Matter Trial Guide for Slack

Welcome to your Matter trial! 🎉 The best trials follow a simple formula: set everything up on day one, send your first kudos, then let Matter run. Feedback Friday, Celebrations, and Surveys all work automatically, so a 30-minute setup today means you'll experience everything Matter has to offer over the next two weeks without lifting a finger.

Here's the game plan.

There are two common ways teams run a Matter trial:

Small immediate team (3–5 people): Your own team, plus whoever installed Matter (often IT). Install, add everyone to the channel right away, and start giving kudos. Perfect for moving fast.

Larger pilot group (20–30 people): An entire department, or a cross-section of users from different departments. For larger groups, we recommend configuring your workspace settings first (Steps 2–3 below), then adding your pilot group once everything is ready. It also helps to share the Member Training Video (Pro Plan Video, Basic Plan Video) with your pilot group so everyone hits the ground running.

Either way, Matter's member list automatically syncs with your Slack channel. Adding people to your Matter-connected Slack channel is all it takes.

First, install Matter in your Slack workspace and add Matter to a Slack channel.

➡️ Watch: Matter Installation Video

Important: Whoever installs Matter becomes the workspace owner. Anyone else helping run the trial (HR, People Ops, team leads) will need to be made a Matter admin to access workspace settings. This takes less than a minute:

➡️ How to add Matter admins

You can set up every feature in one sitting, then experience each one throughout your trial. Work through this checklist:

✅ Custom Kudos (Company Values): Add some of your company values as custom kudos to make recognition feel like yours from day one. ➡️ Kudos Guide | Video

✅ Celebrations: Add birthdays and work anniversaries. Pro tip: include at least one date that falls within your trial window so you see a celebration fire automatically! Note: Celebrations are set per member, so your pilot group needs to be in the channel first. Adding your pilot group later? Circle back to this step once they've joined. ➡️ Celebrations Guide | Video

✅ Feedback Friday: Enabled by default. Just confirm or adjust the settings (day, time, frequency) so your first automated recognition reminder lands the way you want. ➡️ Feedback Friday Guide | Video

✅ Rewards & Coins: Rewards are enabled by default, and teams that use them see record participation. Review the rewards catalog and coin settings. ➡️ Rewards Guide | Video

✅ Challenges: Set a challenge live. Our default challenges are great inspiration and a fast way to drive engagement during the trial. ➡️ Challenges Guide | Video

✅ Pulse Survey: Launch a pulse survey (once your pilot group is in the channel) so responses roll in during your trial and you can see the analytics in action. ➡️ Pulse Surveys Guide | Video

Once your pilot group is in the channel, send kudos to one person or several, with coins attached. This is the moment Matter clicks for everyone. A lively feed on day one shows your team exactly how Matter works, and you'll usually see people start sending kudos on their own before you say a word.

Encourage a few pilot members to redeem their coins for a reward, too. Experiencing Rewards firsthand is very different from just seeing them in a catalog.

With everything configured, Matter takes it from here:

This is Matter on autopilot — exactly how it works after a full rollout. 👏

You don't need to wait until day 14. Within the first week, you'll have plenty to evaluate:

Check your Analytics: See participation rates, kudos activity, and engagement across your pilot group. ➡️ Analytics Guide

Send a wrap-up survey: Use a Custom Employee Survey to collect qualitative feedback from your pilot group. A few suggested questions:

➡️ Employee Surveys Guide | Video

Share with your decision-maker: Your participation data and survey responses make the business case for a company-wide rollout, so bring them to your team's decision conversation.