Permissions

When you add Sortr to a server, Discord lists the permissions Sortr uses, each with a tick box: the 18 that tickets need, View Audit Log and Change Nickname. Sortr works wherever its role can see, with what its role holds. This page says what each permission is for, what Sortr's role needs in private categories and channels, and what stops working when something is missing. It ends with the rules for people: which roles an Administrator can hand out through Sortr, and what changes in a server that requires 2FA for moderators.

#How Discord decides what Sortr can do

Most of what Sortr does is set permissions on ticket channels for your staff and members. Three of Discord's rules decide how far that goes.

Sortr does not ask for Administrator. A server that gave it to Sortr's role before keeps it until someone takes it off, and an admin may give it by hand. There, these three rules do not limit Sortr.

The role order applies whatever Sortr's role holds: Sortr only gives or takes roles that sit below its own. See Role hierarchy.

The invite also asks Discord to let Sortr add its slash commands to your server. Adding Sortr creates no channels, and posts nothing until you send a panel, apart from its welcome message. It adds one command straight away, /help, which tells the server owner and Administrators where Sortr is set up, and other members how to open a ticket.

#The permissions on the invite

Discord's screen lists 20 permissions, each with its own tick box: the 18 Sortr uses, View Audit Log and Change Nickname. The 18 are View Channel, Manage Channels, Manage Roles, Send Messages, Embed Links, Attach Files, Read Message History, Pin Messages, Mention Everyone, Manage Messages, Add Reactions, Use External Emoji, Use External Stickers, Send Text-to-Speech Messages, Create Public Threads, Create Private Threads, Send Messages in Threads and Use Application Commands. Discord sometimes words these a little differently on its own screens. Sortr's role gets the ones left ticked.

View Audit Log is there only to see who added Sortr. When Sortr joins a server, it reads the audit log to leave if the account that added it is blocked, and to send that person the welcome message by direct message when it can't post it in the server. Without View Audit Log, Sortr stays and works as usual, but can do neither. Change Nickname is there only for Display name under Customize bot, which Discord keeps as Sortr's nickname in your server. Nothing in a ticket uses either of the two, and the warning that Sortr can't reach everything does not ask for them.

Six permissions are not on the list, because only optional settings use them: Manage Webhooks, Create Invite, Send Voice Messages, Create Polls, Manage Threads and Use External Apps. When Sortr's role lacks them, Sortr leaves them off a ticket and logs it. To use them in tickets, switch them on for Sortr's role in Server Settings › Roles. The two tables below say what each permission is for, and whether it is on the invite.

#What Sortr needs where

Sortr works wherever its role can see, with what its role holds. Two things decide that:

• Its role's permissions in the server, under Server Settings › Roles. Adding Sortr gives its role the permissions left ticked on Discord's screen, and someone can switch one off later.
• The permissions of each private category or channel. A place hidden from @everyone needs Sortr's role let in there. Private categories and channels lists what it needs in each.

When something a panel needs is out of reach, the server's page and every panel's editor show a warning at the top: "Sortr can't reach everything your panels use." and "Tickets there may not open, move or log as set up. Let Sortr's role into each place named here, and re-add Sortr for a missing permission." It names each problem, for example "Sortr's role is missing Pin Messages." or "Support opens tickets in a private category: Sortr needs View Channel, Manage Channels there.", up to six, then "And 2 more." or however many are left. It has Re-add Sortr and Check again, with the line "By adding Sortr to a server, you agree to the Terms of Service and the Data Processing Terms for it." under them. With nothing out of reach there is no warning at all. See Fix what is missing.

As long as Sortr can create the channel and keep it private, a ticket still opens when a setting uses a permission Sortr lacks: that permission is left off the ticket, whether you set it to Allow or to Deny. For a permission the invite asks for, your log channel says which ones were left out. A permission left off the ticket falls back to what each person has in the server.

The entry only names permissions the invite asks for, which Re-add Sortr gives back. The six that are not on the invite are left off a ticket without a log entry when Sortr's role lacks them. For example, the Contributor access level denies Manage webhooks, Create invite and Manage threads: without them, Sortr leaves those denials off, and each person keeps what they have in the server. Switch them on for Sortr's role in Server Settings › Roles if your staff should be held to them in tickets.

Even when Sortr's role holds all 18, four limits remain, all from Discord's rules. Manage permissions in the grid is left off every ticket. Private categories and channels have to let Sortr's role in. Sortr sees only the Ticket Tool tickets its role is let into: to take over the rest, give its role Administrator by hand for the switch (you can take it off afterwards), or let it into each ticket channel (see Switching from Ticket Tool). And the six permissions not on the invite are left off tickets unless its role holds them.

#What Sortr uses itself

All but View Audit Log and Change Nickname also appear in the permission grid, so you can give them to people in tickets. Manage Roles appears there as Manage permissions, and Mention Everyone as Mention @everyone, @here and all roles.

#What Sortr only passes on

Sortr does not use these itself. It needs them so that the permission grid works, and only puts them on ticket channels, for the roles and members you choose. The ones on the invite are there because the settings a new panel starts with allow or deny them for the ticket owner and the support team. The others are used only if you choose them: the Contributor and Viewer access levels deny some of them, and you can set any of them by hand.

Manage Messages and Mention Everyone, in the table above, reach tickets the same way: a new support role gets Manage Messages, and Mention Everyone is denied to the ticket owner and the support team.

Manage permissions in the grid is the exception. Discord lets only an Administrator put it on a channel, so Sortr leaves it off every ticket, whichever way you set it, and the log says nothing about it. Holding Manage Roles does not change that.

#What stops working when something is missing

Each row is something Sortr's role can lack, in the server or in one place, and what happens then.

Sortr reports most problems in your log channel under two events that are on by default: Missing Discord permission and Something went wrong. Set the log channel under Transcripts/Logging › Event log (see Event log). The entry titles are in bold below.

The dashboard helps you avoid some of this. Its lists of channels and categories leave out the ones Sortr cannot see. When you send a panel, a channel Sortr can see but not post in is greyed out and says "Sortr cannot post here". The list for the log channel leaves out channels Sortr cannot post in, and the list for the transcript channel also leaves out channels where it cannot attach files. A channel already saved that Sortr can no longer use is named on its tab: on Transcripts, "(Sortr can't see it)" or "#channel (Sortr can't post here)", and on Event log as in the table.

#Fix what is missing

What to do depends on what the warning or the log entry names:

• A permission missing from Sortr's role, such as "Sortr's role is missing Pin Messages.": press Re-add Sortr on the warning, on the server's page in the dashboard. Discord's page opens with your server already picked and asks again for the permissions Sortr uses; leave them ticked and confirm. Sortr stays in the server with its panels and tickets. Or, in Discord, open Server Settings › Roles, pick Sortr's role and switch the permission on. Log entries such as Sortr is missing a permission and Sortr cannot make a ticket private name both ways.
• A private category or channel, such as "Support opens tickets in a private category: Sortr needs View Channel, Manage Channels there.": in Discord, open that category's or channel's settings, go to Permissions, add Sortr's role and allow what is named. Re-adding Sortr does not reach these: only the place's own permissions let its role in. See Private categories and channels.
• One of the six not on the invite, or Change Nickname after it was switched off: switch it on for Sortr's role in Server Settings › Roles.

Then press Check again. The warning goes once Sortr can reach everything your panels use. Every ticket opened from then on gets what your settings say. Tickets that are already open are not changed by it.

#Role hierarchy

Discord only lets a bot give or take roles that sit below its own highest role in your server's role list, whatever permissions its role holds. Sortr skips any role at or above its own, on your open and close lists and in an option's Give roles and Remove roles. The Roles updated log entry marks it "(failed)".

To fix it, open Server Settings › Roles in Discord and drag Sortr's role above every role it should hand out or take away.

#Roles Sortr never gives

However high its own role is, Sortr never gives a role with any moderation power: Administrator, Manage Server, Manage Roles, Manage Channels, Manage Webhooks, Manage Messages, Manage Threads, Manage Expressions, Manage Events, Manage Nicknames, Kick, Ban, Timeout, Mute, Deafen and Move Members, Mention Everyone, View Audit Log, View Server Insights, View Creator Monetization Analytics, or Pin Messages. A role that gets one of these in even one channel counts. Sortr also skips roles managed by another app. Taking a moderation role away from a member is allowed.

Nor does it give a support role: a role under Who can see it on any panel in the server, including a deleted panel whose tickets are still around, or a role that could see a Ticket Tool ticket Sortr took over. Whoever got it could read other members' tickets. Taking such a role away is allowed.

#Who can pick which roles

These rules keep a role list from handing someone more than Discord would let them give by hand. Below, a panel hands out a role when the role is under an option's Give roles, or under Roles to add to the ticket owner when a ticket opens or closes. An option also hands out what the panel it opens hands out.

The first three are checked only for roles you add, so a role already saved on a panel never blocks a save by itself. A role that is already saved to be given and later becomes a support role is skipped when a ticket opens, and Roles updated marks it "(failed)". The fourth rule looks at roles already saved as well, but only when the save lets more members reach them. A copy from Copy to other servers is checked the same way, in the server it lands in. See Roles on open and close and Access and roles for where the lists are.

The same idea holds in Discord. Administrators usually skip an option's Who can use it and the roles picked for /new, but not when the option, or the panel /new opens, hands out a role at or above their own highest role. Then they use it like any other member.

#Servers that require 2FA for moderators

Discord lets a server owner switch on Require 2FA for moderator actions. Moderators and admins in that server then have to protect their Discord account with two-factor authentication (2FA) before Discord lets them moderate. Sortr follows the same rule.

• In the dashboard, only the server owner, and Administrators whose own Discord account has 2FA on, can manage Sortr in that server. Anyone else still sees the server under Your servers, but its card says "This server requires two-factor authentication for moderators. Turn on 2FA in Discord to manage Sortr here." instead of a Manage button. Its ? explains the rest: once 2FA is on for your Discord account, press Sync from Discord. The owner can always manage it.
• Transcript links on sortr.xyz follow the same rule. An Administrator without 2FA sees a page titled "Two-factor authentication required" instead of the transcript. The member who opened the ticket can always read their own. After Sortr is removed from a server, its remaining transcripts keep the rule Sortr last saw there, and a server Sortr left before it began keeping this setting counts as requiring 2FA.
• In Discord, the server owner keeps every exception Sortr makes for the owner and Administrators: using any option or command whatever roles are picked, never being stopped by a ticket button's Blocked roles, and counting as the support team. Other Administrators lose those exceptions in such a server, with 2FA or without, because Discord does not tell Sortr whether a member has 2FA. They go by the same rules as everyone else, so give them a support role with Full access under Who can see it if they work tickets.

Sortr checks your account's 2FA when you sign in and with your server list, at most once a minute. After turning 2FA on, press Sync from Discord on Your servers to be let in straight away.

#Private categories and channels

Sortr cannot use a category or channel hidden from @everyone until its role is let in. In Discord, open the place's settings (right-click it, then Edit Category or Edit Channel), go to Permissions, add Sortr's role and allow what it needs there:

A destination category where Sortr is missing one of the two stops the ticket from opening, with the log entry Sortr cannot open tickets in that category. On Destination category, a category Sortr cannot see is listed as "Hidden from Sortr", with "can't see it" where its channel count would be, and a note saying what to let in.

Ticket channels do not take their permissions from the category. Sortr writes each ticket's permissions itself, so keeping a category private does not change who sees a ticket.