Discord for Business

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Geo

My company is presently evaluating alternatives to Slack internally.  Turns out, Discord is one of the most feature rich alternatives, with a relatively smooth UI and voice/video/screenshare capability.  I couldn't even get half of about 10 people on the testing committee to try it.

The reasons:

-The logo in the tray is a video game controller

-The home screen shows a listing of games

-The chat bot addressed a female employee when she joined as "love"

-Touchpoint emails aren't asking for feedback, they're talking about the journey for users to share gaming experiences

 

Except the third one above, none of these are "bad" per se.  And the product is really solid. There's a market there that could certainly use it as is, but perhaps an even bigger (and more lucrative one) that will be turned off to the current state.  We're not moving forward with Discord because we don't feel it really has us as a high value audience.  But some tweaks to modify the UI/UX to meet these differing needs based on license type may be worth exploring.

Thanks! 

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Comments

62 comments

Date Votes
  • Lance McClain

    I was just talking about this the other day, A duplicate of discord but meant more for business, In fact, I would be so glad if this came to discord. It would be amazing!

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  • DreamPhreak
    • Edited

    I asked in a live stream with the devs once and, while they said the logo isn't a controller, they didn't say what else it was meant to represent.

    My gaming community used to be on IRC and tried out Slack but it was too business-oriented for us. When discord came out, it was perfect for gaming.

    Slack has the huge advantage of integrations, and just a quick 5-second look at the main integrations page already shows 2 apps that allow for voice/video like you wanted, "Cisco Webex Meetings" and "Zoom". I bet there are more if you check. You should seriously stick with Slack for a business.

    Both Discord and Slack and many others use a common framework called Electron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_(software_framework)

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  • Farkas

    Discord can't really affect the way chat bots handle usernames/nicknames, that needs to be adjusted by the individual bot developer.
    Also you can disable the games tab in Discords settings!

     

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  • Hans

    If Discord want, they can really give Slack a run for it's money.
    What they need to do is to make a option when you make an account whether you want a Gaming interface or a Business interface. The business interface can be striped for some of the gaming features, and the gaming interface can keep all of the features.

    Discord is way smoother than Slack, and have som very crucial features that sets it apart. They have Voice Chat that is very handy, Conference Call with Screen Share, and the ability to add friends. You aren't locked to organisations. Discord is also much cheaper than Slack, which is very important for organisations, startups and people who are looking for a communication tool for their project.

    The main two important thing that they shouldn't do, is to force you to use two separate apps for business and personal use. You should be able to have work en personal life in one app. But they could add a way to tag all non work servers and people to (Personal), and all work servers to (Work). So you can choose to hide and mute all personal servers and friends during work time. 

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  • nanitamenteana

    I great with you because my mother is a virtual teacher and thinks something similar. I wrote an entry with a similar idea: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360032427792-Professional-and-not-gamer-version-of-Discord

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  • lieuwe_berg

    Upvoted!

    I really dislike WhatsApp for managing your groups and keeping stuff on-topic (one group for all :3). I'd rather have my entire school switch over to Discord so we can actually have things organized and not have important stuff drain in chat.

     

    A professional version would really only have to remove the game aspect of Discord. Basically remove everything with 'game' in the name. The store, the game detection, settings tabs.

    I'm aware this would take a lot of precious time that could be better contributed towards other stuff though. Some counterarguments:

    - The games and store tab are hidden, until you click their button. It's really not noticable if you don't use it.

    - If you don't game; you won't really notice any of Discord's gaming aspects. wait these arguments are basically the same.

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  • 👌 EatThatPie 👌

    Discord was made for gamers. Find a different program if you are against that

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  • Knagie

    Although I can see your point it is a lot of time that would need to be put in for something that will probably not become as big as gaming.
    As EatThatPie already said Discord is made for gamers. You can integrate it at work/corporate business but it will always be aimed at gamers.

    If you want a "professional" version it might be incompatible with the gaming version, as it would need to remove your current activity (games) showing, it would need to remove the store + activity (not that big of a problem and already doable from settings, @lieuwe_berg), remove certain settings regarding gaming.

    Though it sounds like a good market I don't see why the gaming aspect is that big of a problem. You can easily get past it and use the functionality you need from Discord, correct me if I'm wrong.

     

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  • Undercover Stamp

    Uhhhhhh... It's still professional, it's still aimed at gamers

    Obvs

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  • Knight2050

    I also use Discord in a professional environment because it's so much better that Slack, Skype or anything else. The cherry on the cake would be a more "pro" theme for the UI and hide some gaming functionalities.

    I would have no problem paying for that either.

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  • RGTube
    I'd hate to burst your bubble but the target audience vs whom uses Discord vary. The worlds largest most visited NSFW website has a discord server dedicated to it. Hint: it starts with a "P" and ends with "Hub"
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  • Mineboy4Lyfe

    User Settings -> Appearance -> Show Games Tab

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  • Giz Mo
    • Edited

    Office 365 Teams are the business version of discord IMO.

     

    Even more feature rich than discord with just as many integrations; but business based.  Also PSTN support.

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  • Ricker da Silva
    • Edited

    I think that if youre company ditch a valuable option for improving their work because of a logo (whch in fact is not a game controller) you should be worrying more bout who your workers are, which values are you actually gven value to and try a transformation to a more agile environment.

    I´m also considering discord at my workplace, the seamless integration of voice chanels and PTT button sems very appealing for our noisy offices environment. besides we can rely on it for chat voice and doc sharing, chanels and everything skype for business and even slack does not work so straightforward

     

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  • rideh

    Bigger considerations for this to be taken seriously for business is data handling, residency, encryption, security. Who has access, change management processes, certifications/attestations, service level agreements, connection management (ip restriction, vpn requirements, SSO), etc.

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  • RazR

    Make a "Bizord" - Same basic functionality as Discord with all the great collaboration capabilities as we all love, but instead of all the gaming stuff and lingo make it aimed at businesses. 

    Quick ideas for functionality:

    Consultant / collaboration support between companies.

    File management.

    Live chat embedded on website (group and one-on-one)

    Ticket / support system.

    User rating.

    Sales.

    Showcasing 

     

    And yes, those could be community made instead of being native.

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  • Giz Mo
    • Edited

    It sounds like you guys are looking for Office 365 E3+ licensing.  Teams = Discord for Business + RazRs suggestions are  Sharepoint / Flow / Power Apps

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  • rideh

    Except o365 tools and teams sucks. What we're looking for is a voip chatroom version of slack with the same flexibility/capability with webhooks/chatbots.

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  • Hans

    And that let's you chat with people outside your team/organisation/server. But I think matrix.org have a bright future. Just bridged it with my Discord server.

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  • Giz Mo
    • Edited

    >Except o365 tools and teams sucks. What we're looking for is a voip chatroom version of slack with the same flexibility/capability with webhooks/chatbots.

     

    That's exactly what teams is, but also has PSTN as well as VOIP support.

    >Except o365 tools and teams sucks.

    Nah.

    >And that let's you chat with people outside your team/organisation/server.

    Yup, external recipients can be invited as well.

     

      

     

     

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  • Ricker da Silva

    I have tested Tams and it really is not what I need. first of all it´s apps and web access are RAM eager and does not run smooth on all company stations; yes I know that may be our fault, but what can I do?

    A very important part I don{t like about teams is that it has no notifications for the chats. not even when I mention someone. If someone has the app up and running, everything is goo, but once it is closed or sgut down, there is no way you can keep track of your teams conversations.

    The mobile app is really eavy you feel it is consuming a lot anf running slow, which is not the case with discord or slack.

    Yes, disord or slack may not have all the integrations for microsot suite I desire, but for ommunications, discord seems to be a really useful piece of sotware.

    One thing I like about discord (besides all it´s group, bots and integrations, is the PTT button or the auto mic function. Here at work the ambient is really noisy, so it is good to have something to keep the mic off while I´m not speaking and keeping the conversation clear.

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  • 👌 EatThatPie 👌

    Discord was made for and is for gamers. Not business.

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  • MrFancyPantz

    For me all Discord would have to do is offer a re-skinned version without all the gameriness. Just a simple clean look and feel. Very stock and boring skin. It would take a design person less than a week to re-skin it. Set aside a little real estate for ads to cover the revenue side of things and boom it's done.

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  • DUMBO

    What specifically about Discord makes you want to use it over something like Slack? Is it because it's free or some other novel feature I'm missing?

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  • rideh

    we are heavy users of slack at work. We have a lot of automation, bots, log/news/update aggregations, integrations with client slacks, etc. Slack is great. However it doesn't have the persistent voice chat rooms with the push to talk / noise canceling at the same level of refinement as Discord. I suppose you can do a channel call every day and leave up a persistent group voip call but it is not as easily managed as simply having voice channels to join as first order members.  The auto afk, and some other behaviors are nice as well.  If slack added "voice channels" and push to talk and auto-afk then perhaps its a different topic.

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  • DUMBO

    That makes sense. Is there a specific behavior at work where you need persistent voice channels vs calling? Or is it just the super low friction that's compelling about persistent voice channels? In other words, is the typical flow (a) hop on a voice channel at the beginning of the day and stay on throughout / spontaneously jump in and out of voice chats or (b) still scheduled calls but way easier to hop in a voice channel? Trying to understand the difference b/w a voice channel and Slack channel calls.

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  • TechDragon
    • Edited

    I was perfectly fine only using Slack at work, however Discord has successfully convinced a number of open source projects that it is the best tool for real time communications (https://discordapp.com/open-source) and in my particular case, the Ember.js community decided to move from Slack to Discord.  https://www.emberjs.com/blog/2018/07/13/the-ember-times-issue-55.html#toc_a-href-https-github-com-emberjs-rfcs-pull-345-rfc-goodbye-slack-hello-discord-a 

    As a consequence I was forced to decide between using Discord, and having real time communication with the rest of the open source community I was a participant in. So obviously I just decided to use Discord. While this is fine on my personal machines, the current Discord interface is bad from a professional perspective, and I dislike having it open on my work machine. I have no way to define a boundary between my work and my personal life. I don't want all my game servers open at work and discord gives me no control over this. Its mute and/or leave the server, or put up with having it on my sidebar at work.

    At the end of the day. I'd be happy to pay for a "work mode" because as a software developer I know features have maintenance costs, but the only thing Discord wants to let me pay for is gaming related features. 

    Edit: Fixed capitalisation, missing words, and removed some minor exaggeration. :-) 

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  • William

    I do not mind having a Discord version paid for a company. I would pay and it would be an evolution in Brazil, being able to work from home with the rest of the team. And when I say, the only thing that should be removed is the aspect of the game, because the rest of the Discord works very well. ;-)

    Discord Business now! We pay!

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  • Ricker da Silva

    THe one big problem I have with both, Discord and Slack is that you need to ahve a mail address to open an account. Both apps are the future of an emailess life, but they have not went down that way.

    It is really interesting how disturbing it is for people at work to hace a fun, friendly, game interface. Don't be so sad, take advantage and also invlude some gaming at office. 

     

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  • pauloconnor

    A corporate version of Discord would be great. Literally just the ability to remove the game-based bits is all that'd be required. There's some functionality in there that I think would be a huge benefit to our business and where we are hoping to take some elements of our workflow. I've used Slack before but I really like Discord!

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