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Mattermost User Guide

Updated: June 02, 2018


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Welcome to Mattermost!

Mattermost is a team chat tool that is being used at ORGANIZATION_NAME for facilitating communication and collaboration across units and groups. With Mattermost, your project or group can set up a private “team” hosted on our local Mattermost server to communicate and share resources.

Table of Contents

1. About this guide

This guide is designed to get you up and running with the Mattermost app as quickly as possible and to give you an opportunity to become familiar with many of the features that are available.

During the first few days after you receive your invitation link to the platform, it might be a good idea to work through this guide with the assistance of a mentor who is familiar with the platform.

2. Getting started

Before you begin, make sure that you have installed the Mattermost app (not “Mattermost Classic”). If you are running into issues where the app is not working as expected (e.g., slow, not receiving messages or notifications etc), there is a good chance that you may have installed Mattermost Classic. Many display and responsiveness problems can be resolved by installing the correct app.

2.1 Logging in

When you open the app for the first time it will ask you to enter a Server URL. Use the following URL to log in (make sure to include the https:// at the beginning):

SERVER_ADDRESS

2.2 Username

The local Mattermost server is not connected to your institutional ID, so you will need to create a new username and password to use the platform.

The username itself must be in Latin characters only (a-z and 0-9), which means accents and other diacritics can’t be used. Once you log in you will be able to set your Display Name or (Nickname), which will be visible to others and can include any characters you like, including accents, diacritics, or other character sets (see the Beginner checklist below for more details on how to change your Display Name).

3. Channels

Once you log in to the app using the Mattermost server invitation link provided to you, you should see an interface similar to the one in the screenshot below. You will find that the app is organized as a “team”, which is further divided into several “channels” with different topics:

The default “Town Square” and “Off-Topic” channels are public, and depending on the team may be the only channels you are able to see after you first log in.

If your team is using private channels, you will not be able to see them when you first log in. After you have logged in your team administrator can invite you to view any private channels your team is using.

To activate the sidebar channel list, press the menu button (the three horizontal white lines on the far left in the screenshot below):

The channel title is at the top of the screen (in the centre of the above screenshot).

To switch to a different channel, just press the channel name in the sidebar.

6. Beginner checklist

If there is not already a sandbox channel in your team, you can create one to provide a space where you can go through each of the items in the following step-by-step guide, which will help you get familiar with using the site.

Once you’re finished going through the checklist, head over to the Town Square or Off-Topic channel and say hi to the others in your team!

Below is the checklist – to get the most out of it, try to follow these in order!


Post a message!


Reply to a message posted by someone else


Edit a message


Send a message to someone using the “@” feature


Upload a picture from your phone using the attach feature


Post a message using emoji


Post a reaction to a message using a reaction emoji


Use simple formatting like bold and italic


Learn about more basic formatting


Use a hashtag “#” to categorize your message


Log into the web interface


(OPTIONAL) Embed an existing online image in a message


(OPTIONAL) Set up your notification preferences


(OPTIONAL) Set your preferred display name


We hope you have found this guide helpful. See you online!