Chat channels
Set up Mattermost
A Mattermost bot your team DMs or @mentions — the self-hosted option where nothing leaves your network: the assistant connects out to your Mattermost server, which never needs to reach this deployment, so no public URL is needed anywhere.
Before you start
- A Mattermost bot account and its token: System Console → Integrations → Bot Accounts (Integrations → Bot Accounts on older versions), create a bot and copy the token shown — the whole platform-side setup, about two minutes. The token is write-only here, never shown again after saving.
- Chat channels → Mattermost: enter the Server URL (the address your team opens Mattermost on), the Bot token, and choose the behaviour “When @mentioned in a channel”. Create, then Test — the result reads “Connected to Mattermost as @… — people can DM it right away.”
- Nothing to wire on the platform side — the checklist says “This channel connects out by itself”. DM the bot; for channels, add the bot to the channel and @mention it.
- Manage people: choose a person and enter their Mattermost username or email, Add person — looked up on your server instantly (“Mattermost could not find …” if it doesn't exist).
How people use it
Direct messages are always personal and private; /new starts a fresh conversation, /help lists the commands. In a channel the bot answers only when @mentioned, and the reply lands as a thread reply under the message that asked, where everyone in the channel sees it. “When @mentioned in a channel” decides what those answers use — the asker's own access, guest access groups only, or off, which ignores channel mentions entirely. Replies carry the answer's short form with its [n] markers, cut at 3,900 characters; the Sources line beneath links into the asker's own web chat when a public base URL is set in Settings, or lists the cited documents otherwise.
Access
Three ways in, and the person does nothing in any of them: add them by username or email in Manage people; let the match happen by itself — the bot token reads a sender's Mattermost profile, and an email matching an account here links them on their first message (“You're set up — your own document access applies”); or let them link themselves with a one-time code from “Link messaging apps” in the web chat, sent to the bot as a DM (valid ten minutes). Anyone else is a guest: in a DM they're told how to link unless guest access groups are open, in which case they read from those groups; in a channel they're simply not answered.
The bot token is shown once, at creation — Mattermost never displays it again, so a lost token means creating a new bot account. Test fails when the server rejects the token, or with “not a valid server URL” when the address lacks https://. Disabling the channel stops the listening within seconds and keeps its setup and history.
Last updated 20 Sep 2026