Discord

Overview

Discord is advertised as "chat for gamers", but it is an incredibly powerful communications tool, capable of text, voice and video chat from any operating system or mobile device. The power of Discord comes through bots, plugins which can be used to extend the functionality of Discord's offerings.

Discord is well suited as a lab environment replacement. This was tested in EEE4120F 2020 using the Ticket Tool bot (see more below), as a replacement for lab sessions and was found to be effective, with feedback from student's detailing that the experience was better than Vula chat, emails, and Vula forums. The Ticket Tool bot allows for students to log a ticket, creating a separate chat room where the issue could be handled. Those chat rooms were only visible by the student creating the ticket, and the admins on the server (TA, tutors, etc).

Creating a Discord Account

Creating a Discord account is easy - simply head to the Discord site and follow the prompts.

Creating a Discord Server

To create a Discord server, open Discord, and, on the left hand side of the screen, click the green plus (hovering over this button will give the tool tip "Add a Server"). Once you do so, the server wizard will start, guiding you step-=by-step through the process.

Once you've stepped through the wizard, you will be offered to "Invite friends to <server name>" and be presented with a link. Note that the link given to you will expire in 24 hours, so don't use that one. Instead, at the bottom, select "Edit invite link". A new dialog will show, and under "Expire after", set the link to never expire. Click "Generate a New Link" after doing so. The new link that is generated can be shared among students and anyone else who might want to access the Discord server. Before you do so, you may want to set up a few additional settings.

Creating Roles

Different users in the channel may require different permissions (for example, students vs tutors). In order to handle this, Discord has a "Roles"setting. To access the Discord server settings, select the arrow next to the server name near the top right of the screen, and then select "Server Settings". You will be presented with the server settings. Note that for each server, the permissions for that server are isolated from other servers. So if you are creating multiple servers, you will need to create Roles and edit permissions for each server.

In this example, we're going to create a "SupportStaff" role, for the TA, tutors and any other support staff on the server. We're going to give this role additional permissions and allow them to handle relevant admin-related tasks on the server.

On the left hand side of the Settings screen, select "Roles". To the left of that, above the "@everyone" tag, there is test saying "ROLES" with a plus symbol next to it. Select that plus symbol. It will automatically create a role called "new role". Change the name of this role to whatever you wish ("SupportStaff" in this example), and then set the following permissions to True:

• Display role members separately from online members
• Administrator
• View Audit Log
• Manage Channels
• Kick Members
• Manage Nicknames
• Manage Messages
• Mute Members
• Deafen Members
• Move Members
• Priority Speaker

Then select "Save Changes"

Discord Bots

Discord bots enable a world of additional functionality. The below bots are some that are considered useful to using Discord as a lab replacement tool, enabling classroom-like functionality, and allowing better engagement between students and the support staff.

Ticket Tool

Ticket Tool is a bot that allows students to create private chat rooms, viewable only by them and the support staff. This is a nice way for students to ask questions privately in a way that easily allows privacy, feedback and easy communication without following long email chains.

Once your server is created, navigate to the ticket tool website, and click "Invite Ticket Tool". You will need to log into Discord through the site, in order for TicketTool to get access to the servers you manage. You can then select your server to invite Ticket Tool. Leave the permissions as they are, and click "Authorize". Once authorized, Ticket Tool will be added to the server. Add it to the support staff role you created by right clicking on the Ticket Tool user, hovering over "Roles" and checking the "SupportStaff" check box.

Once that is done, head back to [tickettool.xyz Ticket Tool Website], and select "Manage Servers". Select your course server. and on the right hand side of the screen, select "Panel Configs". Panels are how students will interact with the bot. Select "Create a panel".

TODO: COME BACK TO AFTER CREATING CUSTOM CHANNELS