We consider a one-dimensional bosonic gas on a ring lattice, in the presence of a localized barrier or a weak-link. Coherent Rabi oscillations in the flow of the current are feasible, with an enhanced frequency due to chaos-assisted tunneling. We highlight the consequences of introducing a weak-link into the circuit. In the latter context we clarify the phase–space considerations that are involved in setting up an effective ‘systems plus bath’ description in terms of Josephson–Caldeira–Leggett Hamiltonian. We study the persistent currents at varying interactions and barrier strength, for various values of lattice filling. While generically the persistent currents are strongly suppressed in the Mott insulator phase, they show a resonant behaviour when the barrier strength becomes of the order of the interaction energy.