Keeping every SharePoint site and Microsoft Teams on-brand is hard to do natively in Microsoft 365. Tools like Brand Center and Site Branding help you define an approved look, but nothing stops a site owner from changing it afterward, and there's no built-in way to push an updated theme out to sites that already exist.
Automate365 closes that gap at the source: branding is defined inside the template, so every site is correctly branded the moment it's provisioned. No scripting, no relying on site owners to comply, no manual cleanup after the fact.
Why native M365 branding falls short
No enforcement, only defaults. Once a theme or font package is available tenant-wide, any site owner can still pick a different one, or open Site Branding and customize colors and fonts themselves. There's no admin toggle to lock this down without additional scripting.
No way to apply changes at scale. If you update your corporate theme, there's no built-in way to roll it out to existing sites. You're stuck updating them one by one, or scripting it.
Automate365 templates address both: branding is enforced at the point of creation, and applied consistently across every site provisioned from the template; no scripting required.
What you can control
Automate365 templates give you three complementary ways to govern branding, all configured during template creation.
Default logos
Inside the Structure and Content step, toggle Branding on to define default logos for sites created from the template: team picture, site logo, and site logo thumbnail. You also control whether end-users provisioning the template are allowed to change each one, or whether it's locked to your standard.
Team picture: the image used for the Microsoft Teams associated with the site (e.g., its avatar in Microsoft Teams).
Site logo: the SharePoint site logo shown in the site's header/navigation.
Site logo thumbnail: the compact version of the site logo, used wherever SharePoint needs a smaller representation (e.g., site listings, app launcher).
Use team picture as SharePoint site logos: applies the team picture as the site logo too, so you only need to manage one image instead of two.
Allow users provisioning the template to change team picture/site logo: leave unchecked to enforce the same logos on every site; check either box to let end-users upload their own during provisioning.
For the full walkthrough of the Structure and Content step, see Define template structure and content.
Theme carried over from your source content
When you create a template from an existing workspace or by duplicating another template, the source site's theme comes with it automatically; you don't need to reconfigure it.
If the source site uses a BindTuning theme, the full theme is carried over and applied to every site provisioned from the template.
If the source site uses a native Microsoft theme (e.g., one defined in Brand Center), that theme is also carried over and applied the same way.
This means a template built from a well-branded site stays well-branded, without any extra setup.
Hub Site theme inheritance
If your template automatically associates new sites with a Hub Site, you can also choose to have provisioned sites inherit the hub's theme instead of the theme carried over from the source content. This gives you one point of control for a business unit's or region's branding: set the theme once on the hub, and every site associated with it stays visually aligned, without the manual hub-tie workarounds native Microsoft 365 requires.
This is configured as the Inherit theme from the selected Hub checkbox, part of the Hub Site association. See Configuring Hub Site Association in templates for full setup steps.
Note: These branding controls live across a few different steps of template creation (Structure and Content, choosing how to start your template, and Hub Site association), rather than in one single wizard step.