Discord for Business
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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I saw someone post this in some thread.
Some of these features would be great.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/100130269/Discord-Business-Design
Maybe also a self-hosted option for some businesses that have a very strict data policy.
EDIT*
While reading up on this thread I just realized that the designer already posted it in this thread. Whups. :p1 -
Dear Discord team,
Hello, first, thank you for your work, Discord is an amazing tool, this is the best vocal I have ever seen.
With the covid 19, we are many working from home and I was thinking about the possibility to integrate Discord in the company (as Teams, Skype and so one) it would be so great to have the possibility to "recreate" the company and office throughout Discord, and pop into a colleague's office to say hello, meet up for a coffee without scheduling a meeting. I know this is currently complex due to company policies, privacy and security systems, but it was just a thought.
Anyway, thank you again for your work :D1 -
would love to have a clean version of discord for business also!
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I would LOVE to see discord for business. I work in a scrum team of web developers and having channels with roles/permissions that would allow me and my teammates to pop in and out for quick discussions would be so much faster and seamless than webex, zoom or any other similar meeting platform. Currently we use a combination of MS teams and webex and it's a hassle.
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ForearmsTwo What keeps you from using it? go ahead and use it.
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We want it too.
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I don’t understand why you guys just don’t use Slack? It’s pretty much Discord for Work.
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Dumbo In my experience, video sharing in Slack is absolute garbage compared to Discord. That's the main reason I prefer Discord.
Discord also has programming language syntax highlighting in code blocks, which Slack doesn't have. In Slack you have to create "snippets" to achieve that, which is an absolute pain when you just want to paste a few lines of code.
Discord also has voice channels, which is nice to have in some scenarios, like open meetings. In Slack you have to explicitly call/add every member of a meeting.
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Discord could think about this. :)
Always wanted my school to use Discord, but it's not really "professional".
You could sell it for 10$/month and I would buy it.
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For Discord to be considered as a Business Professional app, there's a minimum set of functionality that organizations and businesses consider, generally around things like compliance.
- Expected that it doesn't have any of the "gamer" type features (Twitch/Youtube integration, etc) from the start. Not "you can turn them off", but does not have them in any way.
- HIPAA/SOC compliance reports
- Single Sign On (SAML or OIDC preferably) support
- Directory integration with Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, or Google Workspace
- Integrations to 3rd party software, which Discord has through webhooks, but specifically built integrations or easy configurations would help.
- Role based access control, which Discord has but would need to be extended to support directory groups
- Data retention policies to keep data for a set period of time (generally in terms of years, not days/months)
- Admin ability to export messages/data
- Integration with data loss prevention, e-discovery (legal), and backup tools
- Uptime SLAs with credits/payments if uptime levels are not metThese features are what allow Slack to charge $12.50/user/month and what enables Teams to be the "Discord For Business" that people keep mentioning. I can tell you as a user of all three, Discord is the best at combining the best of Slack and the best of Teams into one singular and easy to use platform. The problem is that the features I listed above are not what Discord's target market wants or needs and would require a fairly large engineering effort to deliver. This would be a Discord company level decision to move into the corporate app space and I'm not sure they or their investors would want to do that.
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I wash I had seen this earlier... how should she be addressed? as monkey? Other than that do you have some issues u wanna talk about?
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I know this is an old topic, but I'd like to give some thoughts as a sysadmin
The things keeping me from using Discord as our business communication app are:
1 - Lack of SSO.
2 - Lack of a compliance tool (as an admin, I need to be able to recover user messages if I'm required by law / corporate).
We use Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) as our identity provider. Hence, we could configure stuff like IP / device / geo restrictions using its Conditional Access features.
Microsoft Teams comes bundled with Microsoft 365, but it's a pretty terrible app. Not only it's a resource hog both on mobile and desktop, but it also has a pretty terrible compliance story. Recovering / investigating users messages involves several manual steps and / or integration with other Microsoft products. It has several long standing unsolved bugs such as images not being presented, messages / notifications not being sent… It has no native backup solution.
Hence, I think implementing (1) and (2) would be enough for users in many industries.
Moreover, Slack is way less feature rich than Discord, while being relatively expensive (it has the same cost of a Microsoft 365 Standard License, generally more if you buy your licenses in volume via VAT)
In practice, I've seen many business starting with Discord, but then migrating to other tools as security becomes relevant.
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It's fascinating to learn about your company's internal evaluation of communication platforms, especially considering the current popularity of Discord as an alternative to Slack. It's promising to hear that Discord boasts a rich feature set and a user-friendly interface, complete with voice, video, and screenshare capabilities. However, it's equally intriguing to hear about the resistance from some members of your testing committee.
Your breakdown of the reasons behind this reluctance sheds light on some key user experience issues. While the presence of a video game controller logo and a listing of games on the home screen may not necessarily be drawbacks, they could contribute to a perception that Discord is primarily geared towards gaming communities rather than professional environments. Additionally, the incident with the chat bot addressing a female employee inappropriately highlights the importance of sensitivity and inclusivity in workplace communication tools.
It's commendable that your company is considering Discord's potential but recognizing the need for adjustments to better suit your audience. As you mentioned, the platform's solid foundation provides a strong basis for adaptation. With some tweaks to the UI/UX, Discord could potentially appeal to a wider range of users, including those in corporate settings like yours. Thank you for sharing your insights, and I hope that Discord or similar platforms continue to evolve to meet the diverse needs of users across different industries.
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