collapsed reply threads

Collapsed Reply Threads are here! Get early access to the beta

We’ve heard your feedback, and are excited to announce that users of Mattermost Cloud and Mattermost Self-Managed v5.37 or later can now get early access to Collapsed Reply Threads in beta! This feature has been a top priority for our team and is the most voted feature request on our idea forum.

Given this is an early access beta, we highly encourage Admins and users interested in enabling the feature to review our documentation and known issues.

What does the user experience look like?

Threads are core to the messaging experience in Mattermost. They allow users to organize conversations about various topics within a channel. Collapsed Reply Threads offers an enhanced experience for users communicating in threads and replying to messages. Our goal was to improve users’ ability to process channel content, find, follow, and resume conversations more easily, and keep threaded conversations focused.

collapsed reply threads beta

Collapsed Threads

Reply messages are collapsed under the first message of a thread to improve the scannability of a channel. Simply click on a message in the channel to view it, or reply to the thread in the right-hand side.

Follow Messages and Threads

Users can follow particular messages or threads so that any reply activity will trigger notifications. Further, users now automatically follow every thread they participate or are mentioned in.

Threads View

Users can access their followed threads from the “Threads” item on the channel sidebar. The thread list is sorted by recent activity and can be filtered to only display unread threads.

Check out this YouTube tutorial and our documentation for more details:

How do I enable Collapsed Reply Threads?

System Admins must enable Collapsed Reply Threads for their workspace in the System Console > Experimental > Features > Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta).

Once enabled by the Admin, end users can choose to enable Collapsed Reply Threads for themselves in Account Settings > Display > Collapsed Reply Threads (Beta).

What configuration options are available?

For the beta release, Admins may choose to configure Collapsed Reply Threads:

  • Off: Users cannot access Collapsed Reply Threads (this is the default).
  • Default Off: Users must choose to enable Collapsed Reply Threads in Account Settings.

As we resolve more known issues we will make additional configuration options available, including:

  • Default On: Users see Collapsed Reply Threads by default and can optionally disable it for themselves in Account Settings.
  • Always On: All users must use Collapsed Reply Threads.

What are the known issues I should be aware of?

Collapsed Reply Threads functionality is still in beta, so it’s expected that you may experience bugs when using this feature. In particular,

  • 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 switch 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
  • You may experience lag in your desktop or web client if you’re following many threads or opening threads with many replies. Work in-progress tickets: MM-36696, MM-36697, MM-36698
  • You should expect to see more unread channels and notifications on your mobile device than you’ll see on your Desktop instance of Mattermost. This is expected until mobile support is available for Collapsed Reply Threads, expected in August 2021. For early access, join our mobile beta program.

These issues and available workarounds are shared in our documentation.

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


When will Collapsed Reply Threads be generally available?

We anticipate releasing Collapsed Reply Threads as generally available in Q4 2021. However, our timeline depends heavily on your feedback as we iterate on the beta. We encourage you to join the conversation in the ~Collapsed Reply Threads channel on our public community workspace. All feedback is good feedback!

Will Mattermost provide support for this feature in beta?

Yes. Mattermost will offer support for the beta feature and provide bug fix releases for severe bugs or security issues according to our usual process.

Where can I find more information and follow the development progress?

You can join us in our community workspace ~Collapsed Reply Threads channel where we are actively discussing feature development. We encourage feedback and questions in the channel.

We greatly appreciate the guidance and user testing participation from our customers and community in designing this enhanced threading experience, and we can’t wait to hear what you think!

Read more about:

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Eric Sethna is a Senior Product Manager at Mattermost, Inc. Prior to joining Mattermost, he worked as a Product Manager for SpinPunch, Inc., a Y Combinator-backed online gaming startup. Eric earned a bachelor of applied science degree in civil engineering from the University of Waterloo.