UPDATE: Google has stopped this Community Program but the tutorial has been kept for educational purposes

You can visit this blog post to know more about the Google Developer Community Program. This post will only cover the detailed tutorial.

 You can make any type of application you want to, but here I am going to choose to a simple Trivia Quiz app for which a template is already provided by Google. I am describing the full process with the emails you will receive for Redeeming the T-Shirt and the Cloud credits($200/month for a year)

Actions on Google Console
  • Click on Add/Import Project to create a new project. The Add project window appears.
  • Select which language you want your Action to support. You can add additional languages later on if you’d like; this decision isn’t final.
  • Give the project a name and click on Create Project. For this demo, I am going to make a trivia quiz on Google itself, so I have the name “Google Quiz”.
  • Under More options near the bottom of the page, pick Templates.
  • Click on the Trivia option. You’ll now be taken to an Overview page where you can enter information about your Action.
  • Click Build > Actions, followed by Add your first action.
  • In the Create Action window, you should see the Trivia option appear. Click Build.
  • In the Personality section, select one of the available personality options(Regal Queen, Mr. Montgomery, Beeps the Robot) and click Next. Each personality has different spoken prompts and sound effects that users hear as they play the game.
  • In the content section, click on Bulk upload the content for your Action using Google Sheets. You will see the following prompt:
  • Update the Configuration tab of the sheet with the name of your Action. You can further customize your game by optionally assigning a difficulty and/or category to each question, and provide custom sounds via audio URLs. For more information on custom configuration options, see the configuration parameters section.
  • When you finish filling out the sheet with the questions and their respective answers, click on Share and click on “Get Sharable Link” and copy it. Go back to the Actions Console and click Next to move on to the Connect Sheet step. You can see my sample spreadsheet in the photo here:
  • Paste your Google Sheet’s URL into the Add your sheet’s URL to upload your content field and click Upload:
  • Click on Upload. It will then validate and show you something like this:
  • Click on “CREATE APP” button and you will get to the following screen now:

You can click on “Test your Action” button and see your app working on a Google Assistant Simulator.  Currently the invocation is “My Test App” so you can even take out your phone and if it has the same Google Account signed in, fire up the Google Assistant and say “Talk to My Test App” and your app will be invoked and the quiz you made can be played. Yes, it’s that easy 🙂

Now we are very less steps far from submitting the application to Google for review. Please keep atleast 30-40 good questions in your quiz app for it to be not rejected in the first trial. You can always submit the app later but it’s good to be safe 🙂

Submit your Action

When the Actions section is complete and you have tested your Action, you may submit your Action to Google for review. If your Action is approved, it will be available to Assistant users.

To submit your Action, do the following:

  1. Go to the Overview page for your project in the Actions Console.
  2. Navigate to Setup > Invocation.
    • Invocation name: Enter your Action’s invocation name. This name is how users invoke your Action.
    • Directory title: Enter your Action’s name for the directory. This name is presented to users in the Assistant Directory.
    • Google Assistant voice: Pick which voice you would like your Action to use. You can hear audio samples of each voice on the Languages and Locales page.
  3. Navigate to Deploy > Directory information.
  1. Details: Add your Action’s introduction, short description, and a full description that clearly explains what the Action is used for and what it does. You also need to add useful sample invocations,
  2. Images: Add two images, one for the banner and one for the logo.
  3. Contact details: Add an email contact. Our review team uses this email address to give feedback on your Action. Users can also see this email address to contact you.
  4. Privacy and Consent: Add the URL to your Action’s privacy policy. The privacy policy explains how you handle user data and appears publicly.
  5. Category: Select the most appropriate category for your Action to live under in the Assistant Directory.
  6. For Families: If you would like your Action to be targeted to kids and families, select Yes.
  7. Alcohol and Tobacco: If your Action references alcohol or tobacco at all, select Yes.
  8. Testing Instructions: Add any specific testing instructions if required. These are only visible to our review team. Generally, for Actions that you build with the trivia template, you can leave this blank.
  9. Transaction: Template Actions don’t perform Transactions, so you can leave this blank.
  10. Navigate to Deploy > Release.
  11. If there are any error messages on the top, you should follow the instructions provided to address the issue. Otherwise, click Submit for production.

That’s all guys! I hope you have learnt something new :). As always, here we aim to please 😀

By the way, here is how the T-Shirt looks like

E-mail when the Quiz is approved:

Here is the e-mail one will receive when the app is successfully enrolled for the Developer Program


Categories: Uncategorized