Microsoft Exchange - Amazon Kendra
Supported featuresPrerequisitesConnection instructionsLearn more

Microsoft Exchange

Microsoft Exchange is an enterprise collaboration tool for messaging, meetings and file sharing. If you are a Microsoft Exchange user, you can use Amazon Kendra to index your Microsoft Exchange data source.

You can connect Amazon Kendra to your Microsoft Exchange data source using the Amazon Kendra console and the TemplateConfiguration API.

For troubleshooting your Amazon Kendra Microsoft Exchange data source connector, see Troubleshooting data sources.

Supported features

  • Field mappings

  • User access control

  • Inclusion/exclusion filters

  • Full and incremental content syncs

  • Virtual private cloud (VPC)

Prerequisites

Before you can use Amazon Kendra to index your Microsoft Exchange data source, make these changes in your Microsoft Exchange and AWS accounts.

In Microsoft Exchange, make sure you have:

  • Created a Microsoft Exchange account in Office 365.

  • Noted your Microsoft 365 tenant ID. You can find your tenant ID in the Properties of your Azure Active Directory Portal or in your OAuth application.

  • Configured an OAuth application in the Azure portal and noted the client ID and client secret or client credentials. See Microsoft tutorial and Registered app example for more information.

    Note

    When you create or register an app in the Azure portal, the secret ID represents the actual secret value. You must take note or save the actual secret value immediately when creating the secret and app. You can access your secret by selecting the name of your application in the Azure portal and then navigating to the menu option on certificates and secrets.

    You can access your client ID by selecting the name of your application in the Azure portal and then navigating to the overview page. The Application (client) ID is the client ID.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

  • Added the following permissions for the connector application:

    Microsoft Graph Office 365 Exchange Online

    • Mail.Read (Application)

    • Mail.ReadBasic (Application)

    • Mail.ReadBasic.All (Application)

    • Calendars.Read (Application)

    • User.Read.All (Application)

    • Contacts.Read (Application)

    • Notes.Read.All (Application)

    • Directory.Read.All (Application)

    • EWS.AccessAsUser.All (Delegated)

    		 full_access_as_app (Application)

  • Checked each document is unique in Microsoft Exchange and across other data sources you plan to use for the same index. Each data source that you want to use for an index must not contain the same document across the data sources. Document IDs are global to an index and must be unique per index.

In your AWS account, make sure you have:

  • Created an Amazon Kendra index and, if using the API, noted the index ID.

  • Created an IAM role for your data source and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the IAM role.

    Note

    If you change your authentication type and credentials, you must update your IAM role to access the correct AWS Secrets Manager secret ID.

  • Stored your Microsoft Exchange authentication credentials in an AWS Secrets Manager secret and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the secret.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

If you don’t have an existing IAM role or secret, you can use the console to create a new IAM role and Secrets Manager secret when you connect your Microsoft Exchange data source to Amazon Kendra. If you are using the API, you must provide the ARN of an existing IAM role and Secrets Manager secret, and an index ID.

Connection instructions

To connect Amazon Kendra to your Microsoft Exchange data source, you must provide the necessary details of your Microsoft Exchange data source so that Amazon Kendra can access your data. If you have not yet configured Microsoft Exchange for Amazon Kendra, see Prerequisites.

Console

To connect Amazon Kendra to Microsoft Exchange

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

  2. From the left navigation pane, choose Indexes and then choose the index you want to use from the list of indexes.

    Note

    You can choose to configure or edit your User access control settings under Index settings.

  3. On the Getting started page, choose Add data source.

  4. On the Add data source page, choose Microsoft Exchange connector, and then choose Add connector. If using version 2 (if applicable), choose Microsoft Exchange connector with the "V2.0" tag.

  5. On the Specify data source details page, enter the following information:

    1. In Name and description, for Data source name—Enter a name for your data source. You can include hyphens but not spaces.

    2. (Optional) Description—Enter an optional description for your data source.

    3. In Default language—Choose a language to filter your documents for the index. Unless you specify otherwise, the language defaults to English. Language specified in the document metadata overrides the selected language.

    4. In Tags, for Add new tag—Include optional tags to search and filter your resources or track your AWS costs.

    5. Choose Next.

  6. On the Define access and security page, enter the following information:

    1. Tenant ID—Enter your Microsoft 365 tenant ID. You can find your tenant ID in the Properties of your Azure Active Directory Portal or in your OAuth application.

    2. Authorization—Turn on or off access control list (ACL) information for your documents, if you have an ACL and want to use it for access control. The ACL specifies which documents that users and groups can access. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

    3. AWS Secrets Manager secret—Choose an existing secret or create a new Secrets Manager secret to store your Microsoft Exchange authentication credentials. If you choose to create a new secret an AWS Secrets Manager secret window opens.

      1. Enter following information in the Create an AWS Secrets Manager secret window:

        1. Secret name—A name for your secret. The prefix 'AmazonKendra-Microsoft Exchange

        2. For Client ID, Client secret—Enter the authentication credentials configured in Microsoft Exchange in the Azure portal.

      2. Save and add your secret.

    4. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—You can choose to use a VPC. If so, you must add Subnets and VPC security groups.

    5. IAM role—Choose an existing IAM role or create a new IAM role to access your repository credentials and index content.

      Note

      IAM roles used for indexes cannot be used for data sources. If you are unsure if an existing role is used for an index or FAQ, choose Create a new role to avoid errors.

    6. Choose Next.

  7. On the Configure sync settings page, enter the following information:

    1. User IDs—Provide the user emails if you want to filter content by certain emails.

    2. Additional configuration—Specify the types of content you want to crawl.

      • Entity types—You can choose to crawl calendar, OneNotes, or contacts content.

      • Calendar crawling—Enter the start and end date to crawl content between certain dates.

      • Include email—Enter "to", "from", and email subject lines to filter certain emails you want to crawl.

      • Shared folders access—Choose to enable crawling of access control list for access control of your Microsoft Exchange data source.

      • Regex for domains—Add regular expression patterns to include or exclude certain email domains.

      • Regex patterns—Add regular expression patterns to include or exclude certain files.

    3. Sync mode—Choose how you want to update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option.

      • Full sync: Freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

      • New, modified sync: Index only new and modified content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

      • New, modified, deleted sync: Index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    4. In Sync run schedule, for Frequency—Choose how often to sync your data source content and update your index.

    5. Choose Next.

  8. On the Set field mappings page, enter the following information:

    1. Default data source fields—Select from the Amazon Kendra generated default data source fields you want to map to your index.

      Note

      The Amazon Kendra Microsoft Exchange data source connector doesn't support custom field mappings.

    2. Choose Next.

  9. On the Review and create page, check that the information you have entered is correct and then select Add data source. You can also choose to edit your information from this page. Your data source will appear on the Data sources page after the data source has been added successfully.

API

To connect Amazon Kendra to Microsoft Exchange

You must specify a JSON of the data source schema using the TemplateConfiguration API. You must provide the following information:

  • Data source—Specify the data source type as MSEXCHANGE when you use the TemplateConfiguration JSON schema. Also specify the data source as TEMPLATE when you call the CreateDataSource API.

  • Tenant ID—You can find your tenant ID in the Properties of your Azure Active Directory Portal or in your OAuth application.

  • Sync mode—Specify how Amazon Kendra should update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option. You can choose between:

    • FORCED_FULL_CRAWL to freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

    • FULL_CRAWL to index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    • CHANGE_LOG to index only new and modified content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

  • Secret Amazon Resource Name (ARN)—Provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of an Secrets Manager secret that contains the authentication credentials for your Microsoft Exchange account. The secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:

    {
    "clientId": "client ID",
    "clientSecret": "client secret"
}

  • IAM role—Specify RoleArn when you call CreateDataSource to provide an IAM role with permissions to access your Secrets Manager secret and to call the required public APIs for the Microsoft Exchange connector and Amazon Kendra. For more information, see IAM roles for Microsoft Exchange data sources.

You can also add the following optional features:

  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—Specify VpcConfiguration when you call CreateDataSource. For more information, see Configuring Amazon Kendra to use an Amazon VPC.

  • Inclusion and exclusion filters—Specify whether to include or exclude certain content.

    Note

    Most data sources use regular expression patterns, which are inclusion or exclusion patterns referred to as filters. If you specify an inclusion filter, only content that matches the inclusion filter is indexed. Any document that doesn’t match the inclusion filter isn’t indexed. If you specify an inclusion and exclusion filter, documents that match the exclusion filter are not indexed, even if they match the inclusion filter.

  • Access control list (ACL)—Specify whether to crawl ACL information for your documents, if you have an ACL and want to use it for access control. The ACL specifies which documents that users and groups can access. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

  • Field mappings—Choose to map your Microsoft Exchange data source fields to your Amazon Kendra index fields. For more information, see Mapping data source fields.

    Note

    The document body field or the document body equivalent for your documents is required in order for Amazon Kendra to search your documents. You must map your document body field name in your data source to the index field name _document_body. All other fields are optional.

For a list of other important JSON keys to configure, see Microsoft Exchange template schema.

Learn more

To learn more about integrating Amazon Kendra with your Microsoft Exchange data source, see: