multi user issue

[anthonylaizure86]

Happy New Years everyone. New Alexa user switching over from Google home. I'm running into a couple of small issues. I have setup 2 3rd gen dots with 2 users (me and my wife). I have my smart things account linked in fine and everything works ie app and voice. However, on my app, I can setup multi-speaker groups but my wife has that greyed out. Then on the other hand if I want to set up a routine for my door sensor to let me know its open if I set up the routine in my phone it doesn't work but if programmed in wife's phone it works. What gives.

Another small concern is that I found it strange that I set up everything in my phone, to begin with and then invited my wife to be in the household and had to set everything up again in hers. I figured it would mirror over all the rooms.

Any and all help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[buffaloquinn]

Is your wife logged into her own Amazon account?
If all devices (including phones) use the same Amazon account they should have the same devices, groups & routines available to them. Amazon (Alexa) will share all of this with household members but if they retain their own Amazon account on their device there are frequently issues or conflicts.
I resolved it by having my wife's Amazon account available (Alexa allows more than one) but having everything default to mine (main household account). If she needs to do something on her Amazon account (buy stuff for instance), she just needs to ask Alexa to switch accounts on the device she's using.

[anthonylaizure86]

She is logged in with her own email yes. I figured this would need to be done to be able to listen to music from 2 accounts. So should I remove her from the house hold and just log her into my account and will we be able to listen to our own music this way?

[buffaloquinn]

She is logged in with her own email yes. I figured this would need to be done to be able to listen to music from 2 accounts. So should I remove her from the house hold and just log her into my account and will we be able to listen to our own music this way?

A lot of people are having this problem with music accounts (Spotify, Pandora, Tunedin, whatever). Since Alexa Skills for each service accesses your Music's account by linking to your Amazon account, there really isn't a way around it at this point. If keeping your Music separate is more important than sharing devices (smarthome or otherwise) than you will need to keep both Amazon accounts active.
You can have each account access the same smarthome devices but you need to do the setup separately with each one.

[anthonylaizure86]

She is logged in with her own email yes. I figured this would need to be done to be able to listen to music from 2 accounts. So should I remove her from the house hold and just log her into my account and will we be able to listen to our own music this way?

A lot of people are having this problem with music accounts (Spotify, Pandora, Tunedin, whatever). Since Alexa Skills for each service accesses your Music's account by linking to your Amazon account, there really isn't a way around it at this point. If keeping your Music separate is more important than sharing devices (smarthome or otherwise) than you will need to keep both Amazon accounts active.
You can have each account access the same smarthome devices but you need to do the setup separately with each one.

Ok thank you. While I do want to have multi-user music I need for everything to work. I have delinked my wife from the household and reset everything up. Currently, under my phone, I have my settings correct and the routines work. So now I will just log her into my account correct? Telling Alexa it is me or her?

I wonder when there will be a fix for this. At some point, I had both of us capable of controlling music from each phone to different dots and we could each select what the other was listening to which was cool but I was not able to add routines in my phone just hers.

[buffaloquinn]

She is logged in with her own email yes. I figured this would need to be done to be able to listen to music from 2 accounts. So should I remove her from the house hold and just log her into my account and will we be able to listen to our own music this way?

A lot of people are having this problem with music accounts (Spotify, Pandora, Tunedin, whatever). Since Alexa Skills for each service accesses your Music's account by linking to your Amazon account, there really isn't a way around it at this point. If keeping your Music separate is more important than sharing devices (smarthome or otherwise) than you will need to keep both Amazon accounts active.
You can have each account access the same smarthome devices but you need to do the setup separately with each one.

Ok thank you. While I do want to have multi-user music I need for everything to work. I have delinked my wife from the household and reset everything up. Currently, under my phone, I have my settings correct and the routines work. So now I will just log her into my account correct? Telling Alexa it is me or her?

I wonder when there will be a fix for this. At some point, I had both of us capable of controlling music from each phone to different dots and we could each select what the other was listening to which was cool but I was not able to add routines in my phone just hers.

Add her to your household on Amazon first, then add her in the Alexa app household. Then you'll need to deregister any Echo devices that were registered to her account & reregister them under your account if you haven't already. Alexa does allow multiple Amazon accounts to be available, but only one active at a time. I have a Show & a Spot in addition to several Dots so some of this is accessable through on screen menus on the Echo devices.
I don't remember exactly how the setup works but you should end up with both Amazon accounts linked to Alexa and your devices. You can ask "Alexa, switch accounts" and it will announce the name of the account it is switching to. This is useful if she wants to order stuff with Alexa on her own Amazon account. Unfortunately, unless you've duplicated everything else (smarthome & Alexa devices on her account) she won't be able to control anything while she's in her own account.
I suspect somewhere along the line Amazon will allow multiple accounts to share setups in a household because it will be more profitable for them. As it is now, it actually discourages people from having separate Amazon accounts.

[anthonylaizure86]

We use the same account to order everything and have no issues with that. So I tried it again in this order. Redid the Echo's under me first, when to amazon adder her to the household, when to Alexa and invited her. At that point, I was back to not being able to control the routines and the multi-speaker feature was gone. 

[asianrocker]

I would just not touch that invite  feature. Just log in to the account you want to use.

I never felt the need for multi anything on Alexa. So I really don't have hands on experience but reading a lot of problems here. I just let my husband put the Alexa enabled speaker he bought on his phone. And the echo we have.on.my.phone.

[kenf]

For the Routine part of the problem, it stems with Alexa registering Routines and devices by account.

So I setup all the echoes on the wife's account when we first got it.  Then I made me an account and joined the household.

Started adding more devices and Routines on my phone, which didn't work for her, because the Echoes were logged in as her.

Turns out I need to do double work to make routines add devices (ex switches) on her phone and mine if I want an Echo signed in as me (like in my Office where accessing my calendar, etc is useful).

For now, I think it's simpler for most people to stick with a single account, with regard to the Echoes.

[asianrocker]

Yap just coz you both have Amazon account doesn't mean you need to connect it to alexa.  And honestly I don't even use my real Amazon account on my Alexa app.

I am that paranoid of internet security.

[buffaloquinn]

We use the same account to order everything and have no issues with that. So I tried it again in this order. Redid the Echo's under me first, when to amazon adder her to the household, when to Alexa and invited her. At that point, I was back to not being able to control the routines and the multi-speaker feature was gone.

The multi-speaker issue might be related to the music server. I have read that some of the music players will not allow you to transmit to multiple devices because they consider that multiuser, not allowed under a single user account.

[anthonylaizure86]

Thanks for all the help. I'm good with everything under just my account and has been working fine for a past couple of days. The only issue I'm running into is music. If say Im on my way to work listing to my Amazon music account and my wife wants to listen to Amazon music at home on the echo its a no go. She has to ask Alexa to play off a free Spotify or Pandora account. This is not ideal. If we have a family amazon music account what is the fix for this?

In regards to this, I really would like to see Amazon change the way they 6 users for Amazon music is handed. For my family, it would work better if we could stream the same account as we listen to a lot of the same music and don't mind it. The way it should be is you have up to 6 users allowed. That means you should be able to have up to 6 streams at the same time no matter what account they are under. It would be 3 on one email and 3 on 3 other individual email accounts. Just a thought.