The Discord program can be called rather strange, but at the same time outstanding, which allows you to significantly increase the effectiveness of communication in a team.
It should be understood that ordinary messengers were initially created in such a way that their operation did not require any specific administrative skills, which allows for a fairly low entry threshold.
In the event that the Discord setup procedures turn out to be complicated, then this circumstance will simply scare off the main part of the potential audience, however, low investments at the first stage may eventually turn into high costs associated with the operation of the product. Let’s consider what ordinary popular instant messengers may not like.
Separation by topic
It is clear that the more users present in the Discord group, the wider the range of topics discussed, and the vast majority of them are of interest only to a limited number of users.
The main approach is to create thematic groups, which include only those for whom this information is really of interest, which allows you to minimize unnecessary content. However, this is in theory, while in practice, complete chaos begins, as dozens of chats appear for work, several for school and kindergarten, as well as a couple related to people living in the same house.
Thus, given the fact that all these chats pass through the prism of the same names, confusion begins, and chats that receive little attention gradually roll back to the very bottom of the list and are eventually forgotten. Attempts to create duplicates of forgotten chats lead to the fact that not all users get into them, and if their number is too large, then there is simply no point in creating parallel chats, since it will take too much time to maintain an up-to-date list of participants.
Thus, as a result, a giant chat appears in Discord, dedicated to all issues of life, while groups in instant messengers gradually acquire a “toxic” character, and in order to find the information you really need, you have to process a pile of garbage content, and therefore many are present in groups only out of necessity.
Many of you have probably come across a situation where a huge number of notifications come from different messengers. It suffices to imagine a situation where each member of a team of fifty people sends five messages daily, which is 250 notifications.
If we imagine that it takes about thirty seconds to view a message, then in total + this will be two hours of daily time, while in relation to the team, the cost of man-hours will already be 104 hours per day. Although in reality the situation is somewhat more rosy, since messages often come in batches and are viewed all at once, the team’s loss of time for notification lies on the surface.
There are solutions, but if you send fewer messages, the very meaning of the messenger is lost, while reading all messages at once will lead to a decrease in the speed of response to incoming information.
Discord Features
It should be noted that this messenger has two modes pursuing different goals. Normal mode can be compared to similar messengers of competitors, and Discord has even more limited features compared to, for example, Skype.
So, the number of participants in a group chat cannot exceed ten people, and in order to send a file larger than eight megabytes, you will need to subscribe to Nitro, which is also necessary if you want to make the screen resolution more than 720p.
The length of one message in the usual version of Discord, used as a rule for group chats that are of a short duration, cannot exceed two thousand characters.
Discord Server
Of particular interest is this particular mode, which can be created by pressing the button with the “+” sign. Users join the server by invitation.
In the left panel of Discord, you can find several entities, and text channels are some kind of chat that differ in additional functions. In the case of text channels, they always remain in their place, not sliding down, unlike instant messengers, and thanks to roles and mentions, as well as other functionality, the degree of convenience is somewhat increased.
As for voice channels, in this case we can draw an analogy with a radio receiver, only you can not only listen to the broadcast stream, but also join the conversation yourself. The voice channel has no beginning and end, while the connection is instantaneous, and there is no call initiator.
Roles in Discord
The main point is that access rights in Discord are not configured for a specific user, but for roles that are distributed among people. The list of rights that a role can have includes 32 items, and the role corresponds to a kind of typical set of user actions.
Let’s take a look at a few possible roles:
- @ everyone is technical and cannot be deleted.
- Employee – allows you to see all the main channels.
- Admin – has the right to administer, and above it – only the server owner, who assigns the appropriate roles.
- Candidate – this refers to a person who will have to pass a remote interview, and the person who has received this role sees only two “interview” channels, which are voice and text.
- The interviewer is an employee with an additional role, not some special person who sees the “interview” channels as well as their own channels.
Channels
The structure of the channels is created for specific needs, and for a topic that implies a long life, a separate channel is created, inhabited by the necessary people using the appropriate roles.
The presence of a large number of channels in Discord allows users to provide additional protection from unnecessary information, since in this case they simply do not see extra channels, due to the lack of roles, or jam the channel, thereby getting rid of it. The combination of role and channel solves the problem of topic separation.
So, channels dedicated to work and, for example, kindergarten, given the location within different servers, will not be mixed. In addition, they will not move down, and their order will remain unchanged, and adding users to the channel is carried out quickly enough, using the appropriate roles.
Mentions
In this case, we mean writing a message to a text channel mentioning an account using a special syntax.
It is worth noting that there are two types of notifications about new messages in Discord, and if there was no mention, the notification will be rather weak, representing a red circle in the taskbar, while if there is a mention, the notification becomes more noticeable.
This approach allows solving the problem of redundant notifications, especially if users are trained in the most efficient style of work beforehand.
With this in mind, even if team members continue to send 250 messages a day, there won’t be many of them that contain a mention, saving time by reading non-essential messages in their spare time. Thus, the problem of redundant notifications is completely solved, and prompt response to really important messages is provided.
Cons of Discord
The main disadvantages include the screen resolution of 720p, which can only be increased with a paid Nitro subscription. Since this is not enough for text and code demonstration, you can share the screen through Skype.
As for the restrictions on sending files over eight megabytes, this amount is usually sufficient, and in extreme cases, you can use cloud storage.
User registration, compared to regular messengers, is more complicated, and initially administrators are required to set up rights and assign roles, and it is highly desirable for users to undergo training in order to properly use mentions.
Summary
We can say that Discord is a kind of messenger 2.0, and the developers decided to go beyond the paradigm of ordinary messengers.
Despite this, Discord is not a competitor to regular messengers, having its own ecological niche. However, it is especially worth noting that Discord collects all the information sent, and initially reports that the correspondence will not be subjected to any encryption, and therefore it is necessary to first assess all the risks associated with a possible leak of confidential information.
Official site https://discord.com
