As I’m sure some people have seen on the thread about the Alexis skill for ISY and some issues people are having, I had a long conversation with Amazon and they confirmed that the Alexa+ does not play well with some of the third-party skills. Especially with home automation.  
 

I had a few lights that were not responding to Alexa commands and also I have the Harmony hub app and that stopped working as well  

 

After talking with them, I had customer service. Take me off Alexa.+ and bring it back to the regular Alexa. As soon as that happened, everything started working normally again.  
 

If anyone looks at the other thread, I copied what they said in their text and posted it there. 

Harmony hub will work with Alexa+. I had to remove the Harmony skill and relink it to my Alexa account and it works without issues now.

I briefly upgraded to Alexa+, only to quickly discover the MobiLinc and Lorex camera skills stopped working. I simply asked Alexa to uninstall Alexa+ via a voice command.

4 hours ago, tlightne said:

Harmony hub will work with Alexa+. I had to remove the Harmony skill and relink it to my Alexa account and it works without issues now.

I tried that multiple times under Alexa plus and it didn’t work. Why reverted back to standard everything was fine.. I’m glad it worked for you.

I changed to Alexa+ about a week ago.

Recently, voice commands seem intermittent - "Alexa, turn on bedroom lights". Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Alexa makes the "ding dong" sound acknowledging the command but it's often not executed.

It might have started before Alexa+ but I don't recall to be certain.

Does anyone else have a similar experience with voice commands not executing at all or intermittently?

The scenes always work if I use the UD Mobile app so I don't think it's an Insteon communication issue.

Something new started today... Every command I give now responds with "The skill for <device name> hasn't upgraded to support the latest version of Alexa. You will no longer be able to use this device with Alexa starting November 4th". I think UD needs to create an updated skill ASAP that works with Alexa Plus.

8 hours ago, BILJ said:

Something new started today... Every command I give now responds with "The skill for <device name> hasn't upgraded to support the latest version of Alexa. You will no longer be able to use this device with Alexa starting November 4th". I think UD needs to create an updated skill ASAP that works with Alexa Plus.

@bmercier I have not had problems with Alexa so far. However I have not been asked or offered to upgrade my Alexa skills etc..

4 hours ago, larryllix said:

@bmercier I have not had problems with Alexa so far. However I have not been asked or offered to upgrade my Alexa skills etc..

Have you upgraded to Alexa+, the new AI version of Alexa? There are many reported problems using Alexa+ with other Smart Home skills developed for the original Alexa as well. Apparently there is a completely new paradigm in how to use AI to interact with devices, and they have a new set of Skill SDKs.

They are essentially saying that the traditional skills (like the current ISY skill) will only work with the original Alexa experience. It seems now that they are going to block use of these skills entirely on Alexa+ on November 4th (based on the message I get after every command I give to ISY).

I fear I will have to abandon Alexa+ and revert back to original Alexa experience.

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/2025/02/new-alexa-announce-blog

Edited October 30Oct 30 by BILJ

On 9/27/2025 at 10:20 PM, richtimpa said:

As I’m sure some people have seen on the thread about the Alexis skill for ISY and some issues people are having, I had a long conversation with Amazon and they confirmed that the Alexa+ does not play well with some of the third-party skills. Especially with home automation.  
 

I had a few lights that were not responding to Alexa commands and also I have the Harmony hub app and that stopped working as well  

 

After talking with them, I had customer service. Take me off Alexa.+ and bring it back to the regular Alexa. As soon as that happened, everything started working normally again.  
 

If anyone looks at the other thread, I copied what they said in their text and posted it there. 

I've been on Alexa+ for a few weeks now, and the ISY control worked most of the time, but now it's giving an explicit message that the skill has not been upgraded and will no longer work after November 4th.  I fear I will also need to revert back to regular Alexa again, if I want to keep using ISY skill.

4 hours ago, BILJ said:

Have you upgraded to Alexa+, the new AI version of Alexa? There are many reported problems using Alexa+ with other Smart Home skills developed for the original Alexa as well. Apparently there is a completely new paradigm in how to use AI to interact with devices, and they have a new set of Skill SDKs.

They are essentially saying that the traditional skills (like the current ISY skill) will only work with the original Alexa experience. It seems now that they are going to block use of these skills entirely on Alexa+ on November 4th (based on the message I get after every command I give to ISY).

I fear I will have to abandon Alexa+ and revert back to original Alexa experience.

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/2025/02/new-alexa-announce-blog

Strange ,I have not heard anything regarding Alexa+ before.

If there is any option I would likely stick with the old Alexa also.

AI garbage is why I dumped Google Home boxes, years ago (have about five in the junk box now). Every time I would ask GH to turn something on it would find every device with X in the name and attempt to turn it on at the same time. When I have 8 different colour names included in Bedroom light strip, turning them all on at the same time is impossible. AI doesn't belong in home automation. I don't need somebody else's logic controlling things for me randomly.

Guessing on meanings is not wanted in HA, only exact control names. AI guessing can be dangerous in some situations. Alexa used to ask "did you mean?" so I dumped my GH junk and went with Alexa in every room years back.

Guessing on meanings is not wanted in HA, only exact control names.

Agreed! Devices responding to predefined, specific names is to me the very definition of HA. Now iif we could just get Alexa to stop saying "A few things share that name"...

Edited November 1Nov 1 by landolfi

I have inconsistent problems with Alexa+ as well, with the UD Skill and other skills, like Roku. In one common problem, I will ask it to turn something on or off, and it will do it, but then it will say “device x is not responding.”

I know Alexa+ is still beta or pre-release, but I can’t imagine too many organizations in the world that have more resources to throw at something like this than Amazon. Why is Amazon’s progress here so painfully slow?!?

Edited November 1Nov 1 by Goose66

On 11/1/2025 at 2:09 PM, Goose66 said:

Why is Amazon’s progress here so painfully slow?!?

My understanding of Alexa+ is that it's only going to work on new(er) devices. Perhaps they're trying to figure out how it's going to impact those of us that have 1st/2nd gen stuff (or just stuff older than they want to support with Alexa+). I have two devices that would work with Alexa+, but I am avoiding it since I don't really like/trust Alexa enough to begin with. I don't want her to keep listening for follow up inputs when all I really need are timers and to turn things on/off randomly. It's this overreaching (over listening) aspect that Amazon is trying to make Alexa smarter by forcing users to use the follow-up that many probably turned off because it wasn't very useful when they first introduced it.

I might be in the minority of wanting/using the new Alexa+. It's clear (to me) if Amazon is implementing Alexa+ while not working with their partners/developers for all the skills essentially breaking the skills (that people have developed over the years) is not very good for any parties involved (Amazon/Developer/User).

If what @bmercier says is true that the V3 skill will work with Alexa+, but results users are having mixed results then I blame Amazon for breaking things. Sadly, many will come here (as they apparently have) and blame UD for not working with Alexa. Let's be sure to point the finger the right direction. Amazon is making a new offering while apparently not "breaking"/changing their API that developers use to make Skills. When the skill doesn't work why is it the developer's fault? The developer is only working off what Amazon is telling them that the skill would/"should" work.

Sadly, it's a never ending cycle these days. Things are trying to become smarter while not supporting things that just work now. Toss into it any little break in network/internet connection really blows stuff up quickly. Remember when we had to physically flip a switch to make a light come on? That never broke...why did anybody think it needed to be "fixed"?

Since Alexa+ is based on LLM, how cool would be if we could add our own system prompts that would stay in context. Like someone could say “when I issue a home automation or device command, first look for an exact match for the device name before searching for the best match in based on context” and it would keep that as a system prompt added to every spoken command.