Offer your organization's WhatsApp groups
List your WhatsApp groups in OpenResa: each user finds the groups that concern them on the home page and in the partner search, then joins them in one click.
List a WhatsApp group
Do you already run WhatsApp groups by level, by discipline or by team? List them in OpenResa so that the right players find them without having to ask for the link. The group itself stays in WhatsApp: joining, leaving and conversations are still managed there as before.
- In WhatsApp, open the group and copy its link from Group info > Invite via link.
- Go to Administration›Customize›Communication›WhatsApp and click New Group.
- Fill in the Group Name and, if you wish, a Description stating who it is intended for.
- Paste the link into WhatsApp invitation link. Only official invitation links, starting with https://chat.whatsapp.com/, are accepted.
- Click Save.
Once the group is saved, add a photo to it with Choose a photo: it appears at the top of its card. Choose an image in 2:1 format, for example 480 × 240 pixels.
Groups are shown to users in the order of the list. Drag a row to move it.
Choose which users see the group
The Audience section restricts the group to some of your users, with the same filters as the user list: profiles, subscriptions, groups, age categories, rankings and various criteria. A beginners' group can therefore be offered only to unranked players, and a "Youth" group only to one age category.
Filters combine as in the user list: several ticked subscriptions add up, whereas two criteria from different families, a subscription and an age category for example, must both be met.
Below the filters, a counter shows in real time how many users will see the group. Without any filter, the group is offered to all users who have access to the partner search.
Choose where the group appears
The Visibility section controls how the group is displayed:
- Activated: deactivate the group to remove it from users' view without deleting it, during a summer break for example;
- Find a Partner: the group appears at the top of the partner search page;
- Homepage: the group appears in the WhatsApp block on the home page.
Displaying it on the home page requires adding the WhatsApp block there once: in Administration›Customize›Homepage, click Add a block and choose WhatsApp. The block is only shown to logged-in users who are offered at least one group.
On the partner search page, the groups scroll horizontally, above the adverts and the directory.
Keep your groups up to date in WhatsApp
When a user clicks Join on WhatsApp, OpenResa checks again that they belong to the group's audience, then opens the invitation in WhatsApp. WhatsApp then handles their membership.
If you reset the invitation link in WhatsApp, the old link stops working: paste the new one into the group's record so that users can still join it. This is also the procedure to follow if the link has been passed on beyond the intended people.
