Authentication overview
Require visitors to sign in before they chat, and personalize answers with their profile.
By default an assistant is open to anyone who can reach the page it lives on. When you need to know who is on the other side of the conversation, you can connect your identity provider and require people to sign in before they chat. This lets the assistant confirm who someone is, adapt to their role, and personalize answers with details from their profile.
You set this up per assistant. Open an assistant, then select Authentication.
What connecting an identity provider gives you
- Sign in before chat. Visitors see a Connect Your Account card in the widget and continue only after they sign in with your identity provider.
- Roles and groups. The groups a person belongs to can flow into the conversation, so a flow can treat a member differently from an anonymous visitor.
- Personalized answers. Profile details such as a name become available to the assistant, so replies can address the person directly.
Single sign-on, one connection
The connection uses OpenID Connect, the standard behind most single sign-on setups. Once your identity provider is connected, people sign in with the account they already use, and no separate password is created for the assistant.
Two related settings
- Authentication connects the identity provider that gates the chat. This is what the guides in this section walk through.
- User data lets you import per-person details so the assistant can fill them into replies, mail-merge style. Use it when you want answers that reference someone's own information.
Guides
After you connect
- Open the widget preview and confirm the Connect Your Account card appears.
- Sign in with a test account and check that the conversation continues.
- If you rely on roles, confirm a flow that checks user role behaves as you expect for signed-in people.