New to Communities: Events and Replies in Announcement Groups

Since launching Communities, it’s been exciting to see how people with common interests – neighborhoods, school associations, hobbyists and more – use the feature to keep groups that belong together connected and organized. To help bring communities even closer together, we’re introducing a new way for people to organize events on WhatsApp, and launching organized replies to Announcement Groups so members can respond to important updates from admins.

With events it’s now easier for people to plan their get togethers directly in WhatsApp, whether it’s setting up a virtual meeting or birthday dinner. Anyone can create an event and others can respond so the whole group knows who is coming. Guests can also find the event in the group’s information page, and those going will get an automatic notification when it’s getting close. Events are coming to groups that belong to a Community first, and will roll out to all groups over the coming months.

We’re also bringing replies to Announcement Groups, so admins can hear from their members while keeping these groups an easy place to catch up on what’s happening in your Community. Replies are grouped together and minimized so you can see what others have said in context, and notifications are muted for everyone.

Over the next few months, we’ll keep rolling out new features to Communities and groups so people have more tools to keep their lives organized on WhatsApp. We’ll share more here along with our WhatsApp Channel directly in the app.