Mattermost Pro Tips: How to get the most from group notifications in Mattermost
Want to give your messages a boost? Learn how to use group notifications to amplify messages in Mattermost and reach the right members of your team every time.
One of the great things about channel-based collaboration is the ability to reach multiple team members all at once. Group notifications are an essential tool in your Mattermost communication toolkit and are a great way to amplify your messages and ensure that they reach the right audience. Learn how to use group notifications more effectively in this installment of the Mattermost Pro Tips series!
- What are group notifications and how do I use them?
- What’s the difference between @here, @all, and @channel?
- When should I use group notifications?
- Creating custom groups for targeted notifications
What are group notifications and how do I use them?
Group notifications are a specific kind of notification that pings large groups of people on the team. Adding a group handle, such as @all, to your message ensures that everyone in a specific group or channel will be notified of your message, depending on how they’ve configured their own notifications. Every Mattermost environment comes equipped with a few general-purpose group handles, including @all, @here, and @channel, but you can create your own custom group handles as well!
As with @username mentions, you can use @ in your Mattermost text input box to bring up a list of groups that can be used in your Channels.
What’s the difference between @here @all and @channel?
Using either @all or @channel will notify everyone in the Channel, regardless of whether they’re currently online or not.
@here will only notify Channel members who are currently online. If you work with a team spread across multiple time zones, this can be especially useful—ensuring that your teammates aren’t disturbed outside of work hours.
When should I use group notifications?
It depends on your organization’s communication culture. If you’re using group notifications for every message you send, your team is more likely to experience notification overload and miss or ignore important messages. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them at all!
For highly urgent, time-sensitive messages that are applicable to the entire channel, using group notifications can be an effective way to give your message a boost — for example “Today is the last day to enable 2-factor authentication for your GitHub account!” is a message your team won’t want to miss.
If you’re pinging a channel that’s generally pretty quiet, using @channel can help prompt teammates who aren’t monitoring that channel regularly.
Creating custom groups for targeted notifications
Found a bug and need to let the QA team know? Have a security question, but not sure who on the security team will know the answer? Want to give kudos to the whole mobile app dev team for a great release? Custom group handles help your organization contact specific teams or groups without having to remember (and type out) a dozen individual user names every time.
This is especially helpful for growing or dynamic teams – new hires can be added to a handle by team admins to get them looped into key conversations more efficiently. Custom groups are currently a beta feature, but it’s one worth trying out!
Get more out of Mattermost with more Mattermost Pro Tips
Want to learn more? Whether you’re new to the Mattermost platform or are just looking for ways to enhance your Mattermost experience, our Mattermost Pro Tips series will help you dig into Mattermost for a better collaboration experience.
