The power of AWS with Amazon Connect
This topic is for developers and administrators who are interested in an overview of which other AWS services you can integrate with Amazon Connect.
The following diagram shows some of the other AWS services you can use with Amazon Connect.
Development
You can use AWS Lambda functions to either look up or post data to sources outside of Amazon Connect. For example, you can look up an inbound caller on Salesforce based on the customer’s phone number. The function may return such results as the customer name, membership level (for example, frequent flyer), last order, and order status. Then based on that information, the call can be routed to an Amazon Lex bot or an agent.
You can also use Lambda with AWS databases like DynamoDB to create dynamic routing abilities. For example, you can retrieve a prompt in a specific language, based on input from the customer.
API Gateway and Step Functions further enhance the abilities of Lambda.
For more information, see:
Storage
Amazon Connect uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store recorded conversations and exported reports. When you set up Amazon Connect, it creates default buckets for these requirements, or you can point it to existing Amazon S3 infrastructure. For more information, see Step 4: Data storage in Create an Amazon Connect instance.
VPC endpoints are not supported.
You can also manage the Amazon S3 policies to move data to Amazon S3 Glacier for less expensive long-term storage. However, it breaks the link in the contact record in Amazon Connect. To fix this, use a Lambda function to rename the S3 Glacier object to match the data in the contact record.
Database
You can use AWS databases with Amazon Connect for a variety of reasons. For example, with DynamoDB, you can create quick tables of data.
You can also create tables of dynamic information for call routing. For example, a Lambda function can write inbound calls to a DynamoDB table, then query the table to see if there are other matches for the phone number. If so, a decision can be made to send the caller to the same queue as before, or to flag them as a repeat caller.
For more information, see:
Analytics
Amazon Connect tracks all interactions using contact records. Contact records are used for real-time and historical metrics reports. You can also use Amazon Kinesis to stream them to an AWS database like Amazon Redshift or Amazon Athena for BI analysis (Amazon QuickSight, or a third party such as Tableau). There are AWS CloudFormation templates available to set up this functionality for Amazon Redshift and Athena.
To perform analysis on your flow logs, you can set up an Amazon Kinesis stream to stream your flow log data from CloudWatch to a data warehouse service, such as Amazon Redshift. You can combine the flow log data with other Amazon Connect data in your warehouse, or run queries to identify trends or common issues with a flow.
For more information, see:
Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Amazon Connect uses the following services for ML/AI:
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Amazon Lex—Lets you create a chatbot to use as Interactive Voice Response (IVR). For more information, see Add an Amazon Lex bot to Amazon Connect.
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Amazon Polly—Provides text-to-speech in all flows. For more information, see Add text-to-speech to prompts in flow blocks in Amazon Polly and SSML tags supported by Amazon Connect.
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Amazon Transcribe—Grabs conversation recordings from Amazon S3, and transcribes them to text so you can review them.
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Amazon Comprehend—Takes the transcription of recordings, and applies speech analytics machine learning to the call to identify sentiment, keywords, adherence to company policies, and more.
Messaging
Amazon Connect uses the following services for messaging:
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Amazon Pinpoint—Use as an outbound messaging trigger for events; for example, bulk messaging (such as outbound marketing campaigns). For more information, see this blog post: Using Amazon Pinpoint to send text messages in Amazon Connect
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Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)—Use to send and receive SMS and other channel notifications. Amazon SNS is particularly useful for sending alerts and validations.
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Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES)—Use to send validation e-mails, such as a password reset bot sending a confirmation of the transaction.
Security
Amazon Connect uses the following services for added security:
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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)—Use to manage permissions for users. Amazon Connect users require permission for services. For more information, see Identity and access management for Amazon Connect.
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AWS Directory Service—Amazon Connect supports user federation through the internal directory (created in the Amazon Connect instance), using Active Directory integration (MAD, ADFS) or SAML 2.0.
For more information, see:
Management
Amazon Connect uses the following services for monitoring usage:
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Amazon CloudWatch—Collects logs, service metrics, performance metrics for Amazon Connect. For more information, see Monitoring your Amazon Connect instance using CloudWatch.
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AWS CloudTrail—Provides a record of Amazon Connect API calls.
For more information about Amazon Connect and AWS CloudTrail, see Log Amazon Connect API calls with AWS CloudTrail.
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AWS CloudFormation—Amazon Connect supports using AWS CloudFormation for initiating an instance with all the supported channels enabled. For more information, see AWS::Connect::Instance.
