Using global controls in Amazon Q Business

You can use Amazon Q Business global controls to configure settings that apply to conversations in your application environment.

The following are the global features that you can customize:

Response settings

When you update your application environment guardrails, you can use Response settings to change this behavior in the following ways:

The following diagram shows you how Amazon Q Business uses these guardrails to direct queries:

Global controls apply to all supported conversation interactions, except when it conflicts with a specific topic-level control. In that case, a topic-level control takes precedence.

Blocked phrases

You can define blocked phrases for your application environment. Amazon Q Business ensures that chat responses don't include these words. You can choose up to 20 words.

Additionally, you can optionally configure a custom message to be displayed to your end users in response to any mention of blocked phrases during chat. You can use this message to inform them that word is blocked and provide them with further guidance on next steps.

By default, your application environment doesn't define any blocked words. You can choose to add these words when you edit and update your global control guardrails.

Feature control

You can control whether end users can upload files during chat to ask questions based on the uploaded document. By default, your application environment allows your end users to directly upload files in chat.

You can also choose whether to allow end users in a web experience to create and use Amazon Q Apps. Amazon Q Apps relies on LLM knowledge to work.

Customizing global controls

When you create an Amazon Q Business application environment, it's assigned the following default global controls:

To update global topic controls for your web experience chat, you can use the AWS Management Console or the UpdateChatControlsConfiguration API operation. The following tabs provide a procedure for the console and code examples for the AWS CLI.

Console

To update a global control guardrail

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Q Business console.

2. In Applications, select the name of your application environment from the list of applications.

3. From the left navigation menu, choose Enhancements, and then choose Guardrails.

4. In Guardrails, from Global controls, choose Edit.

5. In Application guardrails, do the following:

   • For Response settings do the following:

     • Allow end users to send queries directly to the LLM – If you choose to activate this option, end users will be able to toggle between generating responses from either the data sources you have connected to your application environment or use only the LLM to generate responses.

       Note

       If you choose to enable this option, your end users will have the option to generate LLM-only responses even if you don't allow Amazon Q to user LLM knowledge to generate responses.

       For more information, see Using global controls in Amazon Q Business.

     • Allow Amazon Q Business to fall back to LLM knowledge – Choose this option if you want to generate responses from your application environment's LLM world knowledge when it can't find information in your connected data sources. The default is to restrict responses to enterprise data. For more information, see Using global controls in Amazon Q Business.

     • Personalize responses – Allow Amazon Q Business to customize chat responses to end users using metadata associated with them—specifically address and job related information—in your IAM Identity Center instance.

       Note

       You must have already added this information in IAM Identity Center for response personalization to work as intended. For more information on how to configure your IAM Identity Center instance for personalization see Personalizing chat responses.

   • For Blocked words – Define blocked words for the application environment. The application environment will not respond to questions that contain these words or mention them in any responses.

   • For Messaging shown for blocked words – Choose to create a custom response for your end users informing them of blocked word usage and any next steps to take.

6. For Feature settings, choose whether your end users will be allowed to upload files directly in chat to ask questions based on file content and whether Amazon Q Apps will be enabled for your application environment.

7. Choose Save.

AWS CLI

To update a global control guardrail

aws qbusiness update-chat-controls-configuration \
--application-id application-id \
--blocked-phrases-configuration-update '{"blockedPhrasesToCreateOrUpdate":["example phrase 1", "example phrase 2"],"blockedPhrasesToDelete":["example phrase 1", "example phrase 2"],"systemMessageOverride":"user facing message when blocked phrase encountered"}' \
--client-token clientToken \
--response-scope ENTERPRISE_CONTENT_ONLY | EXTENDED_KNOWLEDGE_ENABLED \
--creator-mode-configuration creatorModeControl=ENABLED | DISABLED