What Are Solution Templates? | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• What a Solution Template is
• Why Solution Templates are useful

How Solution Templates Help

In the Content, Pages, and Search tracks, you set up the Yext account for Turtlehead Tacos. You added custom entity types, custom fields, Page Builder templates, search configurations and more. While a Yext account comes with certain features built-in that enable you to start using the platform, you can get even more out of it when you customize it for your needs. Different types of businesses may want to customize their Yext account in different ways so that they can have more robust experiences for their customers.

For example, the Turtlehead Tacos account had a few additions to its data model that were specific to restaurants. The Yext platform encourages these kinds of additions. However, Turtlehead Tacos is not the only restaurant that is a Yext customer. Each restaurant using Yext may also be making additions to information stored in Content. Many of these restaurants will have similar goals in mind. Since each is building its solution from scratch, the restaurants will likely implement it in different ways.

What if all of these restaurants could learn from each other? What if they could use others’ past experiences to implement a solution that was known to work well with certain data models, page templates and search configurations out of the box? What if a new restaurant could install such a solution with a couple of button clicks?

What Are Solution Templates?

That is where Solution Templates come in.

Solution Templates are pre-built configurations created by Yext that can be installed into an account. They provide the structural basis for success on the Yext platform and are configured based on learnings from other clients with similar business needs. They can add all sorts of things - from custom entity types in Content to Search experiences and much more. You can think about this as another way to update your account, just like you do via the UI or the API — this time, it’s just via a set of files.

While Solution Templates are great for getting an account started or adding to the functionality of the account, they should not be seen as static. You can extend these templates with as much of your own custom additions as you would like, and you are certainly encouraged to do so.

Common Resources Included in Solution Templates

• Content configuration
• Page Builder templates
• Search experience (backend and frontend configuration)
• Platform Settings

Common Use Cases for Solution Templates

Solution Templates sound so great, but when would you use them?

• Starting New Accounts: If you are managing accounts for multiple brands, it’ll be much easier to start from a solution template than from scratch. We highly recommend applying one to your empty account when you first log in. It will also give you great ideas on things that you can do!

• Adding New Products: Just starting to add Pages to your account? Or Search? A solution template will help a lot to give you a starting point and save you time!