Skip to main content

Share and update themes across syndicated assistants

Theme syndication lets you manage the design of assistants shared across teams, markets, or retailers. A central team can design a base assistant and share it with others as a syndicated assistant. Each syndicated experience has its own reserved copy of the original theme, but updates can be controlled centrally.

Terminology​

  • Base experience: The original assistant created by the central team. This is where theme updates start.
  • Syndicated experience: A shared version of the assistant received by other teams or regions.
  • Reserved theme: A theme copy created for each syndicated assistant to receive updates without breaking local modifications.
  • Syndicator: The account that owns and distributes the base experience.
  • Syndicatee: The account that receives and customizes the syndicated experience.

Create and syndicate a base experience​

  • Create a Web Discovery assistant in Conversation Studio.
  • Assign a theme in the Design tab or directly in Experience Designer.
  • Publish the assistant.
  • Save it as a syndication.
  • Share the syndicated assistant (not in limited mode).

Syndication

Visual Configurators are not supported by syndication.

Open and modify a syndicated theme​

After syndication, go to the syndicated assistant and open it in Experience Designer. The assistant will have a reserved theme.

You can:

  • Make changes to the reserved theme
  • Assign a different theme
  • Publish the updated assistant

Scenario 1: Manual update​

Use this scenario when you want to apply updates selectively on each syndicated experience.

  • Open the base experience in Experience Designer.
  • Modify and save the theme.
  • In Conversation Studio, distribute the assistant.
  • In the syndicated assistant, click the update icon.
  • Accept the theme changes.
  • The reserved theme will be reassigned if a different theme was applied locally.

Scenario 2: Force update​

Use force update to automatically apply theme changes to all syndicated assistants without requiring user confirmation.

  • Open the base experience in Experience Designer.
  • Modify and save the theme.
  • In Conversation Studio, distribute the assistant with force update.
  • Changes are pushed directly to each syndicated experience.
  • If a different theme was assigned locally, the reserved theme is reassigned.

Scenario 3: Force publish​

Use force publish when you need to both update and publish changes across all syndicated experiences in one step.

  • Open the base experience in Conversation Studio.
  • Modify its theme in Experience Designer.
  • Save and apply the theme.
  • Distribute the assistant with force update.
  • Use force publish to publish the changes live on all syndicated assistants.

The reserved theme is reassigned back if another theme was used locally.

How theme matching works​

When you syndicate an assistant, a reserved theme is created on the syndicated side. If changes are made on the base and re-distributed, the system checks whether the reserved theme is still used.

  • If yes, the theme is updated directly.
  • If the syndicatee switched to a different theme, the reserved theme is reassigned.

Best practices​

  • Always save and apply your theme before distributing changes.
  • Use force update when you want to make sure all syndicatees use the latest design.
  • Only use force publish when changes should go live immediately without manual confirmation.
  • Keep track of which themes are applied in each experience to avoid unwanted overrides.