AI Copilot, Voice Call Updates, and Admin Reporting Enhancements
It’s been quite a while since we last published content, but the Product Design team at Mattermost has been working hard on a wide array of explorations. In this issue, we’re showcasing recent design explorations in AI features, voice conferencing enhancements, and admin reporting improvements.
These ideas may not be in the product yet, but we’re actively working on some of these solutions, so keep an eye on the release notes.
Mattermost AI Copilot
AI is everywhere. In nearly every digital product, AI tools are now offered to help generate content, summarize large amounts of information, or visualize creative imagery from simple text prompts. The now-familiar “sparkle” icon has become a widely used symbol representing AI features.
As we’ve been exploring AI tools in Mattermost, we’ve chosen to adopt these emerging conventions. We’ve leveraged the sparkle icon and the term ‘Copilot’ because we feel they represent what AI should feel like—a magical assistant supporting you in the captain’s chair.
One of the major differences Mattermost offers is configuration flexibility. Most SaaS products are opinionated about the LLM (Large Language Model) they use and don’t offer flexibility. The AI solutions we’re building allow workspace administrators to configure the LLM of their choice with the appropriate access controls. That’s a massive difference for our customers who rely on the safety of their data.
The AI Copilot plugin for Mattermost is currently in Beta, but we’re working towards releasing it for general availability very soon.
Here’s a preview of some of the things we’ve been recently designing.
Quick access to AI Copilot from anywhere
Access AI Copilot any time from the apps bar (far right pane). Click the icon to open the AI Copilot panel and begin chatting with the bot. Ask AI to brainstorm ideas for you, write a report for you, or get answers about almost anything.
Your chat history with AI Copilot is retained in a history view so you can return to it at any time.
Multi-model configuration
Not only will admins have the ability to choose the model they want, they will also be able to configure multiple models in their workspace so they can be used for different purposes. Some models are better at image generation, while others are better at summarization.
Once an admin configures the models, end-users can choose their preferred AI model when interacting with AI Copilot.
Summarization capabilities
With AI Copilot, you can reduce the time it takes to get caught up by leveraging the summarization capabilities. Get summaries of new messages in a channel, threaded conversations, or meeting recordings.
AI-powered search
AI’s superpower is processing large amounts of information, so it’s naturally suited to searching a data-rich workspace. We’re working on an AI-powered search that will enable a smart, context-aware search where you can ask questions about content across your workspace. Ask “What’s happening on Project X this week?” and AI will do the work to find sources of information across the channels you have access to and return contextual answers. Those sources will also be shared in the results so you know exactly where the information came from.
AI-generated checklists
For those familiar with our Playbooks product, we’re also thinking about ways to integrate AI into automating checklists and status updates. Imagine being able to work with AI to automatically build a checklist based on your processes and then use that as a template to ensure you’re following standard processes.
These are just a few explorations we’ve been working on to incorporate AI into the collaboration experience. We have a lot more ideas in the works that we’ll aim to share in future issues.
Updates to the Calls Experience
The Calls plugin (currently in Beta) comes bundled with Mattermost and offers a highly integrated experience for voice conferencing and screen-sharing in channels and direct messages. We’ve been working on many improvements to this experience including call recording, transcription, live captioning, and controls for call hosts. As we get closer to v1.0, These improvements will round out the feature set.
Recording, transcription, and live captions
Those using the Calls plugin can already take advantage of the new recording and transcription capabilities. When a call is recorded, transcription starts automatically and is included as part of the package of files created from a call recording.
And coming soon, we’ll be releasing ‘live captions’ which will provide call participants with the ability to show text captions of the spoken content in real-time.
Host controls
In asynchronous meetings, there are times when meeting hosts need the ability to manage participants and control microphones or screen-sharing to lead a call effectively. We are actively designing and developing solutions that will offer the following capabilities to meeting hosts:
- Mute or unmute participants
- Stop participants’ screen sharing
- Lower hands
- Transfer hosts
- Remove participants
These controls can be accessed from the participant grid in the popout call view and the participant list. This provides quick access for hosts to manage participants regardless of the context they are currently in.
For the mobile experience, a new people button is added to access the participants list. From here hosts can manage participants. The host can also tap on anyone in the participant grid in the main call view to access host controls.
Workspace reporting improvements
The final update in this issue provides admins with a powered-up reporting view of their workspace. The reporting available in Mattermost’s system console has historically shown metrics as point-in-time measurements with limited ability to see trends over time. Because of this, admins haven’t had enough visibility into adoption and usage within their organization. With the improvements we’ve been working on, we hope to change that.
User statistics
The redesigned users page in the system console offers many enhancements that aim to make workspace admins’ lives easier. The new view offers more filtering options to help identify which teams are most active and how things have changed over time.
The interface has also been given a facelift with improved legibility and clarity. Users can configure the data tables to select the columns that are most relevant to their needs and sort by those columns.
System statistics
We have also been working on design improvements for the system statistics view. This exploration is in earlier stages, but we hope to offer admins greater visibility into workspace activity across channels and users. Admins will be able to filter the statistics and gain insights about activity over time.
Between the explorations in AI, the voice call updates, and the admin reporting enhancements shared in this issue, we hope you see some valuable explorations and can see how these might fit into your daily collaboration in Mattermost. Let us know what you think.
If you enjoyed this, give it a clap here on Medium. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on this issue and what you’d like to see in the future. Please share feedback with us!
