Versioning¶
Versioning keeps your live chatbot stable while you make changes. You can edit and test your chatbot without impacting your users. For more details, see the tutorial on creating and publishing versions.
Versioning tracks the history of your chatbot's configuration so you can review what changed, and roll back to a previous version if needed.
Terminology¶
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Unreleased Version. This is the version of the chatbot you are currently editing. It is a draft that has not been versioned or published.
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Published Version. This is the version that users will interact with — through the web, WhatsApp, or any other channel you have set up, including the public link.
What is a Chatbot Version?¶
Once a version is created, it cannot be edited or modified. This ensures that the users' experience remains stable even if chatbot editors are changing the unreleased version.
What is frozen — and what is live¶
Most of a published version's configuration is frozen at publish time. One exception is collection content:
- Changes to files in a linked media collection — such as adding, removing, or replacing files — are reflected immediately in the published bot.
- Scheduled document-source syncs to a linked RAG index collection are also applied to the published bot as they run.
The collection structure (which collections are linked to which nodes) remains part of the frozen version. Only the content of those collections is treated as a live shared resource.
What this means for drift detection
Because collection content is live, adding files to a collection or waiting for a document-source sync no longer marks your bot as having unpublished changes. Only changes to the bot's pipeline configuration and settings are tracked as pending changes.
Existing published bots
This live-collection behaviour applies to bots republished after this change was introduced (2026-06-03). Bots that were published before retain their previous frozen collection snapshot until the next time they are republished.
Chatting to the unreleased version¶
For testing, if you want to chat with the unreleased draft chatbot, go to the chatbot home page and click the speech bubble icon in the top-right corner. In the dropdown, select "Unreleased Version" instead of "Published Version" to open a web chat.
When chatting with an unpublished version, a banner will appear indicating that it is not the published version and showing the version number.
Only bot editors can chat with the unreleased version because it is not available through channels.
Behavior before versioning
Previously, all channels always used the unreleased version.
Changing the Published Version¶
The published version can be selected from any of the Chatbot versions, enabling rollback to a previous version. Only one version can be the published version at a time.
To publish a version, follow the tutorial on creating and publishing versions.
Versioning for OpenAI Assistants¶
Versioning chatbots that use OpenAI Assistants
Yes, this is supported. When a new version is saved for a chatbot that uses an OpenAI Assistant, a snapshot copy of that assistant is automatically created — no extra setup needed. The original assistant remains available and can still be updated in the unreleased version.
Modifying Assistants in OpenAI referenced by released versions
As mentioned above, the copied assistant will be read-only in OCS, however, in OpenAI changes can still be made to that copy of the assistant. We recommend advising your team to not modify this assistant if it references a released version. This can cause unexpected behavior to the version and to its end users. To ensure that the released version acts as expected this assistant should remain as-is.