Mattermost 5.16: Guest accounts, a new Plugin Marketplace, faster installation on desktops, and more

Mattermost 5.16 includes new features that will increase team productivity and improve security:

• Guest accounts – collaborate with contractors, consultants, and customers securely by creating guest accounts with limited permissions (Enterprise Edition) 
• Built-in Plugin Marketplace – accelerate workflows by extending Mattermost with integrations discovered in a new built-in Plugin Marketplace
• Simplified installation – get Mattermost up and running on users’ computers in less time thanks to group policies and MSI installer support
• Desktop away status – let colleagues know you’re online even when you’re not active inside the Mattermost app 

Try these new features by downloading Mattermost 5.16 today. Since it includes security updates, upgrading is recommended.

Thanks for all community contributions this month and in particular our 5.16 MVP, Paulo Bittencourt, who submitted five pull requests, including implementing validation of a plugin’s API version. This brings his total lifetime contributions to Mattermost up to five. Thank you, Paulo!

One more reminder: Support for IE11 is officially deprecated with Mattermost 5.16. Find more information here.

Collaborate securely with people outside your organization

Today, more and more companies are working with contractors and consultants on a regular basis. At the same time, you might prefer communicating with your customers and vendors over Mattermost instead of coordinating via email.

With new guest accounts available to Enterprise Edition customers, admins can now create guest user accounts that can only access the specific channels they’ve been invited to join. Guests are not able to find and join public channels. They also can’t launch direct messages or group chats with users who are not in the channels they have access to.

Guests are easy to identify with a badge that’s displayed next to their names and in their profiles. For more information, read this blog post.

Discover integrations directly inside Mattermost

Admins can now easily discover plugins for applications like Jira, Jenkins, and GitHub in a new built-in Plugin Marketplace accessible via the main menu of the client app.

The new marketplace features plugins that have been verified by the Mattermost team. Currently, the new marketplace only highlights plugins developed internally, while plugins developed by our community can be found at integrations.mattermost.com.

Head over here to learn more.

Streamline the installation process with an MSI installer (beta)

It’s now even easier and faster to install Mattermost on your users’ computers thanks to group policy (GPO) and MSI installer support, currently a beta feature. 

Now, the Mattermost desktop app can be installed in the program files directory that is accessible to any user who shares a computer instead of a specific account. This feature is particularly beneficial for large organizations and can be used to remotely deploy Mattermost over the network to Windows machines (depending on deployment infrastructure).

Admins also have the option to configure the following Group Policies:

• Enabling or disabling the ability to add and remove servers
• Enabling or disabling a default server list

When these policies are enabled, new users won’t have to enter the server URL during onboarding. They also won’t be able to change the server URL once they’ve logged into Mattermost. 

Huge thanks to our community, and William Gathoye in particular, for helping with this feature!

For installation guides, go here. To learn more about the defined Group Policies, read this doc.

Improve team collaboration with a new desktop away status

Let your colleagues know you’re still online when you’re using your computer but are not active in Mattermost with a new away status that ships with v4.3 of our desktop app.

For more, read our docs. 

Mattermost no longer supports IE11

In July, we announced that—starting with 5.16—Mattermost would no longer support IE11 because the browser hasn’t kept pace with evolving web standards. 

Security updates for Mattermost 5.15, the last regular release that offers IE11 support, will continue to be made until December 15, 2019.

If your organization uses Mattermost on IE11, you need to migrate to a supported browser—like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge. 

For more information on what inspired this decision, head over to our forum.

Thank you to our contributors

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Install or upgrade Mattermost

New to Mattermost? Download it for free or sign up for a demo to learn more.

Find help updating to the latest version of Mattermost here. 

For more help on configuring Mattermost, please review our administrator’s guide.

Enterprise E10 and E20

Mattermost Enterprise E10 and E20 are commercial versions of Mattermost designed for high-trust organizations and include upgrade and installation support. For more information on features and pricing, visit mattermost.com/pricing.