Mattermost 3.7: Cloud Platform Auto-deploy, multi-person direct messaging and much more
Enhanced flexibility, scalability, security—that’s what’s new in Mattermost 3.7.
Starting with flexibility, you can now auto-deploy to every major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) via Bitnami, and there’s multi-person group direct messaging for starting quick conversations with other members.
There’s increased scale with performance improvements for large deployments (10,000 users and above) and a new bulk import tool. Plus second-generation mobile apps that are even quicker and more responsive than before are coming at the end of March.
Security enhancements include a new channel administrator role for managing granular permissions, plus OneLogin single sign-on support.
We also received hundreds of community contributions! Thanks to all who contributed and in particular our Most Valuable Professional for Mattermost 3.7, Saturnino Abril!
Mattermost 3.7 is now available for download. It includes security updates and upgrading is recommended.
In this issue:
Cloud Platform Auto-deploy
Group Messaging for Quick, Direct Chats
More Flexibility
API Version 4 (early beta release)
New Website Link Previews
Channel Push Notification Preferences
More Scalability
Faster Server-side Processing
Simplified Import of Bulk Data
More Security
New “Channel Administrator” Role
OneLogin Support
Second Generation Mobile Apps: Beta Release in March
New Community Integrations
Mattermost-Tuleap Bot Plug-in
New Simple GitHub Integration
Thank You to Our Contributors
Install or Upgrade Mattermost
Cloud Platform Auto-deploy
Mattermost deploys to all leading cloud platforms, all leading orchestration platforms, all leading virtualization platforms and it also runs on Linux as a single binary under MIT license.
Check out Mattermost’s Deployment Solutions Programs to discover how Mattermost is being offered in a variety of third-party deployment solutions, including other open source projects as well as in commercial solutions. This is a whole new community and it’s growing fast.
Within this framework we’re delighted to announce a new solution for organizations that want to ensure the confidentiality of information within a private network while giving users a convenient and natural means of communication: the Bitnami Mattermost Team Edition Stack.
This is an easy-to-use, open source, team communication solution that deploys effortlessly on your existing private cloud infrastructure. It combines Mattermost with Bitnami, an extensive library of installers, software packages and virtual appliances. Bitnami automates deployments to your organization’s existing cloud provider’s account for all leading platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Platform.
What’s particularly exciting is support for Azure Government Cloud, a private cloud platform from Microsoft offering a host of public sector certifications.
You can watch what it’s like to deploy Mattermost Team Edition to Microsoft Azure on the Bitnami platform in the video below, which also demonstrates Slack import and a number of benefits Mattermost offers in addition to Slack’s core features (attachments in threaded discussions, display names for channels, Markdown support and more).
Group Messaging for Quick, Direct Chats
We have responded to one of the most popular feature requests by providing support for multi-party direct messages. This means:
- You can now quickly create a conversation with up to seven other people
- You no longer need to create a private channel for quick conversations with small groups
You might like to use this convenient feature whenever you need to communicate with an ad hoc group of people (or part of an existing group) but don’t want to create a new channel.
Stay tuned for further improvements on this feature in our upcoming release!
More Flexibility
API Version 4 (early beta release)
User and community integrations are important to the Mattermost ecosystem. To make the Mattermost API web service easier to use and to offer more powerful options for these integrations, Mattermost is introducing an early release of new API Version 4 endpoints in 3.7. Highlights include:
- Fully documented API endpoints
- More in-depth access to server functionality
- Wider use of established HTTP verbs
- Consistent endpoint structures
- A new and improved Go driver
API Version 4 is an active and ongoing project. We’re looking for contributors to code server endpoints, build drivers, and write documentation. If you’re interested in helping, please join our Mattermost community instance and the APIv4 channel.
Note that API Version 3 will be supported until September 16, 2017.
New Website Link Previews
Now any link to a website that uses Open Graph metadata will display automatically if you have the setting enabled. This new feature replaces the previous link preview, which handled only a subset of links.
To enable the setting, go to Account Settings > Advanced > Preview pre-release features after your System Administrator enables the feature from System Console > Link Previews.
Channel Push Notification Preferences
Mattermost 3.7 gives you more customization options for mobile push notifications: you can now determine what specific activity sends a push notification in each channel. Previously the global setting (in Account Settings) would apply to all channels.
Setting custom mobile push notification preferences to “Marketing: Twitter” channel.
More Scalability
Faster Server-side Processing
We have made several enhancements to improve server performance, reducing CPU usage and database bottlenecks via caching and query optimization. In addition we have eliminated unnecessary WebSocket calls to increase performance when receiving messages, improved performance for mobile push proxy connections and added a cache purging option to the system console.
For those interested in learning more, we have a developer talk going into the details of our recent performance improvements to support deployments with tens of thousands of users – and on our way to supporting hundreds of thousands.
Simplified Import of Bulk Data
Mattermost 3.7 provides a flexible and easy to use way to import bulk data into a Mattermost server. The import process can be run on a live system without impacting performance during the import process.
Data is imported one entity at a time, without the need to load the entire data set into memory before processing. What’s more, you can import data from virtually any source, and set any suitable attributes during the import process. If for any reason the import process is interrupted, it will automatically restart where it left off.
More Security
New “Channel Administrator” Role (Enterprise Edition E10 & E20)
With Mattermost Enterprise Edition E10 we have created a new special Channel Administrator role, which can be granted permissions to rename and delete the channel.
Any channel member can be promoted to a Channel Administrator role by a team or system administrator or by another channel administrator.
This will reduce the workload for team and system admins, overcoming the issue where they were often invited into channels simply to rename or delete them.
Manage members’ model of a channel where team/system/channel admins can promote members to the role of Channel Administrator.
Take a look at the System Console Policy page where the system admin can allow channel admins to rename or delete channels/groups.
OneLogin Support (Enterprise Edition E20)
Corporate directory integration with OneLogin SSO via SAML 2.0 now allows the following in Mattermost Enterprise Edition E20:
- Single sign-on via SAML 2.0, meaning users can sign in to Mattermost simply using their OneLogin credentials
- Centralized identity management: Mattermost accounts can pull user information including first and last name, email and username
- Automatic account provisioning: new Mattermost user accounts are automatically created the first time a user signs in with their credentials on the Mattermost server
You can find documentation on SAML 2.0 SSO here.
Configuration docs for OneLogin are here.
Second-Generation Mobile Apps: Beta Release in March
React Native is a great option for creating iOS and Android apps that are highly performant even with poor mobile connections and feel at home on their respective platforms.
So IT administrators and Mattermost users alike will be delighted to know that the second-generation Mattermost mobile apps for iOS and Android are scheduled for a beta release in March.
If you’re interested in contributing to the project by helping test the apps, please join our Mattermost Native Apps discussion channel and let us know.
Preview of current React Native apps – more updates to come
New Community Integrations
We’re seeing wonderful new integrations every month and March is no exception!
If you’ve built one, or are working on one, please join our community channel for installers or community channel for integrations and apps hosted on our nightly builds server. We’d love to meet you and discuss your work!
When you’re ready to share your work, please let us know!
Here are some of the top projects this month:
Mattermost-Tuleap Bot Plug-in
The Mattermost-Tuleap bot plug-in enables you to send a Scrum stand-up summary of your current planning into Tuleap, the all-in-one open source development platform: get the burndown chart, direct access to the cardwall and updates user stories and bugs status. This connector also allows you to receive new Git pushes into Tuleap.
Find out more about this integration from Tuleap.
New Simple GitHub Integration
With this new GitHub integration, events received via webhooks are processed, formatted and then sent to Mattermost. You can find details on how to set this up here.
Alternatively, you may prefer another GitHub integration which is available here using flask.
Thanks to UlfS!
Thank You to Our Contributors
Many thanks to all of our other contributors to this release. By project, in alphabetical order:
/platform
- aautio, akihikodaki, andreistanciu24, asaadmahmood, ayadav, AymaneKhouaji, bjoernr-de, coreyhulen, cpanato, CrEaK, crspeller, DavidLu1997, debanshuk, enahum, erikgui, favadi, gig177, grundleborg, hmhealey, it33, jasonblais, jazzzz, JeffSchering, joannekoong, jostyee, jurgenhaas, jwilander, kaakaa, khawerrind, laur89, lfbrock, mikaoelitiana, morenoh149, mpoornima, pan-feng, pepf, Rudloff, ruzette, saturninoabril, senk, Zaicon, ZJvandeWeg
/api-reference
/docs
- asaadmahmood, cpanato, crspeller, esethna, grundleborg, hmhealey, ilabdsf, it33, jasonblais, JeffSchering, jostyee, jwilander, lfbrock, lindy65, matmorel, senk, vladimirprieto, wget
/mobile
/docker
/desktop
/selenium
/push-proxy
/load-test
More about Mattermost:
Install or Upgrade Mattermost
Install a new instance of Mattermost with instructions from our download page. Check out our upgrade guide for guidance on updating to the latest version.
Enterprise Edition
Mattermost Enterprise Edition E10 and E20 are commercial versions of Mattermost designed for large organizations backed by commercial support from Mattermost, Inc. and available by subscription. See the feature list for more detail.
Looking for help on install and upgrade? A subscription also entitles you to upgrade and installation help from Mattermost, Inc.
