Find, install, and manage plugins with Mattermost’s new Plugin Marketplace

For many organizations, Mattermost is valuable not just as a standalone messaging system for chatting with team members, but as a central system where conversations, tools, files, and workflows come together to help teams get work done. 

One of the most powerful ways to connect Mattermost with other tools and build more efficient workflows is through plugins, our system for extending and changing a Mattermost server’s capabilities. 

We believe that plugins are one of the most powerful tools your team can use to get more done. That’s why we’re excited to share our new Plugin Marketplace that makes it easier to find, install, and manage plugins.

Why plugins?

Plugins are one of the most powerful ways of extending Mattermost because they sit on the same server as Mattermost and have a variety of “superpowers” such as:

• Evaluating files and messages on their way to the database, before commit
• Hosting their own web server or HTTP API
• Changing certain aspects of the Mattermost UI

These powerful functions can be used to integrate external services into Mattermost. A popular example is our Jira plugin that lets users create a Jira ticket directly within the chat UI, which is accomplished using our plugin architecture.  

On the other hand, some plugins can add simple but powerful functionality to the user experience but don’t involve an integration with an external service. Examples of this include a remind-bot plugin or a plugin that allows users to change their Mattermost “status” text. 

How can I find plugins and integrations?

While the Mattermost server architecture has supported plugins since v5.2, there hasn’t been a single source for Mattermost plugins aside from searching GitHub and Google for the “mattermost-plugin” string. 

Over time, there have been different versions of plugins that have been forked or developed different functionality and it can be difficult to sort through the results to find the “right” Mattermost integration for your install.

As new plugins are listed in the marketplace they become available directly within the Mattermost server—the Plugin Marketplace is located within the Main Menu for System Administrators.  

Mattermost’s Plugin Marketplace makes finding and managing plugins easier than ever 

The Plugin Marketplace is a service hosted by Mattermost that is a central place to store the current versions of plugins that are available. The Marketplace server provides a list of compatible plugins with a particular Mattermost server version, which can then be displayed to Mattermost administrators who are looking for ways to extend their server’s ChatOps functionality.

The Plugin Marketplace allows for a smoother experience for administrators to discover, install, configure, and deploy plugins to their users. Administrators looking for a definitive source for the location of a plugin will start within their Mattermost instance now—instead of Google or GitHub.  

Mattermost-owned and developed plugins are being reviewed and listed first while community plugins will be listed after undergoing a review process. Administrators can choose if they want to install only Mattermost-developed plugins or want to include community plugins on their servers as well. 

Plugins are code-signed to ensure the code that ends up on the server is the same code that was reviewed and approved by Mattermost.

What is on the Plugin Marketplace right now?

The Plugin Marketplace for Mattermost servers was launched in 5.16 and currently supports 14 different plugins. Our most popular integrations—including WebEx, Zoom, Jira, Jenkins, and others—are all available on the Plugin Marketplace now. 

If you’re a system administrator of Mattermost, you can start finding plugins today via the System Console, or read more in our docs.