What you need to know
- WhatsApp brings two new handy features to Communities.
- While one can create events like Calendar apps, the other allows group admins to catch up quickly with organized replies.
- The features will be rolled out Communities’ groups, and other groups are likely to follow soon.
WhatsApp has announced some new features for its Communities that allow users to stay more organized on the messaging platform.
First off, the messaging platform allows users to create calendar events. In the accompanying blog post, WhatsApp indicates that the second functionality has been launched specifically for Communities groups where users can respond to important updates posted by admins.
Events such as virtual meetings or birthdays can now be planned in groups within Communities. Any user in the group can create such events, and other participants can respond to them. The messaging platform also provides automatic notifications for those attending the event when the date approaches.
The ability to create events is currently available to groups in WhatsApp Communities, but the messaging app says this feature will be extended to other groups going forward.
In Announcement Groups from Communities, admins can now easily comprehend what the group members want through their organized replies and likewise catch up to what’s happening in the community. These replies “are grouped together and minimized” so that users can clearly see in what context they were posted in the group. Also, users aren’t annoyed with notifications of those replies as they are likely muted for everyone.
WhatsApp further announced that new features will be rolled out to Communities and groups in the coming months, which include more tools to help users stay organized on the messaging platform.
On the other hand, the app also recently tested a new setting in Communities that allows users to join groups only on an invite basis.
The Meta-owned messaging platform has constantly been testing such features to catch up with or stay ahead of its rival messaging platforms. More recently, the app was found testing an in-app dialer that would allow users to place calls directly from the app for unknown numbers or businesses. It is a handy feature for users who don’t want to store those numbers in their address book because the interactions with them are likely once or twice.