The Assistant is not on screen
Three things make the Assistant look gone, and only one of them is a fault. Something is drawn on top of the launcher; a size remembered from a wider window has put the panel where you cannot see it; or the session has expired and the panel cannot open at all. A reload settles the first two. The third needs you to sign in again.
What you are seeing#
The app renders normally — your screens, your data, your navigation — and the Assistant is not there. Either the launcher is absent from where it always sits, or it is there, responds to a click, and no panel appears. Those two symptoms have different causes and it is worth deciding which one you have before doing anything.
This is a class of defect that is close to invisible in the source and obvious in thirty seconds of looking at the screen, which is why the browser check as both an operator and a customer is part of shipping any change here. Defects that are invisible in the source is the longer treatment.
The three causes, most likely first#
| Cause | What it looks like | The tell |
|---|---|---|
| Something is drawn over the launcher | The launcher is missing from its corner | A toast, banner or dialogue is stacked in the same corner; dismissing it brings the launcher back |
| A remembered size or position | The launcher works, the panel does not appear | It started after you resized the panel, or after opening the app on a narrower window than last time |
| The session has expired | The launcher works and nothing happens, or a sign-in prompt appears | Other parts of the app are also failing quietly — a list that will not refresh, a save that does nothing |
The ordering is not arbitrary. The first two are layout, cost nothing to test, and account for most reports. The third is worth checking last because it announces itself elsewhere in the app as well, and because sessions here last long enough that expiry is rarely the first suspicion.
What Connect completed, and what it did not#
Nothing was in flight when this happened, so the accounting is short — but it is worth being precise, because a person who cannot see the Assistant often assumes something they asked for earlier has been lost.
- What Connect completed
- Every action confirmed before the panel disappeared. Writes go through the owning service and are stored the moment they run, so a follow-up created ten minutes ago exists whether or not the panel is on screen now.
- What Connect completed
- The conversations themselves. Each tab's history, pinned record and draft are held against your workspace, not in the panel, and come back when it opens.
- What Connect did not complete
- Anything you typed and did not send. An unsent composer draft is browser state and does not survive a reload.
- What Connect did not complete
- A proposal you had not confirmed. It was never a change; nothing partial was written and nothing needs cleaning up.
What you can do#
Dismiss anything stacked in the corner where the launcher lives — toasts, banners, an open dialogue.
Result If the launcher reappears, that was the cause and nothing else needs doing.
Reload the page.
Result A reload re-measures the window and re-clamps a remembered panel size to it. This is the fix for the second cause and costs nothing.
Open the Assistant on a wider window, then close and reopen it.
Result If it appears on a wide screen and not on a narrow one, the cause is the remembered size rather than anything to do with your account.
Try any other action in the app that saves something.
Result If that also fails quietly, the session has expired. Sign in again with Google — this is the only sign-in there is.
What an administrator can do, and when to escalate#
An administrator can confirm the account is active and that the person is a member of the workspace they think they are in, which covers the case where the Assistant is absent because the session belongs to a different workspace than the screen. They can also confirm from a second account whether the same screen shows the Assistant, which separates one person's browser from the deployment.
Escalate when the launcher is missing for more than one person on the same screen, or when it is missing for one audience and present for the other — an operator sees it and a customer does not, or the reverse. That asymmetry is a real class of defect here and is worth reporting with the screen, the audience and the window width, because those three facts are usually enough to reproduce it.
Questions#
Did I lose the conversation I had open?
No. Each tab's conversation, pinned record and draft belong to your workspace rather than to the panel, so they return when it opens. What does not return is an unsent message still sitting in the composer.
Could this be an account permission problem?
The Assistant is available to both audiences over the same implementation, so it is not a capability one kind of account lacks. A permission problem shows up as a refusal inside the Assistant, not as the Assistant being absent.
Is a private window a useful test?
Yes, and it is the quickest one. A private window has no remembered panel size and no session, so if the launcher is present there the cause is local state, and if it is present and the panel opens after sign-in, the cause was the session.