What "Publish" Means
In Speako, changes you make to your AI receptionist don't go live immediately when you save them. Most configuration changes need to be published before the AI on live calls reflects your updates.
Why publishing exists
Your AI receptionist uses a live system to handle calls. Saving a draft change in the dashboard doesn't instantly update the system handling your calls — that would risk a caller being mid-call when changes are applied. Publishing is a deliberate step that takes your saved changes and pushes them to the live AI.
Think of it like publishing a webpage: you can edit a draft as much as you want, and only when you publish does the world see the update.
What triggers a publish
A publish is required when you make changes to:
- Greetings — opening greeting, after-hours message, returning customer greeting, recording consent
- Voice & Languages — the AI's voice, primary language, additional languages
- Personality — the AI's name, tone, and personality prompt
- AI Tools — enabling or disabling tools, configuring transfer numbers and URLs
- Knowledge Base — FAQs, info articles, and other content the AI references
- Full configuration — when using "Go Live" to push everything at once
Not all changes require a manual publish. For example, changes to your booking page appearance save and apply automatically.
What the publish process does
When you publish:
- The dashboard saves your configuration.
- A publish job is sent to Speako's background processing system.
- The system packages your AI's configuration (greetings, personality, tools, knowledge, etc.) and sends it to the AI infrastructure.
- Once complete, the live AI is updated.
During processing, you'll see a publishing modal with the current state: Submitting → Processing → Published Successfully!
Published Successfully vs still processing
After clicking Publish, the modal says Publishing... while the job processes. When it changes to Published Successfully!, your changes are live. If the job takes longer than expected, you may see a timeout message — but the job is still running in the background.
💡 Tip: After making multiple changes (greetings, knowledge base, tools), publish once to push them all at once. You don't need to publish after each individual change.
⚠️ Important: Until you publish, your changes exist only as a draft. Live callers still experience the last published configuration. Don't forget to publish after making important updates.