Amazon Kendra: Intelligent Enterprise Search Powered by AI

In today's data-driven organizations, the most critical business answers are often buried within vast amounts of unstructured content scattered across wikis, intranets, file shares, and various SaaS applications. Traditional keyword search tools frequently fail, leaving employees and customers frustrated and unable to find the information they need. Amazon Kendra is an intelligent enterprise search service, powered by machine learning, designed to solve this exact problem.

What is Amazon Kendra? Beyond Keyword Search

Amazon Kendra reinvents enterprise search by moving beyond simple keywords. Instead of just matching words in a query to words in a document, Kendra uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other machine learning models to understand the intent and context of your questions.

This allows users to ask questions conversationally, just as they would ask a human expert—for example, "What is the company's policy on remote work?" or "How do I configure my VPN?"—and get direct, accurate answers, not just a list of ten blue links.

Kendra can provide three types of responses:

1. Extractive Answers: A direct, suggested answer extracted from a relevant document.

2. FAQ Matches: A direct match from a list of frequently asked questions.

3. Intelligent Document Ranking: A list of the most relevant documents, ranked by machine learning models, for further exploration.

How Does Kendra Work? The Four-Step Process

Kendra simplifies the complex process of building an intelligent search engine into a managed, step-by-step workflow.

1. Connect Your Data Sources: You start by creating a centralized Kendra Index. Using a wide range of built-in connectors, you point Kendra to your various data repositories. This can include data sources like Amazon S3, Microsoft SharePoint, Salesforce, Confluence, Google Drive, and many more. Kendra securely ingests and synchronizes the data.

2. AI-Powered Indexing: As Kendra indexes your content, it uses its machine learning models to build a rich, semantic understanding of your information. It goes beyond simple text to comprehend document structure, data relationships, and key concepts.

3. Ask Natural Language Questions: Once the index is built, you can deploy a search application where users can ask questions in plain English.

4. Tune and Refine: Kendra provides powerful tools to continuously improve and customize your search results, ensuring they are always relevant to your organization's needs.

Core Features and Capabilities

• Native Connectors: A comprehensive library of connectors makes it easy to ingest data from popular enterprise systems without complex custom development.

• Reading Comprehension: Kendra's ability to read and understand documents allows it to find and highlight the precise passage that answers a user's question.

• Relevance Tuning: You have granular control to boost the importance of specific data sources, authors, or document freshness, allowing you to tailor search results to your business priorities.

• Custom Synonyms: Upload custom lists of synonyms to ensure Kendra understands your company's specific jargon, acronyms, and terminology (e.g., ensuring "PTO" and "Paid Time Off" are treated as the same concept).

• Enterprise-Grade Security: Kendra integrates with identity providers and respects existing Access Control Lists (ACLs) from your source documents. This ensures that users can only see results and documents they already have permission to view.

Building Your Search Application

Kendra provides flexible options for deploying your search experience.

• Experience Builder: For the fastest deployment, Kendra offers a no-code visual workflow called the Experience Builder. In a few clicks, you can build, customize, and launch a fully functional and secure search application, complete with a search bar and results page.

• API-Based Integration: For full control and custom UIs, you can use the Kendra API to integrate its search capabilities directly into your existing websites, portals, and applications.

Kendra Editions: Developer vs. Enterprise

Amazon Kendra is available in two editions to suit different needs and scales:

• Developer Edition: A lower-cost edition designed for building proofs-of-concept, development, and testing. It's perfect for getting started and exploring Kendra's capabilities.

• Enterprise Edition: Designed for scalable, production-grade deployments. It offers higher capacity for documents and queries, along with the robustness needed for mission-critical search applications.

Common Use Cases

• Internal Knowledge Management: Empower employees to find answers quickly from internal wikis, HR documents, technical manuals, and research reports.

• Customer Support and Self-Service: Reduce support ticket volume by providing customers with an intelligent, self-service search on your public website or help center.

• Research and Development: Accelerate innovation by helping R&D teams discover relevant information and past work from vast archives of research papers and technical documents.