Release 2.4

We are pleased to announce the release of Amazon Connect for Zendesk Application v2.4 which is a Feature release.

In this release we have

• Introduced the ability to handle multiple cross-channel concurrent contacts. Your agents can now work on a task, have more than one chat conversation going and accept a phone call, all at the same time.

• Added support for Amazon Connect tasks, including integration from Zendesk to Amazon Connect via AWS EventBridge.

• Extended support for Amazon Connect VoiceID with intelligent routing of contact flow (IVR), based on customer’s enrolment status stored in Zendesk.

This release also includes

lots of smaller improvements that will make your process and the experience for your help centre visitors even better:

• Dual ringer setup.

• Queue name display in the softphone on an incoming contact.

• Warning notification on missing or expired Talk Partner Edition (TPE) license.

• Outbound CLI number reporting based on the actual queue being used.

• Support for multi-party calls with up to 6 parties at a time.

• Support for enhanced supervisor monitoring with barge-in ability.

• Introduction of standardised remote logging with PII data redaction.

Highlights

Multiple Cross-channel Concurrent Contacts

This feature removes the previous limitation of a single concurrent chat session. Rather, the number of concurrent chats (and tasks) is limited by the Connect’s routing profile configuration.

In addition it also supports a recent (April 2023) Connect feature where an agent can handle contacts from multiple channels at the same time, if this is enabled in their routing profile.

Most of the changes in agent’s experience are present in the built-in CCP, with the following support in the Zendesk UI:

• the app can now handle multiple open contacts and their related tickets,

• switching to a different contact in softphone will automatically switch to the related Zendesk ticket,

• switching to a Zendesk ticket tab that has a related open contact will automatically bring that contact up in the softphone,

• if the agent minimizes the app (softphone) and a new message comes in, in one of the open chat contacts, the softphone will automatically pop with that chat contact focused. 

See a detailed description of this feature in our user guide.

Amazon Connect Tasks Handling

Zendesk agents can now assign tasks originating from Amazon Connect to new or existing Zendesk support tickets. There are two use case scenarios which determine the agent experience when dealing with Connect tasks:

1. An incoming Connect tasks is already linked to an existing tickets, by having the task name field in the format of Zendesk-nnnn where nnnn stands for Zendesk ticket number. Upon receiving such task in the softphone, the linked Zendesk ticket will automatically “pop” and after accepting the task by the agent the relevant Connect task details will be appended to the ticket as an internal note. This scenario will most commonly arise where the client has established Zendesk → Amazon EventBridge integration and configured associated task creation rules.

2. An unrelated Connect task has been received by the agent in CCP (with arbitrary value in the name field, not in the above format). In this case the ticket assignment mode will automatically change to manual and, if applicable, the agent will be able to select a user and a ticket to either create a new ticket or attach task details to an existing ticket.

See also the Task Assignments section of our user guide.

Integration with Amazon Connect VoiceID

VoiceID is an authentication feature of Amazon Connect which is independent from this app (you can read more about it here), so it’s already implicitly supported via the embedded softphone.

In this release we’re adding some enhancements which will improve both customer and agent experience and also improve Zendesk reporting on uptake of this voiceprint based authentication.

To achieve this you configure a couple of Zendesk user fields, one for a unique id associated with the customer’s voiceprint and the other for their enrolment status. This can then drive the logic in contact flows (IVR) where only enrolled customers are asked to identify themselves via voice (sample contact flow is provided). See detailed setup instructions and how an agent would interact with VoiceID in our user guide.

Agents have ability to see the customer’s enrolment and authentication status and can enrol the customers during the call.

Small improvements go a long way!

• Dual ringer setup enables an agent to select a secondary audio device on their workstation to ring when a new contact comes in. Device can be selected from a dropdown in app section of the Zendesk sidebar and stays in use, until reset by the agent.

• Incoming queue name is displayed in the softphone before agent accepts the call, giving additional information to the agent about the incoming contact.

• Talk Partner Edition license is required for this app. The warning comes up in case your subscription doesn’t include this license or the trial license has expired.

• Outbound CLI number reporting is now based on the actual queue being used, where previously it was based on configured number in the app settings. Check the app’s settings section of our installation guide.

• Multi-party calls enable agent to add additional agents or external parties to the call, up to 6 participants in total. The relevant ticket will automatically pop for the added agent.

• Enhanced monitoring features automatic pop of the ticket related to the monitored called, without leaving the usual internal comment. Supervisor can also barge-in into conversation.

• Remote logging, which is turned off by default, enables our technical team greater insight into issues that are client specific and hard to reproduce. All logged data is sanitized (redacted) so that PII and other sensitive information is protected.

Improvements

This release contains the following improvements:

Bug fixes

This release contains the following fixes: