Discord channel

A Discord channel destination posts each matched spot to a channel, as a colored card or a single line of text. It uses a webhook you create in the channel’s settings. There is no Long Lines bot to invite.

Why you’d use it

Your club runs a #pota-spots channel. You want a card there whenever a member activates a park, with the call, frequency and park name, linked to the activator’s profile.

How it works

Long Lines posts through the channel’s webhook URL. You pick the message style and which fields appear, in order:

• Card: a colored embed with a Title (1 to 4 fields), Details (up to 8) and a Small grid (up to 6 short values side by side). The title links to the callsign’s profile, the spot on the source site, or nothing. A footer such as “POTA · 17:42 UTC” is on by default.
• Plain line: one line of text with up to 8 fields, such as **KK4PWJ** · 14.062 MHz · CW · POTA · US-2763 · Pisgah National Forest.

The fields are Callsign, First name, Last name, Frequency, Band, Mode, Source, Reference, Place name, State, Spotter and Time. First and last name come from the spotted call’s FCC license, so they are empty for non-US calls and club calls. Comment is not offered, because it is text typed by the spotter. A field a spot doesn’t have is skipped.

What Long Lines guarantees about every message:

• Every value is escaped, so a spotter can’t inject Discord formatting or links.
• Mentions such as @everyone are always turned off.
• You can’t add your own text.

Card color is By source by default: POTA green, SOTA purple, WWFF teal, WWBOTA gold, DX Cluster blue, RBN orange, Logged contacts magenta. You can pick one color for everything instead.

Pacing

Discord allows about 30 messages a minute per webhook. With One message per spot, Long Lines sends spots as they match, and when a connection is busier than Discord allows, it groups several spots into one message so none are dropped (up to 10 cards a message). With Group spots every 10 seconds (or 30 or 60), the first spot after a quiet spell waits that long so others can join it; 10 waiting spots go at once.

A spot that has waited 24 hours is dropped. If Discord rate-limits the webhook, Long Lines waits as Discord asks and then sends the same spots.

Set it up

1. In Discord, open the channel’s settings and choose Integrations.
2. Choose Webhooks, then New Webhook, and copy the webhook URL. It looks like https://discord.com/api/webhooks/1234567890/AbCd….
3. In Long Lines, open Destinations, select Add destination, pick Discord channel and select Continue.
4. Enter a Name, such as Club POTA channel.
5. Paste the URL into Webhook URL on the Discord channel card.
6. On the Message card, pick Message style and arrange the fields. Use Add a field to add one and the arrows to reorder.
7. On the Delivery card, choose Messages: One message per spot or a grouping interval.
8. Check the Preview, which draws the message in Discord’s dark theme. Preview with this spot lets you try a recent real spot.
9. Select Add destination.
10. Select Send test message on the preview, or Send test on the destination’s card. The test is marked “Test message from Long Lines”.
11. Add the destination to a connection.

After saving, the URL is hidden. To change it, select Replace URL.

Common setups

Club activity card. Style Card. Title: Callsign, Frequency, Mode. Details: Source, Reference, Place name, State. Small grid: Band, Spotter. Title links to Callsign profile. Card color: By source. These are the defaults.

Busy DX channel. Style Plain line. Message: Callsign, Frequency, Mode, Spotter. Bold the first field on, Link preview Hidden. Messages: Group spots every 30 seconds.

One channel per program. Two destinations, POTA channel and SOTA channel, each linked to its own connection, both with Card color set to one fixed color so the two channels look different.

When it doesn’t work

“That is a channel link, not a webhook URL.” You copied the channel’s link. Copy the URL from Integrations > Webhooks instead.

“Use a Discord webhook URL.” The URL must start with https://discord.com/api/webhooks/ or https://discordapp.com/api/webhooks/. Links from ptb.discord.com or canary.discord.com are refused; change the host to discord.com.

Failing with HTTP 404 or 401. Someone deleted or reset the webhook in Discord. Create a new one, select Replace URL, paste it and save.

Messages arrive in bunches. The connection is busier than about 30 messages a minute, so spots are being grouped. Narrow the connection, or choose a grouping interval so it happens predictably.

First name and Last name are blank. The station isn’t in the FCC database, or it is a club call.