A Telegram RSVP bot that collects Going, Maybe and Can't in a group chat
Counting heads in a group chat is a job nobody volunteers for. Somebody proposes a Friday, eleven people reply, four of them reply twice, two say "maybe" and then nothing, and by Thursday the organiser is scrolling back through three days of unrelated messages trying to work out whether to book for six or nine.
EventRSVPProBot replaces that scroll with a single message. One command posts a card into the chat carrying the event title, the time, and three buttons: Going, Maybe, Can't. Tapping a button writes your name under it and edits the card in place, so the group always sees one current count instead of a thread of stale replies.
What the card actually does
The card is one Telegram message that the bot keeps editing. There is no second message when somebody responds, no notification storm, and no separate app for anyone to install; a member taps a button in the chat they are already in and the count moves.
A repeat tap moves you between buckets rather than adding a second entry, so changing your mind from Maybe to Going is a single tap and leaves no trace of the earlier answer. Names come from Telegram display names and the card lists up to 30 per bucket before collapsing the rest into a plus-N count, which keeps a large group's card readable on a phone.
Times are parsed rather than typed into a form. The bot accepts a relative offset (in 2h), a bare clock time (at 19:00), a weekday (fri 19:00), tomorrow plus a time, or a full ISO date. Each member sets their own UTC offset once, so a time written by the organiser is stored unambiguously rather than being read differently by everyone who sees it.
?start=zovo so arrivals from this page are counted separately.Setting one up
- Add the bot to the group. Open the bot, use Telegram's Add to Group, and pick the chat. It needs no admin rights; it reads its own commands and edits its own messages, nothing else.
- Set your offset. Run /tz +2 (or whatever yours is). This is per person, not per group, so it carries to every group the bot is in.
- Post the event. /event fri 19:00 Board game night. The card appears immediately with the three buttons attached.
- Let the group tap. Every tap edits the card. /events lists everything upcoming in the chat with its id, time and Going count if the card has scrolled away.
- Cancel if it falls through. /cancel <id>, creator only. The event is marked cancelled rather than deleted, so ids stay stable and the history stays honest.
Command reference
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| /event fri 19:00 Board game night | Post an event card with Going, Maybe and Can't buttons. |
| /events | List upcoming events in this chat with id, time and Going count. |
| /cancel 12 | Cancel an event by id. Creator only. |
| /tz +2 | Save your UTC offset. Used to parse and display every event time. |
| /pro | Show the per-group Pro upsell and a Stars invoice. |
Free and Pro
Free
- 3 active events per group
- Unlimited RSVPs on each of them
- All time formats, all three buttons
Pro
- Unlimited active events per group
- An automatic reminder posted to the group one hour before the event starts
Pro is a one-time 150 Stars payment and unlocks the group, not the individual: one person pays and every member of that chat gets the higher limits.
What it stores
- One row per event: title, start time, creator id, and the id of the card message it edits.
- One row per person per event, which is why a second tap replaces your answer instead of duplicating it.
- Display names as Telegram supplies them, for rendering the lists under each button. No message text from the chat is read or kept.
Questions
- Does the bot need to be an admin?
- No. It responds to its own commands and edits its own card. Group admin rights are never requested and are not required for any part of the RSVP flow.
- Can somebody change their answer?
- Yes, and it is the normal case. Tapping a different button moves you to that bucket and rewrites the card; there is no separate undo to learn.
- Who can cancel an event?
- Only the member who created it. There is deliberately no admin override, so a card cannot vanish out from under the person organising the thing.
- What happens when the free limit is reached?
- The group can hold three live events at once. Finishing or cancelling one frees a slot. Pro removes the cap and adds the one-hour reminder.
- Does it work in a channel?
- No. It is built for group chats, where the members who tap the buttons are the members who read the card.
Other Telegram bots in this set
All of them are listed alongside the rest of Zovo's free online tools, and the browser-side half of the catalogue is under Chrome extensions.
Want the step-by-step walkthrough? Read RSVP collection in a group chat: the full guide on tg.zovo.one.