The content of this site is also available in other languages: Deutsch
With Helmholtz Matrix successfully launched as our new, modern collaboration platform, the transition from Mattermost is entering its final phase. As previously announced, Mattermost will be retired from the Helmholtz Cloud in mid-July 2026, and team creation in Mattermost has already been disabled for regular users since April 24, 2026.
To support a smooth and data-protection-compliant migration, we are pleased to announce that the Mattermost Archiver Plugin is now available for all Helmholtz Mattermost users.
Preserve Your Chat History: Use the Mattermost Archiver Plugin
The Mattermost Archiver Plugin is a self-service tool that lets team and channel administrators export their Mattermost conversations, including message history and attachments, into downloadable ZIP archives.
A user guide with step-by-step instructions is available.
⚠️ Important: Exported ZIP files often contain sensitive or confidential information (e.g., personal data, internal discussions). Please treat these archives with the same care as your original chat data and store them securely according to your center’s data protection guidelines.
Who Can Use the Plugin?
- Team administrators can export their entire teams (including all channels) or individual team channels.
- Channel administrators can export their specific channels.
- Members of direct or group messages can export those conversations.
- Non-admins – Contact your Mattermost team admin or support@hifis.net in case your admin is not available anymore.
How to Migrate Successfully
- If you haven’t done already, get yourself a matrix account, as described in our getting-started guide and save your recovery key immediately.
- Recreate your teams and channels in Matrix.
- More details in our How-to guide.
- Invite your team members to the new Matrix spaces and rooms.
- More details in our How-to guide.
- In Mattermost, export your data using the Archiver Plugin. Once the export is complete, set the affected channels to read-only to prevent new messages from being lost.
- Publish the archived Mattermost data for future reference.
- Upload the archive to a data-protection-compliant service approved by your organisation, e.g. Sync&Share.
- Add a link to the archive in the corresponding Matrix space description or room topic.
- Please note that, for consistency, you should enable the “New members can see history” option in the room settings. Otherwise, users joining the room later will be able to access the Mattermost archive but not the earlier Matrix conversation history.
If long-term preservation of chat history is important to your team, please note that messages and files in Helmholtz Matrix are only retained for 3 years. Consider periodically exporting important Matrix conversations and storing them together with the Mattermost archive in a suitable long-term storage location.
Where to Get Help
- 📖 Documentation: Matrix User Guides
- 💬 Community: Join the Helmholtz Matrix Community to ask questions and share experiences
- 📧 Support: Contact our team at support@hifis.net
- 🎥 Open Hour: Attend our weekly Matrix Open Hour every Friday at 10:00 AM (Video conference, Meeting ID: 620 6808 2608, Code: 030485)
