Tips and tricks to increase productivity in Mattermost
Our customers are always looking for ways to work faster and more effectively inside Mattermost.
As a remote-first company, we spend most of our time collaborating inside Mattermost, and we’d like to think we’ve learned a thing or two about how to use Mattermost productively over the years.
Here are some of our favorite tips and tricks for getting things done on Mattermost. We hope these examples help your team achieve similar productivity gains.
Keyboard shortcuts
You can do a lot in Mattermost without leaving your keyboard.
If you only learn one Mattermost keyboard shortcut, let it be the shortcut to the list of shortcuts: CTRL + / (CMD + / on Mac and also accessible using /shortcuts).
While there are a ton of shortcuts, you’ll likely find yourself using some more than others. Here are a few of our favorites:
- Switch between channels: For faster navigation, you can switch between channels using
CTRL+KorCMD+Kon Mac. Once you hit the shortcut, you can either search channels by name or toggle between them using the up and down arrows.
- Switch between channels and direct messages: You can also use
ALT+UpandALT+Downto quickly move between channels and direct messages on the Left-Hand Sidebar (LHS).
- Filter to unread only: When you apply the Show Unread filter to the LHS, you can use
ALT+UpandALT+Downto jump between unread channels and direct messages. It’s a great way to quickly triage your Mattermost inbox and get caught up with everything.
- Respond to threads: For faster threaded replies, hit
SHIFT+Upin a channel or direct message, and the Right-Hand Sidebar (RHS) will automatically render with your cursor inside it.
- Switch between teams and servers: If you’re on multiple teams, you can move between them by hitting
CTRL+ALT+ the number of the team you want to move to. And if you’re on multiple servers, you can useCTRL+TABto jump between them.
Learn more about keyboard shortcuts in Mattermost.
Review recent mentions
You come back from vacation and log into Mattermost. There are so many messages, notifications, and unread channels to deal with. Where do you begin?
Click the @ button in the top right-hand corner of the Mattermost interface next to the search bar. A list of Recent Mentions will pop up, enabling you to quickly see when your teammates @mentioned you when you were away.
When you find messages that require your immediate attention, just click Jump next to the result to jump the center pane to the location of that message for more context.
Learn more about Mattermost mentions.
Modify search parameters
Maybe you forgot where you read an important message. Maybe you need information from a project that wrapped up six months ago. Or maybe you’re looking for a document that your colleague Susan sent you at some point in time.
Whatever the case may be, you can find the information you’re looking for faster by mastering the Mattermost search bar and memorizing the available search modifiers.
Learn more about searching on Mattermost.
Format messages with Markdown
One of the hardest parts about communicating via text is that it can be difficult to effectively convey emotions and intentions due to an absence of vocal tone and inflection.
Since 2015, Mattermost has supported Markdown, a lightweight markup language that makes it easy to write richly formatted text online.
Using Markdown helps you communicate more effectively on Mattermost—and might save you from having to jump on video calls or pick up the phone to clarify yourself further.
There are a ton of things you can do with Markdown; here’s a brief list of some of the capabilities you might end up using most often:
| Input | Output |
| *Mattermost* | Mattermost |
| **DevOps** | DevOps |
| [Mattermost](https://mattermost.com) | Mattermost |
| ## Large Heading | Large Heading |
| ### Smaller Heading | Smaller Heading |
| `code snippets` | code snippets |
| * Open source |
You can also use Markdown to type emojis:
Learn more about Markdown on Mattermost.
Create message templates
Let’s say you lead a standup meeting every week, and you use the same richly formatted Markdown message to provide helpful links, share meeting information, and post an agenda.
Instead of writing the same message from scratch every week, you can create a template and send it as a direct message to yourself. Then you can copy that template and paste it into the appropriate channel before each meeting, updating it with that week’s information.
Write to yourself
Speaking of writing to yourself, did you know that you could send yourself direct messages? This community-requested feature shipped with Mattermost v4.5 in December 2017.
You can use this functionality to prepare and test lengthy, informative messages before you post them publicly to make sure they’re crisp and contain the right links. You can also use it like a sticky note for your computer to store information you’ll need later.
Save posts to address them later
Someone sends you an important message or mentions you in a channel but you’re busy and can’t get to it right now. You read the message, get sucked back into your work, forget about the message, and keep plugging away. This happens all the time.
There’s an easy fix: Hover over the message in question and click the Save icon, which is wedged between the Add Reaction button and the Reply arrow.
Once you’ve saved a message, just click the Save icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Mattermost interface near the search bar. All of your saved messages will appear in the Right-Hand Sidebar.
After you’ve addressed the message, click the Save icon again to remove it from that list.
Configure notifications
No two people work the exact same way.
If you’re someone who uses Mattermost sparingly, you may want to configure Mattermost so that you get notifications for all activity.
If you’re someone who uses Mattermost extensively, you might want to configure Mattermost so that you only get notifications when someone direct messages or mentions you in a channel so you’re not flooded with notifications.
In addition to applying your notification preferences across the entire platform, you can also configure them on a channel-by-channel level.
Figure out how to make notifications work best for you, and get more done.
Learn more about configuring notifications in Mattermost.
Configure webhooks
Mattermost supports both incoming webhooks and outgoing webhooks, which enable you to easily integrate external applications into the server (assuming your admin allows this functionality).
Developers can configure Slack-compatible incoming webhooks to have external systems post content into Mattermost channels (e.g., tweets from a competitor going to a Compete channel).
They can also use outgoing webhooks to post messages to external systems based on trigger words (e.g., every post tagged #securityincident can be automatically routed to your ticketing system).
As a result, you’ll have to jump between platforms less frequently to fetch or post information. Since context switching can eat up as much as 80 percent of your productive time, this is no small feat.
Learn more about incoming webhooks and outgoing webhooks.
Use slash commands
Slash commands are similar to outgoing webhooks and are triggered by end users via text. There’s a slew of slash commands built into Mattermost, including:
| Slash commands | Description |
| /away | Set your status to away |
| /offline | Set your status to offline |
| /dnd | Set your status to Do Not Disturb |
| /collapse | Turn on auto-collapsing of image previews |
| /expand | Turn off auto-collapsing of image previews |
| /invite @{user} ~{channel-name} | Invite a user to a channel |
| /leave | Leave the current channel |
| /mute ~{channel} | Turn off notifications for the current channel or channel specified |
You can also extend Mattermost with integrations and/or create custom slash commands to give end users additional functionality. For example, the Mattermost Jira Plugin enables end users to transition Jira issues using slash commands (e.g., /jira assign EXT-20 john).
Learn more about Mattermost slash commands.
Extend the platform with plugins and integrations
Since Mattermost is an open source solution, you can easily extend the platform with server-side and client-side plugins and integrations to unlock additional capabilities and drive productivity gains.
Plugins enable you to do everything from customizing the user interface and launching tightly integrated services to automatically linking certain text and even intercepting and modifying text in flight to protect users from posting sensitive information (e.g., for PCI compliance purposes).
Learn more about Mattermost plugins, check out the Mattermost Integrations Directory to see what’s already available, and find out how to create plugins of your own.
Automate workflows with bots
Bots can also help you be more productive in Mattermost. From welcoming new users automatically and connecting two colleagues for a virtual coffee chat for team-building to taking actions on your behalf and monitoring and debugging Kubernetes resources, there’s no end to the number of ways you can use bots to work faster in Mattermost.
Learn more about bots and bot accounts in Mattermost.
Share your favorite Mattermost productivity tips!
Do you have a favorite shortcut, plugin, or workflow hack that makes your life in Mattermost a little easier? We’d love to hear it! Share your favorite productivity tips on the Mattermost Community server or on Twitter.
