AWS Announces Alexa for Business

Amazon Web Services announced Alexa for Business, a new service that provides every employee with an intelligent assistant to simplify their interactions with the technology around them at work: in conference rooms, at their desks, and around the office. Alexa for Business can help automate tasks like starting conference calls, controlling conference room equipment, scheduling meetings, keeping track of tasks, or reordering supplies.

Alexa for Business also supports a large and growing list of new skills and integrations from companies like Salesforce, Concur, and Polycom that extend its functionality into the popular applications and devices customers already use in the workplace. Companies can easily tailor Alexa by building custom “private“ skills that integrate with a customer’s IT applications and office systems. To help customers easily voice-enable their offices, Alexa for Business includes the tools to set-up and manage Alexa devices, enroll users, and assign skills--at scale.

New AWS service helps solve many everyday hassles by allowing people to use their voices to interact with technology throughout their workdays. As an intelligent assistant at work, Alexa makes starting a conference call as simple as asking Alexa to “start the meeting.“ It can help workers manage calendars, keep up with to-do lists, and make phone calls. Around the office, Alexa can handle tasks like notifying IT of an equipment issue, or finding and booking an open conference room, all with just a few words.

Customers can set up shared devices in common areas around the workplace and manage them, enroll users, and assign skills from the AWS Management Console. With shared Alexa devices, users can start and end meetings in conference rooms by saying “Alexa, start/end the meeting.“ Individual users can also use Alexa for Business from their desks to automatically dial into conference calls, check their upcoming appointments, and schedule or cancel meetings. Alexa for Business works with Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Exchange, and Google G Suite.

Additionally, customers can leverage the tens of thousands of public skills available for Alexa today, and create new private ones for their employees by using the Alexa Skills Kit and the Alexa for Business APIs. By building their own Alexa skills, companies can easily voice-enable the workplace, and let Alexa help with common everyday tasks like providing directions to people’s offices, finding open meeting rooms, checking relevant transportation schedules, ordering supplies, reporting building problems, or notifying IT of an equipment issue.