Welcome to your monthly watsonx Orchestrate newsletter!
Discover the latest enhancements, features, and improvements introduced in IBM watsonx Orchestrate in our June 2026 Technical Touchpoint! 🚀
TL;DR (2‑minute scan for builders)
• Python toolkits in workflows
→ Bundle and reuse Python logic instead of deploying tools individually
→ Why it matters: Less setup, cleaner architecture, faster iteration
• Custom embedded chat fonts
→ Match chat UI to your product branding across user + agent responses
→ Why it matters: More polished, production-ready customer experiences
• New workflow controls + automation upgrades
→ Loops, retries, optional inputs, and async execution
→ Why it matters: Build more resilient, flexible agent workflows
• Prebuilt PDF agents + evaluation improvements
→ Extract, generate, and update documents out of the box + built-in metrics
→ Why it matters: Less custom work, faster time to value
• Upcoming webinars
→ Live demos + deeper dives into real use case
Feature Highlights:
Builders can now add Python toolkits directly to agentic workflows, alongside the MCP toolkits already supported. Instead of deploying individual Python tools one by one, bundle them into a single toolkit for better performance, simpler management, and a cleaner builder experience.
- Invoke Python toolkit tools from agentic workflows with full connection support.
- Run tools asynchronously with built-in error handling and retries.
- Manage related Python tools as a single, reusable bundle rather than separate deployments.
Use this feature when you need agentic workflows to reach into custom Python logic, internal APIs, or domain-specific utilities, without the overhead of standing up each tool independently.
Dive into Python toolkit workflows
Bring your brand into every conversation. Embedded chat now supports custom font styling through the fontFamily parameter, so welcome messages, agent responses, user utterances, and starter prompts all match your brand.
Use this feature to ship embedded chat experiences that feel native to your product, not bolted on. A small change with a big impact on how polished your customer-facing agent looks.
See how to customize embedded chat
New Webinar: From Business Process to Working Agent – A watsonx Orchestrate + IBM Bob Deep Dive
Turning a business process into working software usually means weeks of handoffs: analysts map out the workflow, developers translate it into code, and a lot gets lost between intent and implementation. In this session we'll show a faster path.
|
Join us for a live deep dive demo on June 24, 2026 where we'll walk through the full flow end to end, from process model to deployed agent, and show how Bob skills and watsonx Orchestrate cut manual effort so developers can focus on review and customization instead of starting from scratch.
Register here
|
 |
What's New
Latest watsonx Orchestrate Release: Loops, Flexibility, and a More Polished Chat Experience
This release adds loop controls in Flow builder so you can iterate over data, poll for status updates, and implement retry logic until conditions are met. Tool inputs now support optional parameters through a required toggle, giving you more flexible tool designs. Thumbs-up and thumbs-down feedback in embedded chat is automatically stored on watsonx Orchestrate servers and accessible through the Messages API, eliminating the need for custom storage.
New prebuilt PDF agents (Extract, Insert, Generate, Update) expand productivity automation out of the box. The test evaluation interface now includes embedded metric definitions and supports unlimited evaluation runs, consecutive agent responses in chat are visually grouped within a 2-minute window for cleaner conversations, domain agents on gpt-oss-120b deliver performance comparable to previous Llama-based versions, and session cookies are now isolated to specific regional hostnames to prevent authentication conflicts across regions. AWS MCSP 2.0 environments (HIPAA and GovCloud) also get seamless login through secure access links.
Ready to see how these enhancements can accelerate your AI-driven projects?
Learn more here
New in the ADK: Dynamic Knowledge Base Schemas and Python Toolkits in Workflows
The latest 2.10.0 version now lets you create dynamic input and output schemas for your knowledge bases, configure them for richer external knowledge integrations, and use Python toolkits in agentic workflows the same way you use any other toolkit. Workspace messaging also gets a refresh with improved copy for unhelpful assistant responses and external agent workspaces.
Ready to explore the latest developer tools?
Learn more here
Thank you for your continued engagement — your voice truly makes a difference!
Let us know which new feature are you exploring first? What use case would you like to see highlighted in the next touchpoint?
Shout out to @Femi Abiodun for co-authoring.
#watsonxorchestrate
#community-stories3