Mattermost administration guide

This guide is for people who administer an existing Mattermost server. It’s divided into four parts:

Get started - An overview of standard configurations and features for both self-hosted and Cloud workspaces.
Cloud workspace management - Detailed information about admin capabilities of Mattermost Cloud workspaces.
Self-hosted administration - Detailed information about admin capabilities of self-hosted Mattermost servers.
Other resources - Additional migration, conversion, and troubleshooting resources.

If you’re looking for resources to help you install, deploy, and scale your self-hosted Mattermost server, see the Mattermost Deployment Guide.

Get started

These resources will help you get started with your Mattermost self-hosted or Cloud workspace.

Optimize your workspace - Review health and growth scores for your Mattermost workspace, and take necessary action using the workspace optimization page in the System Console.
Configure your workspace - Mattermost offers extensive configuration options for both self-hosted Mattermost servers and Mattermost Cloud workspaces, and provides a list of deprecated configuration settings no longer supported.
Environment variables - Learn how to use environment variables to manage configuration for a self-hosted deployment.
Provisioning workflows - Learn how to provision and de-provision user accounts.
User authentication - All versions of Mattermost provide basic authentication and offer multi-factor authentication out of the box. Professional and Enterprise versions of Mattermost also include Active Directory/LDAP and SSO for GitLab SSO, OpenID, Google, and Office365.
User permissions - All versions of Mattermost offer standard user permissions control. Professional and Enterprise versions also include advanced permissions control to customize which users can perform specific actions, and System Admin roles to grant admins from your organization access to specific areas of the Mattermost System Console.
Manage team and channel members - Manage team and channel members synchronization, moderation, and membership settings.
Customize branding - Change Mattermost branding, site name, and description with custom branding tools.
Compliance tools - Extract data from Mattermost for eDiscovery use in legal cases, create Compliance monitoring reports for query and download actions, or Compliance export reports for channel history actions, set custom data retention policies, and set custom terms of service for team members.
Notify admin - Keep track of your users’ feature requirement needs.

Advanced user management

AD/LDAP groups - Sync AD/LDAP groups with Mattermost roles and teams.
Use AD/LDAP synchronized groups to manage team or private channel membership - Synchronize your AD/LDAP group with private Mattermost channels and teams.
Guest accounts - Create guest accounts to collaborate with individuals outside your organization.
SAML Single Sign-On - Configure Mattermost to be a SAML 2.0 service provider.
SAML Single Sign-On: technical documentation - SAML 2.0 reference documentation for Mattermost.

Advanced workspace management

Shared channels - Connect channels from multiple Mattermost servers in a federated architecture.
Statistics - Get statistics about your Mattermost server usage.
In-product notices - Get notified about Mattermost updates via in-app notices.
User satisfaction surveys - Learn about Mattermost user satisfaction surveys and how to configure their operation.
Health check - Configure health probes for your Mattermost server.
Announcement banner - Display notices to your users via an announcement banner.
Bulk export tool - Export user, team, channel, and post data from Mattermost.

Cloud workspace management

Mattermost Cloud billing - Set up and manage billing for your Mattermost Cloud workspace.
Workspace limits - Understand the data limits on your plan.
Workspace usage - Keep your workspace active.
Workspace migration - Migrate your workspace using the mmctl tool.
Cloud data residency - Find information about your data in the Cloud.

Self-hosted administration

This section of the guide is for system admins of self-hosted Mattermost servers. If you’re the admin for a Mattermost Cloud workspace, please refer to the Cloud workspace management section on this page.

Include configuration in the Mattermost database - Store Mattermost configuration information in your database rather than as a JSON file. We recommend this for High Availability environments.
Bulk loading data - Import bulk data into Mattermost for teams, channels, users, post content, and more.
SMTP email setup - Connect to an email server to send emails for password resets and system notifications.
Email templates - Alter the transactional emails Mattermost sends to your users.
Calls deployment - Learn about the different calls deployment types.
Configure CloudFront to host Mattermost static assets - Improve caching performance to reduce content load times.
Use an outbound proxy - Monitor outbound traffic and control the websites that can appear in embedded content.
Migration guide - Learn how to migrate from other chat services to Mattermost.
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean search - Set up search capabilities for teams communicating via Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.
Whitelabel Mattermost - Whitelabel the Mattermost server and apps.
Audit logging - Learn how Mattermost records activities and events performed within a Mattermost workspace.
JSON audit log schema - Learn how to configure Mattermost audit logging using a JSON object.
SSL client certificate setup - Configure SSL client certificates for Mattermost Desktop and Web Apps.
Certificate-Based Authentication - Set up certificate-based authentication for Mattermost.

Other resources

If the information above doesn’t solve your problem, look at these other resources to find something that meets your needs. Alternatively, you can also get help from our community or via premium support services.

Convert OAuth 2.0 service providers to OpenID Connect - Migrate from OAuth 2.0 to OpenID Connect.
Generate a support packet - Generate configuration information, logs, plugin details, and data dependencies to provide when contacting Mattermost support.
mmctl command line tool - Use mmctl to manage self-hosted Mattermost servers from the command line.
Migration announcement email template - Use this email template to notify your users about migrating to Mattermost.
Advanced permissions: backend infrastructure - Read our technical guide on modifying self-hosted Mattermost installations to create custom permissions schemes.
Command line tools - Learn how to use the command line to manage self-hosted Mattermost servers.