I've been working out the idea for an extension for a while that involves integrating a phpBB forum with the Discord chat service. Discord has a a robust API that enables a lot of functionality to be added.
https://discordapp.com/developers/docs/intro
Basically I'd like an extension that would take events from the forum(new posts, new threads, etc,) and post them(title of post, forum, and link) using either a Discord bot implementation or webhooks into user specified channels on the Discord server.
Ideally, the Admin Module for the extension would take in the App Client ID, Bot token, and potentially webhooks from a user generated Discord app/bot that they would add to their Discord server themselves. Then the admin would be able to manually select which forums they wanted activity posted for and in what channel the posts would be made(on a sub-forum by sub-forum basis) on the Discord server.
To handle different permission levels the extension would need to allow the forums admin to select the User groups of their choice from their forum and have the Discord bot automatically create matching Roles on the Discord server. These roles could then be manually given access to appropriate Discord channels to maintain the required permission levels(so basic users can't see that a post was made in admin forums etc).
A UCP Module would allow forum users to sign into their Discord accounts using Oauth2 which would save their Discord id onto their phpBB user table row. From here there could either be a button for the user to click which would make the bot add them to the appropriate roles on the Discord server based on the user groups they are in, or the bot could automatically update the Discord roles of users with non-zero Discord ids in their user table row whenever certain events occur(User group changes?). Discord allows the creation of invites that will kick the user if they are not added to a Discord server role within a certain amount of time. This would mean the forum could share the Discord invite link to their users without worrying about people not signed up on their forums joining the server and spamming etc.
This extension would provide a robust third party chat service for phpBB communities to utilize without taking them fully away from the activity of the forum. I've found that when a community switches to a third party chat service that provides no integration with the forum, the forum tends to drop in activity as users no longer notice when new content is posted. This extension would provide a way for forum users to get mobile notifications for chat and forum activity using the Discord app and quickly access links to forum content when notified.
So to summarize. My request is an extension that integrates the user groups and forum activity of a phpBB forum with the roles and channels of a Discord server while maintaining the permission structure of the existing forum.
If anyone is interested in undertaking this task, providing insight, or making suggestions feel free.
Thank you.