The internet is changing all aspects of business communication, and with more of us than ever working remotely, it’s a change that is accelerating. Messaging—the ability to synchronously communicate with teams, coordinating work and workflows—is at the center of this new mode of day-to-day business life. The importance of messaging tools—like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Mattermost—is well-known to those who have already made this shift.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, studies the fundamental structure of the universe by examining the behavior of subatomic particles using highly complex scientific instruments, including the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. In 2015, the research institute deployed Mattermost across the organization to consolidate messaging platforms while providing its community of researchers, scientists, and technologists with a self-hosted, secure messaging space.

In the first three installments in this series, you learned how to send and request data with outgoing webhooks, incoming webhooks, and slash commands. In this article, you learn how to do this with the Mattermost API. Setting up webhooks or slash commands in Mattermost is very easy. Using the Mattermost API requires a few more steps. At the same time, the API is way more versatile and powerful than the other methods. Once you have made your first connection to the API, you will love it!

Mattermost Cloud offers our trusted Mattermost self-managed collaboration platform as a software-as-a-service and removes the burden of administration. Organizations are adopting cloud strategies and moving to cloud software. There are costs associated with hosting and securing software, especially in a highly available environment. Deploying and maintaining a self-hosted environment requires expertise and an upfront investment of infrastructure.

Mattermost release v5.29 is generally available today. In addition to offering bug fixes for increased stability, the new quality release features the general availability of a pre-installed incident management application, channel moderation settings, and Mattermost Omnibus.