Contact Circles

At a glance

Location	Contact panel → Main tab → Circles section (below Labels); Contacts page → Circles tab (all circles); Contacts page → select contacts → Add to circle; chat list → Circles filter (beside Labels); Pipeline board cards
Plan	All plans, including the free tier
Related features	5

Circles group contacts who belong together, for example the five employees of one client company, a family, a committee or a project team. Opening any member's chat shows the other members of the circle, each with a role that only means something inside that circle (Boss, Secretary, Tech, Employee). A contact can belong to several circles, and a circle can hold many contacts.

A circle belongs to the account: every team member of the account sees it, within their usual sharing scope (a teammate who sees only some chats sees only the members they can see, and a circle with no visible member is hidden from them). Circles sit alongside the contact's company, department and job title fields; they do not replace them.

Each circle has a name (unique within the account, compared regardless of case), an optional color and an optional icon. Members are contacts: adding a chat that has no contact yet creates an unsaved contact named with its phone number. Only people can be members: a WhatsApp group is never a member itself, but dragging one onto a circle offers to add the people in it. Newsletters and Spun chats cannot be added. A deleted contact leaves its circles; archived contacts stay listed. When two contacts are merged, the merged contact keeps the circles of both. If both were in the same circle, it keeps its own role there, or takes the other contact's role when it had none.

Renaming a circle, changing its color or icon and deleting it is for account managers and the circle's creator. Adding and removing members and editing roles is open to every team member with write access to contacts, within their scope. Read-only teammates and view-only shares can see circles but not change them.

All of the account's circles are also listed on the Contacts page, in its Circles tab: search them by name, sort them by name, by most members or by newest, create a new one, and open one to see and manage its members, their roles, its name, color and icon. A teammate who sees only some chats must pick a first member when creating a circle there.

A circle's "..." menu, and the buttons on an open circle in the Circles tab, offer two ways to reach everyone in it. "Message everyone" opens the Proactive Bots campaign launcher with the circle's members already filled in as the audience (archived members are listed too) and creates a draft campaign; nothing is sent until the campaign is started from Proactive Bots, and the campaign's own rules (opt-outs, frequency caps, the send window, the daily limit and the other sending protections) decide who actually receives it. It is offered to account managers who can send messages, when Proactive Bots is available on the account. "Create WhatsApp group" shows a warning before anything happens: adding many people to a new group can lead WhatsApp to limit or block your number, especially people who have never chatted with it, so only add people who expect it. It lists the members who will be added and how many against the limit: only members with a phone number, at most 30 people (the rest are listed as left out), with members who have no phone number listed as skipped. Cancel is selected first, and Cancel, Escape or a click outside the window closes it without creating anything. Only pressing "Create group with" and the number of people creates the group on your WhatsApp number. It is offered to anyone who can send messages when the account has a WhatsApp number connected.

How to use

1. Open a person's chat and look at the Circles section on the Main tab of the contact panel, just below Labels.
2. Press "Add to circle", then pick an existing circle (type to search) or type a new name, choose a color and create it; you can give this person a role in the same step. If the name you type already belongs to a circle, you are offered to add the person to that circle instead.
3. Inside a circle, press "+ Add member" and search by name, number or email to add someone else.
4. Click a member to open their chat; the member whose chat is open is marked "this chat". A member with no number or email cannot be opened, and the row says so.
5. Press "Add role" or a member's role to set or change it; Boss, Manager, Employee, Secretary, Tech, Accounting, Owner and Family are offered, along with roles already used in your account, or type your own.
6. Press the X on a member to take them out of the circle; Undo on the notice puts them back.
7. Managers and the circle's creator can rename the circle, change its color or icon, or delete it from the "..." menu. Deleting a circle does not touch the contacts or their chats.
8. To see every circle at once, open Contacts and choose the Circles tab. Type in "Search circles" to find one, pick an order (Name, Most members, Newest), and press "New circle" to create one with a name, color, icon and an optional first member. Click a circle to open it: its members, roles and the same add, remove, rename, recolor and delete controls appear beside the list on a computer, or on their own screen on a phone (press "All circles" to go back). Clicking a member opens their chat.
9. On a computer you can also drag: with a person's chat open, drag any chat from the chat list onto one of the circles in the Circles section to add that person to it. Drag it onto "Drop a chat here to start a new circle" (or onto "Add to circle" when the open chat has no circle yet) to start a new circle with both people: name it (the open contact's company is suggested) and press "Create circle", or Cancel to create nothing. You can also drag onto the Circles tab of the Contacts page: drop a chat on a circle in the list, or on the circle you have open, to add that person. Saved contacts you have never chatted with, shown under "WhatsApp Contacts" when you search the chat list, can be dragged onto a circle the same way. Dragging a WhatsApp group onto a circle opens a list of the people in the group: everyone is ticked except people already in the circle and your own number, you can untick anyone, and "Add" puts the ticked people in the circle (the group itself is not added, and a circle still holds up to 200 people). Dropped on "Drop a chat here to start a new circle", the group starts a new circle with the open contact and the ticked people, named after the group unless you change it. Newsletters and Spun chats cannot be dropped, someone already in the circle is not added twice (a person dragged once as a chat and once as a contact is still one member), and dragging is not available on a phone or for read-only teammates.
10. In the chat list, a chat whose contact is in a circle shows a small colored dot for each circle (up to two, then "+" and how many more); point at the dots to see the circles' names.
11. To see only the chats of certain circles, press "Circles" beside the Labels filter at the top of the chat list and tick one or more circles; a chat in any of the ticked circles is shown. Press "Clear circles" to show every chat again. The circle filter is not kept in saved filters, and choosing or clearing a saved filter clears it.
12. To put many contacts into a circle at once, open Contacts, tick them (or select a page or everything that matches) and press "Add to circle" in the bar that appears. Pick a circle or type a new name, optionally give everyone a role, and confirm; people already in the circle are not added twice and keep their role. A circle holds up to 200 people.
13. Opening a contact on the Contacts page also shows its Circles section, with the same controls as in the chat panel.
14. On a Pipeline board, a card whose contact is in a circle shows the first circle and the contact's role there, for example "Acme Ltd: Boss, +3" (the number counts the other circles). Choose "Peek at messages" in the card's "..." menu (for a contact with a chat) to see, under the messages, each of its circles with the other members and their roles; click a member to open their chat. The board only shows circles: it does not change them, and moving cards between stages works as before. To reach a whole circle, open its "..." menu (or the open circle in the Circles tab) and choose "Message everyone" to start a draft Proactive Bots campaign for its members, or "Create WhatsApp group" to review who will be added (members with a phone number, up to 30) and create the group.

Related features

• Contacts
• Labels
• Sales Pipeline
• Proactive Bots
• Groups & Communities

FAQ

• How do I group contacts from the same company?
• What is a circle?
• How do I add a contact to a circle?
• Can a contact be in more than one circle?
• Who can see my circles?
• How do I give a contact a role in a circle?
• Can I add a WhatsApp group to a circle?
• Why can't I rename this circle?
• How do I delete a circle?
• Where do I see a contact's circles?
• Why can't I click a member of a circle?
• Where can I see all my circles?
• How do I create a circle without opening a chat?
• How do I find a circle by name?
• Can I drag a chat into a circle?
• What are the colored dots on my chats?
• How do I show only the chats of one circle?
• How do I add many contacts to a circle at once?
• Can I see a contact's circles on the pipeline board?
• How do I message everyone in a circle?
• Can I send a campaign to a circle?
• How do I make a WhatsApp group from a circle?
• Why were some circle members skipped when creating a group?
• How many people can a group made from a circle have?