AWS Contact Center

Managing quick connects with a new API in Amazon Connect

In the contact center world, agents frequently transfer contacts to other agents or queues. They also transfer calls to external Direct Inward Dialing (DID) or toll-free numbers. This may mean scanning hundreds of numbers to find the correct one to dial. Transferring the customer to the wrong destination also leads to inefficiency and frustration. Maintaining updated, accurate lists and training agents on which numbers to use are prone to human error. Each incorrectly dialed or transferred call reduces customer and agent satisfaction. Quick connects provide a way to pre-configure transfers to intended destination numbers, queues, or agents with minimal effort.

Amazon Connect now provides APIs to programmatically create and manage quick connects. This is important for cases when new agents are onboarded or new queues are added to handle different skills and make them accessible via Contact Control Panel (CCP). Through the use of the new APIs, processes to create and manage quick connects can be automated to save considerable manual entry reducing human error. This allows agents to quickly, conveniently, and accurately select the right destination and transfer interactions. Additionally, you can extract all quick connects as a point-in-time snapshot and copy them to a different instance.

In this blog you will examine Amazon Connect’s full set of capabilities to create, read (describe), update, and delete quick connects via API. You can use these APIs within your existing solutions, or explore them through an ‘Art of the Possible’ User Interface (UI) by following the steps detailed below.

Overview of solution

This solution uses an AWS CloudFormation template. It creates an Amazon S3 bucket and loads all the assets into CloudFront for this solution. As a user, you use the CloudFront URL to view the website to test different scenarios. For example, including changing the quick connect configuration or creating a new quick connect.

Prerequisites

For this walkthrough, you should have the following prerequisites:

  • An AWS account
  • An existing Amazon Connect instance
  • Access to AWS services
  • AWS IAM access key and secret access key credentials to access your instance quick connects using the API’s

Deploy the solution

Note: The CloudFormation template will deploy resources in the US West (Oregon) Region.

To deploy in other regions, download the solution from this GitHub repository.

Overview of the steps:

  1. Create the CloudFormation stack
  2. Use the CloudFront web UI to access the portal
  3. Configure AWS credentials to manage the quick connects of an Amazon Connect instance
  4. Add/delete/modify/read/ quick connects in an instance
  5. Test and validate the solution by performing actions on quick connects of an Amazon Connect instance

CloudFormation deployment:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console in the US West (Oregon) region.
  2. Launch the CloudFormation template here: launch stack button
  3. Enter a unique stack name (e.g. quickconnectsapi-blog).
  4. Enter a globally unique name for a new S3 bucket. The template creates and stores all the assets that are required for the website you access through the Amazon CloudFront URL.

  1. Check the box for “I acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources.”
  2. Choose Create Stack.
  3. The AWS CloudFormation template may take 15-30 minutes to create all the resources. Once done, it will show the status as “CREATE_COMPLETE”. It may take another 15-20 min for Amazon CloudFront to complete its deployment of the website assets after the status changes to “CREATE_COMPLETE”.

Launch the Amazon Connect Quick Connects APIs user interface website

    1. Open the AWS CloudFormation service in the AWS Management Console and select the stack that you just created.
    2. Go to the Outputs section of the newly created stack. Copy the CloudFrontEndpoint URL from the Value column.

    1. Open the URL in a new browser tab or window to navigate to the Amazon Connect Quick Connect website. You will see options to list all existing quick connects, create a new quick connect, modify an existing quick connect, describe a quick connect, or delete quick connect in JSON format.
    2. Enter the AWS IAM Access Key and Secret Key for your user.
    3. Enter the Region and Instance ID of your Amazon Connect instance.
    4. Choose Save Configurations.

  1. Refresh the page by selecting the refresh button in the browser.
  2. When the page loads, observe all of the quick connects that are configured in your Amazon Connect instance.

Create user quick connect

    1. Choose List all quick connects to retrieve the quick connects defined in your instance using the ListQuickConnects API.

    1. Click on the button “Create quick connect”. This presents a pop-up that requests you enter the new quick connect.

  1. Enter all the details, name of the quick connect, type of quick connect (Agent/Queue/External), destination, and the contact flow that needs to be performed based on the destination and the description.
  2. Click on the button “Create quick connect”. This performs the CreateQuickConnect API and creates a quick connect under your instance.

Modify a quick connect

    1. Choose quick connect in the list box and click on the button “Modify quick connect”.

  1. Modify the name or description and click on “Modify name/description” button, that will modify name/description of the quick connect usingUpdateQuickConnectName API.
  2. Modify the type/destination/contact flow and click on “Modify quick connect” button, that will modify name/description of the quick connect using UpdateQuickConnectConfig API.

Describe a quick connect

  1. Select quick connect in the list box and click on Describe quick connect.
  2. The DescribeQuickConnect API is performed and the “JSON Output” will show the response in JSON format.

Delete a quick connect

  1. Choose quick connect in the list box and click on Delete quick connect.
  2. Select Yes to confirm its deletion. The quick connect is deleted using the DeleteQuickConnect API.

Cleaning up

To avoid incurring future charges, remove all created resources by deleting the AWS CloudFormation stack.

Conclusion

This post demonstrated how to use Amazon Connect’s new quick connect APIs to manage quick connects in an Amazon Connect instance. Using the new APIs you can now programmatically

  • Modify a quick connect when an external number has changed.
  • Add new quick connects when a new agent is on boarded.
  • Delete a quick connect when agent is no longer in the organization.

You learned how to perform the following functions programmatically through the web UI:

  • List all quick connects that are configured in an Amazon Connect instance.
  • Create, modify, describe and delete quick connects.

To learn more about how this solution was built and see how the APIs were performed, refer to the GitHub repo.

Related links

To learn more about the technologies or features used to create this solution, see the following: