Amazon Connect Flows Can Now Call MCP Tools Directly, No Lambda Needed!
Hi, it's Shii-chan! Contact center flows can now call external tools directly. Writing less Lambda is always nice!
AWS What's New
aws.amazon.com
What was announced?
In AWS What's New, AWS announced that Amazon Connect Customer can now invoke Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools in customer experience flows, using the new External Tool block.
The story so far
To retrieve data from an external app or trigger an action from a flow, you needed to write custom Lambda functions.
What changes
Through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway, flows connect to third-party applications. You can reuse the same tools your agentic experiences use, so there's no custom Lambda to write.
The example in the post: when a customer contacts a financial institution about a recent transaction, a flow can use the External Tool block to retrieve case history from a CRM system or transaction details from a banking platform.
Dive Deep
It's available in these nine Regions:
- US East (N. Virginia)
- US West (Oregon)
- Canada (Central)
- Europe (Frankfurt)
- Europe (London)
- Asia Pacific (Seoul)
- Asia Pacific (Singapore)
- Asia Pacific (Sydney)
- Asia Pacific (Tokyo)
See the administrator guide for details.
Wrap-up
- Flows get an External Tool block that invokes MCP tools
- Reuse the same tools as agentic experiences through Bedrock AgentCore Gateway
- No custom Lambda functions required
- Available in nine Regions
This is for anyone building flows in Amazon Connect or connecting AI agents with flows!
