AWS connect documentation change
Summary
Added release notes for multiple new features including: Cases CloudFormation support, agent screen recording status tracking, nested JSON storage in flows, dashboard filtering, automated evaluations in 5 languages, real-time metric alert details, new evaluation question types, WhatsApp for Outbound Campaigns, third-party speech providers, AI agent enhancements, granular evaluation access controls, chat improvements, data redaction, email automation, and various operational enhancements.
Security assessment
The changes document new security features like in-flight chat data redaction and granular access controls for evaluations, but there's no evidence of addressing specific vulnerabilities. Security documentation is added for redaction capabilities and access controls.
Diff
diff --git a/connect/latest/adminguide/amazon-connect-release-notes.md b/connect/latest/adminguide/amazon-connect-release-notes.md index 737bfbb7a..b859bd4c6 100644 --- a//connect/latest/adminguide/amazon-connect-release-notes.md +++ b//connect/latest/adminguide/amazon-connect-release-notes.md @@ -24,0 +25,22 @@ For more information, see [Set overrides for extended, reduced, and holiday hour +### Cases now supports AWS CloudFormation + +Amazon Connect Cases now supports AWS CloudFormation, enabling you to model, provision, and manage case resources as infrastructure as code. With this launch, administrators can create CloudFormation templates to programmatically deploy and update their Cases configuration—such as templates, fields, and layouts—across Amazon Connect instances, reducing manual setup time and minimizing configuration errors. + +For more information, see [documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/TemplateReference/AWS_Cases.html). + +### Agent screen recording status tracking + +Amazon Connect now offers customers the ability to view status of agent screen recordings in near real time in CloudWatch using Amazon EventBridge. With screen recording, supervisors can identify areas for agent coaching (e.g., non-compliance with business processes) by not only listening to customer calls or reviewing chat transcripts, but also watching agents' actions while handling a contact (i.e., a voice call, chat and task). Using Amazon EventBridge, customers can see status of each agent screen recording including success/failure, failure codes with description, installed client version, agent web browser version, agent operating system, screen recording start and end times from CloudWatch. + +Customers can start using Amazon Connect screen recording status tracking by subscribing to Screen Recording Status Changed event type in Amazon EventBridge event bus. + +For more information, see [Set up and review agent screen recordings in Amazon Connect Contact Lens](./agent-screen-recording.html). + +### Store nested JSON object and looping arrays + +Amazon Connect now enables you to store and work with complex data structures in your flows, making it easy to build dynamic automated experiences that use rich information returned from your internal business systems. You can save complete data records, including nested JSON objects and lists, and reference specific elements within them, such as a particular order from a list of orders returned in JSON format. + +Additionally, you can automatically loop through lists of items in your customer service flows, moving through each entry in sequence while tracking the current position in the loop. This allows you to easily access item-level details and present relevant information to end-customers. For example, a travel agency can retrieve all of a customer's itineraries in a single request and guide the caller through each booking to review or update their reservations. A bank can similarly walk customers through recent transactions one by one using data retrieved securely from its systems. These capabilities reduce the need for repeated calls to your business systems, simplify workflow design, and make it easier to deliver advanced automated experiences that adapt as your business requirements evolve. + +For more information, see [Flows in Amazon Connect](./connect-contact-flows.html). + @@ -32,0 +55,32 @@ For more information, see [Set up workspaces for your admin website users](./ama +### Dashboards now support filtering metrics based on custom business dimensions + +Amazon Connect dashboards now support filtering metrics based on custom business dimensions such as business divisions, product lines, or customer segments. Using predefined attributes, you can create business dimensions to filter metrics helping you customize the dashboards based on your unique business need. For example, if your queue handles contacts across product lines, you can filter metrics by product line to compare handle times and determine where agents need product training. + +For more information, see [Dashboards in Amazon Connect for getting contact center performance data](./dashboards.html). + +### Automated agent performance evaluations support 5 additional languages + +Amazon Connect now automates agent performance evaluations in Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish using generative AI. Managers define custom evaluation criteria in natural language and receive AI-generated evaluations with justifications in their preferred language. Performance evaluations also supports cross-language evaluation and can complete assessments in English, even when the conversation is in another language. This enables multilingual contact centers to use a standardized evaluation framework across languages. + +For more information, see [Evaluate agent and self-service interaction performance in Amazon Connect](./evaluations.html). + +### Additional details available within real-time metric alerts + +Amazon Connect alerts on real-time metrics now provide the specific agents, queues, flows, or routing profiles that exceeded thresholds and triggered the alert. This enables managers to respond faster to customer experience and operational issues by eliminating the need to manually investigate the root cause of the alert. For example, alerts on elevated queue wait times now include the exact queues affected, so managers can reassign agents to those queues. These detailed alerts can be sent through email, tasks, and Amazon EventBridge. + +For more information, see [Create alerts on real-time metrics in Amazon Connect](./rule-real-time-metrics.html). + +### Multiple choice and date questions now possible in evaluation forms + +Amazon Connect provides two new evaluation question types to capture deeper insights on human and AI agent performance. Managers can now create questions that allow multiple answer selections, such as the products that the customer was interested in during a sales conversation. Additionally, managers can capture dates for customer and agent actions within evaluation forms. For example, you can record when a customer applied for a loan and when it was approved. + +For more information, see [Create an evaluation form in Amazon Connect](./create-evaluation-forms.html). + +### WhatsApp channel for Outbound Campaigns + +Amazon Connect Outbound Campaigns now supports WhatsApp, expanding on the WhatsApp Business messaging capabilities that already allow customers to contact your agents. You can now engage customers through proactive, automated campaigns on their preferred messaging platform, delivering timely communications such as appointment reminders, payment notifications, order updates, and product recommendations directly through WhatsApp. Setting up WhatsApp campaigns uses the same familiar Amazon Connect interface, where you can define your target audience, choose personalized message templates, schedule delivery times, and apply compliance guardrails, just as you do for SMS, voice, and email campaigns. + +Previously, Outbound Campaigns supported SMS, email, and voice channels, while WhatsApp was available only for customers to initiate conversations with your agents. With WhatsApp support in Outbound Campaigns, you can now proactively reach customers through an additional messaging platform while maintaining a unified campaign management experience. You can personalize WhatsApp messages using real-time customer data, track delivery and engagement metrics, and manage communication frequency and timing to ensure compliance. This expansion provides greater flexibility to connect with customers on their preferred platforms while streamlining your omnichannel outreach strategy. + +For more information, see [Create an outbound campaign in Amazon Connect](./how-to-create-campaigns.html). + @@ -39 +93 @@ Amazon Connect Cases now supports conditional field visibility and dependent fie -For more information, see [ Add case field conditions to a case template in Amazon Connect](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/case-field-conditions.html). +For more information, see [Add case field conditions to a case template in Amazon Connect](./case-field-conditions.html). @@ -45 +99,185 @@ Amazon Connect now supports creation of custom metrics, enabling contact center -For more information, see [ Custom metrics](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/custom-metrics-topic.html). +For more information, see [Custom metric primitives](./metric-primitive-definitions.html). + +### Native testing and simulation capabilities + +Amazon Connect now allows you to test and simulate contact center experiences in just a few clicks, making it easy to validate workflows, self-service voice interactions, and their outcomes. For each test, you can configure the test parameters including the caller's phone number or customer profile, the reason for the call (such as "I need to check my order status"), the expected responses (such as "Your request has been processed"), and business conditions like after-hours scenarios or full call queues. After executing tests, results show success or failure based on your defined criteria, along with the path taken by the simulated interaction and detailed logs to quickly diagnose potential issuesWith this launch, you can run multiple tests simultaneously to validate scenarios and workflows at scale, reducing testing time. Companies can view test results and identify common failure patterns across all their tests in Connect's analytics dashboards. These capabilities enable you to rapidly validate changes to your workflows and confidently deploy new experiences to adapt to your ever-changing business needs. + +For more information, see [ Amazon Connect call simulation](./testing-simulation.html). + +### New criteria to automatically select relevant contacts for performance evaluation + +Amazon Connect provides managers with new criteria while setting up automated evaluations, making it easier to identify relevant contacts for evaluation, and providing additional insights to automatically populate evaluation forms. For example, managers can specify that inbound contacts with no connectivity issues, handled by agents in a specific department, should be automatically evaluated using a particular evaluation form. Additionally, managers can use new metrics criteria on agent call avoidance, contact handling efficiency, and audibility, to automatically fill the selected form. + +For more information, see [Evaluate agent and self-service interaction performance in Amazon Connect](./evaluations.html). + +### Support for third-party speech-to-text and text-to-speech AI models for end-customer self-service + +Amazon Connect now supports third-party speech providers for end-customer self-service, giving you greater flexibility in how you deliver voice experiences. You can integrate Deepgram for speech-to-text and ElevenLabs for text-to-speech directly within Amazon Connect, using them together with Amazon Connect's native speech capabilities, built-in orchestration, analytics, and compliance controls. This feature is available with Amazon Connect unlimited AI and in all commercial AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered. + +For more information, see [Configure third-party speech-to-text (STT) providers](./configure-third-party-stt.html). + +### Enhanced agent assistance capabilities + +Amazon Connect now provides customer service representatives with new AI agents that guide them through customer interactions by recommending actions, retrieving information, and executing tasks on their behalf. For example, an AI agent can guide a representative through processing a product return by automatically pulling order history, calculating refund amounts, and initiating the return process. These AI agents analyze conversation context and customer sentiment in real-time, actively completing tasks such as preparing documentation and handling routine processes. This enables representatives to focus on building customer relationships and handling complex situations while AI manages the background work, enhancing productivity and ensuring consistent outcomes. You can get started with out-of-the-box agents provided by Amazon Connect or easily customize AI agent behavior and actions to align with your business needs. + +For more information, see [Create AI agents in Amazon Connect](./create-ai-agents.html). + +### Granular access controls for performance evaluations + +Amazon Connect now enables businesses to restrict access to specific performance evaluation forms, preventing unauthorized access to evaluation form templates and completed evaluations. Businesses can provide managers access to modify or use only the evaluation form templates that are relevant to their business line or function, improving security and making it easier for managers to select the right form while completing evaluations. Additionally, both managers and agents can be restricted from viewing certain completed evaluations. For example, you can restrict agents from viewing test evaluations filled with a form template that is yet to be finalized. + +For more information, see [Assign security profile permissions for users to create and access evaluation forms](./evaluation-forms-permissions.html). + +### Simplified linking of related contacts to cases using flows + +Amazon Connect now makes it easier to link related contacts such as email replies, call transfers, persistent chats, and queued callbacks to the same case so agents can view the complete customer journey and resolve issues faster. You can use flows to link a follow-up contact to an existing case, eliminating the need for custom logic or manual linking. + +For more information, see [Flow block in Amazon Connect: Cases](./cases-block.html). + +### Chat now supports agent-initiated workflows + +Amazon Connect now supports agent-initiated workflows, enabling agents to send interactive forms to collect sensitive data or share general policies and disclosures within customer chat conversations, increasing efficiency and improving customer experience. For example, when a customer needs to update their address, agents can now send a form that customers complete without leaving the chat interface.Agents can trigger these workflows at any point during a chat conversation, making interactions more dynamic and responsive to customer needs. By handling everything within the ongoing chat conversation, businesses can maintain security and compliance standards while helping customers get faster solutions. + +For more information, see [Enable agent-initated flows during active chat sessions](./agent-initiated-flows.html). + +### Agentic self-service with more natural, expressive, and adaptive voice interactions + +Amazon Connect is introducing agentic self-service capabilities that enable AI agents to understand, reason, and take action across voice and messaging channels to automate routine and complex customer service tasks. Connect enables you to blend deterministic and agentic experiences, allowing you to deploy these AI agents at scale, reliably and safely. With integration with advanced speech models from Amazon Nova Sonic, voice self-service experiences now deliver more natural and adaptive interactions. Connect's self-service voice AI agents understand not only what customers say but how they say it, adapting voice responses to match customer tone and sentiment while maintaining natural conversational pace across multiple languages and accents. For example, when a customer calls about an order issue, your AI agent can greet them by name, ask clarifying questions, look up their order status, and process a refund, with voice interactions that adapt to the customer's tone and respond expressively throughout the conversation. This enables your contact center to automate complex troubleshooting, account management, and consultative interactions while maintaining the ability to escalate to a live representative at any point.Nova Sonic support with Amazon Connect is available in two commercial AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) and fully available in English and Spanish and in preview for French, Italian, and German. + +For more information, see [this blog post](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-amazon-nova-2-sonic-next-generation-speech-to-speech-model-for-conversational-ai). + +### Chat now supports in-flight data redaction and message processing + +Amazon Connect now supports message processing that intercepts and processes chat messages before they reach any participant. This new capability enables automatic redaction of sensitive data and custom message processing, helping businesses maintain compliance and security standards while delivering personalized customer experiences.The built-in sensitive data redaction can automatically detect and remove sensitive information like credit card numbers and social security numbers across multiple languages, including English, French, Portuguese, German, Italian, and Spanish variants. You can choose to redact selected or all sensitive data entities, with options to replace them with generic or entity-specific placeholders (e.g., [PII] or [NAME]). Businesses can also integrate custom processors for use cases such as language translation or profanity filtering, ensuring compliant and effective communications for their specific business needs. + +For more information, see [Enable in-flight sensitive data redaction and message processing](./redaction-message-processing.html). + +### Automated email responses using conditional keywords and phrases + +Amazon Connect now allows you to automate email responses and agent routing logic using keyword and phrase conditions, helping organizations increase self-service, reduce manual handling time, and improve routing accuracy. For example, if a customer sends an email asking if a certain product is in stock, or is checking on their shipment status, an automated response can be sent without involving an agent.To enable this feature, add the Get stored content block to your flows and use accompanying flow blocks such as Check contact attributes and Send message to configure automated email responses and routing. + +For more information, see [How Amazon Connect email works](./email-capabilities.html). + +### AI agent assistance and summarization for Agentforce Service + +Amazon Connect launches real-time AI agent assistance and contact summarization for Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect (SCC-AC). It enables Connect AI agents to automatically leverage customer information and knowledge base articles from Salesforce CRM for accelerated issue resolution and consistent outcomes across voice and chat interactions.When human intervention is required, the seamless integration within SCC-AC connects customers to agents who have a unified view of customer data, issue context, and interaction history within Agentforce Service and Agentforce Sales. Agents receive real-time voice transcripts and contextual recommendations, while supervisors gain enhanced call monitoring capabilities directly in Salesforce. Upon resolution, automated post-contact summarization enables agents to easily update Salesforce cases, streamlining administrative tasks. Administrators can deploy and configure this integrated contact center solution in minutes, leveraging Amazon Connect's voice, digital channels, and intelligent routing capabilities. + +### Support for multiple knowledge bases and integrates with your Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases + +Amazon Connect now allows you to bring your own Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases and supports multiple knowledge bases per AI agent, giving you greater flexibility in how you organize and access knowledge content for your AI agents. You can now connect your existing Bedrock Knowledge Bases directly to Amazon Connect AI agents in just a few clicks, with no additional setup or data duplication required. This allows you to leverage your current data sources and the Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Base connectors, including Adobe Experience Manager, Confluence, SharePoint, and OneDrive, giving you flexibility to use existing content repositories.With support for multiple knowledge bases per AI agent, you can configure AI agents to query multiple sources in parallel for more comprehensive responses. For example, a financial services company can easily connect separate knowledge bases for compliance documentation, product information, and internal policies, enabling AI agents to provide complete guidance across all relevant content during customer interactions.This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect AI agents and Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases are offered. + +For more information, see [Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Base configuration](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/agents-kb-add.html). + +### Stream messages for AI-powered interactions + +Amazon Connect now supports message streaming for AI-powered chat interactions. This new capability shows Connect AI agent responses as they're being generated, which reduces perceived wait times and improves the customer experience.When using Amazon Connect AI agents, customers see status updates like "One moment while I review your account" during processing, and watch responses appear progressively. This experience gives customers confidence their request is actively being worked on while AI agents reason, invoke tools, and craft comprehensive solutions. + +For more information, see [Enable message streaming for AI-powered chat](./message-streaming-ai-chat.html). + +### Model Context Protocol (MCP) support + +Amazon Connect now supports Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling AI agents for end-customer self-service and employee assistance to use standardized tools for retrieving information and completing actions. With this launch, businesses can enhance their AI agents with extensible tool capabilities that improve issue resolution. For example, an AI agent can automatically look up order status, process refunds, and update customer records during a self-service interaction without requiring human intervention.With this launch, Amazon Connect provides out-of-the-box MCP tools for common tasks such as updating contact attributes and retrieving case information. You can also use flow modules as MCP tools to reuse the same business logic across both deterministic and generative AI workflows. Additionally, you can integrate custom tools or third-party services through flow modules or the Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway. + +For more information, see [this blog](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/contact-center/using-mcp-with-amazon-connect-to-monitor-operational-readiness/). + +### Agent workspace now supports custom visual themes + +Amazon Connect now allows you to customize the visual appearance of the agent workspace. You can apply a custom theme, including a logo, font, and color palette for light and dark modes, so the agent workspace aligns with the brand identity of your company or business unit.Contact center agents spend hours each day in the Amazon Connect agent workspace, which provides them with all of the customer information, applications, and step-by-step guidance they need to deliver superior customer experiences. With today’s launch, organizations can change the default Amazon Connect theme to their own branded experience, creating a more familiar and intuitive experience for agents who use the agent workspace and other company applications. The agent workspace also has a new header bar where agents can easily access their settings, including their preference of light and dark mode, contributing to greater agent satisfaction and efficiency. + +For more information, see [Customize the Amazon Connect agent workspace](./agent-workspace.html). + +### AI-powered case summaries + +Amazon Connect now provides AI-powered case summaries that give agents complete context into customer issues, reduce manual wrap-up work, and help resolve cases faster. With a single click, agents can generate a concise case summary even when the case spans multiple interactions, follow-up tasks, and teams, capturing key details such as issue background, actions taken, and next steps. Administrators can configure custom prompts and guardrails to ensure that summaries align with organizational style and preferences. + +For more information, see [Amazon Connect Cases](./cases.html). + +### Outbound Campaigns now supports multi-step, multi-channel customer engagement journey builder + +Amazon Connect Outbound Campaigns now supports visual journey builder, a new feature that lets you create multi-step, multi-channel customer engagements directly in the Amazon Connect console. You can design end-to-end engagement experiences that combine voice, SMS, email, and WhatsApp interactions to reach customers proactively and reduce inbound contact volume.Outbound Campaigns help you automate personalized communication flows based on customer behavior or time-based triggers. For example, you can send an appointment reminder by SMS, follow up with a voice call if the customer does not respond, and send a confirmation email once the appointment is booked. You can also configure steps in the journey builder that offer customers the option to connect with a live agent through Amazon Connect when additional support is needed. You can use existing Amazon Connect Flow integrations, AI capabilities, and customer data from Amazon Connect Customer Profiles to tailor each interaction. This helps contact centers improve engagement rates, reduce manual effort, and deliver more consistent customer experiences. + +For more information, see [Set up Amazon Connect outbound campaigns](./enable-outbound-campaigns.html). + +### Automated performance evaluations for self-service interactions + +Amazon Connect now provides businesses with the ability to automatically evaluate the quality of self-service interactions and get aggregated insights to improve customer experience. Managers can define custom criteria to assess the quality of self-service interactions, that can be filled manually or automatically using insights from conversational analytics, and other Connect data. For example, you can automatically assess if the AI agent repeatedly fails to understand the customer, resulting in poor customer sentiment and transfer to a human agent. Managers can review these insights in aggregate and on individual contacts, alongside self-service interaction recordings and transcripts, to identify opportunities to improve AI agent performance.Manually filled evaluations of self-service interactions are available in all regions where Amazon Connect is offered. Automated evaluations of self-service interactions are available in the following AWS regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Europe (Frankfurt). + +For more information, see [Evaluate agent and self-service interaction performance in Amazon Connect](./evaluations.html). + +### Improved analytics and monitoring for AI agents + +Amazon Connect now provides analytics and monitoring capabilities for AI agents across self-service and agent assistance experiences. With this launch, you can measure and continuously improve AI agent performance and customer outcomes through easy to customize dashboards that provide key metrics like number of AI agent led interactions, hand-off rates, conversation turns, and average handle time. You can also compare AI agent performance across versions to identify optimal configurations and review insights to understand where AI agents are performing well and where improvements are needed. Additionally, with this launch, you can configure rules to trigger automated actions, such as sending alerts when self-service contacts are transferred to human agents with low sentiment scores. Amazon Connect also provides AI agent traces via APIs with detailed information such as request and response payloads and tool invocations, enabling you to easily understand AI agent actions and decision-making for faster troubleshooting. + +For more information, see [Dashboards in Amazon Connect for getting contact center performance data](./dashboards.html). + +### Business users can create custom UIs to adjust contact center configurations in real time + +Amazon Connect now gives business users greater control over daily contact center operations without requiring technical resources. With new capabilities to create customer UIs that adjust queues, routing behavior, and customer experience settings in real time, business users can respond to changing conditions immediately while maintaining enterprise-grade governance and security. For example, during a weather disruption, an airline contact center operations manager can shift agents to rebooking queues, update after-hours routing, and activate a pre-approved protocol that refreshes IVR prompts and triggers customer notifications, all in minutes and without technical team intervention. This reduces wait times, increases agent productivity, and improves the customer experience at moments of peak demand.Contact center administrators can start by defining key business configurations such as queue assignments, operating hours, skill mappings, and escalation rules, in data tables that directly drive contact flows. Guides can then be configured to surface role-specific actions for each business user within persona based workspaces. Together, these updates enable a business-led operating model that keeps contact center operations fast, consistent, and secure, all without relying on IT. + +For more information, see [Set up workspaces for your admin website users](./amazon-connect-workspaces.html). + +### Lex now supports LLMs as the primary option for natural language understanding + +Amazon Lex now allows you to use Large Language Models (LLMs) as the primary option to understand customer intent across voice and chat interactions. With this capability, your voice and chat bots can better understand customer requests, handle complex utterances, maintain accuracy despite spelling errors, and extract key information from verbose inputs. When customer intent is unclear, bots can intelligently ask follow-up questions to fulfill requests accurately. For example, when a customer says “I need help with my flight,” the LLM automatically clarifies whether the customer wants to check their flight status, upgrade their flight, or change their flight. + +For more information, see [Amazon Lex documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/lexv2/latest/dg/intent-structure.html). + +### Flow modules now support custom inputs, outputs, and version management + +Amazon Connect flow modules now support custom inputs, outputs, and branches, along with version and alias management. With this launch, you can now define flexible parameters for your reusable flow modules to math your specific business logic. For example, you can create an authentication module that accepts a phone number and PIN as inputs, then returns the customer name and authentication status as outputs with branches such as "authenticated" or "not authenticated". All parameters are customizable to meet your specific needs.Additionally, advanced versioning and aliasing capabilities allow you to manage module updates more seamlessly. You can create immutable version snapshots and map aliases to specific versions. When you update an alias to point to a new version, all flows using that module automatically reference the updated version. These new features make flow modules more powerful and reusable, allowing you to build and maintain flows more efficiently. + +For more information, see [Flow modules for reusable functions in Amazon Connect](./contact-flow-modules.html). + +### Agents can send follow-up replies to email contacts + +Amazon Connect now allows agents to send follow-up replies to email contacts, making it easier to share additional information or continue assisting customers without starting a new thread. This capability preserves the full conversation history, helping agents maintain context and deliver consistent, seamless support.