Automate365 now gives template creators more control over two parts of provisioning that are often difficult to keep consistent: branding and workspace settings. A new Branding step brings Brand Center and BindTuning themes into the Template Creation Wizard, while expanded blueprint collection allows additional supported settings to be captured directly from an existing site or team rather than added only through a saved policy. Imagine creating a template from a well-configured SharePoint site: its current branding is detected automatically, its supported settings remain visible, and you can choose whether those settings stay specific to the template or become reusable policies. This means fewer manual steps after deployment, clearer configuration choices and more predictable results across newly provisioned workspaces.
Embedding Branding Governance into SharePoint Site Provisioning
Template creators can now pre-configure and enforce approved corporate branding directly within templates, ensuring all newly provisioned sites automatically inherit the correct visual identity from day one. A dedicated Branding step is now available inside the Template Creation Wizard, expanding the existing logo options with both brand center and BindTuning theme selection:
Brand Center themes: When selecting this option, administrators can view and choose from all available Brand Center palettes, ensuring strict adherence to organizational color standards.
BindTuning themes: Selecting a BindTuning Theme displays all custom themes available to the user, automatically locking the associated color palette to read-only mode to prevent design inconsistencies.
Automatic Blueprint Detection: When creating a template from an existing site blueprint, the wizard automatically detects and pre-selects the blueprint's current branding while allowing administrators to easily switch between Brand Center or BindTuning themes.
This update eliminates the need to manually apply themes after site creation, streamlining governance and guaranteeing absolute visual compliance across all newly provisioned sites.
Extending Blueprint Settings Collection
Building on the template collection improvements introduced in July, Automate365 can now collect additional workspace settings directly from the blueprint site or team. Previously, these settings could only be applied to a template through a saved policy. This meant that a template created from an existing workspace did not always reflect the configuration currently applied to that workspace. Template creators can now preserve supported blueprint settings directly within the template, while retaining the option to turn them into reusable policies when the same configuration should be applied elsewhere. The settings selector now distinguishes between:
Current Site/Team Settings — the configuration currently applied to the blueprint workspace. This is selected by default when creating a template from an existing site or team.
Default Settings — the standard configuration applied when a new site or team is created. This replaces the previous Tenant Default terminology.
Saved Policies — reusable, named configurations that can be applied across templates.
Template creators can move between current settings, default settings and saved policies without losing access to the original blueprint configuration. This makes it clearer which settings will be preserved in the template and gives creators greater control over whether a configuration remains specific to that template or is promoted to a reusable policy. This enhancement expands the coverage and consistency of blueprint collection, helping templates represent existing workspace configurations more accurately and supporting more predictable deployment outcomes.
This release makes templates more representative of the workspaces they are built from and more reliable when they are deployed. By bringing governed branding into template creation and extending blueprint collection beyond policy-only configuration, Automate365 reduces repeated setup, clarifies where settings come from and helps administrators provision SharePoint sites and Teams with greater consistency.