Per-tenant translations

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Multi-tenancy

Learn how to create tenant-scoped translation files that override your base translations for specific tenants.

Per-tenant translations enable you to override specific translation keys for individual tenants. When Knock renders a notification for a workflow run associated with a tenant, the tenant's translation content are deep-merged on top of your base translation files. The tenant-specific translations take precedence while everything else falls back to your base translations.

How it works

When a notification is rendered, Knock will translate the content if a t tag or t filter is found, following the locale prioritization chain to identify the appropriate translation file to use. When a notification is scoped to a tenant, that flow prioritizes tenant-specific translations over base translations. Keys not present in the tenant-scoped file fall back to the base translation.

Given a tenant-scoped translation for acme-corp:

And a base en translation:

When a notification is sent for a workflow run associated with the acme-corp tenant, the resolved translations are:

The greeting key is overridden by the tenant-scoped file; order_ready falls back to the base translation.

Tenant-scoped translations

Tenant-scoped translations are managed via the Management API using the existing translations endpoints. Add the tenant query parameter to scope a translation to a specific tenant.

Create translations

The request body is the same as a standard translation upsert:

Get translations

List all translations for a tenant

Use the tenant query parameter to filter the translations list to a specific tenant:

Get a specific translation for a tenant

Use the tenant query parameter and the locale_code path parameter to get a specific translation set:

Translations in templates

In your templates, use the t filters or t tags to indicate content blocks that should be translated to tenant-specific copy. Knock will resolve the appropriate translation based on the tenant provided in the workflow trigger and, if applicable, the recipient's locale.

When these templates are rendered for a workflow run associated with the acme-corp tenant, Knock uses the tenant-scoped value if one exists for the recipient's locale.

See translations for more information on using translations in templates.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. If you've enabled environments, the Management API blocks translation upserts to production when the Modify resources in any environment setting is disabled, or when the translation was created in another environment. To write directly to production in those cases, pass force=true as a query parameter. This bypasses the development-only and origin environment checks, allowing you to upsert tenant-scoped translations directly to any environment.

Yes. You can manage tenant-scoped translations from the Translations page in the Knock dashboard. Filter the translations list by tenant using the tenant filter, click into a translation to view its tenant scope, and edit and save changes directly from the detail view.

Yes, per-tenant translations can be used to customize templates on a per-tenant basis, even if you're not working with multiple locales. Set all of your customizable content as translation keys in your templates, then upsert tenant-scoped translation files that override those keys for each tenant. This gives you per-tenant control over notification content without requiring separate templates or workflows per tenant.