October 2024
Amazon Connect launches the ability to initiate outbound SMS contacts
Amazon Connect now supports the ability to initiate outbound SMS contacts, enabling you to help increase customer satisfaction by engaging your customers on their preferred communication channel. You can now deliver proactive SMS experiences for scenarios such as post-contact surveys, appointment reminders, and service updates, allowing customers to respond at their convenience. Additionally you can offer customers the option to switch to SMS while waiting in a call queue, eliminating their hold time.
To get started, add the new Send message block to a contact flow or use the new StartOutboundChatContact API to initiate outbound SMS contacts. This feature is available in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), and Europe (London).
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-connect-initiate-outbound-sms-contacts/
Amazon Connect now supports multi-day copy and paste of agent schedules
Amazon Connect now supports copying of agent schedules across multiple days, making management of agent schedules more efficient. You can now copy multiple days shifts from one agent to another agent or to the same agent, up to 14 days at a time. For example, if a new agent joins the team mid-month, you can quickly provide them with a schedule by copying up to 14 days of shifts from an existing agent’s schedule. Similarly, if an agent has a flexible working arrangement for a few weeks, you can edit their schedule for the first week and then copy it over to remaining weeks. Multi-day copy of agent schedules improves manager productivity by reducing time spent on managing agent schedules.
This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect agent scheduling is available.
Amazon Connect Contact Lens supports new read-only permissions for reports and dashboards
Amazon Connect Contact Lens now allows users to save and publish reports and dashboards as read-only. By publishing a report as read-only, only the user who created the report or dashboard can edit the report, while still making it visible for others to view or create a copy. For example, a contact center manager can configure a custom read-only dashboard and share it with the supervisors on their team to ensure they monitor the same metrics, while still allowing the supervisors to customize and save their own versions for further analysis.
This feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
Amazon Connect can now generate forecast for workloads with as little as one contact
Amazon Connect can now generate forecasts for smaller workloads, with as little as one contact, making it easier for contact center managers to predict demand. This eliminates the need for you to manually adjust historical data to meet minimum data requirements. By reducing minimum data requirements, you can now enable managers to generate forecasts for smaller volume workloads than were previously possible, making it easier to do capacity planning and staffing.
This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect agent scheduling is available.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-connect-generate-forecast-workloads/
Amazon Connect launches prompt customizations for Amazon Q in Connect
Amazon Q in Connect, a generative-AI powered assistant for contact center agents, now enables contact center supervisors to pre-configure LLM prompts to match your company's brand and business guidelines. Supervisors can tailor prompts to change Amazon Q in Connect's tone and behavior to incorporate specific company phrases, follow language guidelines, and designate certain "fixed" responses for situations requiring absolute consistency. For example, when a customer contacts a healthcare insurance provider, Amazon Q in Connect can be customized to be sensitive for use cases such as denied claim. Agents using step-by-step guides for the claim appeals process will be provided empathetic phrasing and automated disclaimers for different types of medical advice. With Amazon Q in Connect, contact centers can empower agents to consistently represent the company's brand, reduce compliance risks, and increase customer satisfaction.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-connect-customizations-q-connect/
Amazon Q in Connect adds personalized guidance for agents
Amazon Q in Connect, a generative-AI powered assistant for contact center agents, now recommends personalized guidance to agents using customer data from Amazon Connect and other third-party CRM systems. Amazon Q in Connect detects the customer's intent from the real-time voice or chat conversation and understands customer data to recommend what an agent should say or what action they should take.
For example, when a customer contacts a hotel to upgrade their room, Amazon Q in Connect analyzes the real-time conversation, identifies the customer's loyalty tier, and provides the agent with a step-by-step guide of upgrade options and discounts to offer the customer. With Amazon Q in Connect, contact centers can empower agents to provide a more personalized and efficient customer interaction while driving increased customer satisfaction.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-q-connect-personalized-guidance-agents/
Amazon Connect now supports using your customer’s initial chat message to personalize the customer experience
Amazon Connect Chat now supports using your customer's initial message in flows, enabling you to improve self-service containment rates and personalize the customer experience. You can use the initial chat message to display the right step-by-step guide, trigger interactive messages from Amazon Lex (e.g., list pickers, carousels), or route the chat to the best agent. For example, if the initial message is about an order issue, you can immediately show the customer a list pickers of recent orders. Alternatively, if the message is about rescheduling a delivery, you can present date and time pickers to help them make the change.
To use the customer's initial message with Amazon Lex, simply check the 'Initialize bot with message' option in the 'Get customer input' block within Amazon Connect's flow designer. Additionally, you can access the customer's initial message using the InitialMessage flow attribute for branching flows or integrations using AWS Lambda.
This new feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is available.
Amazon Connect Contact Lens dashboards now support additional customization capabilities
Amazon Connect Contact Lens dashboards now include the ability to color code metric performance, customize service level thresholds, and switch metrics within widgets. With these dashboards, you can view and compare real-time and historical aggregated performance, trends, and insights using custom-defined time periods (e.g., week over week), summary charts, time-series chart, etc. You can further customize the dashboards by changing the metrics you want to monitor, as well as color code metric performance based on custom defined thresholds. For example, you can automatically show service level as red if it dips below 70%, yellow if its between 70-90%, and green if its greater than 90% to give a quick visual indicator on how service level is performing.
This feature is available in all commercial AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
Amazon Connect launches iOS and Android Chat SDKs to support in-app chat experiences
Amazon Connect Chat now offers SDKs for iOS and Android, allowing you to deliver native in-app chat experiences that improve customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs. These SDKs provide pre-built components for network and session management, along with a sample UX application, streamlining integration and ensuring seamless, resilient in-app chat experiences.
Amazon Connect Chat SDK capabilities leverage the same generative AI-powered chatbots, routing, configuration, analytics, and agent experience as calls, tasks, SMS, and web calling in Amazon Connect, making it easier for you to deliver omnichannel experiences. For example, you can offer customers waiting in a call queue the option to switch to in-app chat, reducing wait times and increasing both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
The Amazon Connect Chat SDKs for iOS and Android are available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect Chat is available.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-connect-ios-android-sdks-chat-experiences/
Amazon Connect now offers screen sharing
The Amazon Connect screen sharing capability enables agents to quickly gain an understanding of issues and help guide the customer, accelerating resolution and sales, and reducing customer frustration. Agents and end users can leverage screen sharing with Amazon Connect Web and Video calls and pass contextual information to Amazon Connect to personalize the customer experience. Additionally, you can ensure a safe and secure customer experience by restricting screen share to specific web pages. Using the fully managed communication widget, you can add screen sharing to voice and video calling with as little as a single line of code. You can also create a fully custom experience for your customers by leveraging the SDK.
Amazon Connect’s screen sharing capabilities are available in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Africa (Cape Town), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt) and Europe (London).
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/10/amazon-connect-screen-sharing/
Amazon Connect now provides published forecast data in analytics data lake
Amazon Connect now provides published forecast (short-term and long-term) data in the analytics data lake, making it easier for you to generate reports and insights from this data. With published forecast data in data lake, you can build dashboards that compare forecasts against actuals or view this data in conjunction with other data sets such as sales forecasts. This launch eliminates the need for manually downloading each published forecast and allows you to automate ingestion of this data in business intelligence tools. To generate these reports and insights, you can use Amazon Athena with Amazon QuickSight or another business intelligence tool of your choice.
This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect agent scheduling is available.
Monitor Amazon Q in Connect by using CloudWatch Logs
To gain visibility into the real-time recommendations that Amazon Q in Connect provides to your agents, and the customer intents it detects through natural language understanding, you can query CloudWatch Logs. For more information, see Monitor Amazon Q in Connect by using CloudWatch Logs.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/amazon-connect-release-notes.html
September 2024
Amazon Connect Contact Lens can now generate transcriptions in 10 new languages
Amazon Connect Contact Lens can now generate transcriptions in 10 new languages that include Catalan (Spain), Danish (Denmark), Dutch (Netherlands), Finnish (Finland), Indonesian (Indonesia), Malay (Malaysia), Norwegian Bokmål (Norway), Polish (Poland), Swedish (Sweden), and Tagalog/Filipino (Philippines). With this launch, Contact Lens conversational analytics now provides transcription support for 33 languages.
Amazon Connect Contact Lens helps you to monitor, measure, and continuously improve contact quality and agent performance for a better overall customer experience. With Contact Lens conversational analytics, you can transcribe customer calls, analyze customer sentiment, discover top contact drivers, help redact sensitive data, and more, all natively within Amazon Connect.
Transcription support for these 10 new languages is available for post-call scenarios and across all regions where Contact Lens conversational analytics is available. This feature is included with Contact Lens conversational analytics at no additional charge.
Amazon Connect now offers intraday forecasts
Amazon Connect forecasting, capacity planning, and agent scheduling now includes machine learning (ML) powered intraday forecast capabilities, available within the Amazon Connect Contact Lens dashboards. With intraday forecasts, you receive updates every 15 minutes with predictions for rest-of-day contact volumes, average queue answer time, and average handle time. These forecasts allow you to take proactive actions to improve customer wait time and service level. For example, if contact volume drops below expected levels, contact center managers can use the intraday forecast to predict how long that drop will continue, determine the required staffing levels, and shift the remaining agents into back office work or other higher volume queues.
This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect forecasting, capacity planning, and agent scheduling is available.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/09/amazon-connect-intraday-forecasts/
Amazon Connect now provides a weekly view of agent schedules
Amazon Connect now provides a weekly view of agent schedules, making it easier for contact center managers to get an at-a-glance view of staffing for an entire week. With this launch, you can now ensure there is required coverage each day via daily aggregated metrics including service level, occupancy, and forecasted versus scheduled hours. For example, from the weekly view you can easily identify if there is overstaffing on Wednesday and understaffing on Friday. You can then move agent shifts from Wednesday to Friday within the weekly view. Weekly view also makes it easy to verify that agents receive the appropriate shifts each day (e.g. each agent has an 8-hour shift) and that they are not working too many days in a row (e.g. each agent gets at least 2 days off every week). Weekly view improves manager productivity by reducing time spent on day to day management of agent shifts and makes it easier to review staffing for multiple days in a single view.
This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect agent scheduling is available.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/09/amazon-connect-weekly-view-agent-schedules/
Amazon Connect Contact Lens now supports new ways to automate agent performance evaluations
You can now automatically mark a performance evaluation question as not applicable based on conversational insights (e.g., detected call reason, etc.), and you can now use additional contact metrics (e.g., longest hold duration, number of holds, agent interaction duration including holds) to automatically fill answers to questions in the evaluation form. With this launch, you can automatically complete only the applicable evaluation questions, under specific conditions. For example, you could check if an agent explained new account benefits and pricing, only for those customers who called to open an account. Additionally, you can automatically evaluate whether the agent was able to resolve the customer’s issue efficiently (e.g., resolved the customer’s issue within 10 minutes) and did not put the customer repeatedly on hold.
This feature is available in all regions where Contact Lens performance evaluations is already available.
Amazon Connect launches AWS CloudFormation support for agent status
Amazon Connect now supports AWS CloudFormation for agent status, in addition to other resources used to configure a contact center like routing profiles, queues, Amazon S3 buckets, and AWS Lambda. You can use CloudFormation templates to programmatically deploy Amazon Connect agent statuses in a secure, efficient, and repeatable way, allowing you to ensure consistent configurations. CloudFormation allows you to track changes over time, apply updates in a controlled and automated manner, and includes version controls so you can easy roll back changes if needed.
CloudFormation support for agent status is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/09/amazon-connect-aws-cloudformation-agent-status/
Amazon Connect expands AWS CloudFormation support for agent hierarchies
Amazon Connect now provides AWS CloudFormation for configuring agent hierarchy structures. You can use CloudFormation templates to programmatically deploy Amazon Connect hierarchy levels in a secure, efficient, and repeatable way, reducing the risk of human error from manual configuration. CloudFormation allows you to track changes over time, apply updates in a controlled and automated manner, and includes version controls so you can easy roll back changes if needed.
CloudFormation support for agent hierarchies is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
Enhancements for automated evaluations
You can automatically mark a performance evaluation question as not applicable based on conversational insights (for example, detected call reason). This enables you to automatically fill and submit evaluation forms that contain situation-specific questions, for example, if the customer called to open an account, did the agent explain the account benefits and pricing?
Automatically fill answers to evaluation form questions using additional contact metrics such as longest hold duration, number of holds, agent interaction, and hold time.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/adminguide/amazon-connect-release-notes.html
August 2024
Amazon Connect launches the ability to configure when whisper flows are used
Amazon Connect now supports the ability to configure when whisper flows are used during a contact to optimize flow performance. A whisper flow is what a customer or agent experiences during the moment when they are connected to each other in a voice or chat conversation. With this launch, you can turn off whisper flows, helping you further optimize your flow’s performance and reduce contact duration. For example, you can choose to turn off whisper flows during an outbound or callback scenario to save time when the agent and customer are expecting the contact.
This feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/08/amazon-connect-configure-whisper-flows/
Amazon Connect now supports audio optimization for Amazon WorkSpaces cloud desktops
Amazon Connect now makes it easier to deliver high-quality voice experiences in Amazon WorkSpaces Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments. Amazon Connect automatically optimizes audio by redirecting media from your agent’s local desktop to Connect, simplifying the agent experience and improving audio quality by reducing network hops. Agents can simply log into their Amazon WorkSpaces client application for a Windows device, a web browser, or Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client and start accepting calls using your custom agent user interface (i.e., custom Contact Control Panel) using APIs in the Amazon Connect open source JavaScript libraries.
Amazon Connect now supports additional agent scheduling staffing rules
Amazon Connect now supports additional agent scheduling staffing rules, making it easier to schedule agents while complying with labor, union, and other contractual rules. You can now configure five new rules for scheduling agents in Amazon Connect: minimum rest period between shifts, minimum rest period per week, maximum consecutive working days, maximum consecutive day of the week worked, and shift cannot start earlier than the previous day's shift. Once configured, these rules will be applied when new schedules are generated as well as when existing schedules are edited. These additional rules in agent scheduling make day-to-day management of agent schedules easier for managers.
This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect agent scheduling is available.
Amazon Connect now provides an API to update routing criteria on a queued contact
Amazon Connect now provides an API to update the routing criteria on a contact while it is currently in queue. Routing criteria allow you to target a contact to a specific preferred agent or to a set of agents based on their attributes, such as their proficiency level in a particular language. With this API, you can now update the routing criteria on a queued contact directly from an external system. For example, you could build a dashboard that allows agents to pick contacts from a queue to be routed next, based on attributes such as customer name, and send those routing instructions to Connect with this new API. To learn more about the UpdateContactRoutingData API, see the UpdateContactRoutingData documentation in the Amazon Connect API Reference.
This feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
Amazon Connect Contact Lens generative AI-powered agent performance evaluations (preview) now available in 6 new regions
Amazon Connect Contact Lens generative AI-powered agent performance evaluations (preview) are now available in Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (London), Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), and Asia Pacific (Singapore) AWS regions, providing managers with generative AI-powered recommendations for answers to questions in agent evaluation forms. Managers now receive additional agent behavioural insights (e.g., did the agent show empathy while delivering bad news?), and get context and justification for the recommended answers (i.e., reference points from the transcript that were used to provide answers), enabling them to perform evaluations faster and more accurately.
With this launch, Contact Lens generative AI-powered agent performance evaluations is available in 8 AWS regions, including the 6 new regions and the existing US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon) regions.
Amazon Connect outbound campaigns now supports Mexico
Amazon Connect now supports outbound campaign calling to Mexico in the US East (Virginia) and US West (Oregon) regions, making it easier to proactively communicate across voice, SMS, and email for use cases such as delivery notifications, marketing promotions, appointment reminders, or debt collection. Communication capabilities include features such as point-of-dial checks, calling controls for time of day, time zone, number of attempts per contact, and predictive dialing with integrated voicemail detection. A list management capability provided by Amazon Pinpoint can also be used to build customer journeys and multi-channel user contact experiences. Outbound campaigns can be enabled within the AWS Connect Console.
With Amazon Connect outbound campaigns, you only pay-as-you-go for the high-volume outbound service usage, associated telephony charges and any monthly target audience charges via Amazon Pinpoint.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/08/amazon-connect-outbound-campaigns-mexico/
Amazon Connect in-app, web, and video calling is now available in Africa (Cape Town) region
Amazon Connect now provides in-app and web voice and video calling capabilities in Africa (Cape Town) region, making it easier to deliver more personalized voice and video experiences in your websites and mobile applications. These voice and video capabilities allow customers to contact you without having to leave your website or mobile application. You can use these capabilities to pass contextual information to Amazon Connect, enabling you to personalize the customer experience based on attributes such as the customer’s profile, authentication status, or actions previously taken within the app.
Using the fully managed communication widget, you can implement these new voice and video calling capabilities with as little as a single line of code. You can also create a fully custom experience for your customers by leveraging the SDK. In addition, you can use the same configuration, routing, analytics, and agent application as with telephone calls and chats, helping saving costly integration time, license fees, and maintenance expenses.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/08/amazon-connect-in-app-web-video-calling-africa/
Amazon Connect Contact Lens now provides an audit trail for changes to an agent performance evaluation
Amazon Connect Contact Lens now provides an audit trail to review the changes made to an agent performance evaluation when it is re-submitted. This launch displays the audit trail, which was previously available within a customer’s S3 bucket, directly in the Amazon Connect UI. When an evaluator submits changes to an existing evaluation form, managers can now view an audit trail of who submitted the original evaluation, who re-submitted the evaluation, and what changes they made. Contact center managers can use this information to perform internal audits and improve consistency across evaluators.
This feature is available in all regions where Contact Lens performance evaluations is already available.
Amazon Connect provides new ways to configure callbacks
Amazon Connect now allows you to configure flows to take actions on callbacks prior their creation and while they are in queue. For example, you can now automate sending a notification to a customer via SMS before calling them back, update callback attributes based on latest customer data for agents to reference, or even terminate the callback if the issue has already been resolved. You can also now run flows to dynamically re-prioritize and transfer callbacks to another queue based on customer information from Customer profiles or third-party applications, or if it’s just taking too long for the callback queue to drain.
This feature is available in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect is offered.
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2024/08/amazon-connect-configure-callbacks/
Updates to filter comparison operator and metric results dimension for the GetMetricDataV2 API
You can now use metric threshold comparison operator such as LTE (less than equal) and LT (less than) to explicitly include the threshold boundary value.
The metric results empty dimension values were also updated to be consistent in returning null. Previously empty String was returned in some scenarios when the request contained groupings attributes that were not defined in the filters.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/APIReference/API_GetMetricDataV2.html
Programmatically set routing criteria on a contact via the UpdateContactRoutingData API
You can now use the UpdateContactRoutingData API to programmatically update the routing criteria on a contact. Previously, you could only set the routing criteria on a contact using the Set routing criteria flow block in the Amazon Connect admin website.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/connect/latest/APIReference/API_UpdateContactRoutingData.html
| Version | Date | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Current Version (v. 10) | Oct 31, 2024 08:41 | Darren Marr |
| v. 39 | Mar 02, 2026 06:58 | Darren Marr |
| v. 38 | Mar 02, 2026 06:57 | Darren Marr |
| v. 37 | Feb 02, 2026 08:04 | Darren Marr |
| v. 36 | Jan 05, 2026 09:02 | Darren Marr |
| v. 35 | Dec 02, 2025 04:39 | Darren Marr |
| v. 34 | Dec 02, 2025 04:37 | Darren Marr |
| v. 33 | Nov 03, 2025 08:31 | Darren Marr |
| v. 32 | Oct 02, 2025 08:17 | Darren Marr |
| v. 31 | Oct 02, 2025 08:16 | Darren Marr |
| v. 30 | Sep 03, 2025 05:13 | Darren Marr |
| v. 29 | Aug 08, 2025 08:35 | Darren Marr |
| v. 28 | Aug 08, 2025 08:34 | Darren Marr |
| v. 27 | Aug 08, 2025 08:03 | Darren Marr |
| v. 26 | Jul 01, 2025 06:56 | Darren Marr |
| v. 25 | Jun 02, 2025 03:54 | Darren Marr |
| v. 24 | May 01, 2025 03:22 | Darren Marr |
| v. 23 | May 01, 2025 03:22 | Darren Marr |
| v. 22 | May 01, 2025 03:17 | Darren Marr |
| v. 21 | May 01, 2025 03:07 | Darren Marr |
| v. 20 | Apr 25, 2025 05:48 | Darren Marr |
| v. 19 | Mar 31, 2025 03:53 | Darren Marr |
| v. 18 | Feb 28, 2025 04:43 | Darren Marr |
| v. 17 | Feb 28, 2025 04:32 | Darren Marr |
| v. 16 | Feb 03, 2025 03:27 | Darren Marr |
| v. 15 | Feb 03, 2025 03:25 | Darren Marr |
| v. 14 | Jan 02, 2025 03:19 | Darren Marr |
| v. 13 | Dec 02, 2024 04:50 | Darren Marr |
| v. 12 | Dec 02, 2024 04:49 | Darren Marr |
| v. 11 | Oct 31, 2024 09:50 | Darren Marr |
| v. 10 | Oct 31, 2024 08:41 | Darren Marr |
| v. 9 | Sep 03, 2024 03:01 | Darren Marr |
| v. 8 | Sep 02, 2024 05:36 | Darren Marr |
| v. 7 | Sep 02, 2024 05:24 | Darren Marr |
| v. 6 | Aug 26, 2024 05:09 | Darren Marr |
| v. 5 | Aug 01, 2024 06:07 | Darren Marr |
| v. 4 | Aug 01, 2024 03:32 | Darren Marr |
| v. 3 | Jul 09, 2024 06:31 | Darren Marr |
| v. 2 | Jul 09, 2024 05:48 | Darren Marr |
| v. 1 | Jul 09, 2024 05:36 | Darren Marr |