Hello. Last week I have created a mattermost instance (hosted on cloud.mattermost.com) using the free version for my classmates to chat on due to some issues we had with Google hangouts. While I am happy with the setup and got it working (the fact that I could set up login with our school Google accounts was great), I do have a few questions?
I noticed that it is free for up 2 10 users. What defines a user in this context? Does it include bot accounts?
Since I am using this for school, but not necessarily for a class, not for a whole school, would I still qualify for an academic mattermost license?
Are there anything I should be aware of with using mattermost for this usecase?
I do want to mention that this is for a fairly small class (around 15 students).
There are some plugins (such as the mattermost welcome bot) that I would like to use with my mattermost instance. Would I have to self host them, or is there a way I can add them to my hosted instance?
While you mentioned that you have it hosted, can you please confirm if you were referring to the Mattermost Cloud or rather the self hosted instance?
Meanwhile, allow me to answer the questions that you have here:
An active user will take up a license seat. If the user is deactivated, it does not count towards the license and bot accounts does not count as mentioned in the documentation.
For this one, I would recommend you to go through the official process and fill up the form here if you are referring to Mattermost Server AKA self hosted
Nothing specific in general but if you can share how you are using Mattermost on your end, we might be able to suggest some integrations to further improve and enhance the user experience.
You can install most plugins directly from the Plugin Marketplace without the need to self host it. May I know if you have any specific plugins in mind besides the Welcome Bot?
That’s what I thought. I didn’t think to look for Documentation. Thanks for the link.
I’m still referring to the cloud hosted server. I had found that link. It says 20 staff members (besides my teacher, there aren’t any staff) which is why I asked. As far as I know, I don’t think I’ll need to upgrade so that doesn’t matter much right now.
We are just using it as a replacement for hangouts (if I can convince my classmates to use it). I did set up sso with google, and used sameroom.io to bridge to groupme. I am attempting to bridge to hangouts, but that probaly isn’t going to happen.
I found the plugins marketplace (I would’ve found it if I looked earlier) and found the welcome.bot, but I don’t know how to configure it without access to the congig.json file. I think I’ll switch to matterbridge from sameroom. I’ll be sure to post back if I have any questions.
I was away for a bit. Apologies for the radio silence.
Tapping back into the cloud hosted server you mentioned, I believe that you are referring to Mattermost Cloud. As of now, I don’t think there are any explicit information about academic Mattermost Cloud license but if you are interested, I can reach out to the team on this to get more information on it.
If I miss out on anything, please let me know so I can assist you further. Thanks.
Thanks. I would appreciate it if you would reach out to them. I am willing to make some compromises if necessary. Right now, the restriction I am facing is the max number of users.
I am currently lost on how to configure the welcome.bot plugin without access to the config file as there is no web interface afaik. I would appreciate it if you could help me set that up.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and reply to this thread. I hope that it can be of use to others as well.
No worries. I have reached out to the team on the Mattermost Cloud Academic license (if it is available) and report back to you once I have more information that.
Meanwhile, the Welcome Bot limitation is definitely something that we can bring up to the developers.
