Setting Up Departments: Whitelists, Roles, and Everything Else

Departments are where everything else in the CAD actually happens. A member's department decides their board, their callsign, whose radio channels they hear, and what shows up on the roster next to their name. This guide covers every setting a department has — not just the whitelist.

Before you touch anything

You need two things: the CAD turned on for your server, and either Owner access or a rank carrying the Settings permission. Settings exists for exactly this job — it lets someone administer departments and the community's own configuration without also handing them the full staff roster.

A few of the settings below (approving requests, specifically) need a different permission — Roster. You can have Settings without Roster, or the other way round. If you're setting up a whitelist, make sure someone actually holds Roster access, or requests will just pile up with nobody looking at them.

Finding the screen

Staff console → Settings → Departments. Every department shows up here as its own card. Everything in this guide happens on this one screen.

Making a department

Type a name in the box at the top and hit Add. That's the whole first step — everything else below gets filled in after, and none of it has to happen all at once.

The fields, one at a time

Name. What shows up everywhere — the roster, the radio, the overview page. Full names read better than abbreviations here ("State Patrol", not "SP").

Type. LEO, Fire, EMS, Dispatch, DOT, Comms, or Other. This is the one field that actually changes what a member sees — it decides which board they get. Fire and EMS get apparatus, patients, and triage. LEO gets plates, warrants, and records. Dispatch sees everything, every department, every call — that's what makes it Dispatch. Pick the type that matches what the department actually does in your world, not just what sounds official.

Short name. PD, FD, EMS — whatever fits in a tight space. Shows up on the roster and anywhere else "State Patrol" would be too long.

Callsign prefix. Stuck to the front of a member's callsign automatically — "1A-" turns into "1A-12" the moment someone picks a number. Keep it short.

Icon. One emoji. Shown next to the department's name everywhere it's listed — the roster, the overview page, the admin card itself. Purely visual, but it's the fastest way to make a long department list easy to scan at a glance.

Colour. Six hex characters, no hash in front (3b82f6, not #3b82f6). Shows as a small dot next to the department's name. Leave it blank and it falls back to the CAD's own default.

Description. Free text, as long as you need. This is what a member actually reads before deciding whether to request a department — "what do these people actually do" — so it's worth writing a real sentence or two instead of leaving it blank. Shows on the community's overview page right under the department's entry.

Member cap. Leave it blank for no limit. Set a number and the department stops taking new members the instant it hits that count — same refusal a closed department gives, "isn't taking new members right now." It only ever blocks new people from getting in; lowering the cap below the current headcount doesn't remove anyone already there. If the department requires approval, the cap doesn't block a request — it's checked again right when someone's approved, since the count can change while a request is sitting there waiting.

Activity log. Pick a channel and Varko posts there every time someone joins the department, or is approved into it. Leave it blank and nothing gets posted. This is the department's own log, separate from anything the community posts elsewhere — useful for a department that wants its own paper trail without digging through a general log full of every other department's activity too.

Discord role. Covered in its own section below, since it interacts with verification mode.

Reordering departments

The up and down arrows on each card move it relative to its neighbours. This is purely display order — the roster, the overview page, and the admin screen itself all follow it. There's no other effect; a department higher on the list isn't more "senior" to Varko, it just shows first.

Open or closed

Before whitelisting even comes into it: is this department taking anyone at all right now? That's the Taking members / Closed button. Closed doesn't touch the roster or remove anyone currently in the department — it just refuses every new join, code or not, the member cap, request button, all of it. Use it for a department that's full for reasons beyond a simple cap, retired, or just not recruiting at the moment.

The whitelist setting below only shows up while the department's open. A closed department has nothing to approve, so there's nothing to show.

Setting up the whitelist

This is the real question behind "whitelist": does joining need a yes from someone first, or does it just happen?

Joins instantly (the default) — use the code, or hit Join on the overview page, and you're in immediately.

Approval required — joining files a request instead. The person's told it's pending right away, and nothing on their end changes until someone with Roster access approves or denies it.

Click the button on the card to flip between the two. This is per department — whitelisting your PD while leaving a general Civilian Support department wide open is completely normal, and the two settings don't interact with each other at all.

How people actually join

There are two doors in, and whitelisting treats them identically.

A join code. Every department gets its own, shown on its card. Hand it out however you already recruit — post it, DM it, put it in a form. Need a new one? Hit refresh next to the code. The old one dies the moment you do, so this doubles as how you revoke a code that leaked.

Joining straight from the site. Anyone already in your community can see every open department on the community's own overview page, with a button right there. It reads Join on a department that lets people in instantly, or Request to join on a whitelisted one, so nobody's surprised by which they're getting before they click. Already got a pending request for that exact department? The button's replaced with a plain Pending approval badge — no way to send the same request twice by accident.

Reviewing requests

Anyone holding Roster access sees a Department requests panel on the community's overview page, with a number badge whenever something's waiting. Each row shows who's asking and which department, with Approve and Deny right next to it.

Approve moves them in — department set, Discord role granted automatically if one's configured, activity log posted if one's set up.

Deny just clears the request. It doesn't remove the person from the community at all — they're left as an ordinary member with no department, free to try again later or request somewhere else.

Where membership actually gets proven

Separate question from whether a join needs approval: once someone's accepted, where does Varko actually prove it? Two modes, picked right on the department's card under "Where membership is verified."

This server (the default). Pick a Discord role, and Varko grants it the moment someone's accepted — right here, automatically, every time.

A separate server. Some communities run a department's real vetting somewhere else entirely — a dedicated server that department already uses. One thing to know going in: Varko can't create that server for you. Discord blocks any bot already in this many servers from making new ones. That's a platform rule, not something left unbuilt — so this is "bring your own server, Varko automates everything inside it," not full auto-setup.

If that's the route you want:

1. Make the server the normal way (or use one that already exists) and invite Varko to it, same as inviting any bot.
2. Turn on Developer Mode in your own Discord settings if you haven't (User Settings → Advanced → Developer Mode), right-click the server's icon, and copy its ID.
3. Back on the department's card, switch to "A separate server" and paste that ID in. Click away to save it.
4. Once Varko can reach that server, two role pickers show up: a welcome role, handed to anyone who joins it at all (think of it like a normal welcome-server autorole — "you're in, but not verified yet"), and a verified role, handed out once they're actually accepted back in the main CAD.

That verified role is a real, working Discord credential — staff can check it and trust it completely. What it can't do is reach into the game itself. There's no way for a Discord role to directly unlock a department in ER:LC. Treat it as proof someone's been vetted, not a lock on the game.

Everything in one place

Setting	What it controls
Name, Type, Short name, Callsign prefix	How the department shows up and what board its members see
Icon, Colour, Description	How it reads on the roster and overview page
Member cap	Caps instant joins; re-checked at approval for whitelisted departments
Activity log	Posts a line when someone joins or is approved
Taking members / Closed	Whether the department accepts anyone new at all
Joins instantly / Approval required	Whether joining needs a yes from a Roster holder first
Where membership is verified	Which server the acceptance role actually lives in
Join code	The code that gets someone straight into this department

Checklist for one department, start to finish

• Name, type, short name, callsign prefix, icon, colour, and description all filled in
• Member cap set, if you want one
• Activity log channel picked, if you want one
• Set to Taking members
• Switched to Approval required, if that's the goal
• Verification mode picked, and a role chosen either way
• If using a separate server: server made, Varko invited, ID saved, both roles picked
• At least one person with Roster access knows to check pending requests
• Join code shared wherever you recruit, or people told they can just request it from the site