Overview
Release 2026.017 makes it easier for admins to manage complex site structures and create more flexible layouts. It also includes useful updates for developers and analytics teams, plus a few integration improvements that were released early through a backport.
Schedule
- Staging: Week of September 21, 2026
- Production: Week of September 28, 2026
- Enterprise: Week of October 5, 2026
Site Structure Updates
Managing a complex community becomes easier and safer when admins can understand related settings and preview structural changes together. Site Structure gives admins one centralized place to manage the hierarchy of languages, subcommunities, categories, knowledge bases, layouts, and applied style guides.
It consolidates work previously spread across Subcommunity, Category, Knowledge Base, and Language settings, along with style guide assignment and visibility workflows.
Admins can focus on a specific branch of a complex community; add, move, merge, edit, or delete categories and subcommunities; review pending operations; and apply related structural changes together. Layout assignments show whether each layout is inherited or overridden, while applied style guides show where they are in use.
Site Structure also supports intentional language migrations. Admins can retain manually translated language communities, move toward AI Languages, or create a hybrid structure that preserves separate audience, regional, regulatory, or knowledge-base experiences where needed. Migration plans can include selected historical admin-generated and user-generated content, with progress available after the plan is applied.
Site Structure is available across all plans. Existing plan entitlements still determine access to capabilities such as Knowledge Bases and the permitted number of Knowledge Bases or subcommunities.
Documentation: Site Structure · Site Structure Plans · Set Up Subcommunities · Language Translation Overview · Set Community Language Settings · AI Translations
Full-Width Layout Controls
Communities can give content more visual space where it matters without forcing every page into the same presentation. New width controls let admins create full-width experiences where they are useful while retaining constrained layouts elsewhere. Style Guide settings provide site-wide defaults for full width, primary content width, gutters, and secondary panels.
Within the Layout Editor, admins can override those defaults for individual layouts. Two-column and three-column sections can use full width, panel widths can be adjusted, and the Title Bar can be configured as full width for a specific layout.
Documentation: Configure Global Styles — Layout width · Create a Custom Layout — Full-width sections and panel resizing · Create a Custom Layout Title Bar — Full width
Core Reactions API Access
Developers can build reaction-based integrations against a more predictable core API surface. The documented API v2 endpoints for adding and removing reactions from discussions are now available without relying on the legacy Reactions add-on state. Existing permissions and authorization rules still determine who can react.
This makes API availability consistent with Reactions being part of the core product and removes an obsolete add-on dependency for integrations using these endpoints.
Documentation: Reactions · API v2 Endpoints · Make API Calls with the API Docs Page
Reactions Analytics by Receiving User Rank
Community teams can better understand how engagement varies across member ranks. Analytics users can now group Reactions data by the receiving user’s rank, making it easier to compare how members at different rank levels receive engagement and include rank context in reaction-focused reporting.
Documentation: Data Source — Reactions
Available Early: Escalation Webhook Author Details
Integration teams can process escalations with fewer follow-up requests and clearer author context. The cmdEscalation webhook can now include an expanded recordUser object for the author of the escalated content, while existing webhook fields remain backwards compatible.
This improvement was backported and made available with Release 2026.010.
Documentation: Webhooks
Available Early: Zendesk Integration Improvements
Teams using Zendesk can keep connected support workflows more reliable and route tickets more accurately. Integration improvements add token refresh handling and PKCE support, while multi-brand support lets tickets created through Vanilla route to the appropriate Zendesk brand. The CommunityReply workflow has also received reliability improvements.
These changes were backported and are already live from Release 2026.010. No customer action should be required, although teams using the integration may want to confirm that their Zendesk connection remains active.
Documentation: Zendesk Integration