WhatsApp · 5 min read · Savina Bansal
Hide customer phone numbers from your WhatsApp team
Your team can chat, call and follow up with every customer without ever seeing their number. How role-based number masking works, and what it does not block.
Building the platform this article is about
Every customer number in your WhatsApp inbox is a business asset. It is also very easy to walk out with. A sales executive who leaves can take a list of every lead they ever spoke to, and keep messaging them from a personal phone.
The usual answer is to trust people, or to not give them the inbox. Neither works for a growing team. Number masking is the third option: people do their job with the customer, and never see the number.
Masking by role
In Ohanvi, WhatsApp → Manage → Role access decides who sees numbers. Turn masking on for any combination of roles — Super Admin, Admin, Manager, Executive — including your own level if you want to. Quick presets cover the common set-ups, the screen shows how many people are in each role, and a preview shows what a masked person will see.
Only admins can change it; people below Admin see the settings read-only.
What a masked person sees, and can still do
A masked number appears as +91 98765 •••••. The person can still reply on WhatsApp, place a WhatsApp call and edit the contact. Behind the scenes their app holds a token in place of the number, and Ohanvi’s server swaps the real number back in when the message or call goes out. The number itself never reaches their screen or their phone.
It holds everywhere a number appears: the Team Inbox, Contacts, broadcasts and campaigns, CRM leads, contacts and accounts, email contacts, and the Ohanvi mobile app, including its notifications.
What masking switches off
Anything that would hand over the real number is hidden for a masked person: copying the number, calling it from the phone’s own dialler, and Call on Mobile. Phone-number fields are read-only for them. A CSV export they make carries the masked number, not the real one.
That is the point. A WhatsApp call through Ohanvi works; a call that would put the number into a personal phone’s call log does not.
Routing on the same screen
Role access also decides who gets which chat. New chats can be assigned automatically, by taking turns or to whoever is least busy, with a limit on how many open chats one person holds. Masking decides what each person sees; routing decides which customers they see.
What it does not stop
Masking hides the number. It cannot stop someone reading a customer’s name and city off the screen, or a customer volunteering their number in a chat. It removes the easy, bulk way to take a list, which is the one that does the damage.
Keep reading
Questions this answers
- Can I hide customer phone numbers from WhatsApp agents?
- Yes. In Ohanvi, WhatsApp → Manage → Role access masks numbers for any combination of roles. Masked people still chat, call and edit contacts, but see numbers as +91 98765 ••••• and cannot copy, dial or export the real number.
- Can a masked agent still call the customer?
- Yes, as a WhatsApp call through Ohanvi. Calling from the phone’s own dialler and Call on Mobile are hidden for masked people, because they would expose the number.
