Group Integration¶
By default, all teams and channels in Mattermost are either fully public or private. Public teams can be joined by anybody (including non-CERN people); private teams are joinable only using the invite link or by being added manually.
To make things easier, we have installed a custom plugin that allows to link a team/channel with an egroup, allowing people in that egroup to join such a channel on their own.
This only works in the Web and Desktop clients as the mobile Mattermost apps do not support plugins.
Info
If you want to automatically synchronize your team or channel members with an egroup, please check the relevant FAQ entry about how to set this up.
As a user who wants to join a restricted team¶
In the main menu (icon with three horizontal lines), click "Join Restricted Teams".
This will go through an authentication flow which is usually transparent, but if you haven't logged in to CERN SSO recently you may need to do so again.
Afterwards, a dialog appears showing you all teams you can join based on your current group membership. Clicking a team will add you to it immediately.
Info
Due to technical limitations in Mattermost, you need to be a member of some team before you can use this functionality!
As a user who wants to join a restricted channel¶
In the main menu (icon with three horizontal lines), click "Join Restricted Channels". Make sure you are currently in the team containing the channel.
This will go through an authentication flow which is usually transparent, but if you haven't logged in to CERN SSO recently you may need to do so again.
Afterwards, a dialog appears showing you all channels you can join based on your current group membership. Clicking a channel will add you to it immediately.
As a Team Admin who wants to use this in their team¶
In the team settings make sure your team has "Allow any user with an account on this server to join this team" set to "No" (this is the default, but check anyway).
Then, from any channel of the team use the slash command /cern team-group XXX with XXX being the
name of the egroup. You will get a message indicating that the group has been set.
To remove the link between the team and a group again, use /cern team-group *.
Info
Due to technical limitations in Mattermost, users need to be a member of some team before they can join a team using this feature.
If the team is for a department/group/etc. and likely to be the first team a newcomer will join, you may want to send the usual team invitation link to them during your onboarding procedures so they can join the team without having to use the self-join feature.
Warning
There is no automated synchronization with this feature, i.e. people who have been removed from the egroup WILL NOT be automatically removed from the team! However, we can set up an automated synchronization for this. See the FAQ entry for details.
As a Channel Admin who wants to use this in their channel¶
Make sure your channel is private (see the FAQ in case it isn't).
Then, while in the channel you want to link to a group, use the slash command
/cern channel-group XXX with XXX being the name of the egroup. You will get a message indicating
that the group has been set.
To remove the link between the channel and a group again, use /cern channel-group *.
Team admins can use the /cern list-channels command to get a list of all channels in the current
team that have groups set.
Warning
There is no automated synchronization at the moment, i.e. people who have been removed from the egroup WILL NOT be automatically removed from the channel! However, we can set up an automated synchronization for this. See the FAQ entry for details.