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ChatOps speeds up software development and operations by enabling DevOps teams to use chat clients and chatbots to communicate and run tasks. DevOps engineers have increasingly moved their monitoring, system management, continuous integration (CI), and continuous delivery (CD) workflows to chat applications in order to streamline activities in a single place and enable better collaboration within organizations.

For example, AWS Chatbot enables ChatOps for AWS to monitor and respond to operational events. AWS Chatbot processes AWS service notifications from Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) and forwards them to your Slack channel or Amazon Chime chat rooms so teams can analyze and act on them immediately, regardless of location. However, AWS Support customers had to switch applications from Slack to the AWS Support Center console to access and engage with AWS Support, moving them away from critical operation channels where essential group communications take place.

Today we are announcing the new AWS Support App, which enables you to directly manage your technical, billing, and account support cases, increase service quotas in Slack, and initiate a live chat with AWS Support engineers in Slack channels. You can then search for, respond to, and participate in group chats with AWS Support engineers to resolve support cases from your Slack channels.

With the AWS Support App in Slack, you can integrate AWS Support into your team workflows to improve collaboration. When creating, updating, or monitoring a support case status, your team members keep up to date in real time. They can also easily search previous cases to find recommendations and solutions and instantly share those details with all team members without having to switch applications.

Configuring the AWS Support App in Slack
The AWS Support App in Slack is now available to all customers with Business, Enterprise On-ramp, or Enterprise Support at no additional charge. If you have a Basic or Developer plan, you can upgrade your support plan.

For connecting your Slack workspace and channel for your organization, you should have access to add apps to your Slack workspace and an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user or role with the required permissions. To learn more, see examples of IAM policies to manage access.

To get started with the AWS Support App in Slack, visit the AWS Support Center console and choose Authorize workspace.

When prompted to give permissions to access your Slack workspace, you can select your workspace to connect and choose Allow.

Now you can see your workspace on the Slack configuration page. To add more workspaces, choose Add workspace and repeat this step. You can add up to five workspaces to your account.

After you authorize your Slack workspace, you can add your Slack channels by choosing Add channel. You can add up to 20 channels for a single account. A single Slack channel can have up to 100 AWS accounts.

Choose the workspace name that you previously authorized, the Slack channel ID included in the channel link and the value that looks like C01234A5BCD where you invited the AWS Support App by /invite @awssupport command, the IAM role that you created for the AWS Support App.

You can also set notifications for how to get notified about cases and choose at least one of the options in New and reopened cases, Case correspondences, or Resolved cases for notification types. If you select High-severity cases, you can get notified for only cases that affect a production system or higher by the severity levels.

After adding a new channel, you can now open the Slack channel and manage support cases and live chats with AWS Support engineers.

Managing Support Cases in the Slack Channel
After you add your Slack workspace and channel, you can create, search, resolve, and reopen your support case in your Slack channel.

In your Slack channel, when you enter /awssupport create-case command, you can create a support case to specify the subject, description, issue type, service, category, severity, and contact method — either email and Slack notifications or live chat in Slack.

If you choose Live chat in Slack, you can enter the names of other members. AWS Support App will create a new chat channel for the created support case and will automatically add you, the members that you specified, and AWS Support engineers.

After reviewing the information you provided, you can create a support case. You can also choose Share to channel to share the search results with the channel.

In your Slack channel, when you enter the /awssupport search-case command, you can search support cases for a specific AWS account, data range, and case status, such as open or resolved.

You can choose See details to see more information about a case. When you see details for a support case, you can resolve or reopen specific support cases directly.

Initiating Live Chat Sessions with AWS Support Engineers
If you chose the live chat option when you created your case, the AWS Support App creates a chat channel for you and an AWS Support engineer. You can use this chat channel to communicate with a support engineer and any others that you invited to the live chat.

To join a live chat session with AWS Support, navigate to the channel name that the AWS Support App created for you. The live channel name contains your support case ID, such as awscase-1234567890. Anyone who joins your live chat channel can view details about this specific support case. We strongly recommend that you only add users that require access to your support cases.

When a support engineer joins the channel, you can chat with a support engineer about your support case and upload any file attachments to the channel. The AWS Support App automatically saves your files and chat log to your case correspondence.

To stop chatting with the support agent, choose End chat or enter the /awssupport endchat command. The support agent will leave the channel and the AWS Support App will stop recording the live chat. You can find the chat history attached to the case correspondence for this support case. If the issue has been resolved, you can choose Resolve case from the pinned message to show the case details in the chat channel or enter the /awssupport resolve command.

When you manage support cases or join live chats for your account in the Slack channel, you can view the case correspondences to determine whether the case has been updated in the Slack channel. You can also audit the Support API calls the application made on behalf of users via logs in AWS CloudTrail. To learn more, see Logging AWS Support API calls using AWS CloudTrail.

Requesting Service Quota Increases
In your Slack channel, when you enter the /awssupport service-quota-increase command, you can request to increase the service quota for a specific AWS account, AWS Region, service name, quota name, and requested value for the quota increase.

Now Available
The AWS Support App in Slack is now available to all customers with Business, Enterprise On-ramp, or Enterprise Support at no additional charge. If you have a Basic or Developer plan, you can upgrade your support plan. To learn more, see Manage support cases with the AWS Support App or contact your usual AWS Support contacts.

– Channy

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