How to Connect an Assistant Designer Topic to the Support Chat Widget in ServiceNow UI Builder?

[236m1a4204]

Hello ServiceNow Community,

I am developing a ServiceNow application called TierServe360 – Intelligent Tier-Based Customer Service for Gold and Silver Customers.

I have already created my custom AI topic, tierserve360_nova ai_v2, in Assistant Designer and linked the topic to my assistant. Now, I want to integrate this existing assistant into my TierServe360 Customer Dashboard, which is built using UI Builder.

My dashboard already contains a Support Chat button. My requirement is that when a customer clicks this button, the chat interface should open and use my configured assistant to handle customer queries related to Accounts, Cases, and Outages.

I am not looking to create another topic or link the topic to the assistant again. That configuration is already completed. I need help connecting the existing assistant to the Support Chat button in UI Builder.

Could you please help me with the following?

1. Which UI Builder component should I use to display or launch my existing Assistant Designer assistant?
2. How can I configure the Support Chat button's click event to open the chat interface associated with my assistant?
3. How can I configure the assistant's display experience so that it works on my custom UI Builder Customer Dashboard?
4. Is there a supported way to launch the assistant directly from a UI Builder button, or do I need to configure a specific chat component or experience?
5. Are any additional plugins, permissions, or activation settings required?
6. Could you provide the exact configuration steps or a working example for this integration?

My current setup:
- Application: TierServe360
- Interface: TierServe360 Customer Dashboard
- Development tool: UI Builder
- Existing component: Support Chat button
- Assistant: Already configured in Assistant Designer
- Custom AI topic: tierserve360_nova ai_v2
- Required functionality: Open the configured assistant when the customer clicks Support Chat.

I would appreciate a step-by-step solution and links to the relevant official ServiceNow documentation.

Thank you for your help!

[kmohammed]

Hi, the missing piece is the mental model: you do not connect a UI Builder page to a topic, and there is no UI Builder component that hosts an Assistant Designer topic directly. Topics are only ever reached through an assistant, and an assistant is only ever reached through one of its published display experiences (chat clients). So the work is all on the launch side, in three steps:

1. Give the assistant a launchable display experience. In Assistant Designer, open your assistant and check its Display experience settings - it needs a web/chat experience enabled and published (the same mechanism that surfaces it in a portal or the Now Assist panel), with your topic active in that assistant. If the assistant has no display experience switched on, there is nothing for a button to open, however the page is built.

2. Note the URL/entry point of that chat experience. When an assistant is exposed on a portal it is reached through that portal's chat page/widget - i.e. the chat client URL for the portal/experience the assistant is attached to, not a URL for the topic itself. Test that entry point in a browser first, as a customer: it should open the chat, greet you with your assistant, and your tierserve360 topic should be discoverable/startable from its opening utterance. Get this working standalone before touching UI Builder - if it does not work there, the button is not the problem.

3. Wire the Support Chat button to that entry point. In UI Builder, select the button, add a Clicked event handler and use the Link to destination / open URL style handler to navigate to the chat URL from step 2 (open it as the page/modal target that suits your dashboard layout). You are not passing a topic sys_id or a topic name in the event - the assistant decides which topic runs once the user starts the conversation, based on the utterance / topic discovery you have already configured.

On your other questions: no separate plugin is needed to launch it this way beyond the assistant/chat pieces you already activated to build the topic, but the users clicking the button do need the same roles/access the chat experience itself requires, and the topic and assistant must both be active/published in the target instance - a topic that only exists as draft in Assistant Designer will not appear in the launched assistant. The Now Assist panel itself is a platform/workspace feature and cannot be embedded as a panel inside a custom UI Builder page, which is why launching the assistant's own chat experience is the supported pattern for a custom page like yours.

Hope that unblocks it - in short: assistant's display experience first, test its chat URL standalone, then point the button at that URL.

[sanjaygupta]

You need to make the Assistant available through a chat experience first, then connect that experience to your Support Chat button.

• Navigate to All > Conversational Interfaces > Assistants.

• Open your existing assistant.

• Open Display experience.

• Select the target portal.

• Configure the chat experience.

• Save and activate the assistant.

• Verify that your tierserve360_nova ai_v2 topic is active and linked to the assistant.

Next, connect the chat to your dashboard:

• Open TierServe360 in UI Builder.

• Select the Support Chat button.

• Configure its click event to launch the published chat experience.

• Publish the page and test the button.

You don't need to pass the topic name or sys_id through the button. The assistant handles topic discovery.

Are you using Service Portal or a standalone UI Builder experience for TierServe360? This determines the correct chat integration method.

Hope you find this helpful.