Features

The five toggles#

Under Websites → your site → Widget → Widget features. All five default to on and all five are stored per website. Only the first is currently read by anything.

Help searchenforced

Off removes the article search and suggestions from the widget home. See Help search.

AI assistant switchstored, not yet enforced

Intended to hide the AI/human control. The control currently renders whenever there is a conversation, whatever this is set to.

File attachmentsstored, not yet enforced

Intended to remove the attach control from the composer. The paperclip is currently always there.

Notification soundsstored, not yet enforced

Intended to suppress the chime for a whole website. Visitors can already silence it for themselves, and that is what governs today.

Client functionsstored, not yet enforced

Intended to refuse function registration for a website. Functions registered from your page are currently accepted whatever this is set to.

Help search#

The widget opens on a home view. When help search is on and your knowledge base has at least one published article, that view carries a search box, a short list of suggested articles, and a reader.

• Results show a snippet with the matched terms emphasised, and distinct states for loading, no results, and failure — the no-results state offers “ask us instead” rather than a dead end.
• Opening a result reads the article inside the widget. Links in the article open in a new tab, so the visitor never loses the page they came from.
• Help is reachable from the chat view too, not only from home, for a visitor already mid-conversation.
• Articles obey their audience: an article shared org-wide reaches this website’s widget, a tag-restricted one does not.

With no published articles the surface hides itself whatever the toggle says — a search box that can only ever return nothing is worse than no search box.

The same articles are published at your public help centre, /help/<slug>, which is where you can link people from an email or a support macro.

AI and human#

Once a conversation exists, the visitor gets a two-way control at the top of the thread: AI assistant or Human. It sets who handles the conversation, and it is the visitor’s choice, not yours.

• Switching to Human marks the conversation as waiting and notifies your team the usual way — in-app and by push.
• AI messages are labelled AI assistant in the thread, or by whatever name your AI profile carries. They are never presented as a person.
• The AI answers from your knowledge base. What it knows, how it behaves, and whether it is configured at all live in the dashboard’s AI settings, not in the widget.

Attachments#

The composer has a paperclip. It accepts one file at a time through the system file picker.

Accepted typespng · jpeg · webp · gif · pdf

Enforced on the server as well as in the picker.

Maximum size10 MB

Per file. Larger uploads are refused before anything is stored.

Images

Measured in the browser before upload so the thread reserves the right space and never jumps as the picture arrives. Shown inline in the thread and in the agent inbox.

Other files

Served as downloads from a private bucket through short-lived links, never rendered inline.

Sound and notifications#

A short chime plays when a message arrives. Visitors can silence it from inside the widget and the choice is remembered in their browser — it is theirs, and it does not reach your dashboard.

Browsers refuse to play audio before a visitor has interacted with the page, so the first chime in a session may be silent. That is the browser, not a setting.

With the chat closed, an incoming message also raises a preview card above the launcher and increments the unread badge; with the tab in the background, the page title flickers. The card is drawn inside the iframe, so the message text never crosses into your page.

When nobody is online#

If no agent is available and Connect does not have an email for the visitor, the widget asks for one inline. Answer arrives by email when the team is back. Once given, the widget confirms where the reply will go instead of asking again.

You can skip that question entirely for signed-in customers by pushing the address yourself — see Identity and data.

Satisfaction rating#

When an agent resolves a conversation, a five-star card appears at the foot of the visitor’s thread with an optional comment. One rating per conversation, first answer wins, and the card becomes a thank-you once submitted. Scores roll up on the dashboard’s CSAT page.

Nothing to configure — resolving the conversation is what triggers it.

Always on#

The rest of the widget has no switch, by design.

• Live delivery, with reconnect and replay after a dropped connection.
• Typing indicators and read receipts in both directions.
• Message grouping by author, day dividers, relative timestamps.
• Automatic visitor context — page, title, referrer, browser, operating system, language, timezone, screen, and coarse location from the IP address. See what is collected automatically.
• Keyboard operation throughout, and reduced-motion respected.

A note for your privacy page#

Connect sets no cookies. What it keeps in browser storage, and where, is listed under What it stores in the browser.