Release notes - Amazon Connect
April 2022 UpdatesMarch 2022 UpdatesFebruary 2022 UpdatesJanuary 2022 UpdatesDecember 2021 UpdatesNovember 2021 UpdatesOctober 2021 UpdatesSeptember 2021 UpdatesAugust 2021 UpdatesJuly 2021 UpdatesJune 2021 UpdatesMay 2021 UpdatesApril 2021 UpdatesMarch 2021 UpdatesFebruary 2021 UpdatesJanuary 2021 UpdatesDecember 2020 UpdatesNovember 2020 UpdatesEarlier Updates

Release notes

To help you keep track of the ongoing updates and improvements to Amazon Connect, we publish release notices that describe recent changes.

April 2022 Updates

New API to change an agent's current status

Amazon Connect provides an API to programmatically change the current status of an agent. Agent statuses are used to determine when an agent is Available to be routed contacts in Amazon Connect, versus when they are set to Offline or a custom status such as Lunch or Break and should not be routed contacts. For more information, see PutUserStatus in the Amazon Connect API Reference.

New API to search for users by name, agent hierarchies, and tags

Added API to search for user records in your Amazon Connect instance. This new API provides a programmatic and flexible way to search for users by first name, last name, username, routing profile, security profile, agent hierarchies or tags. For example, you can now use this API to search for all users tagged with a Department:key value pair. You can also quickly find a list of all users assigned to a specific security profile, routing profile, or agent hierarchy. For more information, see the Amazon Connect API Reference.

New APIs to claim and configure phone numbers

Added new APIs to claim new phone numbers and configure them programmatically. Using these APIs, you can programmatically search for and claim available phone numbers, associate phone numbers to contact flows, or release phone numbers that are no longer needed. Additionally, the phone number APIs come with support for AWS CloudFormation. For more information, see the Amazon Connect API Reference and the Amazon Connect Resource Type Reference in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

Telephony: Multi-party calls

You can enable Amazon Connect to allow up to six parties on a call: the agent, the caller, and four more participants. (By default, Amazon Connect allows agents to have up to three parties on a call: the agent, and caller, and another participant.) For more information, see Update instance settings. For more information, see Host multi-party calls.

For information about new functionality on the existing Connection and Contact API in Amazon Connect Streams, see the Amazon Connect Streams Readme.

The following sections describes how managing multi-party calls differs from managing three-party calls.

New behavior with multi-party calls

  • All agents see all of the connections in a call.

  • All agents have exactly the same capabilities as any other agent on the call. This takes into affect the moment an agent accepts the invitation to join the call.

  • Before a warm transfer is complete, an agent can start talking to the caller as well as disconnect any other agent on the call.

Comparison: Three-party and multi-party calls

The following table summarizes the differences between the agent's experience using the Contact Control Panel (CCP) for three-party calls and multi-party calls.

  • Primary agent: the first agent on the call.

  • Secondary agent: any agent other than the first agent on the call.

Three-party calls Multi-party calls

Agent can control hold, resume, and disconnect only the parties they added.

All agents are have the same call control capabilities.

Agent can add one other participant to an existing call, for a total of three participants (the agent, the caller, and another participant).

Any agent on the call can add additional participants, as long as the total number of participants on the call, including themselves, does not exceed six.

Agent can put only the party they added on hold.

Any agent on the call can put any party on hold.

When a primary agent places a secondary agent on hold, the secondary agent can't take themselves off hold.

Any agent on the call can take themselves off hold.

Secondary agent can talk to the primary agent during hold.

Secondary agents cannot talk to each other until they are taken off hold.

Primary agent can only mute themselves.

Secondary agent can only mute themselves.

Any agent on the call can mute any other participant on the call.

When an agent disconnects (leaves or is disconnected), call control continues to be available to the remaining agent(s) on the call.

When an agent disconnects, control of the call is transferred to the remaining agents.

Only the primary agent can disconnect a party on the call. The secondary agent can disconnect the caller only if the primary agent has disconnected.

All agents have the capability to disconnect any other party.

The primary agent can see two connections (caller and another party), while a secondary agent sees only the transfer connection.

All agents can see all connections.

An agent only sees internal transfer for another agent on the call.

An agent sees the quick connect ID for other agents, instead of just internal transfer.

Not applicable.

When an party is being dialed, an agent on a multi-party call cannot add another party until the prior dial operation is completed (party added or call leg terminated).

Play prompts from an Amazon S3 bucket

Added the ability to source prompts from an Amazon S3 bucket. You can store as many voice prompts as needed in Amazon S3 and access them in real time by using contact attributes in the following contact blocks that play prompts: Get customer input, Loop prompts, Play prompt, and Store customer input.

For more information, see the Play prompt block. For information about the policy required for Amazon Connect to access the Amazon S3 bucket, see Set up prompts to play from an S3 bucket.

CloudTrail support for queues and routing profiles

Amazon Connect records all changes made to users, routing profiles, and queues as events in AWS CloudTrail. For example, you can identify who took which action, what resources were acted upon, and when an event occurred. For more information, see Logging Amazon Connect API calls with AWS CloudTrail.

March 2022 Updates

Rich messaging for chat

Added support for rich messaging for your customer's chat experience. Agents and customers can use bold, italics, bulleted lists, numbered lists, hyperlinks, and attachments. For more information, see Enable text formatting for your customer's chat experience.

Customer Profiles: Object type mapping user interface

Added a user interface for creating object type mapping by using the Amazon Connect admin console. For more information, see Create an object type mapping.

February 2022 Updates

Added bulk ingestion of data for Customer Profiles

Added support for the bulk ingestion of data for Customer Profiles. For more information, see Bulk ingestion of data in the Set up integration for Salesforce, ServiceNow, Marketo, or Zendesk topic.

New CloudWatch metrics for chat

Added the following Amazon CloudWatch metrics for chat: ConcurrentActiveChats, ConcurrentActiveChatsPercentage, ChatBreachingActiveChatQuota, and SuccessfulChatsPerInterval. For more information, see Monitoring your instance using CloudWatch.

January 2022 Updates

Configure maximum chat duration up to 7 days

You can configure the maximum chat duration to last up to 7 days. For more information, see the ChatDurationInMinutes parameter in the StartChatContact API.

Add custom vocabularies to Contact Lens

Improve the accuracy of speech recognition for product names, brand names, and domain-specific terminology, by expanding and tailoring the vocabulary of the speech-to-text engine in Contact Lens. For more information, see Add custom vocabularies.

December 2021 Updates

Chat widget supports browser notifications

The chat widget supports browser notifications for desktop devices. For more information, see Browser notifications.

Ingest data into Customer Profiles from Segment and Shopify

For more information, see Set up integration for Segment and Set up integration for Shopify.

November 2021 Updates

Released unified agent application

Amazon Connect released the unified agent application to improve the agent experience and customer interactions. For more information, see Agent training guide.

Released call summarization

Contact Lens for Amazon Connect provides the option for you to view a transcript summary. The summary shows only those lines where Contact Lens has identified an issue, outcome, or action item in the transcript. For more information, see View call summary.

Released Identity Resolution to consolidate similar profiles

Amazon Connect Customer Profiles offers Identity Resolution, a feature that is designed to automatically detect similar customer profiles by comparing name, email address, phone number, date of birth, and address. For example, two or more profiles with spelling mistakes, such as "John Doe" and "Jhn Doe," can be detected as belonging to the same customer "John Doe" using clustering and matching machine learning (ML) algorithms. Once a group of profiles are detected to be similar, admins can configure how profiles should be merged together by setting up consolidation rules by using the Amazon Connect admin console or Amazon Connect Customer Profiles APIs.

Amazon Connect Customer Profiles stores contact history at no charge

Amazon Connect Customer Profiles now provides contact history and customer information together in unified customer profiles at no charge, helping contact center managers personalize the contact center experience. In new instances, Customer Profiles is enabled by default. For more information, see Step 4: Data Storage in the Create an Amazon Connect instance topic.

Added modular flows to help you create common functions

Contact flow modules are reusable sections of a contact flow. You can create them to extract repeatable logic across your flows, and create common functions. For more information, see Contact flow modules for reusable functions.

New APIs to archive/unarchive and delete contact flows

Added new APIs that provide a programmatic and flexible way to manage your library of contact flows at scale. For example, contact flows used only during certain times of the year can be archived when not in use and then unarchived when needed. You can now also delete a contact flow so it is no longer available for use. For more information, see the Amazon Connect API Reference.

Search contacts by custom contact attributes

Added support for searching contacts by custom contact attributes (also called user-defined attributes). For more information, see Search by custom contact attributes.

Added Customer profiles block

Added the Customer profiles block. It enables you to retrieve, create, and update a customer profile.

Released Contact APIs

Added APIs so you can get and update contact details programmatically. For example, you can describe contact details such as queue information, chat attachments, task references, and update contact information such as task name. For more information, see DescribeContact, UpdateContact, and ListReferences in the Amazon Connect API Reference.

Released scheduled tasks

Added the ability to schedule tasks up to six days in the future to follow-up on customer issues when promised. You can also update the scheduled date and time using the UpdateContactSchedule API. For more information, see the Create task block and the Create a task topic in the Agent training guide.

Released security profiles APIs

Added APIs so you can create and manage security profiles programmatically. Security profiles help you manage who can access the Amazon Connect dashboard and Contact Control Panel (CCP), and who can perform specific tasks. For more information, see the Amazon Connect API Reference.

Changes to real-time metrics agent tables

We are rolling out a new service to maintain the high availability from metrics that you expect from Amazon Connect. Due to this change, the agent tables will now be sorted by availability status by default, rather than by agent login.

Additionally, the queues and routing profiles table will sort by agents online by default instead of queue or routing profile name.

Added new metrics

Added following new historical metrics: Contacts transferred in by agent and Contacts transferred out by agent. Added new real-time metrics: Transferred in by agent and Transferred out by agent. For more information, see Historical metrics definitions and Real-time metrics definitions.

October 2021 Updates

Released real-time chat message streaming

You can subscribe to a real-time stream of chat messages. For more information, see Enable real-time chat message streaming.

Released HoursOfOperation APIs for General Availability

Released the Amazon Connect HoursOfOperation APIs for general availability (GA). Also launched AWS CloudFormation support for Users, User Hierarchies, and Hours of Operation. For more information, see the Amazon Connect API Reference and the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

September 2021 Updates

Released Amazon Connect Wisdom General Availability

For more information, see Deliver information to agents using Amazon Connect Wisdom and the Amazon Connect Wisdom API Reference.

Amazon Connect Voice ID - General Availability

For more information, see Use real-time caller authentication with Voice ID and the Amazon Connect Voice ID API Reference.

Preview release of Amazon Connect High-Volume Outbound Communications

Added content for the preview release of Amazon Connect High-Volume Outbound Communications. By using Amazon Pinpoint Journeys and Amazon Connect, you can now create high-volume outbound campaigns for voice, SMS, and email. For more information, see Enable High-Volume Outbound Communications.

New Amazon AppIntegrations Service APIs

New DataIntegration APIs for the Amazon AppIntegrations Service: CreateDataIntegration, DeleteDataIntegration, GetDataIntegration, ListDataIntegrationAssociations, ListDataIntegrations, UpdateDataIntegration.

For more information, see Amazon AppIntegrations Service API Reference.

Display name and contact attributes in chat

You can now personalize the chat experience, as you can specify the name of your customer that interacts using the chat user interface. You can also securely pass the contact attributes to capture information about the contact which can be used in the contact flow to further personalize the experience. For more information, see Pass the customer display name when a chat initializes and Pass contact attributes when a chat initializes.

Preview of agent application

Launched an updated UI for the agent application preview that combines Customer Profiles and the Contact Control Panel (CCP). For more information, see Access Customer Profiles in the agent application.

Added Create task block

Added the Create task block. It creates a new task, sets the tasks attributes, and initiates a contact flow to start the task. For more information, see Contact block: Create task.

August 2021 Updates

Improved user interface for Amazon Connect console

Released a redesigned and improved user interface for the Amazon Connect console, making it easier and faster to manage Amazon Connect instances. For more information, see Create an Amazon Connect instance.

APIs for Hours of Operation and Agent Status (Preview)

Released for ungated preview new APIs for managing hours of operation and agent status. For more information, see Amazon Connect Service API Reference.

Contact Lens: Build rules that generate tasks and EventBridge events

Contact Lens rules now allow you to automatically generate tasks and EventBridge events based on uttered keywords, sentiment scores, customer attributes, and other criteria. For more information, see Create rules with Contact Lens.

Networking: Allow AWS Global Accelerator

When using SAML Sign-In to your Amazon Connect instance, you now need to add the AWS Global Accelerator domain, *. awsglobalaccelerator.com, to your allow list. For more information, see Set up your network.

July 2021 Updates

"Next status" feature for the CCP

In busy contact centers, it can be difficult for agents to take a break or go offline when contacts are being quickly routed to them. To help agents manage their time, we have released a feature that lets agents pause new contacts being routed to them while they finish their current contacts. When all their slots are cleared, Amazon Connect automatically sets agents to the next status, such as Lunch.

For details about how agents use this feature, see Set your "Next status".

Metrics: No changes due to "Next status"

When an agent is in Next status, their metrics are the same as when their status is Available.

For example, an agent is handling one contact and chooses Next status. Here's what you'll see in the real-time metrics report:

  • Agent Activity state = On Contact

  • Agent - Staffed = 1

Non-productive time (NPT) is not incremented when an agent is in Next status because the agent is still Available. NPT increments only when the agent actually enters the non-productive status, such as Lunch.

Agent event stream has new NextAgentStatus field

When an agent sets their status to Next status, Amazon Connect populates a new NextAgentStatus field with the next status selected by the agent.

At the same time, the AgentStatus field continues to display Available.

The following code snippet shows what the agent event stream looks like when an agent has set their CCP to Next status: Lunch. 

"CurrentAgentSnapshot": 
{
    "AgentStatus": {
            "ARN": "example-ARN",
            "Name": "Available",
            "StartTimestamp": "2019-08-13T20:52:30.704Z"
        },
     "NextAgentStatus": {
            "Name": "Lunch",
            "ARN": "example-ARN2",
            "EnqueueTimestamp": "2019-08-13T20:58:00.004Z",
        }
}

When an agent has not selected a Next status, the field is null, as shown in the following snippet:

"CurrentAgentSnapshot": {
    "AgentStatus": {
            "ARN": "example-ARN",
            "Name": "Available",
            "StartTimestamp": "2019-08-13T20:52:30.704Z"
        },
     "NextAgentStatus": null
}

Amazon Connect Streams API and "Next status"

The feature has the following effect:

  • If you integrate with Amazon Connect Streams API and your agents interact directly with the native CCP user interface, your agents will start using this new feature immediately.

  • If you integrate with Amazon Connect Streams API but your agents don't interact directly with the native CCP user interface, your contact center will continue to have the previous behavior when agent.setState() is called: an agent will not be able to select an NPT or Offline status while connected to at least one contact.

    If you are handling state change logic yourself from Amazon Connect Streams, you will need to make additional changes explained in the Amazon Connect Streams README.

Contact search: To search contacts by Agent login requires Users - View permissions in your security profile

To use the Agent filter on the Contact search page, in your Amazon Connect security profile you must have Users - View permissions, as shown in the following image:

When you have Users - View permissions, on the Contact search page the Agent filter appears, as shown in the following image:

Without User - View permissions, the Agent filter is not visible, and searching contacts by Agent login is not supported, as shown in the following image:

June 2021 Updates

Apple Messages for Business GA

Released Apple Messages for Business for general availability (GA). For more information, see Enable Apple Messages for Business.

Quick connects management API GA

Released Amazon Connect quick connects management API for general availability (GA). For more information, see Amazon Connect Service API Reference. The quick connects API also supports AWS CloudFormation. For more information, see Amazon Connect Resource Type Reference in the AWS CloudFormation User Guide.

Support for Amazon Lex V2 console and APIs

For more information on using the Amazon Lex V2 console with Amazon Connect, see Add an Amazon Lex bot. Added these three APIs: AssociateLexBot, DisassociateLexBot, and ListLexBots. See the Amazon Connect Service API Reference.

Chat: Increase to chat agent concurrency

Chat agents can now handle up to 10 concurrent chat contacts. For more information, see Create a routing profile.

May 2021 Updates

Added contact events

Subscribe to a near real-time stream of contact events (for example, call is queued) in your Amazon Connect contact center. For more information, see Amazon Connect contact events.

Contact search

The following changes were release for Contact search:

  • Download increase: You are able to download 3,000 rows of search results to a CSV file, instead of 1,000 rows. This increase applies to contacts that occurred after Dec 01, 2020.

  • Contact search supports Disconnect Reason as a new filter on the Contact search page.

    The following image shows how Disconnect reason appears in the user interface as a filter.

    The following image shows how you can filter by type of disconnect reason. For a definition of each disconnect reason, see the ContactTraceRecord section of the Contact records data model topic.

    The following image shows how you add Disconnect reason as a column to your search results.

April 2021 Updates

Customer Profiles: Identity resolution

Added identity resolution APIs to Customer Profiles. For more information, see the GetMatches and MergeProfiles APIs in the Amazon Connect Customer Profiles API reference.

Contact Lens: Use category tags to navigate transcript

For more information, see Tap or click category tags to navigate through transcript.

Fixes for chat metrics

We released fixes for the following issues identified in chat metrics:

  • Amazon Connect incorrectly reported that chat contacts that were created from disconnect flows were created from transfer flows.

  • When these fixes, Amazon Connect correctly reflects in the contact records and agent event stream that these chat contacts were created from disconnect flows.

There is no impact to voice or task contacts.

Chat contacts created through disconnect flows no longer increment the following metrics:

In addition, note the following fixes for contact records and the agent event stream for chat contacts:

  • Contact records: There was an issue in the Attributes section of a chat contact record where the initiation method is API for both disconnect and transfer contacts. With this fix, the initiation method correctly reflects Disconnect and Transfer, respectively.

  • Agent event stream: Chat contacts created from disconnect flows now have Disconnect as the initiation method.

March 2021 Updates

Amazon Connect is now available in the Canada (Central) Region

Amazon Connect is now available in the Canada (Central) Region. You can claim toll-free and local telephone numbers from Canadian telephony suppliers. For a list of countries were the Canada (Central) Region is supported, see Region requirements for phone numbers. For a list of Contact Lens features available in the Canada (Central) Region, see Availability of Contact Lens features by Region.

Domain for new Amazon Connect instances is "my.connect.aws"

The domain for the Amazon Connect access URL has changed to my.connect.aws.

For example:

  • Current: https://[instance name].awsapps.com/connect/

  • New: https://[instance name].my.connect.aws/

How does this change impact logging in to Amazon Connect?

The current access URL continues to work for Amazon Connect instances created before the release of the my.connect.aws domain. Any Amazon Connect instances created after the release automatically use the new domain.

Also, if you create new Amazon Connect instances after the release of the new domain, you must add new domains to your allow list. These domains are in addition to the ones that are currently required.

Currently required domains added to your allow list:

  • {myInstanceName}.awsapps.com/connect/ccp-v2

  • {myInstanceName}.awsapps.com/connect/api

  • *.cloudfront.net

New additional domains to add to your allow list:

  • {myInstanceName}.my.connect.aws/ccp-v2

  • {myInstanceName}.my.connect.aws/api

  • *.static.connect.aws

For more information, see Set up your network.

Schedule for domain change

The change has been rolled out to all Regions.

Chat: Add a chat user interface your website

Added a chat widget that you can customize and secure so it can only be launched from your widget. For more information, see Set up your customer's chat experience.

Provided an open source example. For more information, see Download and customize our open source example.

Amazon Connect Endpoint Test Utility

To help you validate connectivity to Amazon Connect, or troubleshoot when your agents are experiencing problems with the Contact Control Panel (CCP), we've added the Amazon Connect Endpoint Test Utility. For more information, see Use the Endpoint Test Utility.

February 2021 Updates

Contact Lens: Availability of real-time analytics

Content Lens real-time analytics is available in Europe (London), Europe (Frankfurt), and Asia (Tokyo). For more information, see Availability of Contact Lens features by Region.

Ingest data into Customer Profiles using Amazon S3

Added the ability to create and ingest data from Amazon S3. For more information, see Create and ingest customer data into Customer Profiles by using Amazon S3.

Disconnect reason in contact record stream

The Amazon Connect contact records stream now includes DisconnectReason for voice calls and tasks. DisconnectReason indicates whether an agent or customer disconnected the call, or whether a telecom or network issue caused a call to disconnect. You can also determine whether a task was completed by an agent or an automatic flow, or it expired. For more information, see ContactTraceRecord.

Custom service levels

Added the ability to create custom service levels. For details, see New metric groupings and categories.

January 2021 Updates

CCP: Change your audio settings

Added the ability to change audio settings from the Contact Control Panel (CCP). This applies to organizations using a customized CCP. For more information, see Change your audio device settings.

Queue APIs (Preview)

Added APIs so you can programmatically create and manage queues. For more information, see Amazon Connect Service API Reference.

Amazon AppIntegrations APIs - GA

Released Amazon AppIntegrations APIs for general availability (GA). For more information, see Amazon AppIntegrations Service API Reference.

December 2020 Updates

Quick Connect APIs (Preview)

Added APIs so you can programmatically create and manage quick connects. For more information, see Amazon Connect Service API Reference.

Chat: Support for attachments

Added support for chat attachments. For more information, see Enable attachments to share files using chat.

Added the following APIs:

Configurable DTMF timeouts for Lex bots

For more information, see Configurable fields for DTMF input.

Tasks

Added support for tasks, allowing you to prioritize, assign, track, and even automate tasks across the disparate tools agents use to support customers. For more information, see Tasks.

Amazon Connect APIs

Added an Amazon Connect API that provides the ability to create tasks (StartTaskContact), and a set of preview APIs.

Preview APIs:

  • CreateIntegrationAssociation

  • DeleteIntegrationAssociation

  • ListIntegrationAssociations

  • CreateUseCase

  • DeleteUseCase

  • ListUseCases

Amazon AppIntegrations APIs (Preview)

Added the Amazon AppIntegrations APIs (Preview), which enables you to configure and reuse connections to external applications. For more information, see Amazon AppIntegrations Service API Reference (Preview).

Customer Profiles

Added Amazon Connect Customer Profiles, enabling agents to create a customer profile for every new contact that comes in. You can also integrate with external applications that provide customer profile data. For more information, see Use Customer Profiles and the Amazon Connect Customer Profiles API Reference.

Real-time analytics using Contact Lens

Added real-time analytics for Contact Lens so you can detect and resolve customer issues more proactively while the call is in progress. For more information, see Analyze conversations using Contact Lens for Amazon Connect and the Amazon Connect Contact Lens API Reference.

Amazon Connect Voice ID (Preview)

Added Amazon Connect Voice ID (Preview), which provides for real-time caller authentication. For more information, see Use real-time caller authentication with Voice ID.

Amazon Connect Wisdom (Preview)

Added Amazon Connect Wisdom (Preview), which enables agents to search and find content across multiple repositories, such as frequently asked questions (FAQs), wikis, articles, and step-by-step instructions for handling different customer issues. For more information, see Deliver information to agents using Amazon Connect Wisdom.

Amazon Connect with Apple Messages for Business (Preview)

Added support for using Amazon Connect with Apple Messages for Business. For more information, see Enable Apple Messages for Business.

November 2020 Updates

Telephony call metadata attributes

View historical changes

  • The ability to View historical changes on the resource configuration pages is now available for the London Region. The following differences appear as the changes are rolled out to other Regions.

    • Total results: The number feature in the View historical changes search page, and page numbers, are replaced with Previous and Next icons.

    • The Username filter requires the entire login name.

Chat

APIs

  • Added APIs so you can programmatically manage your agent hierarchies and agent groups. For more information, see Amazon Connect Service API Reference.

  • Added the following APIs (in an ungated preview release):

    • CreateInstance

    • DescribeInstance

    • ListInstances

    • DeleteInstance

    • UpdateInstanceAttribute

    • UpdateInstanceStorageConfig

Earlier Updates

October 2020 Updates

The following updates were released in October 2020:

Contact flows

Metrics

September 2020 Updates

The following updates were released in September 2020:

Service quotas

Contact flows

  • Added the Amazon Connect Flow language, a JSON-based representation of a series of flow actions, and the criteria for moving between them. For more information, see Amazon Connect Flow language.

APIs

Added the following APIs for contact flows:

Added the following API to list prompts:

Added the following APIs for routing profiles:

August 2020 Updates

The following updates were released in August 2020:

Contact flows

Telephony

Monitoring

Contact Lens for Amazon Connect

July 2020 Updates

The following updates were released in July 2020:

Contact flows

  • The Set voice block supports speaking styles with neural text-to-speech (TTS) voices. For more information, see Contact block: Set voice.

APIs

Contact Lens for Amazon Connect

  • Updated Contact Lens for Amazon Connect for general availability. This feature lets you analyze customer-agent conversations, by using speech transcription, natural language processing, and intelligent search capabilities. For more information, see Analyze conversations using Contact Lens for Amazon Connect.

Metrics

  • Fixed content that was added in June 2020 that said Agent idle time, Agent on contact time, and Occupancy had been deprecated. That was incorrect. Rather, they are no longer available for queue groupings only. For more information, see What's new in metrics.

  • Corrected how Occupancy is calculated. The correct calculation is:

    (Agent on contact (wall clock time) / (Agent on contact (wall clock time) + Agent idle time))

June 2020 Updates

The following updates were released in June 2020:

Metrics

  • The following historical metrics no longer appear in queue groupings:

    • Agent idle time

    • Agent on contact time

    • Occupancy

  • Added upcoming metric changes: new real-time and historical metrics for inbound and outbound contact time. For more information, see What's new in metrics.

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

  • Released the following improvements:

    • DTMF input is passed to all lines in a three-way call. Any party can enter DTMF input.

    • Resolved an issue where the DTMF tone degraded when agents interacted with Quick connect and/or Number pad during a session.

    • Resolved an issue where quick connects sometimes did not appear on a page, even after an agent refreshed it.

    • Improved the experience when a manager "listens in" to multiple chat conversations. Updated the unread message count on the CCP to include messages sent by the customer and those sent by the agent. Previously, the unread message count only included messages sent by the customer.

  • Published instructions for upgrading to the latest CCP. For more information, see Upgrade to the latest CCP.

  • Published a training video that explains how to use the CCP. For more information, see Training video: How to use the CCP.

Contact flows

May 2020 Update

The following updates were released in May 2020:

Contact flows

  • Added the ability to select multiple blocks at the same time and rearrange them as a group within a contact flow. For more information, see Create an inbound contact flow.

April 2020 Update

The following updates were released in April 2020:

Telephony

  • Added early media support for outbound phone calls. Enabled by default, an agent hears tones and audio messages played by phone companies—such as busy signals, failure to connect errors, or other informational messages—through their headset or audio device. For more information, see Step 3: Set telephony in the Create an Amazon Connect instance topic.

  • Added the barge-in-enabled session attribute to the Get customer input block so customers can interrupt Amazon Lex bots with their voice.

March 2020 Update

The following updates were released in March 2020:

Contact flows

Metrics

Networking

February 2020 Update

The following updates were released in February 2020:

Service Quotas

Contact Flows

Updated the following blocks so you can set contact attributes:

January 2020 Update

The following updates were released in January 2020:

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

The following updates were made to the updated Contact Control Panel (ccp-v2):

  • Agents can now transfer a contact by double-clicking a quick connect. For more information, see Transfer calls to a quick connect or external number.

  • The number pad now retains the previously selected country flag so agents don't need to select it every time.

  • All strings in the CCP user interface are now localized in available languages.

  • Resolved an issue where the color of the call status bar incorrectly displayed as green during a conference call when the call was in the Joined state. It is now blue.

  • Resolved an issue where the agent’s name was displayed in error messages for missed chats, rather than the customer’s name.

Networking

  • Updated Set up your network to include requirements for the updated Contact Control Panel (ccp-v2).

December 2019 Update

The following update was released in December 2019:

Monitoring

November 2019 Update

The following updates were released in November 2019:

Omnichannel Support

  • Added support for chat communications. For more information, see Concepts.

Metrics

Contact Flows

Added the following contact flow blocks:

Updated the following contact flow blocks for chat:

User Management

Live Media Streaming

API

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

October 2019 Update

The following update was released in October 2019:

Metrics

  • The real time metric On call is now incremented whenever an agent is handling a contact who is connected, on hold, in After Contact Work, or the agent is dialog out to a customer.

    This metric is available in the Queues tables and Routing Profile tables on the Real time metrics page. It's also returned by the GetCurrentMetricData API as AGENTS_ON_CALL.

June 2019 Update

The following update was released in June 2019:

Contact Flows

  • Added contact flow versioning so you can choose between a saved or published version when you roll back.

May 2019 Updates

The following updates were released in May 2019:

Metrics and Reporting

  • Improved the error messages you might encounter when creating, editing, or deleting a scheduled report.

  • In the Historical metrics report UI, changed Contacts missed to Agent non-response. This metric appears as Contacts missed in scheduled reports and exported CSV files.

  • In the agent event stream, fixed the formatting of the timestamp millisecond so you can better order and analyze the data. To learn more, see Amazon Connect agent event streams.

Contact Control Panel

  • Resolved an issue where calling a destroy action (such as connection.destroy) using the Amazon Connect Streams API resulted in different behavior depending on which leg of the conversation it was called from: the agent or the customer. Now calling a destroy action results in the same behavior for both: a busy conversation is moved to After Call Work (ACW) and a conversation in any other state is cleared. If you used the native Contact Control Panel instead of the Amazon Connect Streams API, you weren't impacted by this issue.

April 2019 Updates

The following updates were released in April 2019:

Contact Control Panel

  • Resolved an issue where the hold flow didn't run in this case:

    • The agent missed a call and then set themselves back to Available.

    • Then they were re-routed the same call.

    • The agent put that customer on hold while handling the call.

    However, taking the customer off hold worked as expected and no other impact occurred.

  • Resolved an issue where the Amazon Connect Streams API returned softphoneAutoAccept = FALSE even though Auto-Accept Call was enabled for the agent.

March 2019 Update

The following updates were released in March 2019:

Metrics and Reporting

  • Improved the error messages you might encounter when running real-time metrics reports. For example, if you manually configure a real-time metrics report to contain more than 100 queues, we'll display this message: "You've hit the maximum limit of 100 queues. Please reconfigure your report to contain no more than 100 queues." To learn more, see No metrics or too few rows in a queues report?

Contact Control Panel

  • Resolved an issue where, in rare cases, an agent already handling an outbound call could have been incorrectly presented with an additional queued callback, even though they are only allowed to handle one contact at a time. Since that agent would have been on contact and not idle, the agent wouldn't have been able to accept the queued callback.

    In these cases, the outbound call was not impacted; the agent wouldn't have noticed any differences in the CCP. The callback was presented to another agent instead of being dropped.

February 2019 Updates

The following updates were released in February 2019:

Contact Routing

  • Resolved an issue where in rare cases some contacts were not routed to the agent that was available for the longest time.

  • Resolved an issue in the user interface where the value displayed for No. of agents staffed for the Basic Routing Profile on the Routing Profiles page was incorrect. The correct number of agents for the routing profile was displayed on the User Management page.

Contact Flows

  • Resolved an issue with the contact flow editor when adding intents in Chrome.

  • Resolved an issue where routing priority and age for queued callbacks were not saved.

  • Resolved an issue where contact attributes for an outbound whisper flow were not saved.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Added EnqueueTimestamp, Duration, and DequeueTimestamp to the contact record for callback contacts.

  • Resolved an issue where InitiationTimestamp for callback contacts did not match the time that the callback was created.

  • Resolved an issue where users were given an incorrect message when they did not have permissions to edit a report.

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

  • Resolved an issue where callbacks were not ringing in the CCP.

January 2019 Updates

The following updates were released in January 2019:

Contact Routing

  • Resolved an issue where in rare cases agent transfers were failing.

Contact Flows

  • Resolved an issue where agent transfers were failing.

  • Resolved an issue that resulted in periodic delays in publishing contact flow logs.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Resolved an issue in real-time metrics reports where the page showed the wrong calculation for Avg queue answer time.

  • Resolved an issue where some events were missing from an agent event stream.

December 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in December 2018:

Metrics and Reporting

  • Resolved an issue where agent event streams were missing agent snapshots during login and logout events.

  • Resolved an issue where the contact record detail page displayed timestamps using the timezone selected on the search page.

  • Resolved an issue where the AfterContactWork status was overridden.

  • Resolved an issue where the timestamps are incorrect if an agent accidentally disconnects while placing a customer on hold.

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

  • Resolved an intermittent issue with initialization when an agent configuration is corrupted or null.

  • Resolved an issue where pressing Enter to transfer a call did not work.

November 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in November 2018:

General

  • Resolved an issue with auditing.

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes resulted in agents being placed in a default state when a contact disconnected when attempting to connect to an agent.

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes resulted in newly created agents not being able to log in correctly if the log in attempt occurred immediately after user account was created.

Contact Flows

  • Added the new Loop block, which lets you loop through segments of a contact flow, such as requesting customer information additional times if valid data is not entered.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Resolved an issue where callbacks handled were included in the count for incoming contacts in historical reports, but not counted in scheduled reports. Callbacks handled are no longer included in the count for Incoming contacts handled in historical reports.

  • Improved performance of report generation for reports with a large number of queues and agents in an instance.

  • Resolved an issue with how ACW was reported, and backfilled data in customer instances to correct the ACW data for September, October, and November.

October 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in October 2018:

General

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes resulted in stuck media sessions.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes resulted in agent names not being displayed correctly in historical reports.

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes resulted in the data related to agent Auxiliary states were incorrectly overwritten.

API

  • Resolved an issue where the GetCurrentMetrics operation returned the metric OLDEST_CONTACT_AGE in milliseconds instead of seconds.

September 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in September 2018:

Updates by category

General

  • Improved page loading times for the User management page.

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes caused issues loading the Queues page when there were a large number of quick connects associated with a queue.

API

August 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in August 2018:

General

  • Added a restriction of 64 characters for the password length for the administrator account created during instance creation.

  • Resolved an issue where the Hours of operation page would not load when no days were selected for a saved Hours of operation configuration.

Contact Routing

  • Increased the timeout for whispers to 2 minutes for outbound and queued callbacks so that agents have longer to prepare for the incoming call.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Modified how the value for the Contacts abandoned metric so that calls that transfer to callbacks are not counted as abandoned contacts.

July 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in July 2018:

New Features

General

  • Added an error message when attempting to create an admin user during instance creation using “Administrator” as the user name. The user name Administrator is reserved for internal use, and cannot be used to create a user account in Amazon Connect.

  • Added support for directory user names that include consecutive dashes.

  • Added pagination when displaying security profiles in your instance so that more than 25 security profiles can be displayed.

  • Performance optimizations to reduce latency when using the StartOutboundVoiceContact API.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Resolved an issue in real-time metrics reports where applied filters were not displayed in the settings page when an additional filter was applied. The settings page now displays the applied filters correctly.

Contact Flows

  • Added drop-down menus for contact attributes to make it easier to reference attributes in a contact flows.

June 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in June 2018:

General

  • Changed the font in the UI to Amazon Ember for better readability.

Telephony and Voice

  • Introduced support for using Amazon Lex bots with Amazon Connect in the US West (Oregon) Region.

  • Fixed a bug that in some cases caused a call to drop when a Loop prompt occurred at the same as a call connecting to an agent.

Contact Flows

  • Renamed the Set queue block to Set working queue.

  • Added a Copy to clipboard button next to the ARN of a contact flow so you can easily copy the ARN. Choose Show additional flow information under the name of the contact flow in the designer to display the ARN.

  • Added a new Call phone number block, which lets you choose the phone number from your instance to display as the caller ID in an outbound whisper flow. For more information, see Caller ID number: Set in the queue or Call phone number block.

  • Released contact attributes for system metrics, including a new Get metrics block in contact flows. For more information, see Route based on number of contacts in a queue.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Fixed an issue that caused incorrect rendering of the search field in the filters settings for some historical metrics reports.

  • Fixed an issue in downloaded reports where the phone number would be blank instead of listing the phone number for calls that were callbacks.

  • Login/Logout reports now support 20,000 rows per report generation, up from 10,000.

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

  • Added a mute button to the CCP and a mute function to the Streams API so agents can mute and unmute active calls.

April and May 2018 Updates

The following updates were released in April and May 2018:

General

  • New Amazon Polly voices are now automatically made available in Amazon Connect as soon as they are launched. You can use new voices, such as Matthew and Léa, in your contact flows.

  • Updated password enforcement for Amazon Connect user accounts to match requirements for the Amazon Connect admin account created during instance creation.

  • Resolved an issue that sometimes resulted in the email addresses not being saved when updating an existing user account.

Telephony and Voice

  • Service optimizations to reduce latency and improve caller ID for Japanese telephony.

  • Customers can now place calls to Jersey and Guernsey in the Channel Islands.

  • Added support for keypad numeric input to an Amazon Lex bots when used in an Amazon Connect contact flow. For more information, see Amazon Connect Now Supports Keypad Input with an Amazon Lex Chatbot.

  • Reduced latency for the contact control panel, improving the agent user experience.

Contact Flows

  • Resolved an issue with publishing a contact flow in the case where an AWS Lambda function block is used in a contact flow, and the input type for a parameter was changed from Send attribute with a System attribute is changed to Send text. These contact flows now publish successfully.

  • Agent and customer whispers are now maintained with queued callbacks.

  • Attributes now correctly persist with queue callbacks.

  • Contact attributes are now maintained when using a Loop prompt block in a queue flow.

Metrics and Reporting

  • Data for scheduled reports is now delayed by 15 minutes to allow for most recent data to be incorporated in to reports. Previously, in some cases, report data for the final 15 minute period during the scheduled report interval did not get included in scheduled reports. This applies to all report types.

  • In metric calculations, the time that an incoming call rings is attributed to idle time if the agent is in idle state before an incoming call.

  • The metric Agent on contact time now includes time that an agent spent in an auxiliary busy state.

  • Published new documentation about metrics.

Contact Control Panel (CCP)

  • Added a Save button to the settings menu for the CCP when an agent is using a desk phone. The Save button saves the deskphone configuration between sessions.

  • Agent username is now available as part of agent configuration data in the Amazon Connect Streams API.

  • Contact attributes are now available when using the streams.js (Streams API) for screenpops after queued callbacks.

  • Fixed issue where for some auto-accept calls, the agent continued to hear ringing after accepting and joining the call.