Organizing Mattermost¶

Scoping Names¶

It’s natural to start with broadly defined channels and let them divide into more narrow topics as discussions progress.

For example, you might begin with a “Marketing” channel for all things related to marketing. As conversations progress, you might naturally divide that channel into: “Marketing: Website”, “Marketing: Social Media”, “Marketing: General”.

As the organization grows, disciplines might also split across business units, products and geographies, with channel names like “US: Marketing” and “UK: Marketing”

As you grow further, you can combine the hierarchies, with formats like [SUB-TEAM]: [TOPIC]: [SUB-TOPIC]. For example: US: Mrkt: Website and UK: Mrkt: Social Media

Good naming can take a team up to several thousand channels without causing significant confusion. Eventually every organization hits a limit and an additional team might need to be created on the server to accommodate a very large number of channels.

Navigating to channels using the keyboard¶

Another reason why channel names in Mattermost are limited to 22 characters is the common use of keyboard shortcuts to jump quickly to channels.

User use CTRL+K to bring up a dialog where they can quickly type in the first few letters of a channel, which triggers auto-complete, and hitting ENTER to jump to the channel directly.

Keeping names clear and short lets users navigate large collections of channels quickly.

Topic Channels¶

Topics are a broad category for organizing discussions. Topics are similar to how a user might create a folder for organizing emails or documents:

Examples: Recruiting, Interviews, Legal Reviews, Documentation

Users can join and leave topic-based channels, as well as add colleagues to have topic-based discussions.

As teams get larger and the number of channels increase, you may start naming topics in a hierarchy to make them easier to find:

Example: Legal: Trademarks, Legal: Contracts, Legal: Licensing

Meeting Channels¶

Channels are often used to organize regular meetings. Members can add topics as messages, which would be discussed during the regular meeting time:

Examples: Monday Sales Update, All Hands Meeting

There are a number of built-in features to make meetings in Mattermost easier to manage:

1. Numbered agenda items in title text

You can number and format messages as agenda items to discuss for the next meeting.

Try pasting the following as an example in a channel designated for meetings:

#### 1) Agenda item example

Commentary about agenda item to be discussed.

2. Threaded messaging

On an agenda item message, you can select [...] > Reply to leave comments about an agenda item before or after a meeting to extended discussion.

3. Header links

If you’re meeting remotely, add persistent links to your video or audio conferencing solution, like Zoom, Google Hangouts, or BlueJeans in the channel header.

When it’s time to meet, your team can click the conference link to connect.

Sub-Teams¶

Sub-teams can include people from the same discipline, project teams, people with the same manager or other groups brought together for a shared purpose:

Examples: Developers, Marketers, Offsite Organizing Committee, SusanK's Directs

As sub-teams grow beyond a manageable size for one channel, they can sub-divide:

Examples: US: Developers, UK: Developers, SusanK's Directs, SusanK's Extended Directs

Projects¶

Project channels discuss how groups of people can come together to achieve specific outcomes:

Examples: Logo Design, Localization, Product Launch

Projects are often private groups rather than public channels and are often used to organize a small team around a project brought up in a larger channel. The Project Channel is used to do detailed work, and updates are communicated back to larger channels in many instances.

Location Channels¶

If your teams are in different buildings, cities or regions, you can create channels to help people coordinate meetings and get-togethers:

Examples: Building 10, Palo Alto, Toronto, Delaware

This helps share announcements and discussions relevant to only those locations.

Data Channels¶

Sometimes you want to setup integrations to automatically bring data into certain channels. Information like Twitter updates, new or updated support tickets or bug reports, or mentions of your company name in the news can all be made available in channels your team choose to monitor. Some people might use these channels like a daily newspaper, reading about everything that’s happened since the last day.

Others may configure their notifications to only get their attention when their username, or certain key words are mentioned. There’s a wide array of options:

Examples: Bugs, Support Tickets, Twitter, News Mentions