Organize conversations using Collapsed Reply Threads

Threads are a key part of the messaging experience in Mattermost Channels. They’re used to organize conversations and enable users to discuss topics without adding noise to channels or direct messages.

Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta) offers an enhanced experience for users communicating in threads and replying to messages that includes a unified threads inbox to read all conversations in one view. Our goal is to improve users’ ability to process channel content, find, follow, and resume conversations more easily, and keep threaded conversations focused.

Enable Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta)

Your System Admin must enable the Collapsed Reply Threads beta feature in the System Console. See our Configuration Settings documentation for details. Before enabling, please ensure you are well-versed with the known issues, particularly relating to database resource requirements and server performance implications.

Once this feature is enabled in the System Console, you can enable this feature for your account by going to Settings > Display > Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta).

Known issues

Important

Collapsed Reply Threads is available as an early beta in Mattermost Cloud and Mattermost Server v5.37 and later. It’s expected that you may experience bugs and server performance implications as we stabilize the feature. In particular, please be aware of these important known issues and risks:

• Collapsed Reply Threads is a complex feature that will increase demand on your server and database resources. If you cannot easily scale up your database size, or are running the Mattermost application server and database server on the same machine, we recommended waiting to enable Collapsed Reply Threads until it’s promoted to general availability in Q2 2022. Learn more about these performance considerations here.

• When enabling Collapsed Reply Threads for the first time, you may see channels or threads you’ve seen before appear as unread. To resolve this:

  • View any unread channels or use ALT+SHIFT+UP/DOWN to navigate to unread channels with the keyboard. Work in-progress ticket: MM-35494

  • Use the Mark all as read button in the Threads view to mark your threads as read. Work in-progress ticket: MM-35345

• For a comprehensive list of known issues, and to see our work queue in priority order, check out our Kanban board.

Start or reply to threads

Replies are collapsed under the first message of a thread. To reply to a thread, select the Reply icon, or select the reply count if a thread already exists.

Tip

• Select anywhere on a message in a channel in the center pane to view it, or reply to it, on the right-hand side.

• In channels, a dot next to the thread participants indicates there are unread replies. You’ll only see unreads for threads you’re following.

Follow threads and messages

You can follow particular messages and threads so that any reply activity triggers notifications. Follow or unfollow any thread, at any time, by toggling the thread’s Follow/Following indicator, or by accessing the More Actions menu.

You’ll automatically follow every thread you participate or are mentioned in. If you’re no longer interested in a or message thread, you can unfollow it to stop receiving notifications. Viewing a thread without responding to it doesn’t automatically follow that thread.

Tip

Follow messages with no replies from the More Actions menu to be notified if someone replies to the message later based on your notification preferences.

View all threads

Select Threads at the top of the channel sidebar to see all your followed threads on the currently selected team. Threads with the most recent replies display at the top of the list.

Select Unreads to filter your followed threads by only those with unread replies.

Tutorial video

For additional details about working with the beta release of Collapsed Reply Threads, see our tutorial video on YouTube.