---
title: "Communications Orchestration (Beta)"
slug: "communications-orchestration-beta"
updated: 2026-10-12T15:54:25Z
published: 2026-10-12T15:54:25Z
canonical: "docs.blackthorn.io/communications-orchestration-beta"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.blackthorn.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Communications Orchestration (Beta)

Communications Orchestration helps event teams manage cross-campaign email overlap, prevent attendees from receiving too many messages in a short window, and apply organization-wide communication governance policies.

              Beta feature

              

Communications Orchestration is a beta feature. Enable it for your org on the /beta page. The governance and suppression rules described on this page continue to evolve before general availability.

## What it does

The Forge communications engine today handles per-event email sends: confirmation emails, session reminders, speaker invitations, and custom broadcasts. Communications Orchestration adds a cross-event coordination layer that operates across all your events simultaneously.

- Overlap detection: identifies when the same contact is scheduled to receive messages from multiple events within a configurable suppression window (e.g. no more than 2 emails in 3 days)
- Governance policies: define org-wide rules for maximum send frequency, blackout periods (e.g. holiday weeks), and required cooling-off periods after a hard bounce
- Campaign send calendar: a unified calendar view of all scheduled email sends across every event, with conflict highlighting
- Priority overrides: mark a communication as high-priority to bypass suppression (used for transactional messages like payment receipts)
- Suppression log: per-contact log of which messages were suppressed, with reasons
- Integration with Salesforce Marketing Cloud (where licensed): governance rules can be exported to Marketing Cloud suppression lists

> 🖼️ **In the Forge app:** The Communications Orchestration calendar view showing scheduled sends across multiple events with conflict indicators.

## How to enable

1. Go to /beta and toggle Communications Orchestration on.
2. Navigate to Communications in the Forge sidebar.
3. Open Orchestration Settings and configure your suppression window (default: 3 days) and maximum emails per contact per window.
4. Define any blackout periods for your organization.
5. Review the Campaign Send Calendar to identify existing conflicts.
6. Apply governance policies — Forge will flag any future scheduled sends that violate the rules before they are dispatched.

## Current limitations

- Cross-event suppression requires all events to use Forge's built-in email system. Third-party email providers (external mode) are not covered by orchestration in this beta.
- The governance policy engine covers email sends only. SMS and push notifications are future scope.
- Salesforce Marketing Cloud export is planned but not available in the initial beta.
- The conflict calendar is read-only in the first release — direct editing of scheduled sends happens on the individual event Communications tab.
- Suppression logs are retained for 90 days in this beta; retention policies will be configurable at GA.

:::(Note) (Salesforce note) Communications Orchestration works with Salesforce Contact and Lead records (for contact-level suppression) and bt_base__Email_Log__c (for send history). It does not modify Salesforce records directly — governance is enforced at the Forge dispatch layer before emails are handed to the sending service. :::