You will need a 64-bit Ubuntu server and access to an account with sudo privileges. Mattermost prebuilt binaries are available only on a 64-bit platform. If you are running 32-bit Ubuntu, you will need to compile Mattermost from source. We will use MySQL as a database for Mattermost. I will use the same server for the database and Mattermost. You may want to separate these services on two different servers for better performance.

Create a separate MySQL user account and database for Mattermost. I will use the lowercase mattermost as a database name as well as a username.

Additionally, you will need a proxy if you are planning to load balance multiple Mattermost instances or have a secure setup with SSL enabled.

You will need a separate storage directory for shared multimedia contents. You should use a separate large volume specifically assigned for this purpose. Make sure that the directory is owned by the current user. To keep things simple, I will use a data directory under the current user's home, that is, /home/ubuntu/mattermost-data.

Mattermost is based on Golang as a backend and React, a JavaScript framework, for the frontend. Golang is capable of creating self-sufficient independent binaries. We will download the prebuilt package available on GitHub. As of writing this, the latest stable version is 1.3.0:

Mattermost is all about team communication and collaboration. When you access the Mattermost server for the first time and sign up with your email address, you will get an option to create a new team or join existing teams.:

To join an existing team, you need to submit your email address and Mattermost will reply with links to the team page where you are a member. If you have not yet created a team, simply proceed with signup. On signup, after you have entered your email address, you will be asked to select a team name and URI or a web address for your team page. Enter a good name for your team and click Next:

On the next page, you will be asked to choose a URL for your team page. The box should be pre-filled with a suggested URL. Feel free to change it if you have a better idea:

Once you are done with signup, you will be greeted with a welcome message and a simple walkthrough of the Mattermost service. Once you are done with the introduction, you will land on the Town Square channel. This is a prebuilt public channel accessible to all users. There's one more prebuilt channel named Off-Topic listed on the left side menu. You can create your own public channel, create a Private Group, or have a one-to-one chat through Direct Messages.

Before you start using the service, invite some more users to your team. Click on the Invite others to this team link or click on your username at the top left and then select the Invite New Member link. Here, you can enter the email and name of a single member to invite them. Optionally, you can get a team invite link, which can be shared with a group:

The username menu on the left gives you some more options. You can update team settings, manage team members, and even create a new team altogether. You will need to be a team admin to access these options. If you are part of multiple teams, then you can see an option to switch to a different team.

The team members will receive all communication in public channels. A user can decide to be a part of a channel or leave it and not receive any communication from a specific channel. Other options are Private group and Direct messages. In private groups, you can communicate and share with selected people and not the entire team, whereas in a direct message, as the name suggests, it is a one-to-one chat.

Every single message shared using Mattermost is archived and stored on the Mattermost server. Users can access their respective communication history and even search for a specific message, or documents from a specific user. Shared documents also become part of the archive and are available for later use. The search menu is available at the top-right corner of the screen.

The first user to sign up on Mattermost will get additional admin rights and can access the System Console (from the username menu) to configure system settings and set global defaults. Here, you can configure the database, set your email server and configure email notifications, configure default team settings, check system logs, and much more. When using Mattermost in production mode, make sure that you have configured the SMTP service under email settings and enabled email notifications. You can also enable email verification where account activation will need a user to verify their email address.

The Mattermost service provides an option to integrate with various other popular services. One such service we have worked with is the GitLab server. While working with Git, we have seen the installation process of the GitLab omnibus package. The omnibus package contains Mattermost as a configurable component. If you have GitLab installed through the Omnibus package, check its configuration to enable the Mattermost service. Alternatively, you can configure GitLab integration from the Mattermost settings as well.

From version 1.1, Mattermost added support for web hooks to integrate with external services. Mattermost supports both incoming and outgoing hooks. Incoming hooks can pull events from external services and vice versa. These hooks are compatible with Slack APIs and the tools developed to work with Slack should work with self-hosted Mattermost as well.

Read more about Mattermost by following these resources: