy variable need to be redefined, as wil any calling an old Isy device. The routines will all be there, but often with blank fields after the above delete. 

Current best back up process is to export the CSV file, but ALSO, do another copy paste from the Alexa web page for both devices and switch, as their format is a bit easier for reading and re-entering manual per above. 

Let me know anyone if you have a different / better experience or suggestions for future. 

Thanks,

[jec6613]

I'm not sure about the portal interface, but when using the Polyglot/Hue Emulator combination to expose them, the spoken name is tagged in the Spoken note of the ISY itself, which gets backed using ordinary methods.