Create a custom AWS Certification exam practice tool with Amazon Q Apps

Amazon Q Business is a generative AI-powered assistant that gives enterprises the ability to use their data and internal information in revolutionary ways. Amazon Q business can answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on your data and enterprise information.

A new key component of Amazon Q business is Amazon Q Apps (Preview), a groundbreaking new feature that allows users to quickly create generative AI-apps through simple natural language processing. These secure and customized apps can streamline tasks and increase team and individual productivity. Amazon Q Apps can be used either through a prompt wizard to define the application functionality or in an existing Amazon Q Business chat to automatically generate an application. In both cases, Amazon Q Apps will use generative AI to translate the user input into a fully functioning application. You can then publish your app to a managed library to share with your coworkers. Amazon Q Apps inherits all of the user permissions, access controls, and guardrails from Amazon Q Business.

In this blog, we will explore how you can harness the power of Amazon Q Apps to create your own personalized AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam practice tool. By using the generative capabilities of Amazon Q Apps, you will be able to build a tailored study aid that adapts to your specific knowledge gaps and learning style. This tool can enhance your learning and confidence as you prepare for your next AWS Certification.

Amazon Q Apps – Solution Architect Associate exam practice tool

Prerequisites

To build a Q App, you must have the following prerequisites in place:

• Amazon Q Business setup – Complete setting up Amazon Q Businessand a Amazon Q Business application environment. Configuring the application environment is necessary so that you can allow users to manage their own Amazon Q Apps. Also, include a retriever and, optionally, a data source connector.
• Set up identity provider – For web experience users to create and run their own Amazon Q Apps within a broader Amazon Q Business application environment, they must be granted access through AWS IAM Identity Center. These users interact with Amazon Q Apps through the deployed web experience. IAM Identity Center is the only acceptable SAML 2.0-compliant identity provider (IdP) for users who want to create and run their own Amazon Q Apps. For setup instructions, see Setting up Amazon Q Business with IAM Identity Center as identity provider.
• Create IAM role – Configure an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) access role (permissions policy) for the deployed web experience for your broader application environment, including permissions for Amazon Q Apps. You can choose to have the Amazon Q Business console create the required IAM role for you as part of the configuration steps. If you want to view the required IAM access role with set permissions, see IAM role for a web experience, including Amazon Q Apps.
• You can enable or disable the ability for web experience users to create and run their own Amazon Q Apps. To do this, use the feature settings for your broader application environment, as part of the admin controls and guardrails in the Amazon Q Business console.

After you enable Amazon Q Apps in the console, web experience users can then start creating and publishing their own purpose-built Amazon Q Apps.

Deploying the application

Amazon Q Apps is available directly within your Amazon Q Business web experience. To get started, simply sign into your Amazon Q Business web experience via the deployed URL and choose the Apps tab on the left side. This opens the Amazon Q Apps Creator window and the interface to guide you through the process of creating your application.

On this page, you will be able to instruct Amazon Q Apps to create a custom application using natural language. The interface provides several pre-built example applications to choose from, such as content creator, interview question generator, meeting notes summarizer, or grammar corrector.

For our purposes, we are going to create a Q App to help us study for the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam. To do this, I have prepared some instructions to give to Amazon Q:

Create an application that tests my knowledge of the AWS Solutions Architect Associate Exam. The application should first prompt me with the service that I would like to be tested on. Once I enter the service I should then be prompted with 20 example questions, each with 5 answer choices. I should then input a series of answer choices for each one before the answer explanations are given. After my selection, the application should tell me if I got the answer correct as well as an explanation of why. In the explanation, include why each of the answer choices provided is right or wrong. Do not provide the correct answer until after my selection.

Provide the above instructions to Amazon Q Apps and click generate.

Once you’ve provided the necessary information, Amazon Q Apps will use generative AI to create an application based on the input provided. You will see something that is similar to the below. Actual results may vary due to the variability associated with generative AI. However, the overall experience should be similar.

Let’s take a look at the application:

• AWS Service Section: The section is where a user can enter the services they would like to focus on for this practice test. Amazon Q Apps will tailor the practice questions to the user’s requested domains.
• Practice Questions: Amazon Q Apps will generate 20 practice questions based on the user’s input from the AWS Service Section.
• Your Answers: This section is where the user will be able to answer the practice questions
• Answer Explanations: Once the user submits their answers and hits the run button, Amazon Q Apps will use generative AI to determine the correct answer and provide detailed feedback to the user.

Using the application

You now have a fully built application to test yourself on AWS Services. For example, you can input services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and more to test yourself. Simply enter the services and hit run. You will then be given a list of 20 practices questions. Next, read the questions and provide the best answer choice in the your answers section. Once you finish answering, click run to check your answers. The application will analyze your choices and provide you answer explanations for the questions.

Your first test of the application is complete. Amazon Q Apps was able to rapidly generate a personalized, generative-AI practice exam tailored to a user’s specific needs. You can use prompt engineering to modify the instructions for a more customized test experience. You can ask for more questions, detailed explanations, or even request questions for different AWS exams. Amazon Q Apps also gives you the ability to publish your application, allowing you to share with others and pave the way for collaborative study groups.

The practice exam built today is just the start of the potential solutions available through Amazon Q Apps. Embracing Amazon Q Apps and continually refining your prompts will allow you to create a comprehensive set of customized tools to help you succeed on your cloud learning journey.

Furthering your knowledge

Amazon Q Apps is based on large language models which are typically trained until a finite point in time. These models are also constantly changing, which makes Amazon Q Apps inherently variable and able to produce different results each time the app is created.

In order to have the most up to date and accurate training experience, you can use AWS Skill Builder, our online learning center. Skill Builder offers 600+ free on demand courses and 1000+ interactive, hands-on learning experiences like labs, gamified training, and more to increase AWS Cloud knowledge. Here are a few course recommendations for Amazon Q and the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate to get started:

• Amazon Q Introduction – This course gives a high-level overview of Amazon Q, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) powered assistant. You’ll learn about the use cases and the benefits of linking Amazon Q to your company information, code, and systems.
• Amazon Q Business Getting Started – In this Getting Started course, you will learn about the benefits, features, typical use cases, technical concepts, and cost of using Amazon Q Business.
• Introduction to Generative AI – Art of the Possible – Provides an introduction to generative AI, use cases, risks and benefits.
• A Hands-On Look at Amazon Q Business Expert – Deeper dive into the world of Amazon Q, to learn how to make better data-driven decisions and improve employee productivity through hands-on demonstrations, digital whiteboarding and relatable story-telling
• Exam Prep Official Practice Question Set: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Conclusion

No matter the certification you are working towards, Amazon Q Apps can help you study. The future of customized exam preparation is here with the launch of Amazon Q Apps. Try it out today and share your practice exams with the world!

This blog was written with minimal assistance from generative AI tools: Claude (2023). Used to augment and improve the syntax and content of this blog. Anthropic AI assistant. https://www.anthropic.com