# Understanding Groups on WhatsApp API Business Accounts ### 1. Overview LimeChat CRM supports **WhatsApp Groups** for eligible WhatsApp API business accounts. This allows businesses to create and manage group-based customer conversations directly from CRM, instead of coordinating the same discussion across multiple 1:1 tickets. This feature is designed for use cases where multiple participants need to stay in the same conversation thread, while still allowing teams to manage that conversation operationally inside LimeChat CRM. ### 2. What problem does this solve? WhatsApp Groups helps solve a set of operational gaps that are hard to manage in regular 1:1 WhatsApp conversations: * **Multi-party coordination:** multiple customer-side stakeholders can participate in the same conversation instead of requiring separate tickets. * **Single source of truth:** all group messages stay inside one ticket journey instead of being fragmented across multiple chats. * **Faster collaboration:** agents can handle updates, clarifications, and coordination in one shared thread. * **Better visibility:** support and operations teams can see the entire group conversation in one place. * **Reduced ticket sprawl:** instead of one issue generating multiple 1:1 threads, one group ticket can hold the complete context. ### 3. Eligibility and guidelines WhatsApp Groups is **not universally available on every business number**. #### Eligibility requirements * The business must have an **Official Business Account (OBA)**. * The phone number must be an **eligible Groups-enabled number**. * The business must have at least a **100K messaging limit / TIER\_100K**. Meta’s docs describe this in terms of the business phone number/business portfolio being used to message **100K or more unique WhatsApp users in a rolling 24-hour period** for that tier. * Groups is still subject to other product constraints such as **no Coexistence** and **no Multi-solution Conversations numbers** for Groups usage, based on Meta’s Groups documentation. #### Important limitations Meta currently documents the following core limits and constraints for Groups: * **Maximum 8 participants per group** * **Maximum 1 Cloud API business per group** * **Maximum 10,000 groups per business number** * **Calling API is not supported in groups** #### Supported message behavior Meta documents that Groups APIs support sending and receiving messages in groups, and the Message API supports `recipient_type = group`, where the `to` field takes a `group-id` instead of a phone number. Meta also notes support for text, media, and template-based group messaging. #### Pricing note Groups API follows **Cloud API per-message pricing**, not a special separate group-conversation pricing model. Meta also notes that performance metrics are not available for templates used in groups. ### 4. How the feature is structured At a high level, the feature works in two parts: #### A. Group creation and management LimeChat uses Meta’s Groups APIs to: * create a group, * generate the group invite link, * manage group lifecycle, * and enable messaging to the group once members join. Meta’s Groups API lifecycle includes group creation, invite-link creation, and group querying/management endpoints. Meta also notes that once a user joins the group, a webhook is triggered, after which the business becomes eligible to message the group. #### B. Ticketing and agent workflow On LimeChat CRM: * the group is represented as a **group ticket**, * the ticket is assigned to the creating agent, * participants can later be invited into the group, * incoming messages from multiple group members are visible within the same ticket, * and the ticket follows the inbox-level resolution/closure logic configured on CRM. *** ### 5. Key nuances to understand There are a few important nuances teams should understand before using this feature: #### 5.1 Group access is number-dependent Even if the business has WhatsApp API enabled, the specific business phone number must still be eligible for Groups. If not, Meta may return error `131215` indicating that the number is not eligible for Groups APIs. #### 5.2 The business number is part of the group Meta states that the business phone number used to create the group is automatically added to the group as the **creator and admin**. That is why, in practice, with a max group size of 8, the business account occupies one seat and the remaining capacity is for customer-side participants. #### 5.3 Group messaging starts only after join Creating the group is not enough. Meta notes that once a user joins the group, a webhook is triggered, and only then can the business start messaging the group. This is important for understanding why invite flow and join flow are critical parts of the journey. #### 5.4 Groups are not the same as standard tickets A group ticket differs from a regular 1:1 ticket because: * messages can come from multiple end users, * invite and participant management are part of the workflow, * and the same conversation thread is shared across members. #### 5.5 Invite flow is operationally important Since participants must join using the invite link, sending that link properly becomes a key part of the product flow. In LimeChat CRM, this is handled by letting users pick a template and inject the group invite link into a variable before sending the invitation. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://limechatai.gitbook.io/limechat-product-guide/helpdesk/tickets/understanding-groups-on-whatsapp-api-business-accounts.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.