Efficient AWS monitoring is crucial for IT teams that need to respond to operational data in real time. Particularly in the area of customer service, for example with Amazon Connect, fast response times and a comprehensive view of operational metrics are essential. AWS Grafana can be used to create powerful live dashboards that provide in-depth insight into operational metrics and can be flexibly tailored to individual requirements. There are various ways to configure and use Grafana. We differentiate here between the service managed by Amazon (‘Amazon Managed Grafana’) and the option of hosting Grafana yourself:
What is Amazon Managed Grafana (AMG)?
Amazon Managed Grafana (AMG) is a fully managed service that simplifies setup, scaling and maintenance and offers seamless integration with AWS services, built-in security (IAM, SSO) and automatic updates. However, there are restrictions on customisation and the use of plugins, and billing is based on the number of users and queries.
A self-hosted Grafana instance, on the other hand, offers full control over configurations, plugins and costs, but requires manual effort for setup, maintenance, security and scaling.
Accordingly, teams can decide what type of Grafana implementation they need and what factors are central to it.
AWS Grafana: Powerful real-time analytics dashboarding
Grafana is an open-source time series data visualisation platform that is ideal for AWS monitoring. Through seamless integration with various AWS services such as Amazon CloudWatch, AWS X-Ray, AWS Timestream and Amazon Managed Grafana, IT teams can perform detailed analysis and optimise performance.
The main advantages of AWS Grafana Live Dashboards:
- Real-time data visualisation: real-time tracking of system and application metrics.
- Customisable dashboards: individual metrics for specific business needs.
- Multi-data source support: connect to CloudWatch, Prometheus, Elasticsearch and many more.
- Alerts and notifications: proactive warnings of critical events.
- Automated reports: Create and send regular performance reports.
- Interactive queries: Dynamic filters and queries for detailed data analysis.
Key metrics for Amazon Connect dashboards
With AWS Grafana, companies can efficiently visualise relevant key figures, e.g.
- Average call duration: Time agents need for a call.
- Availability: Proportion of successfully answered calls.
- Maximum waiting time: The longest time a customer has spent waiting in the queue.
- Live agent status: Real-time monitoring of active agents.
- Queue performance: Analysis of average waiting times and bottlenecks.
- Customer satisfaction: Visualisation of CSAT and NPS scores.
By combining these metrics in an AWS Grafana dashboard, IT teams can gain a powerful, data-driven foundation for optimising service performance.
Architecture of an AWS Grafana dashboard for Amazon Connect
Our recommended architecture for a high-performance AWS monitoring system is based on a combination of AWS services and open-source technologies. One example of a cost-effective solution includes:
- Data sources: Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Kinesis for real-time data streams.
- Processing: Lambda functions or Python scripts to aggregate metrics.
- Storage: AWS Timestream or DynamoDB for historical data storage.
- Visualisation: AWS Grafana deployed on an EC2 instance or as a managed service.
- Notification systems: integration with Amazon SNS or Slack for real-time alerts.
This setup ensures a scalable, cost-effective and user-friendly real-time monitoring solution for contact centre administrators. The combination of real-time and historical data not only enables deeper analysis of trends, but also data-based decision-making to continuously improve customer service.
Best Practices for AWS Grafana Dashboards
To get the most out of AWS Grafana dashboards, IT teams should follow some best practices:
- Clearly defined metrics: Focus on the most important KPIs for optimal performance monitoring.
- Scalable architecture: Use cloud-based services to flexibly scale as data volumes increase.
- Automated updates: Ensure that dashboards are continuously updated with the latest data.
- User-friendly design: Intuitive visualisations and customisable views for different teams.
- Role-based access control: Ensure that only authorised users have access to sensitive data.
Further resources
For more information or a specific use case, we recommend our comprehensive whitepaper on Amazon Connect, which describes both live and historical dashboards. In this whitepaper, we show best practices for integrating AWS Grafana dashboards into existing Amazon Connect environments.
AWS Grafana Live Dashboards give IT teams a powerful tool for real-time monitoring, error analysis and performance optimisation – an indispensable part of a modern AWS monitoring system. The combination of powerful AWS services and flexible dashboard technology ensures that companies can make informed decisions and continuously optimise their operational processes.
HWS Your expert for AWS solutions
The experts at HWS Gruppe are available to answer any questions you may have about AWS. Whether you are interested in cloud migrations, cloud optimisations, storage migrations or Amazon Connect, we are your reliable partner.
We also support you with specialised topics such as SharePoint FSx migrations to AWS, the implementation of highly available and secure cloud environments, and the automation of IT processes. Our experienced AWS architects and consultants will help you modernise your infrastructure, optimise costs and align your cloud strategy for maximum efficiency.
As an official AWS partner, we have extensive expertise in a wide range of AWS technologies – from migrating traditional workloads to implementing highly scalable, serverless architectures. Our experts will guide you from analysis to implementation and ongoing optimisation, offering customised solutions tailored to your individual business needs.
Benefit from our expertise and let us advise you without obligation – we look forward to working with you to develop the optimal AWS solution for your company!
