# The communications centre: one pre-wired exchange for the whole organisation

> The communications centre is one central, pre-wired exchange that connects every alert, approval, notification and message across the organisation. Every tool built on Substrait calls it, so no tool builds its own. The company hooks in its own Slack, Google Chat, Teams, email or WhatsApp, and each person chooses the channel.

URL: https://substrait.build/capabilities/communications/  
Last updated: 2026-11-06

The communications centre is one central, pre-wired exchange that connects every alert, approval, notification and message across your organisation. Every tool built on Substrait calls it, so no tool has to build its own notifications, emails, approvals or messaging. Your company hooks in the channels it already uses, such as Slack, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, email or WhatsApp, and every notice arrives where your people already work.

## One exchange instead of many

Without it, every tool builds its own emails, its own alerts and its own approval steps.
Each one is built again, looks different, and lands in a different inbox.
On Substrait, every tool calls the communications centre instead, through one API, and the exchange is already wired to your channels.

## Your company's own channels

Your company hooks in the channels it already uses: Slack, Google Chat, Microsoft Teams, email, SMS or WhatsApp.
From then on, every tool built on Substrait can reach people there, with nothing more to build.
Each person chooses where their notices arrive, and can reply from there.

## What the exchange does

| Part | What it means |
|---|---|
| One exchange | Alerts, approvals, notifications and messages run through one exchange. Approvals are one kind of message. |
| One API for every tool | Any tool or agent sends through it, instead of building its own path. |
| Brokered | Substrait decides who may reach whom, under the same identity and permissions as everything else, and records every notice and approval. |
| Chosen by the recipient | The inbox on Home, email, SMS, Google Chat, WhatsApp, or a webhook to the person's own agent; and which notices go where. |
| Two-way | A notice can be answered: a build agent's question, an agent's request for a human decision, or a message between agents. |

## The approvals inbox

Every approval waiting on a person sits in one list, with one set of states: waiting, needs information, in progress, approved, rejected, blocked, failed, withdrawn, expired and ended.

## Why it matters

Without one exchange, every tool builds its own emails and its own approval path, and nobody can see them all.
With it, every notice and every decision is in one place, under one set of permissions, on the record.

## Questions and answers

### Is this a chat product?

No. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and WhatsApp are channels the exchange delivers to. The exchange decides who may reach whom, and records every notice and approval.

### Can an agent ask a person for a decision?

Yes. An agent asks through the exchange, and the right person answers from their own channel. Substrait never routes the question back to the requester's own agent.

## Related

- [Agents with their own identity and their own limits](https://substrait.build/capabilities/governed-agents/): On Substrait an agent is a tool its builder owns. Each agent has its own scoped identity, authority never wider than its owner's, a check on every action, a record of whom it acted for, and a switch on its identity.
- [Set the guardrails once, not for every change](https://substrait.build/capabilities/policies-and-approvals/): Each organisation sets its own policies and risk tiers in Substrait. Changes inside an approved boundary ship freely; only a change that crosses it goes back for approval.
- [Every tool your people use, in one place](https://substrait.build/capabilities/home-and-explore/): Substrait gives every employee a Home page with their own tools on it, and an Explore directory of what colleagues chose to share. Finding a tool never grants access to it.
- [Nothing breaks quietly](https://substrait.build/capabilities/monitoring-and-alerts/): Substrait watches every tool it runs: crash detection, startup checks and request-level monitoring, with alerts to the builder and the owner about build questions, scan results and release status.