Mattermost administration guide

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

• The basics - An overview of standard configurations and features.

• Cloud admin - Detailed information about admin capabilities of Mattermost Cloud workspaces.

• Self-hosted admin - Detailed information about admin capabilities of self-hosted Mattermost servers.

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

The basics

These resources will help you get started with your Mattermost workspace.

• Visit the workspace optimization page in the System Console to review health and growth scores for your Mattermost workspace and take recommended actions.

• Configuration - Mattermost offers extensive configuration options for both self-hosted Mattermost servers and Mattermost Cloud workspaces.

• Authentication - All versions of Mattermost provide basic authentication, multi-factor authentication, and GitLab SSO out of the box. Professional and Enterprise versions of Mattermost also include Active Directory/LDAP and SSO for 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.

Workspace management

• Mattermost Cloud billing - Set up and manage billing for your Mattermost Cloud workspace.

• Workspace migration - Migrate your workspace using the mmctl tool.

• Cloud data residency - Find information about your data in the Cloud.

Self-hosted admin

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

Self-hosted setup and configuration

Initial setup

• Configuration overview - Set up and configure your Mattermost Cloud workspace.

• Custom branding tools - Change Mattermost branding, site name, and description.

• Customize Mattermost - Whitelabel the Mattermost server and apps.

• SMTP email setup - Connect to an email server to send emails for password resets and system notifications.

Advanced configurations

• Shared channels - Connect channels from multiple Mattermost servers in a federated architecture.

• 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.

• Email templates - Alter the transactional emails Mattermost sends to your users.

• Configuring CloudFront to host Mattermost static assets - Improve caching performance to reduce content load times.

• Using an outbound proxy - Monitor outbound traffic and control the websites that can appear in embedded content.

• Chinese, Japanese, and Korean search - Set up search capabilities for teams communicating via Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

User onboarding

• Provisioning workflows - Learn how to provision and de-provision user accounts.

• Bulk loading data - Import bulk data into Mattermost for teams, channels, users, post content, and more.

• Migration guide - Learn how to migrate from other chat services to Mattermost.

Advanced user management configurations

• AD/LDAP groups - Sync AD/LDAP groups with Mattermost roles and teams.

• Guest accounts - Create guest accounts to collaborate with individuals outside your organization.

• Using AD/LDAP synchronized groups to manage team or private channel membership - Synchronize your AD/LDAP group with private Mattermost channels and teams.

• 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.

• SSL client certificate setup - Configure SSL client certificates for Mattermost Desktop and Web Apps.

• Certificate-Based Authentication - Set up certificate-based authentication for Mattermost.

Self-hosted server management

• Managing team and channel members - Manage synchronization, moderation, and membership settings.

• 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.

Self-hosted compliance

• Electronic discovery - Extract data from Mattermost for eDiscovery use in legal cases.

• Compliance export - Create compliance reports from the Mattermost System Console.

• Audit log v2 (experimental) - Review a comprehensive list of events that occur on your Mattermost server.

• Data retention policy - Set custom data retention policies to manage how long Mattermost retains messages and file uploads.

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.

• Converting 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.

• Scripts - Explore a selection of example scripts you can use to manage self-hosted Mattermost servers.