Using WordPress Quizzes for Amazon Alexa Trivia Skills

This plugin package allows us to make a voice trivia quiz from selected quiz plugins. The idea for this was to make everything even simpler. You can make an Amazon Alexa skill for a multiple choice quiz and be done in less than 15 minutes. For that, we will firstly need Convoworks.

But what is Convoworks, and why do we need a plugin pack for it? Convoworks is a visual editor. You are defining a conversational service, for example, an Amazon Alexa skill, through the GUI. Some of the functionalities are Convo Trivia quizzes. Convoworks has two trivia templates that make making a voice trivia quiz easy. They have two elements regarding quizzes, one for the Quiz and Survey Master quizzes and the other one for the Open Trivia DB quizzes. You can read more about it here.

This plugin package adds more functionalities to the Trivia part of the plugin, adding three more adapter elements for quizzes from popular plugins: QuizCat, QuizMaker, and LifterLMS.

Why do we use plugin packages?

So, now that we know what Convoworks does let’s talk about why we would need a plugin package for it. Simply said, it makes our lives easier. Convoworks has a lot of elements, those elements are located on the left side of the interface, but maybe we need specific elements for easier usage of the service. That’s where plugin packages come in. We can import, for example, a package with additional elements.

How to use Convoworks?

Before we jump into the Trivia adapter package, we need to know how to exactly use Convoworks. If you are new to Convoworks, you need to check out Getting started with Convoworks. When you know how to use it, the process will be a lot simpler. If everything works, just to try out the if everything works, create a new service and select the Mini FIlm Trivia or Trivia Multiplayer template. If you already set up the Amazon Integration settings, you can go under Configuration and select Configure under Amazon Alexa and then save it.

Now Amazon Alexa will make skill, and you can try it out if it works.

If everything works well, you are good to go.

Trivia adapter package

The trivia adapter package is an addition to the current Convoworks WP plugin with three adapter elements for three popular quiz plugins. WordPress has a lot of quiz plugins, so the purpose of this package is to use some of those plugin quizzes on the existing Convoworks WP Plugin.

Those plugins are:

• Lifter LMS
• QuizCat
• Quiz Maker

Installation

The plugin is available on WordPress as well as on github as trivia-plugin-pack.

These are ways to set up this plugin:

1. Simply find the plugin on WordPress and install it, then activate it when it is installed.

2. Upload the zip file of the plugin through your WordPress site.

3. Manually extract the folder inside the zip file into your wp_content/plugins folder

   
   

You will also need to have composer installed (if you want to use the GitHub version of the plugin) so the plugin package will work. Simply open the Command Prompt and navigate to the directory where the plugin is installed, and run composer install. When you have done that, the plugin will have full functionality.

Usage

To use that package, we press the configure menu, and then we select the plugin pack we want to use. In this example trivia-adapter-pack.

When the package is turned on in the configure packages menu, then we can see, additionally to the convoworks-core package, there is the trivia-adapter-pack package.

Step by step quiz implementation

This step-by-step quiz implementation will allow you to make a quiz from any of the Quiz Adapter Elements (including QSM and OpenTDB). The QSM and OpenTDB adapters are located under the convo-trivia package on the left side of the UI while the QuizCat, Quiz Maker, and LifterLMS ones are under trivia-adapter-pack.

1. In the Convoworks WP Services, create a new service (e.g., Quiz Maker) with the Mini Film Trivia or Trivia Multiplayer template. We will use the Mini Film Trivia template for this.

   
   

   

2. When the service is created, in the configure menu, enable trivia-adapter-pack. Check the Usage fragment of the article.

3. Select the Fragments tab on the right and then select Load Questions.

   
   

   

4. Delete every element and place the Quiz Maker Adapter Element.

   
   

   

5. We must enter the Quiz Maker Quiz ID in the element (e.g., 2). The Quiz Maker Quiz ID is located in the Quiz Maker plugin under Quizzes.

   
   

   

After these steps, your service will work. Here is an image of the test view. On the right side, we can turn on the Debug, and we can see all the arrays with our questions and the answers and the correct answers.

Conclusion

Plugin packages are a great way to make our lives easier, and that’s why there will be plenty more. This package is a good example of how to extend Convoworks and a great way to show how you can make an easy task even easier.