Forge by Blackthorn

Event operations, native to Salesforce.

Forge runs your event lifecycle on top of the Salesforce data you already trust — no second source of truth, no data shadow.

What Forge is

Forge is the Blackthorn event operations app. It gives planners a fast, modern interface for running registrations, sessions, sponsors, attendees, communications, and reporting — all backed by the Blackthorn managed packages installed in your Salesforce org.

Because Salesforce remains the system of record, every change you make in Forge is written through to standard Blackthorn objects. There is no separate database of customer records — Forge is a thin operational layer over the schema you already own.

What you can do with Forge

Everything your team needs to plan, run, and measure events — built on the Salesforce data you already own.

Plan & publish events
Create, clone, and schedule recurring series; design an event website with drag-and-drop branding.
Sell tickets & collect payments
Ticket types, add-ons, discount codes, donations, Salesforce-native checkout, and an embeddable widget.
Register & manage attendees
Online registration, check-in, waitlists, group bookings, and bulk import/export.
Build the agenda
Sessions, tracks, speakers, and a visual agenda builder — all linked to your Salesforce records.
Engage your audience
Email composer, scheduled campaigns, automated journeys, audience segments, and surveys.
Run the day-of
Seating & tables, exhibit spaces, hotels & housing, logistics and resources.
Measure everything
Live dashboard, registration and financial reports, and attendee analytics — all in Salesforce.

What's live in Forge today

Forge brings a modern web UI to Blackthorn on Salesforce. Salesforce remains the system of record; Forge is a faster way to use it. Here's what's wired up today, what's in beta, and what's still on the roadmap.

Live today

Available to every signed-in user — no setup required.

Attendees
Budget & Expense
Communications
Custom Content
Event Content
Event Info
Forms
Location
Overview
Page Designer
Related Lists
Reporting
Sessions
Settings
Speakers
Sponsors
Staff
Surveys
Tickets & Items
Transactions
Audiences
Contacts & Accounts
Events & Event Groups
Forms (global)
Lists
RSS feeds
Records
Reports (global)
Speakers (global)
Sponsors (global)
Webinar Accounts

In beta — opt in at /beta

Working but still being polished. An admin can flip these on per-tenant from the Beta Features page.

Attendee Portal
Badges
Budget Approval Workflow
Budget Insights & Alerts
Checkout Flow
Contract & Deadline Register
Event Tasks
Giving Data Models
Milestones & Deadlines
My Tasks
ROI Dashboard
Speaker Portal
Sponsor Portal
Staff Workload
Tables & Seating
Vendor & PO Tracking

Coming soon

Toggleable previews on the Beta Features page; not yet recommended for production.

Communications
Data Dictionary
Fees
Invoices
Navigator
Push Notifications
Recurring Events
SMS
Translations
Visibility

Looking for dates and priorities? See the public roadmap.

Open the roadmap Manage beta features

Where your data lives

Salesforce is your system of record. Forge and our classic event pages keep your contacts' personal details in Salesforce and pull them in only when needed — held briefly in a short-lived cache, then dropped. We store configuration and Salesforce record IDs, not your attendees' personal data.

Classic event pages

Kept by Blackthorn: Nothing in a Blackthorn database — pages read from Salesforce. Images served via CDN.
Pulled live from Salesforce: Event details, agenda, registration questions, and registrations.
Cached for: Minutes for attendee and checkout data (encrypted); page design up to a day.

Forge

Kept by Blackthorn: Settings, templates, an encrypted Salesforce sign-in token, and Salesforce record IDs only. Files live in Salesforce.
Pulled live from Salesforce: Attendee names and emails, registration answers, and reports.
Cached for: Up to about 2 hours for attendee lists, then automatically dropped.

Beacon (AI · coming soon)

Kept by Blackthorn: Records it creates go to your Salesforce org. Conversation history will live in your Salesforce org at launch.
Pulled live from Salesforce: Your event and CRM data, queried live — never bulk-copied.
Cached for: Conversation context is short-lived; product help content (not your data) powers its knowledge base.

What counts as personal data

We treat names, email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses as personal data and keep them in Salesforce. Record IDs, counts, settings, and company (account) names are not personal data and may be cached to keep things fast.