How to Connect Amazon Polly with Document360 (2026)

Why Connect Amazon Polly and Document360

Amazon Polly is a cloud service from AWS that converts text into lifelike speech using advanced deep learning technologies. It supports dozens of languages and voices, offers neural text-to-speech for natural-sounding output, and can generate speech in real time or store it as audio files. Document360 is a knowledge base and documentation platform that helps companies create, organize, and publish self-service help centers, product documentation, SOPs, and internal wikis with a powerful editor, version control, and analytics.

Connecting Amazon Polly and Document360 enables audio versions of your knowledge base articles, making your documentation accessible to a wider audience. Users who prefer listening over reading, people with visual impairments, or those who want to consume documentation while multitasking can benefit from having knowledge base content available as spoken audio. This integration brings accessibility and convenience to your documentation strategy.

For companies that invest heavily in their Document360 knowledge base, adding audio capability through Amazon Polly increases the value of existing content without requiring writers to record voiceovers manually. Every article update can automatically generate a fresh audio version, keeping spoken content in sync with written documentation.

What This Integration Does

Combining Amazon Polly's text-to-speech capabilities with Document360's documentation platform enables several features:

• Audio Article Generation: Automatically convert Document360 knowledge base articles into audio files using Amazon Polly's neural voices, creating a listen-along option for every article.
• Multilingual Audio Documentation: Generate audio versions of documentation in multiple languages using Polly's extensive language support, matching the multilingual capabilities of your Document360 knowledge base.
• Accessibility Compliance: Meet accessibility requirements by providing audio alternatives to text content, making your help center usable for people who rely on screen readers or prefer audio consumption.
• Automated Audio Updates: Regenerate audio files automatically when Document360 articles are updated, ensuring the spoken version always matches the current written content.

Native Integration vs Third-Party

Amazon Polly and Document360 do not have a native integration. To connect them, you will need either a custom integration built on their APIs or a third-party automation platform. Amazon Polly is accessed through the AWS SDK or REST API, and Document360 provides a comprehensive API for reading and managing knowledge base content.

For automated workflows, Make is a strong choice because it supports both AWS services and HTTP-based API calls with good data transformation capabilities. Zapier can handle simpler workflows. n8n is ideal for self-hosted setups where you want full control over audio file processing and storage. For production-grade implementations, a custom AWS Lambda function that listens for Document360 webhooks and calls Amazon Polly is the most robust approach, especially since it keeps everything within the AWS ecosystem.

Step-by-Step Setup

Here is a practical guide for setting up audio article generation from Document360 content using Amazon Polly.

Step 1: Configure AWS Credentials for Polly

In the AWS Management Console, create an IAM user or role with permissions for the Amazon Polly service. Generate access keys and note the AWS region where you want to run Polly. Test the setup by making a sample Polly API call to synthesize a short text string, confirming you receive an audio file in response.

Step 2: Set Up Document360 API Access

In your Document360 project settings, generate an API key with read access to your knowledge base articles. Test the API by retrieving a sample article and reviewing the response format. Note how the article content is structured, as you will need to extract the plain text from the HTML content before sending it to Polly.

Step 3: Build the Text Extraction and Conversion Pipeline

Create a workflow that retrieves an article from Document360, strips the HTML tags to produce clean plain text, and sends that text to Amazon Polly for speech synthesis. Polly accepts plain text or SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) for more control over pronunciation, pauses, and emphasis. For documentation content, SSML can be useful for handling technical terms and code references.

Step 4: Store and Link the Audio Files

Save the audio files generated by Polly to a storage service such as Amazon S3, and generate public or signed URLs for each file. Then update the corresponding Document360 article with an audio player link or embed, either through the API or by using a custom widget in your Document360 knowledge base template.

Step 5: Automate Updates

Set up a webhook or scheduled job that detects when Document360 articles are created or updated. When a change is detected, the workflow should regenerate the audio file for that article using Polly and update the stored audio file and any embedded links. This ensures audio versions never fall out of sync with written content.

Common Use Cases

• Accessible Help Center: Add audio playback to every article in your Document360 help center, making your customer support documentation accessible to users with visual impairments or reading difficulties.
• Onboarding Audio Guides: Convert employee onboarding documentation from Document360 into audio guides that new hires can listen to during their first days, supplementing hands-on training.
• Multilingual Support Documentation: Generate audio versions of translated Document360 articles using Amazon Polly's native language voices, providing spoken support content in each language your customers use.
• Mobile-Friendly Documentation: Offer an audio option for field technicians or mobile users who need to reference documentation hands-free while performing tasks.

Tips and Best Practices

• Use Amazon Polly's neural voices rather than standard voices for a more natural and pleasant listening experience. Neural voices are available for major languages and produce significantly better audio quality.
• Strip code blocks, tables, and complex formatting from the text before sending it to Polly, as these elements do not translate well to speech. Consider replacing them with verbal descriptions.
• Use SSML tags to improve the pronunciation of technical terms, product names, and acronyms that Polly might not handle correctly with default settings.
• Store generated audio files in S3 with a naming convention that includes the article ID and version hash, making it easy to identify outdated audio files that need regeneration.
• Monitor Amazon Polly usage costs, especially for large knowledge bases. Polly charges per character synthesized, so frequent regeneration of long articles can add up. Cache audio files and only regenerate when content actually changes.
• Add a visible audio player at the top of each Document360 article so readers immediately see the listen option, and include an estimated listening time to set expectations.