Staff applications with a form

This guide builds an application panel. Members press Apply and answer your questions in a Discord form, and a private channel opens that only your hiring team can see. Every application also lands as a row in a Google Sheet, each member can have one application open at a time, and you close each one with a reason the applicant receives.

#You will need

• To be the server owner or have the Administrator permission.
• A role for the people who review applications, called Hiring in this guide.
• A category for applications, and a private channel such as #hiring-log that only Hiring can see. Let Sortr's role into #hiring-log, and into the category if it is private too: see Private categories and channels.
• A Google Sheet you own, if you want the answers there.

#Build the panel

1. Create it. In the dashboard, pick your server and press New panel. Type Staff applications under Panel name and press Create panel.
2. Change the button. Go to Buttons. Change the text of the Open ticket option to Apply and pick an emoji such as 📝.
3. Write the questions. Go to Questions and switch on Enable form. Change the Form title from "Please answer these questions" to something like Staff application. A new panel comes with three questions, each in a folded card: press a card's header to open it and rewrite the question. The dashed Add question button under the last card adds another. Discord allows 5 questions, with titles up to 45 characters. Switch on Multi-line for longer answers. To ask for examples of their work, add a question and set its Answer to Files: Sortr posts what they attach in the application channel, and the sheet gets the files' names (see Questions that take files). Required is on for a new question: switch it off for the ones applicants may skip. Keep Show answers in the ticket on, so your team reads them in the channel.
4. Send the answers to your sheet. On the same screen, the Google Sheet card sits folded under the preview. Switch it on with the switch in its header, and the card opens. Under Share your sheet with Sortr, press Copy, then share your sheet with that email in Google Sheets as an Editor. Paste the sheet's address into Sheet link and press Check access. It should say "Connected to" and the sheet's name. Tab, the name of the tab the rows go in, is required: Check access fills it in when the sheet has one tab, and lists the tabs for you to pick from when it has more. If you type a tab name yourself, the card checks it against the sheet a moment later and warns before you save when the sheet has no tab by that name. Under Columns, type a column letter beside each question, and beside Submitted at and Discord username if you want those. Each application fills the next free row, and a header in row 1 is kept. More in Google Sheets.
5. Keep applications private. Go to Who can see it. On the Support team card, press Add role and pick Hiring. The card asks whether Hiring should also get access to tickets that already exist: a new panel has none, so leave that off. Each application channel is then open to the applicant, Hiring and server administrators only. Support roles from your other panels are not included.
6. Pick the category. Under Destination category, add your applications category to Where new tickets go. Add another to Where closed tickets move if you want finished applications kept apart.
7. Allow one at a time. Go to Limits and rules. Open tickets per member is already 1. Under Cooldown, set Wait after opening a ticket to the gap you want between applications, in minutes. 4320 is three days, and the most is 10080, which is seven days. The wait counts from when their last application opened, whether or not it has closed since.
8. Keep a record. Go to Transcripts/Logging. On the Transcripts tab, keep Post it to Discord on and set its Channel to #hiring-log. Leave Save it on When the ticket closes, its default. When an application closes, Sortr then posts the whole conversation there as a file anyone in that channel can open. The list offers only channels Sortr can post the file in. If #hiring-log is not there, let Sortr's role into it, in the channel's own permissions, with View Channel, Send Messages, Embed Links and Attach Files: see Permissions.
9. Save and post. Press Save changes, then Send panel and pick the channel members apply from.

A member who presses Apply again too soon is told privately, before the form opens:

The cooldown is checked before the one-open limit, so while it runs this is the message they get, even with an application still open. To word it for applications, go to Ticket Messages and edit Opening too quickly, and Open ticket limit reached next to it.

#Close with a reason

The Close button does not ask for a reason. The /close command takes one, up to 500 characters.

1. Turn on the command. Go to Slash commands and switch on Enable slash commands. /close is on by default; switch off the others if you do not want them. Leave Who can use it under /close on Support team only. With no roles picked, only the roles on Full access under Who can see it can use the command, which here is Hiring, along with the server owner and Administrators (in a server that requires 2FA for moderator actions, Administrators need the Hiring role too). Applicants cannot. While no panel in the server has roles picked for it, Discord lists the command only for members with the Manage Messages permission. If a reviewer cannot find /close, pick Hiring under Who can use it: Discord then lists it for every member, and Sortr still lets only Hiring use it.
2. Tell the applicant. Closing locks the applicant out of the channel, so a notice posted there would not reach them. Bots keep their access. If Discord refuses Sortr in that channel, for example when its role lacks Manage Permissions there, taking the channel away can fail, and the event log then names who may still be in. Go to Ticket Messages, pick Close message to the member under Closing a ticket, switch it to Sent, and add {reason} to its text. It goes to their direct messages. If theirs are closed, Sortr skips it and says so in the event log.
3. Save. Press Save changes. Your team can now type /close inside an application, fill in the reason option with the outcome, and send.

#Try it

1. Apply yourself. Press Apply and fill in the form. The channel opens in your applications category with your answers, and a new row appears in the sheet a few seconds later.
2. Apply again. You get the message above. To test again straight away, add your own role under Roles that bypass open limits, which skips the cooldown too, and take it off when you are done.
3. Close it. Run /close with a reason. The direct message arrives with the reason, and the transcript appears in #hiring-log.

#Related

• Questions: the form, its limits and where answers appear.
• Google Sheets: sharing, columns and what to do when a row does not arrive.
• Who can see it: support roles and access levels.
• Limits and rules: limits, cooldown, blocked roles and support hours.
• Transcripts: what is kept, when it is saved and who can open it.
• Slash commands: who can use each command.
• Ticket Messages: every message Sortr sends, and the variables they take.