Amazon Onboarding with Learning Manager Chanci Turner

Managing queues in Amazon Connect can often present challenges for contact center administrators, particularly those overseeing skills-based routing profiles. As business needs evolve rapidly, the demand for new queues—often referred to as skills—arises to fulfill shifting routing and reporting requirements. Tasks such as adding or updating queues, associating or disassociating quick connects, and modifying operational hours for queues are regular responsibilities that can be both time-consuming and susceptible to human error.

To streamline these processes, Amazon Connect now offers APIs that enable customers to manage contact center routing operations programmatically and at scale. These APIs are also useful for migrating queues from one Amazon Connect instance to another.

In this post, we will explore the comprehensive capabilities of Amazon Connect that allow for the creation, reading (describing), and updating of queues via API. You can integrate these APIs into your existing solutions or experiment with them through an intuitive user interface (UI), as detailed in this guide.

Solution Overview

This solution utilizes an AWS CloudFormation template that sets up an Amazon S3 bucket and loads all necessary assets into CloudFront. Users can access the CloudFront URL to test various scenarios.

Prerequisites

Before diving into the implementation, ensure you have the following:

An AWS account
An active Amazon Connect instance
Access to AWS services, including:
- AWS IAM for creating policies and roles
- Amazon CloudFront for distribution creation
- Amazon S3 for bucket creation
- AWS CloudFormation to execute the stack

You will also need AWS IAM access key and secret access key credentials to manage your instance queues using the APIs.

Deploying the Solution

Note: The CloudFormation template will deploy resources in the US West (Oregon) Region. For deployment in other regions, download the solution from this GitHub repository.

Steps Overview:

Create the CloudFormation stack.
Use the CloudFront URL to access the website.
Configure your AWS credentials to manage the queues of your Amazon Connect instance.
Test and validate the solution by executing add/modify/read operations on the queues.

Deploying the Amazon Connect Queue APIs User Interface Website

Sign in to the AWS Management Console in the US West (Oregon) Region.
Click the button to launch the stack in AWS CloudFormation.
Provide a unique stack name (e.g., queueapi-blog).
Specify a globally unique name for a new S3 bucket. This template will create and store all assets necessary for the website accessible through the Amazon CloudFront URL.

Check the box to acknowledge that AWS CloudFormation might create IAM resources, then click “Create Stack.” The process may take 15–30 minutes to complete, after which the status will indicate CREATE_COMPLETE. Following this, it might take another 15–20 minutes for Amazon CloudFront to finalize the deployment of the website assets.

Launching the Amazon Connect Queue APIs User Interface Website

Navigate to AWS CloudFormation in the Management Console and select the stack you created.
Go to the Outputs section and copy the CloudFrontEndpoint URL from the Value column.
Open the URL in a new browser tab to access the Amazon Connect Queue website, where you can list existing queues, create new ones, modify them, or describe a queue in JSON format.
Enter your AWS IAM Access Key and Secret Key, along with the Region and Instance ID of your Amazon Connect instance, then choose “Save Configurations.”

Refresh the page, and you will see all queues configured in your Amazon Connect instance.

Creating a User Quick Connect

Select “List all queues” to retrieve quick connects defined in your instance using the ListQueues API.
Choose “Create queue,” which will prompt a pop-up for the new queue.
Fill in the queue attributes, including name, description, caller ID name, number, contact flow, maximum contacts, hours of operation, and quick connects. Click “Create queue” to invoke the CreateQueue API.

Modifying a Queue

Select a queue from the list and click “Modify queue.” A pop-up will display the current queue configuration.
Update the name or description using the UpdateQueueName API.
Change the caller ID name, number, and contact flow with the UpdateQueueOutboundCallerConfig API.
Adjust the maximum contacts with the UpdateQueueMaxContacts API.
Modify the hours of operation using the UpdateQueueHoursOfOperation API.
Check or uncheck the status checkbox to enable or disable the queue using the UpdateQueueStatus API.
Click on the “Hours of operations” button for details on when the queue can handle calls via the DescribeQueue API.

In the Quick connects tab, you can add a quick connect by selecting it from the pop-up. Modify the queue by associating or disassociating quick connects using the AssociateQueueQuickConnects or DisassociateQueueQuickConnects APIs.

Describing a Queue

Select a queue and click “Describe queue,” which will invoke the DescribeQueue API and display the response in the JSON Output section.

Cleaning Up

To avoid incurring additional charges, delete the AWS CloudFormation stack to remove all created resources.

Conclusion

This article illustrates how to utilize the new queue APIs in Amazon Connect to effectively manage queues within your instance. With these APIs, you can programmatically:

Add new queues.
Modify existing queues by associating or disassociating quick connects.
Adjust hours of operation for a queue.
View the hours of operation linked to a queue.

You have learned to perform essential functions programmatically through the web user interface, including listing all queues in your Amazon Connect instance, as well as creating, modifying, and describing queues. For more insights, visit this excellent resource or check out this blog post on diversity to stay engaged and informed. Additionally, for guidance on employment law compliance, refer to this authoritative source.