It’s going to be a very strange Christmas. Without the possibility of being able to meet as a family, technology will come as a salvation by way of videoconferencing, and that Amazon knows. For this reason, the company has decided to include a feature for its Echos that many have long expected: group calls.
Talk to family thanks to Alexa
The new function incorporated by Amazon in its virtual assistant allows you to create voice and video calls between several people at the same time. So you can talk to your loved ones no matter where they are, only needing an Echo device and an Amazon account to establish the connection. The process is so simple that you will only have to recite a simple command to create the group call, however, first you will have to configure some aspects, and that is exactly what we are going to explain.
What Echo devices are supported?
Since calls can be made by both voice and video call, the supported Echo devices are as follows:
- Threw out
- Echo Dot
- Echo Show
- Fire TV Cube
As you can see, it does not matter that the device does not have an integrated camera, since the call can also be by voice. Even so, devices with a screen such as the Echo Show 5, ECho Show 8 and Echo Show 10 offer the possibility of generating video conferences with which to be able to see the face on the other side of the camera, so it is an interesting point to consider. when choosing one device or another.
How can I call multiple contacts at the same time through Alexa?
The secret of this new function will be in the creation of user groups. Now, from the Alexa application, you can create groups of contact groups and use them to directly call several at the same time. Thus, if you create the Family group incorporating several members, just by saying “Alexa, call the family”, your Echo device will create a group call automatically without having to do anything else.
The process that you must complete is the following:
- Make sure to create a user group.
- To do this, enter contacts, click on the three points and click on Add group.
- All the contacts that have Alexa will appear, and you will only have to choose the ones you want to be part of the group.
- Click on Continue.
- Define the group name so you can easily identify it.
You already have your group created, so now you just have to launch the command for Alexa to generate the call between all the members. To do this, tell Alexa the following: “Alexa, call [group name]”, and Alexa will begin to create the call between the same group that is part of it.
Keep in mind that for the call to be made, the person receiving the call must go off-hook, so not all of them may appear on the screen or on the call if they don’t go off-hook.
