Starting today, Amazon Chime users can perform a set of quick actions directly from the lock screen and the app icon when using iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. From the lock screen, users can quickly respond to messages, mute notifications, join or decline meetings, or notify participants that they are running late, without the need to unlock their devices and open the Amazon Chime app. By using 3D Touch with the Amazon Chime app icon, users can start a new conversation or an instant meeting. Quick actions allow users to respond to Amazon Chime activities with fewer interruptions. 

Starting today, you can encrypt Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) communication between your applications and AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also known as AWS Microsoft AD. Many Windows and Linux applications use LDAP to read and update information about users and devices, including personally identifiable information (PII). Now you can enable LDAP over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS), also called LDAPS, to encrypt your LDAP communications end to end. This helps you protect PII and other sensitive information exchanged with AWS Microsoft AD over untrusted networks.

AWS is pleased to release a major update to the Splunk Enterprise Quick Start, focused on high availability and ease of use. 

Amazon QuickSight users can now create analyses from dashboards within their account. This allows users to quickly create customized views of dashboard content by modifying existing visuals or adding new visuals. New users may utilize this capability to get started quickly by creating QuickSight analyses from dashboards shared with them. For data administrators, this capability reduces requests for customizations of dashboards and enables faster onboarding of users to QuickSight. 

Today, we added an integration between Amazon Cognito User Pools and Amazon Pinpoint to provide analytics for Cognito User Pools and to enrich the user data for Pinpoint campaigns. Amazon Cognito User Pools provide user directories that makes it easy to add sign-up and sign-in to your mobile or web application. Amazon Pinpoint provides analytics and targeted campaigns to drive user engagement in mobile apps using push notifications. Using Amazon Pinpoint Analytics, you can track User Pool sign-ups, sign-ins, failed authentications, daily active users (DAUs) and monthly active users (MAUs). This feature will thus enable user based analytics within Amazon Pinpoint. You can drill into the data for different date ranges or attributes like device platform, device locale, app version etc. You can also set up user attributes specific to your app using the Pinpoint SDK. These can then be used to segment your users on Pinpoint and send them targeted push notifications, emails, and SMS text messages. 

AWS CloudFormation now allows you to protect a stack from being accidently deleted. You can enable termination protection on a stack when you create it. If you attempt to delete a stack with termination protection enabled, the deletion fails and the stack, including its status, will remain unchanged. To delete a stack you need to first disable termination protection. 

The Danish Environmental Protection Agency is poised to test a new technology being developed to detect microplastic contamination in drinking water sources…

The multi-year commitment to support WE&RF research into water reuse builds on a previous three-year research partnership.

EPA funding will be used to upgrade sewage plants and drinking water systems throughout the state.