# Introduction

What Crew is, how it works with Discord, and the few ideas everything else builds on.

Crew is people management for teams, organizations and communities that run on Discord: companies,
public services, clubs, volunteer groups and anything in between. It gives your server a proper
staff directory, an org chart, approvals, activity tracking, training, hiring and an audit trail,
without asking anyone to create another account.

## How Crew works with Discord

Crew splits the work with Discord:

- **Discord** is who people are. Everyone signs in with their Discord account, and Crew reads their
  server membership and Discord roles to decide what they can do. There are no Crew passwords.
- **Crew** is what your organization knows about its people: profiles, departments, reporting
  lines, roles and their history, records, requests, leave, activity and training.

The two stay in step. Give someone a Discord role that's linked to a Crew role and their profile
updates by itself; promote someone in Crew and the Crew bot gives them the new Discord role.

> [!NOTE]
> A Crew profile is **not** a copy of a Discord account. It's a record your organization keeps, which
> can be _linked_ to a Discord account so the person can sign in and see it. Profiles can also exist
> without a link, for example for contractors or people who haven't joined the server yet.

## The ideas behind everything

A few terms come up on almost every page of these docs.

| Term               | What it means                                                                                                                             |
| ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Organization**   | One Discord server with Crew in it. Each organization keeps its own members, settings and data, completely separate from every other.     |
| **Member**         | Someone with a Crew profile in the organization (shown in the **Directory**).                                                             |
| **Role**           | A step in your organization's structure, such as Director, Team Lead or Volunteer. Usually linked to a **Discord role** of the same name. |
| **Access level**   | What someone may do in Crew: **Super User**, **Manager**, **Member** or **View only**. It comes from their Discord roles.                 |
| **Department**     | A group of members, such as Support or Events. Departments can contain **units** (smaller teams).                                         |
| **Reporting line** | Who manages whom. A manager can act for the people below them in the line. It also draws the **Org chart**.                               |

## What you can do with Crew

- **People:** a searchable directory, profiles with custom fields, an org chart, CSV import and
  export, and onboarding checklists for new members.
- **Roles:** import your Discord roles, decide what each one may do in Crew, and promote people from
  Crew, Discord or the `/crew promote` command. Every change is kept in the member's service record.
- **Activity:** members log shifts or clock in with `/crew clockin`; managers see who meets your
  requirements and who has gone quiet.
- **Requests and leave:** leave, transfers, resignations and more go to the right manager, with a
  shared leave calendar.
- **Training:** a training catalog, mandatory trainings with due dates, and certifications that warn
  before they expire.
- **Hiring:** post a job, announce it in Discord, and review applications as a team.
- **Integrations:** a read-only API, signed webhooks and a public staff list for your website.
- **Safety:** access checked on every action, an audit log, a two-person rule for destructive
  actions and short data-retention defaults.

## Where to go next

1. [Add Crew to your server](/crew/add-to-discord): invite the bot and check it has what it needs.
2. [First-run setup](/crew/first-run-setup): import your roles, decide who can manage, and add
   your first members. It takes about ten minutes.

If you've been invited to an organization that's already set up, go straight to
[Signing in](/crew/signing-in).

Source: https://docs.noyralabs.com/crew/introduction