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Create Chat Buttons
Create chat buttons to enable customers to request a chat with an agent directly from your website.
Required Editions
| View supported editions. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To create and customize chat buttons: | Customize Application |
Legacy Chat will be retired on February 14, 2026. To avoid service interruptions to your end users, switch to enhanced Chat (formerly Messaging for In-App and Web). Enhanced Chat offers many of the legacy Chat features that you love plus asynchronous conversations that can be picked back up at any time. Learn about migrating in Help and Trailhead.
Before you create chat buttons:
- Create skills. Each chat button is associated with a particular skill or set of skills. Chats that are initiated from the button are routed to agents with those skills.
- To use custom images for the online and offline versions of your button, create a Salesforce site and static resources. If you don’t have a Salesforce site, you can specify online and offline button images or text by modifying the code that’s generated when you create a button.
Create the buttons that visitors click to start chats. Like a deployment, a button consists of several lines of JavaScript that you copy and paste into web pages. A single deployment can have multiple buttons; each button enables you to refine the chat experience for visitors. For example, create buttons for laptop, phone, or tablet issues. Each button is mapped to a skill or set of skills to ensure that visitors’ inquiries go to agents who can solve their problems.
- From Setup, enter Chat Buttons in the Quick Find box, then select Chat Buttons & Invitations.
- Click New.
- Select Chat Button from the Type field.
- Choose the settings for your chat button.
- Click Save.
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Copy the button code, and then paste it on each web page where you’ve deployed Chat.
Make sure that you paste the code in the area on the page where you want the button to
appear.
Tip Because the code changes with each modification, remember to copy and paste the code each time that you update the button.
After you create the button and add it to the web page, the chat button is enabled for your customers to click as long as:
- The number of chats doesn’t exceed the button’s queue size.
- At least one agent has available capacity and the required skills listed in the associated routing configuration.
- Chat Routing Options
Routing options in Chat enable you to specify how incoming chat requests are directed to agents. To use Chat in Lightning Experience, you must route chats with Omni-Channel. New chat buttons must use Omni-Channel routing—legacy Live Agent routing is no longer available. - Chat Queuing Options
Queuing options in Chat let you control how incoming chat requests are handled when no agents are available.
