Element Pro: Element X, built specifically for the workplace

Element is focused on providing sovereign, secure and interoperable communications for the workplace; especially governments and public sector organisations. 

To date, this has centred on providing an enterprise-grade backend; Element Server Suite Pro. It gives end-user organisations (and the hosters that support them) everything they need to safely administrate end-to-end encrypted real time communications in line with corporate norms and compliance requirements.

Now we’re delighted to launch a dedicated frontend client that furthers support for public sector and workplace use. Element Pro is designed to operate in conjunction with Element Server Suite Pro to deliver a complete solution for the workplace. Element Pro is included with Element Server Suite Pro subscriptions.

As one might expect, therefore, the additional features that go into Element Pro are specific to workplace use. New features that are more general will still also be made available in normal open-source Element apps. 

So what does Element Pro bring to the party?

In-app server-configured brand colouring

Element Pro enables the end-user organisations to reflect their brand colouring within the app (Android, iOS, Web and Desktop). Controlled within Element Server Suite Pro, your admin function can specify your exact brand colour and automagically Element green turns into your organisation’s brand colour.

The app itself - the icon and overall name - remains Element Pro but once inside it carries the corporate colour, even including the subtle bloom styling.

Whitelabelled Element for large deployments

Many large public sector organisations, such as NATO’s NI2CE Messenger, need to use their own branded apps (Android, iOS, Web and Desktop). Having the end-user organisation’s brand and name on the app icon helps maintain and communicate full digital sovereignty. It also gives employees (or invited partners) confidence that they are downloading and using the correct app.

However history has repeatedly shown that 3rd party forks of Element incur an enormous cost in maintenance, keeping them in sync with the ever-improving upstream features and critical security improvements.

So we’ve designed Element Pro to enable whitelabelled apps to stay supported and 100% up-to-date with the upstream Element Pro app, radically easing maintenance and app store management. The result is a self-branded app, but with continuous maintenance and updating handled by Element.

The service is at an additional cost, making it applicable only for larger deployments.

Mobile device management (MDM)

Element Pro enables the organisation to control how the frontend operates on the devices employees use.

The Element Pro app will determine the account provider (your Element Server Suite Pro deployment) to connect to from your MDM configuration. This saves you from telling all your users which account provider to use and to manually type it in.

Once Element Pro and Element Server Suite Pro are connected, configuration is controlled by the server-side to manage how the app operates according to the IT function’s preferences. 

Certificate pinning

Certain environments require TLS certificate pinning, a security practice where an application hardcodes a specific server certificate or public key to ensure it only communicates with the intended server. Element Pro supports certificate pinning when used with Element Server Suite Pro.

Analytics and error reporting

Element Pro supports the routing of analytics and error reporting (aka ‘rageshakes’) to the end-user organisation, rather than Element. Rageshakes are bug reports which can be done from settings but, famously, also kick in if someone shakes their mobile device.

Keeping rageshakes internal is of importance to security-minded organisations, who may wish to vet capture data before enabling access to an outside party such as Element. Rageshakes can, of course, be resolved internally but might be resolved by Element depending on the SLA in place.

It is also of particular use for our air-gapped customers, for obvious reasons.

Enhanced anti-virus and data loss protection

Element Pro also supports our server-side content scanning, which enables anti-virus and data loss protection as would be fairly standard for most security-conscious corporate email systems.

Easy installation from the usual app stores, or your internal provisioning platforms

The Element Pro app, even when whitelabelled, can be downloaded from the usual app stores as the end-user organisation’s configuration is controlled on the organisation’s server-side (Element Server Suite Pro). 

Provisioning from a public app store is often preferable for large government and public sector organisations that might be looking to support end-users spread across separate organisations or large numbers of remote, nomadic end-users. 

Taking advantage of its Enterprise Mobile Management capabilities, Element Pro can also be made available from internal enterprise stores.

Group and role access for organisation-wide chat structures

Element already provides excellent hierarchical spaces, but in Element Pro these really come into their own by linking space membership to enterprise group membership with Element Server Suite Pro.

Want to avoid journalists getting accidentally invited to your sensitive chats? No problem - enable Group Sync in Element Server Suite Pro, and watch as the Spaces in Element Pro magically synchronise with your Active Directory, LDAP, or SCIM datasource.

On joining the organisation, a new employee can simply login through SSO and open a complete organisation-wide chat environment that’s tailored to their job role and access rights. Likewise leavers, joiners and movers are managed centrally to ensure that only the right people are in the right rooms.

And a quick peek at some future features!

Modules interface

Element Pro will soon offer simplified custom functionality with the introduction of a modules interface and a range of optional features. We’ll share more on this as the feature becomes available.

Additional policy control

Another planned feature is client-side policy control to complement the rules-based federation provided by secure border gateways (SBG). Element Pro lets enterprises enforce policy restrictions on end-users to match the ruleset in the SBG.

The magic of Element Server Suite Pro

Element Pro (frontend client) takes advantage of server-side configurations controlled through Element Server Suite Pro (backend platform).

The Element Server Suite Pro can be used to power any Matrix-based deployment (including air-gapped), and is of course interoperable with any Matrix-based frontend.

Element Server Suite Pro provides a whole range of enterprise-grade benefits. First and foremost it provides an ultra reliable high performance deployment that requires minimal maintenance as a result of Long-Term Support versions and regular updates from Element. Based on our advanced homeserver Synapse Pro, ESS Pro scales to support millions of end-users, and can also provide multi-tenant deployments to support hundreds of thousands of small hosts.

ESS Pro provides a range of enterprise-grade features including Advanced Identity and Access Management, auditing and record keeping, moderation and flexible rules-based federation.

The wonderful world of Matrix

Having highlighted just how well the combination of Element Pro and Element Server Suite Pro serves workplace compliant messaging, it’s worth remembering why Element is so committed to the Matrix open standard. 

Matrix ensures that end-user organisations can select any Matrix-based server-side solution (including building their own from community software, such as https://github.com/element-hq) and combine it with any Matrix-based frontend client. 

Even better, if desired, an end-user organisation can easily federate with other organisations who are also using Matrix-based systems. Each and every end-user organisation in the federation is free to mix and match their Matrix-based frontend and backend as the open standard ensures interoperability.

If that sounds a little like email, it’s because that also operates from a standard that everyone uses (SMTP), leaving end-user organisations free to choose from a variety of vendors without having to worry about whether they can email separate organisations using different email providers.

This is, you’ll note, totally different from traditional proprietary software models - such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Wire and others - that seek to exploit a network effect by deliberately locking out competition from interoperable vendors.

By handing end-user organisations the power to pick and choose their technology stack based on a healthy, competitive open standard, Matrix delivers the digital sovereignty that governments need.

We believe the combination of Element Pro and Element Server Suite Pro is the best possible solution for government and public sector communication. But we’re totally committed to digital sovereignty, and make it easy for end-user organisations to change, bend or tweak their Element deployment with any other part of the Matrix universe including open source based in-house development.

Discover the offerings from Element Pro and Element Server Suite Pro:

Element provides sovereign, secure and interoperable communications to governments and large public sector organisations. 

Most workplace features are provided by Element Server Suite Pro (ESS Pro), our powerful server-side solution that delivers outstanding performance, reliability and enterprise-grade functionality. ESS Pro can be used to support pretty much any Matrix-based frontend client.

Element Pro brings additional workplace features and is only available as a part of a subscription to ESS Pro.

The table below provides a breakdown of workplace features, and whether the feature is delivered by ESS Pro or Element Pro in conjunction with ESS Pro.