How & why to use Discord for team collaboration- our alternative to Notion

Rich Watson
5 replies
Here is how I use a Discord server in an unconventional way and why: So there's been about a dozen discussion topics I've replied to asking what is best for collaborating with a team or on a development project, to-do or check lists, and similar topics. To make sense of how it got started- our product & it's services were originated out of our Discord group. To date, 85-90% of our members were already active on Discord. We operated & managed everything there, so it was natural when we chose Discord to manage & organize everything development related. We use Discord, which servers are made for communities, but their features are perfect for what we do. Previously, we were doing everything through a group DM but it got extremely annoying being pinged or notified every time a message was sent, and hard to keep track of to-do lists, features, or anything when we started scaling so we just made a discord server- and here's why: Discord offers so many features, and is structurally built that was a perfect fit for what we were trying to do. -Channels to communicate in, with categories to organize them We have categories for different aspects of our app, design/frontend, backend, and the 2 sided features of our app (stocks & crypto) can be separated for discussion and to-do lists. -Pin messages within channels Important messages can be pinned, making easy to know what's important, as well easy to find. We pin important tasks or features that take top priority over others. We also pin important links such as libraries or tools we find interesting or that might be useful for development. -Threads. You can create a thread on a message, which allows you discuss with each other & post content strictly related to the content on that message We have to-do list channels, for each category or even checklist channels for individual team members. Posting a single message with what's needed to do, so a thread can be created on it where discussions can be had directly related to the topic of that task. -Message searching Their search function is fantastic. Can search anything by specific dates (before, during, after), user mentions, specified channels, & messages including links, embeds, or files. Very helpful when a good idea was discussed, and gets lost in the chat for later on when it's something to be evaluated or put thought into again. -Voice, video, and screen sharing all built-in Voice channels can be made, where video conference can be done or sharing your screen through the stream. Perfect for meetings, updates, etc. -Pings & notifications When @mentioning someone it creates a push notification for them for both desktop & mobile, sounds included. It also shows you what channels you have unread pings in. Perfect for getting someone's attention on something, announcements, updates, etc. -Discord bots & integrations Soo many options. You can get a Discord bot to do almost anything. We have one that sends messages in a channel when GitHub repo events happening such as a push or pull request. We also have one to auto bump threads so they don't archive, create logs for threads that do get archived (perfect for when doing changelogs), member subscription events (new subs, payments, cancellations), alerts when website or a bot is done. Anything you need, there is most likely a bot for it already. One of our important bots records all the discussions taking place in voice channels- when 2 or more users connect it automatically joins and starts recording, which is perfect for reference & transcribing to be posted. Now I've only used notion for the same purpose of what I'm doing now, and not all that familiar with it- but I know there is a lot of products, templates, etc. Here to optimize the use of it. But it just can't do certain things we need, and the messaging capabilities alone on Discord is it's worth. Not having to go back and forth from Notion, spend time creating or organizing it, etc. Discord just comes naturally to my team and I, no extra effort. So what might work for us, won't for you.

Replies

Rich Watson
Here's a peek at our category/channel/thread structure. Each thread represents a feature or task. We have 18 current open threads, 109 archived threads (98% finished, 2% saved for later), and 101 tasks to do (of which 18 have have been started) There has been over 30,500 messages in the server, granted there has been some off topic chat. and specifically over 9,500 messages strictly in the to-do list channel & it's threads where no irrelevant chat is allowed. We've been doing it this way since January and I don't why we didn't think of it sooner.
Henry Dills
Great share. i'm a discord lover and there is so many other creative ways to use it instead just for communities
I really don't like Discord as a task management tool - I really lose track of things. But it's such great value and has so many amazing features for something that's free