Discord Bot Automation for PoliTo Organization

The PoliTo student organization managed a Discord server for 200+ engineering students. Each semester, new students joined and needed appropriate course-specific roles for access to private channels. The manual process was time-consuming and error-prone:

• 2 hours per week spent manually assigning roles
• Human errors leading to incorrect permissions
• Delayed access - new members waited hours or days for roles
• No audit trail - difficult to track role changes
• Scalability issues - process didn't scale with growing membership

I developed a Discord bot that automates the entire role assignment process with real-time synchronization and audit logging.

Architecture

1. Discord.js Bot - Listens for member joins and command interactions
2. Supabase Backend - Stores member data, role mappings, and audit logs
3. Role Verification System - Validates university email addresses
4. Automated Assignment - Assigns roles based on course enrollment

Key Features

• Self-service role selection via slash commands (/roles)
• Email verification with university domain checking
• Bulk operations for administrators
• Real-time sync with Supabase for role state management
• Audit logging - all role changes tracked with timestamps
• Error recovery - automatic retry logic for failed operations

Technical Implementation

// Slash command handler
client.on('interactionCreate', async (interaction) => {
  if (!interaction.isCommand()) return
  
  if (interaction.commandName === 'roles') {
    const courses = await supabase
      .from('courses')
      .select('*')
      .eq('active', true)
    
    const embed = new EmbedBuilder()
      .setTitle('Select Your Courses')
      .setDescription('React with emojis to get course roles')
      .addFields(
        courses.data.map(course => ({
          name: course.code,
          value: course.name
        }))
      )
    
    await interaction.reply({ embeds: [embed] })
  }
})

// Role assignment with error handling
async function assignRole(member, roleId) {
  try {
    await member.roles.add(roleId)
    
    // Log to Supabase
    await supabase.from('role_assignments').insert({
      user_id: member.id,
      role_id: roleId,
      assigned_at: new Date().toISOString()
    })
    
    return { success: true }
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Role assignment failed:', error)
    return { success: false, error }
  }
}

• Start with MVP - Initially built basic role assignment, then added features based on user feedback
• Error handling is critical - Discord API rate limits and network issues required robust retry logic
• Audit logs save time - When issues arise, logs make debugging 10x faster
• User experience matters - Slash commands are more intuitive than text commands
• Documentation is key - Good README reduced support questions by 80%