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You can interact with the Coral Messaging features from your WhatsApp app, from our web dashboard, or using our APIs.  Most users will interact with the Coral product via their WhatsApp app. 

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Using Coral groups from the WhatsApp app

When interacting with the Coral product from the WhatsApp app, note that group management features like creating a Coral group and adding and removing people work differently than a regular group chat among friends. This is because you as an individual participant cannot be the admin of a group chat, only your company is the chat admin.  
  • Create your first chat from within WhatsApp. Start a direct chat in your WhatsApp app with your organization’s Coral API phone number (we recommend you save the Coral API phone number into your contacts on your phone as “Coral Assistant” since you will be sending WhatsApps to it a lot going forward in order to control and access features of your Coral account).  In that chat thread, send a message “/new Your Chat Subject Here” and wait for the group invite link and QR code to come back; you have effectively created an empty group chat, and you can join it by clicking on the link.  To add someone else to the chat from your WhatsApp app, simply share the QR code or link with them.   
  • Try some “slash commands” from inside of your group chat. You can perform common functions for your group chat from directly inside your chat.  Sending “/invite” into the group chat will generate the group invite link and QR code, which you can share with others so they can join the group.  Sending “/subject New Subject Here” will change the chat subject.  Currently, changing the photo, changing the group description, or removing a participant can only be done from the Coral web dashboard. 
Now you’re ready to use Coral Messaging with clients and contacts. 

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User Coral groups from the dashboard

Your organization’s Coral account must have a WhatsApp payment method set up to create chats and add participants to an existing chat from the Coral dashboard.
  • Create a chat. From the Coral dashboard, you can create your chats one by one, or in bulk by uploading a CSV file in the Create Chat tab with phone numbers. 
  • Basic chat management: adjust photo, description, and remove a participant. Currently, changing the photo, changing the group description, or removing a participant can only be done from the Coral web dashboard.  Log in to the Coral web dashboard, and navigate to the Chats tab, click on the chat where you want to change the settings, and click on the menu on the top right to open the Edit Chat window. 
IMPORTANT: if you remove a participant using the Coral web dashboard, they can never again rejoin the chat. We suggest that they remove themselves from the group chat instead using their WhatsApp app as they normally would, which allows them to rejoin in the future.