What Is Forge

Forge is Blackthorn's event-management web app — a fast, modern interface that sits as a stateless layer on top of your Salesforce org. Every record you create or edit in Forge is immediately written to Salesforce; Forge itself holds no permanent copies of your event data, attendee PII, or financial records.

The stateless-layer model

Traditional event-management tools store your data in their own database and offer a one-way sync back to Salesforce. Forge takes the opposite approach: Salesforce is the system of record, and Forge is simply a purpose-built UI that reads and writes through the Blackthorn managed packages in real time.

• No duplicate database — your Salesforce data is the only copy.
• Changes made in Salesforce are visible in Forge immediately (after a page refresh).
• Your existing Salesforce automations, flows, and reports continue to run against live records.
• Data residency and compliance obligations are satisfied at the Salesforce layer, not duplicated.

What Forge manages

• Events — create, configure, clone, and publish events of any type (in-person, virtual, or hybrid).
• Registrations — sell tickets, manage waitlists, handle discount codes and promotional pricing.
• Attendees — view, filter, check in, and communicate with everyone who registers.
• Sessions — schedule breakout tracks and link them to tickets or attendee groups.
• Speakers and Sponsors — manage profiles, confirmations, and portal access.
• Forms — build registration forms that map directly to Salesforce fields.
• Payments — connect a payment gateway, set fees, and track revenue.
• Communications — send targeted emails to audience segments before, during, and after events.
• Reporting — view registration funnels, revenue snapshots, and attendance metrics.

What Forge does not do

• Forge does not store attendee PII (names, emails, phone numbers, addresses). That data lives exclusively in Salesforce Contacts, Leads, and Attendee records.
• Forge does not process payments itself — it passes charge requests to your configured gateway (Stripe, Authorize.Net, etc.) and records the result in Salesforce.
• Forge does not replace Salesforce reporting — it surfaces key metrics in-app, but your Salesforce reports and dashboards remain the authoritative analytics layer.