Emergency Messages in Amazon Connect (part 2)

 In this article, I would like to continue talking about Emergency Messages in Amazon Connect.

In part1 I explained how to add Emergency Messages in your existing IVR. Now I would like to talk about how to disable/enable them using Admin IVR.

As described in part1 we already have DynamoDB table EmergencyMessages that contains information about our Emergency Messages. 

So what options do we have to update this table?

1) Option1  - connect to DynamoDB and change values directly in the table. This option is situable for system administrators, regular users would not have access to the table.

2) Option 2 - create a web interface that would allow us to manage Emergency Messages. This is probably the most user-friendly option but it requires web development.

3) Option 3 - create Admin IVR that allows to Enable/Disable emergency messages. 

I would like to give you an example of how to implement Option 3.

Step 1.

I created Lambda function using Python 3.9 which is called UpdateEmergencyMessage.

It takes 2 input parameters:

• MessageID  -  ID of Emergency Message
• Status  - current status of the message

After that, it changes the status of the emergency message from the current one to the opposite (Enabled to Disabled, Disabled to Enabled) and updates DynamoDB EmergencyMessages table

You can download source code from my GitHub:

https://github.com/contactcenterdude/amazon-connect/blob/main/EmergencyMessages/UpdateEmergencyMessage.py

Step 2.

Now we will create a new IVR flow EmergencyMessagesAdmin.

How it works:

1) At first we will ask a user to enter ID of the Emergency Message.

2) After that we will use the existing lambda function CheckEmergencyMessage to check the current status of this message

3) We will play back the user current status of the message

4) After that I offer the user 2 options

• Press 1 - to change the status of the message
• Press 2 - to play text of the message (might be helpful to verify if you are actually changing the right thing)

5) If the user pressed 1 - I will call Lambda function UpdateEmergencyMessage to change the status of the message.

6) After that I will call again lambda function CheckEmergencyMessage to verify the new status of the message and playback to user new status

You can download the flow from my GitHub:

https://github.com/contactcenterdude/amazon-connect/blob/main/EmergencyMessages/EmergencyMessagesAdmin_flow.json

Step 3.

Now you just need to assign a phone number to Admin IVR flow.

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Ok. Admin IVR is now ready but something seems to be still missing.

Well, right now anyone can dial this Admin IVR and disable/enable emergency messages. There is almost no protection. Stay tuned for part 3 of this article where I would discuss options of adding a security layer to Admin IVR.