Business Productivity

Calling from a shared address book in Alexa for Business

AWS has released a new feature in Alexa for Business that let you call your contacts from Amazon Echo devices located in meeting rooms, hotel rooms, or shared workspaces.

You can already use Alexa for Business to join meetings or dial phone numbers. However, customers asked for the ability to call contacts from a central address book. With this new feature, your organizations can create address books with common contacts such as helpdesk, conference room support, facilities, concierge services, room service, and front desk. You can then allow your users to call those contacts from the Amazon Echo devices in shared locations. For example, in a conference room, a user can say “Alexa, call help desk” and Alexa then makes the call.

To start using this feature, you must set up an address book and a room profile.

To set up an address book

  1. Open the Alexa for Business console.
  2. Choose Calls.
  3. Choose Address books, Create address book.
  4. Type a name and description for the address book, and choose Create.
  5. Choose Contacts, Create contact.
  6. Type a name, phone number, and description for the contact.
  7. For additional entries, choose Add another contact. When you’re done adding contacts, choose Add contacts.

To set up a room profile

  1. In the Alexa for Business console, choose Room profiles.
  2. Type a room profile name, and the address and time zone where you’re located.
  3. Select the word to say as your voice command; for example, Alexa.
  4. In Outbound calling, choose Enabled, select the address book to use, and choose Create.

For more information about using and managing multiple room profiles, see Managing Room Profiles.

You can create multiple address books with different contacts, for example, to have a specific address book for each of your buildings or locations. The address books are available in each of your room profiles. For more information about setting up address books, see Managing Calling.

If you have questions or suggestions, please comment below or reach out to us in the AWS Forums or through AWS Support.