A few (probably dumb/simple) questions from a noob

We are looking at using mattermost in our organization, and have been very impressed with the functionality and polish so far.

I’ve poked around the forum and the docs a bit, and I may have missed the answers, but I still have a few questions:

  • how do you archive / purge old data? maybe I want to clear conversations in specific channels over a year old? Can that be performed?

  • Manual setting of user status - am I correct that this is not possible?

  • Additionally It appears there are only 3 statuses right now: online, away, and offline. No other statuses are available, and no way to only appear offline?

  • Announcement / Read only Channels - there is no way to make a channel that admins can write in, but all other users can only read, correct? is there any facility for system wide announcements then?

  • We want to restrict team invites to Admins only. I believe that is a feature set to be added in the future, am I correct about that?

I hope posting this is not “bad form”, as I say I’m new here.

Thank you!

Thanks @jimb! Very glad to hear.

Mattermost is designed as a continuous archive, not supported right now. Can you share more about how important this is? Messages from a year ago shouldn’t affect load times.

Not yet, there’s /online and /offline slash commands proposed in a design under review, these are feature changes where code contributions are welcome.

Correct, you can add a feature idea to be upvoted on this if there isn’t one already.

No permissions on channels right now, you can add a feature idea to be upvoted on this if there isn’t one already.

That said, Town Square is typically used for announcements and you can rename the channel to “Announcements Only”.

If someone on your team is over posting in the Announcements channel, it’s probably more a people problem than a software problem.

You can add a feature idea to be upvoted on this if there isn’t one already.

With regards to archive / removal of older data: not a deal breaker, but I can see a time where we would want to purge old discussions. Depending on the nature of some communications, older discussions may have little value, and only be a potential social or legal liability.

If someone on your team is over posting in the Announcements channel, it’s probably more a people problem than a software problem.

As I always say, good fences make good neighbors.

Even in testing we have seen some slack experienced users who as such are familiar with using these types of systems, accidentally posting in the wrong channel.

Thank you for the quick responses!