> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://bettertickets.gg/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

> The core concepts behind better tickets: categories, staff roles, premium tiers, and jail, and how they fit together across the bot.

**better tickets** is a Discord bot for running support tickets, staff applications, and a jail system from inside your server. If you've used a ticket bot before, the shape will feel familiar - a member clicks a button, gets a private channel or a DM conversation, and staff handle it from there. What's different here is *how* it's configured: almost everything happens through interactive menus you click through in Discord, not slash-command flags you have to memorize or look up every time.

<Warning>
  This bot is in beta mode at this moment. Add it on your own risk
</Warning>

This page covers the handful of concepts that show up across every part of the bot, so the rest of the docs make sense without repeating them each time. If you just want to get something running, skip ahead to [Quickstart](/docs/quickstart).

## Categories

Both tickets and applications are organized into **categories** - independent, named configurations you create with `/ticket create` or `/application create`. A server can have several of each: a `support` ticket category alongside a separate `report` category, or a `mod-team` application category alongside a `builder-team` one. Nothing about one category affects another - they have entirely separate settings.

Every category has its own:

* **Staff roles** - who's allowed to manage it (see [Staff permissions](#staff-permissions) below).
* **Channels** - where tickets get created, where completed applications get posted, where transcripts and logs go.
* **Questions** - what's asked before a ticket opens or an application is submitted (optional - a category can have none). Tickets alone support eight input types - short text, paragraph, number, multi-select, and live user/role/channel pickers and file uploads - not just plain text boxes. See [Ticket questions](/docs/tickets/settings#questions) for the full list.
* **Panel message** - the message with the button members actually click to open a ticket or apply.

You configure all of this through `/ticket edit` or `/application edit`, which opens an interactive settings menu in Discord - a message with dropdowns, toggles, and buttons - rather than a long list of command options you'd have to get right in one shot. See [Tickets](/docs/tickets/overview) and [Applications](/docs/applications/overview) for the full walkthrough of creating and configuring each.

<Card title="Tickets" icon="ticket" href="/docs/tickets/overview">
  Categories members open for support, with claiming, staff roles, and transcripts.
</Card>

<Card title="Applications" icon="file-text" href="/docs/applications/overview">
  Categories members apply to, with a DM question flow and a staff review workflow.
</Card>

## Staff permissions

There are two distinct permission systems, and knowing which one applies to a given command matters:

* **Server-level commands** - `/ticket create`, `/ticket edit`, `/application create`, `/application edit`, `/config`, and the stats commands - always require the **Administrator** or **Manage Server** Discord permission. These change configuration, so they're locked to server admins regardless of any category's staff roles.
* **Per-category actions** - claiming a ticket, closing it, adding/removing members, reviewing an application, accepting or denying it - are gated by that specific category's own **staff roles**, set on the category's Roles page. This is what lets you have, for example, a support team that can manage tickets without any of them being full server admins.

Holding Administrator or Manage Server always satisfies a category's staff-role check too, so admins can act in every category without being explicitly added to each one's role list.

## Premium tiers

Some limits scale with the server's premium tier - Free, Plus, or Max - rather than being fixed for everyone: how many ticket/application categories you can create, how long staff/ping/assign role lists can be, how many questions an application can ask, and how many custom command prefixes you can add. A handful of specific fields (like custom ticket channel name templates) are locked to premium tiers entirely, not just capped lower on Free. Nothing is ever deleted by a downgrade - configuration past the new limit just goes inactive until you're back under it. See [Premium](/docs/premium) for what each tier's about, or the [FAQ](/docs/faq#what-do-the-premium-tiers-change) for the full table of numbers.

## Jail

Jail is a special case of the ticket system rather than a separate feature: one ticket category gets designated as the server's jail category via `/config jail`, and jailing a member (`/jail`) strips their roles, applies a configured jail role, and opens them a channel in that category - similar to a ticket, but one staff placed them into rather than one they opened themselves. See [Jail](/docs/tickets/jail) for the full setup and how it works end to end.