What is Amazon Kendra?
Amazon Kendra is an intelligent enterprise search engine that uses machine learning to understand natural language queries. Unlike traditional keyword search engines, Kendra understands the meaning of questions and delivers precise answers directly from your enterprise documents.
Kendra indexes content from various data sources: S3, SharePoint, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Confluence, databases, and more. The service learns from user interactions and continuously improves search results through relevance feedback.
Amazon Kendra is available in EU regions for GDPR-compliant implementations. The service offers 99.9% availability SLA and scales automatically with your requirements.
Core Features
Amazon Kendra provides powerful search capabilities for enterprises:
Natural Language Understanding: Kendra understands questions in natural language. For “How do I request vacation?” Kendra delivers the relevant passage from the HR handbook, not just documents containing the word “vacation.”
Document Ranking: Machine learning models evaluate document relevance based on context, recency, and user behavior. Frequently used and recently updated documents rank higher.
Incremental Learning: Kendra learns from click behavior and feedback. When users prefer certain results, Kendra adjusts ranking accordingly.
Faceted Search: Filters by document type, author, department, date, or custom attributes enable targeted search.
Access Control: Kendra respects existing access rights from data sources. SharePoint permissions are automatically inherited; users only see documents they have access to.
Typical Use Cases
Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Search
Employees search daily for information across various systems: intranet, SharePoint, Confluence, document archives. Kendra unifies this search. A single query searches all connected sources and delivers the best answer regardless of storage location.
Example: An employee asks “What is our travel expense policy for international trips?” Kendra finds the relevant policy in HR SharePoint, extracts the specific passage, and displays it as a featured snippet.
Customer Self-Service
Customer portals with Kendra integration enable self-service support. Customers find answers to common questions without contacting support. Kendra searches FAQs, product documentation, knowledge base articles, and delivers precise answers.
The Kendra Search API integrates seamlessly into existing customer portals. Autocompletion and suggested queries improve user experience. Support volume reduction of 30-50% is typical.
IT Helpdesk and Troubleshooting
IT support teams use Kendra for quick access to troubleshooting guides, runbooks, and past tickets. For recurring problems, Kendra immediately delivers solution paths from documented cases.
ServiceNow integration: Kendra indexes resolved tickets and makes their solutions available for new requests. Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) decreases through faster access to relevant knowledge.
Compliance and Legal Research
Legal departments and compliance teams search contracts, policies, and regulatory documents. Kendra understands legal terminology and finds relevant clauses through natural language search.
Example: “Which contracts have a termination notice period of more than 30 days?” Kendra identifies relevant contract passages and lists affected documents with source citations.
Benefits
Amazon Kendra provides concrete benefits for enterprises:
Faster Information Discovery: Employees find relevant information in seconds instead of minutes. Studies show knowledge workers spend 20% of their time searching. Kendra significantly reduces this time.
Higher Answer Quality: Machine learning delivers more precise results than keyword search. Users receive direct answers instead of long document lists.
Unified Search: One entry point for all enterprise knowledge sources. No need to search different systems separately.
Respected Access Rights: Kendra inherits existing ACLs. Compliance and data privacy remain preserved.
Continuous Improvement: Through relevance feedback and click analytics, search quality automatically improves over time.
Amazon Kendra Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with Amazon Kendra:
Architecture Design: We design your enterprise search solution with Kendra. Connector selection, index structure, faceting, custom attributes for your specific requirements.
Connector Integration: Connection of SharePoint, Confluence, Salesforce, ServiceNow, databases, and custom systems. Synchronization scheduling, incremental updates, error handling.
Access Control: Implementation of user and group permissions. Integration with Active Directory, Cognito, SAML providers for seamless authentication.
Cost Optimization: Analysis of your Kendra usage. Index sizing, query capacity planning, connector cost optimization. Typical savings: 20-30%.
24/7 Support: Monitoring of index synchronization, query performance, and error rates. Alerting on sync failures or performance degradation.
Contact us for a non-binding consultation on Amazon Kendra and enterprise search solutions on AWS.
Typical Use Cases
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Amazon Kendra?
Amazon Kendra is an intelligent search engine that uses machine learning to understand natural language queries. Kendra searches documents, wikis, FAQs, SharePoint, Salesforce, and other data sources, delivering precise answers rather than just keyword matches.
How much does Amazon Kendra cost?
Kendra Developer Edition: $810/month (up to 10,000 documents, 4,000 queries/day). Kendra Enterprise Edition: $1,008/month per index unit plus connector costs. Query capacity units: $0.40 per 1,000 queries. Typical costs: $1,000-5,000/month for mid-sized companies.
What data sources does Kendra support?
Kendra offers native connectors for: S3, SharePoint Online/Server, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Confluence, Google Drive, OneDrive, Databases (JDBC), Web Crawler. Custom connectors via Kendra Custom Data Source API for proprietary systems.
How does Kendra differ from OpenSearch?
OpenSearch is a classic full-text search with keyword matching. Kendra understands natural language and delivers direct answers. Example: For 'How do I submit vacation requests?' Kendra delivers the answer from the HR handbook, OpenSearch only documents with those keywords.
Can I integrate Kendra with chatbots?
Yes, Kendra integrates natively with Amazon Lex for chatbot development. The Kendra Search API can be used by any chatbot framework. Kendra delivers answer snippets and source citations for transparent bot responses. Ideal for customer service and internal support bots.