Management Tools No One Tells You About

So you've got a guild. And you're the boss. WHEE! You can do whatever you like! Except for that part where you have no idea what you're doing!

Turning in your guild charter provides you with no manual whatsoever. You may find yourself puttering with your guild roster with no discernible clue as to what you are trying to accomplish. Things the Guild Charter Guy does not tell you:

Ranks: You will start with a handful of pre-set ranks. You can rename them and you can expand them at your discretion. You can then also decrease them, but only back to the default numbers, and only if there is no guild member sitting on the rank you want to delete. You do NOT have to use all these ranks right away. Each rank will need its permissions set - but for your own, they will all have the barest minimum of privileges. I will discuss these further in an upcoming 'How to Build a Guild' post.

Guild Info: When you first examine your shiny new roster, you'll see a Message of the Day space that you and you alone (until permissions are changed) can set. You will also see three other tabs you can play with, including Guild Info. This is a notepad for you to place info in. I recommend a brief outline of your rules (You... do have rules, right?), website info, vent info where applicable, and other useful trivia.

Guild Info's window also links to another FASCINATING tab that you should utilize right from the start... assuming you know about it. That is the tab called 'LOG.'

LOG's purpose is not immediately clear - you may look at it and assume it does something useless, like log the guild info's useful trivia into a notepad doc or something (It's what I thought at first until it was pointed out to me by an officer... two months after guild creation. *shame*). Far from it - LOG is critical to guild management. This tab will track who is invited to the guild, who has been promoted/demoted, who has gquit, and who has been kicked. It is finite, so you have to peek at it regularly to keep up on the news, but it is extremely useful if you allow open recruitment privileges or permit your officers to handle any rankings or removals. I LOVE THIS TAB.

Officer notes: You will, as GM (and potentially any officers, should you set the permission) be given access to another tiny notepad for each member that joins. They will have their own note (and I suggest allowing them read/write access, so long as they behave), and now you have another one. This is great for tracking alts, marking who's being a potential problem, or who needs a chat on some varying topic.

As you expand your guild and its amenities, you will inevitably begin working with the Guild Bank. This also has its useful if obscure tabs, and there are settings for it that you access from your management button on the bottom right of the Roster window.

When you open up a bank or any bank tab - at first, you will likely have one - you will see a set of buttons along the bottom. One will show you the contents. Easy. Another will - I love this, and you will almost never get anyone to read it - allow you to write bank tab information. While you will be able to give each tab a title and distinct icon to help clarify what each tab is for, you can outline more information for each tab in the Info note.

The last tab is also critically useful to you, and that is another Log. Yay! This will tell you who's withdrawing or depositing and, roughly, when, with a limited amount of entries. There will also be a log available for the gold withdrawal option, again, with a limited amount of entries. These are wonderful tools when trying to track who may be overusing guild repair or who's snagging stuff they shouldn't (course, you have permissions set, right? RIGHT?).

There is YET ANOTHER magnificently useful aspect to this bank log that no one will tell you about - go to the Armory at Blizzard's site, log in, and find your guild. You will see tabs available to you that allow you to see bank contents and allows you to access the bank log without logging into the game. But hark! What's this? It's a FULLY FUNCTIONAL bank log that allows you to filter by tab, by date, by guild member, and it goes back weeks to months!

Got a guy you've been suspecting of overly sucking off the bank repair teat for longer than you've realized? Gotten frustrated because your bank log ingame has only gone back to Wednesday? Hop onto the site, filter him down, and tally it up. Holy crap, that's useful.

And of course, /officer chat, or /o. This will be more useful once you actually HAVE officers, but wow, it's nice to have your own little space to discuss management. Try to not overuse it, however, and separate yourself off from /gchat too much. Also, ALWAYS doublecheck to ensure that you are posting to /o when that is your intent. You will make a mistake at least once. Try to not make it a woeful one.

I will expand on how to use and set up some of these tools in the upcoming post about actual guild creation.