Guide · August 19, 2026 · 5 min read

Discord staff CRM: recruiting and running your team

Past thirty or so active members, a moderation team can no longer be run from a private channel. You end up with a spreadsheet for the register, a Google form for applications, and three threads for time off. This guide shows how to keep it all in one place — step by step, with screenshots.

Contents

  1. Before you start
  2. 1. Link a Discord role
  3. 2. Organising the teams
  4. 3. Building the application form
  5. 4. Declaring the positions to fill
  6. 5. Publishing and spreading the word
  7. 6. Reading the applications
  8. 7. Offering an interview
  9. 8. The trial period
  10. And then, day to day
  11. What to take away
Every application, its status and Orius’s read — inside the staff CRM.
Every application, its status and Orius’s read — inside the staff CRM.
The public form, as an applicant sees it — inside the staff CRM.
The public form, as an applicant sees it — inside the staff CRM.
Shift planning, coverage gaps included — inside the staff CRM.
Shift planning, coverage gaps included — inside the staff CRM.

What you will have at the end

  • A staff register that fills itself from your Discord roles
  • Recruitment with a public form, positions and an automatic announcement
  • Activity tracking, a rota, and trial periods that do not get forgotten

Allow ten minutes for the essentials. The rest fills in as you go.

Before you start

The CRM lives in the web panel, at /staff. It is a space separate from the admin panel, and that is deliberate: your moderators get in without receiving a single administration permission on the server. The Staff CRM button sits in the admin panel.

On first opening, everything is empty. That is normal: nobody is in the register yet.

This is the move that opens access to your team, and it is done once. In the Rights tab, pick a role — “Moderator”, for instance — and tick what it grants. One role can carry several rights.

Three things worth knowing straight away:

2. Organising the teams

The teams board answers a question the register never answers: how is this distributed? A short column is visible before you have read a single name. You move somebody by dragging their card from one column to another.

The CRM teams board: four columns — Moderation, Events, Partnerships and No team — with members as draggable cards and a crown on the lead.
The crown marks the team lead. The “No team” column is always there: without it, you could not take somebody out of a team without forcing another one on them.

A team lead sees and manages only their own. That is what lets you delegate without opening the whole org chart.

3. Building the application form

The Recruitment tab. The editor deliberately borrows the conventions of Google Forms: one card per question, the type is chosen on the right. If you have built one elsewhere, there is nothing to relearn.

The CRM question editor: stacked cards, a type menu on the right, answer options in a row with round dots and square boxes.
Short answer, paragraph, multiple choice, checkboxes, dropdown, scale, date… The fine settings — minimum length, bounds — are folded away so they do not clutter.

4. Declaring the positions to fill

A recruitment drive rarely opens a single position. Rather than two forms — and so two links and two queues to follow — declare several positions in the same one: the candidate picks theirs.

Position settings: title, number of places, description, required seniority, account age, required role, assigned team, trial role and permanent role.
Each position carries its prerequisites and its two roles. A filled position switches to “Filled”: it disappears from the public form but stays visible in the settings.

A rule that avoids a trap

A position can only tighten the form's prerequisite, never loosen it. Otherwise, creating a position with no condition would bypass the server's rule — and that is exactly what you do without thinking about it.

5. Publishing and spreading the word

Choose the announcement channel and the shape of the message, then switch the form to open: the announcement goes out on its own. Editing it afterwards updates the same message — it does not publish a second one, and candidates never follow a stale link.

The public recruitment link, with a Copy button and a button to open it in a tab.
The link carries a random suffix: two servers that name their recruitment the same way do not block each other, and the address cannot be guessed.

6. Reading the applications

Applications land in a board where you move the cards forward. The expand icon opens the application in full: the answers on one side, and on the other what the bot has already observed about the person — activity, warnings, penalties, account age, previous applications.

The most useful signal is also the least obvious: messages deleted for scam content. It is almost never a fraudster — it is a compromised account the person has not noticed. Recruiting them would amount to giving moderation rights to whoever controls their account.

The CRM never returns a verdict. It shows, you decide.

7. Offering an interview

“We'd like to talk, when are you free?” opens three days of back-and-forth where each side waits for the other. Offer several slots instead: the candidate takes theirs in one click from their tracking link, and you get a private message as soon as they have chosen.

Offering interview slots: three pre-filled dates with time and detail, an accompanying note, and the Invite button.
The times are the server's own, so nobody has to convert in their head.

The candidate follows their application on a private link received by direct message: received, under review, interview offered, accepted or not selected. They never have to chase the staff — and it is often the best candidate who walks away when nobody answers.

8. The trial period

Set its length in Settings (0 = none). On acceptance, the position's trial role is granted automatically and the deadline set. A reminder arrives as the end approaches.

The trial periods card: one overdue deadline flagged in amber, another two days out, with Confirm and Decline buttons.
Overdue deadlines move to the top, in colour. Mixed in with the others they drag on for weeks — and a trial period that never gets closed serves no purpose.

Nothing decides itself. No automatic confirmation — a trial passed by silence is worth nothing — and no automatic dismissal. You confirm, and the bot then grants the permanent role while removing the trial one.

And then, day to day

Once the team is in place, three screens get used almost every day.

On top of that come an internal handbook — your written procedures, with read receipts — and an HR file. Start with the penalty scale: it is the one people reinvent most often, and two moderators who were never given the same instruction cannot reach the same decision.

What to take away

Read next : Security checklist, Auto-moderation.