Your team outgrew scattered tools. Telion is what comes next.
Most FTC and FRC teams start with a group chat, a shared spreadsheet, and a paper sign-in sheet. That works for a little while — then coordination itself becomes the hard part, no matter how many students you have.
The problem with duct-taped tools
Even a small roster needs more than a group chat can hold: who's coming Thursday, who owns the intake mechanism, who's allowed to see a student's contact info, and who's actually ready to lead a sub-team.
Spreadsheets don't notify anyone. Group chats bury tasks. And most general-purpose team tools are built for offices, not for a roster split between students, parents, and mentors with very different needs.
Built by a coach, for coaches
Telion isn't a generic project management tool with robotics branding bolted on. It's built by someone who coaches a team and uses the app with his own roster every season — every feature exists because a real team needed it.
That means proxy RSVPs for parents, availability heatmaps for build nights, and a skill framework that reflects how students actually grow on a robotics team.
Built to fit your team, not the other way around
Every team runs differently, so the admin side of Telion is built to be reconfigured rather than assumed. None of this requires touching code or filing a support ticket — it's all in the app.
Custom roles
Define your own roles — Mentor, Captain, E-Board, Sub-team Lead, whatever your team actually calls them — and assign multiple roles per person.
Your own workflow
Task statuses, priorities, and event types are all team-defined, not hardcoded. Set them up to match how your team already talks about work.
Fine-grained permissions
Control who can post, pin, or manage each channel, and who can see contact info, down to the individual member if needed.
A real curriculum, not a vague rating
Telion's skill tracking is built around a structured progression framework covering seven areas of competitive robotics, each rated on a five-level scale from no exposure to teaching others. It gives coaches and students a shared, concrete language for growth instead of a gut-feeling checkbox.
The seven skill categories
Design · CAD · Procurement & Fabrication · Build · Code · Strategy · Presentation
What most teams actually use, side by side
The two most common setups we see are Discord for chat and Trello for tasks — often with a spreadsheet and Google Calendar bolted on. Here's how that compares to a single app.
| Telion | Slack / Discord | + Trello | + Trello + Excel | + Trello + Excel + Google Cal. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All in one place | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Automatic linking between tasks, events & chat | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Team chat | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Task & sprint tracking | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Event scheduling & RSVPs | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Skill development tracking | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Proxy RSVPs for parents | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Built specifically for robotics teams | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Apps you need to manage | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Feature comparison based on default/free functionality of each tool as of 2026. Individual teams may configure integrations between these tools to close some gaps.