Hello to all.
I want to know if it is possible to receive messages sent in a whatsapp group for the following purpose. The goal would be to be able to recognize the message and by whom it was sent, then use that message to display content on a dashboard. For example, in an office where many people work, I want that when people send "clock in" their name appears in green on the dashboard. when they put "clock out" their names will be removed or the green color will be removed. I hope I have made myself understood, I only need help in the part of reading whatsapp messages.
Short answer - no
Long answer - no
WhatsApp do not allow access to their messages from outside of their apps
Sometimes people manage to hack in
WhatsApp then manage to disable their hacks
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thanks for the answer. Is the same idea using telegram more plausible?
I believe so - Telegram is much more open and easily accessible to/from Node-RED
(I don't use it myself but lots of others do)
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Not sure if this may help, as i don't use Whatsapp. So not sure how groups work.
The Telegram bot is good though and may be better for your purposes
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Yes it is. Telegram has a much better and very mature bot interface which is relatively easy to use, unlike most other messaging apps.
Just note that Telegram isn't quite as secure as WhatsApp. You wouldn't want to put anything nation sensitive through it 
But it is good enough for most things and likely a lot better than something like Slack.
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I agree with you about security. For now, it's just to know the start and end time of work for employees! Thank you
Telegram will be good for that. I wouldn't use Telegram for blowing the whistle on state secrets but it is fine for everyday use and much better than many tools a lot of people take for granted.
What you want to do is something you could achieve using: node-red-contrib-whin
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only contrib node that supports receiving a whatsapp on node-red. All other options are "only" able to send a whatsapp...
Whin node is based on a shared number that proxies all the whatsapps it receives, and send them to the appropiate node-red instance. At its origin, the use case implemented was very close to the one you're describing. The idea would be all the ppl in the office would send the "clock-in" / "cloud-out" msgs to a number which will deliver the messages to node-red. From within node-red, you can take care of the states and how they're showed on the dashboard.
I am one on the maintainers of whin node, happy to help you implement this. PM me if support is needed. 
As lu4t suggests, I think your use case is doable with whin.
Telegram might be more straight forward but as @TotallyInformation mentioned, might not be that secure.
The reason why did whin is because in some countries Telegram is just not spread as much as Whatsapp is and users would always ask a .. may I get this on Whatsapp instead of TG?
@cymplecy mentioned WhatsApp traditionally manages to 'ban non whatsapp apps' and he is 100% right. We can't tell for sure how long whin solution will run for. The client solution we're using, though, seems to be very well maintained and very much aligned to WhatsApp Web client.
Summary; TG may be 'safer' for the long run while WHIN may be more 'user friendly'.
If you decide to give whin a go, we'll support you.. sounds like a nice use case.
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