Background
The Mattermost chat service will be replaced by Matrix (see blogpost) soon - but Mattermost was not only used for chatting but also provided a Boards functionality which was also used by HIFIS internally e.g. for Service Recruiting (Service Idea Board) and Service Integration (Sprint Planning). Since Matrix doesn’t offer a Boards functionality it was time to think about where to transfer the existing Mattermost Boards.
There are two Helmholtz Cloud services which have an integrated Boards functionality: Helmholtz Codebase (GitLab) provided by HZDR and OpenProject provided by HZB.
Boards in Helmholtz Codebase
The Boards functionality in Helmholtz Codebase works with Issues/ the Issue Board. You can create an issue for every Board entry and display them when navigating to “Plan” > “Issue boards” in the menu on the left side. The issues are displayed in columns. The colums can be defined individually - e.g. by using labels for priority, status or anything you want to customize. Columns can be expanded or collapsed with one click to stay focused on the part of the issue board that is currently handled. When clicking on an issue, the details are displayed and you can edit, comment or add/remove labels. When clicking an issue, you can also drop it to another column, which will automatically update the labels/status accordingly.
Let’s have a look at how to get started with creating an Issue Board in Helmholtz Codebase in the next section.
How to create an Issue Board in Helmholtz Codebase
- Create a new project.
- Work out an issue template - which information do you want do get whenever a new issue is created?
- Add the issue template to your repository: there needs to be a folder “.gitlab/issue_templates” in the repository. In the folder you add a file “default.md” and define the content of the issue template in this file. As soon as committed, every newly created issue will be created using the default issue template as defined in the “default.md” file.
- For every old Board entry in Mattermost, create an Issue in your new Codebase project.
- You can use labels to sort your Issue Board, e.g. Status labels like “To Do”, “Doing” or Priority Labels. You can also add individual labels to your project.
- Go to “Plan” > “Issue Boards” to have a look at your Issue Board. You can customize the columns displayed (e.g. by adding columns for labels).
Comparison of Service Idea Board in Mattermost Boards and Codebase Issue Boards
To give you an idea of how transferred Boards look like in Helmholtz Codebase, you find screenshots of both the old Board in Mattermost (left side) and the new Board in Codebase (right side). The Board displayed is the Service Idea Board with each issue/card representing one service idea. The Board was sorted by priority in Mattermost, so corresponding labels were created in Codebase to enable the same structure in the new Board. There are less details displayed in the overview in Codebase than they were in Mattermost, but all details are included in the issue and can be read when clicking on a distinct issue.
Having a look at the details of each service idea in Mattermost (left side) and Codebase (right side) shows that the structure can be displayed in a quite similar way. You can use a table in Codebase to display the information that was former part of individual fields in Mattermost. It is of course also possible to add comments to each issue and “vote” for them using the “thumbs up”/”thumbs down” functionality.
By the way: feel free to visit the Service Idea Issue Board in Helmholtz Codebase and vote for the Service Ideas you require most!
Boards in OpenProject
Stay tuned - there is gonna be a second blogpost soon which reports about Boards in OpenProject and how the transfer from Mattermost Boards was done.
Backup of Mattermost Boards
To be sure that you do not lose any information formerly stored in Mattermost Board, you should back up your Mattermost Board. You can do that using the export functionality (to .csv or .board-archive). However, we suggest to check the Backups once exported to ensure that all information from the Board is actually included.
Changelog
- 2026-03-12: Add link to new service idea board in Helmholtz Codebase
