Servers and Direct Messages

Discord gives you the option to talk on a server (for instance, the osoc 2021 server or the osoc alumni server) or via direct message.

Servers

You can access different Discord servers with your account (comparable to Slack, for instance). You can get invited via a link. Once you are in a server, you'll have different chat channels [read more] at your disposal.

Once you join a channel, you will get a role (such as student or coach).

Direct Messages

The blue button on the top left is your home button, which brings you to the overview of all the private conversations you are in.

Example of your home, where you can find all of your direct messages and friends.

To start a private conversation, you can click on a profile on any server and send them a message.

You can add people as a friend, by clicking their profile and hitting the "Send Friend Request" button.

Channels

Inside each server you have two different ways to chat: text chat and voice chat.

Text chat

This chat is comparable to any type of chatroom you've ever been to. Some channels are public (default) and some are private or assigned to specific roles (you will not see those if you do not have the that role).

Some channels are just for reading purposes, for example "welcome" or "announcement" channels. You can react to certain messages in those channels with a (pre-assigned) emoji.

Voice chat

These chatrooms are something you might have to get used to. These voice channels enable you to speak to one another, while you can still go from text channel to text channel.

You can recognise a voice channel by the little sound icon 🔊.

Joining a voice channel

Clicking a room immediately turns on voice chat. All the people in that voice channel will hear you, and you'll be able to hear them (check out the etiquette on this).

Roles

Roles help people understand who is here for which reason.

You could for instance recognise what type of member they are (student, student coach, coach, partner, councillor, ...), which project they are working on, what skills someone has or which year they've been part of (only on the alumni server).

Some roles will be assigned to you (such as a project), some roles you can pick yourself (your skills), by for instance adding certain emoji to a message: