Since earlier this year WhatsApp has been working on Communities, a major update to how people will be able to connect on WhatsApp in the groups.

Today, they announced that they have started to roll out Communities on WhatsApp globally and this will be available to everyone over the next few months.

Communities like neighbourhoods, parents at a school, and workplaces can now connect multiple groups under one umbrella to organize group conversations on WhatsApp.

Once you’re in a community, you can easily switch between available groups to get the information you need, when you need it, and admins can send important updates to everyone in the Community

With Communities, WhatsApp is aiming to raise the bar for how organizations communicate with a level of privacy and security not found anywhere else via end-to-end encryption.

WhatsApp is also announcing three more features:

  • the ability to create in-chat polls
  • 32 person video calling
  • groups with up to 1024 users.

Just like emoji reactions, larger file sharing, and admin delete, these features can be used in any group but will be particularly helpful for Communities.

WhatsApp says they have already implemented Communities with over 50 organizations in 15 countries and plan to keep adding features over the coming months.

To get started, tap on the new communities tab at the top of your chats on Android and at the bottom on iOS. From there you can start a new Community from scratch or add existing groups.