Add Teams, Skype, Zoom and other chat, call or meet now links to your signature

Common signatures include a greeting, your name, your company name and possibly a website address and a phone number.

Since nowadays people contact each other a lot more via online meeting tools such as Teams, Skype and Zoom, you can also add special links which will allow the receiver to directly contact you via one of those methods as well.

With the use of recognizable icons, you can easily include these references without making your signature look huge.

This guide starts off with an example of a signature which is small but contains several instant communication links as well. After that, an overview is given of the instant communication links that can be used with commonly used IM and video conferencing clients.

• Example signature with communication links
• Background info: General and application specific communication protocols
• Download: Applications icons for your signature
• Microsoft Teams
• Skype
• Skype for Business
• Cisco Jabber
• Cisco WebEx Teams
• Zoom
• Slack
• GoToMeeting
• WhatsApp

Example signature with communication links

The more information you add to a signature, the greater the risk that is will turn out huge. You can overcome this by using small recognizable icons which contain a link holding the information.

An example of a commonly used signature with only 2 additional information lines;

Your name
     | +12 3456789 | you@domain.com
Company name | Registration info | Street, City, Zip code

As you can see, the first line holds your personal contact information and the second line holds the company information. You can hyperlink the company name to the website of your company and add a map pin icon to link to your corporate location or business entry on Google Maps.

For first time contact communication or for when you start a new mail conversation, you can opt to go for a bit longer signature which also includes your position and perhaps even a company logo. For this, Outlook allows you to set a different signature based on whether it is a new message or a reply/forward on an existing mail conversation.

Note:
Links and images will be lost in the Plain Text version of your signature. Therefore, it is highly recommended to modify your Plain Text signature to include the information you want.

Background info: General and applications specific communication protocols

The below communication protocols are general protocols which, when used, do not target a specific application but open the application that has been set as the default for that action.

For instance, the mailto link will open the default mail client installed on the computer and thus could open Outlook but also Windows 10 Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, etc…

Things get a bit more complicated when using a calling app and are not calling to a regular phone number but an application specific user ID. This application could support the callto or sip protocol handler but if the recipient is using another application as the default, or is not part of your organization or federation, it will not not be able to resolve your user ID to make the call.

In that case, application specific protocol handlers such as skype, webexteams and slack come in handy. The only requirement is that the recipient also has this application installed to use the link.

Then there are also “deep links” which look a lot like regular web addresses and will open your default Internet browser to access a page which either then uses the web based version or can detect that the recipient has its client installed and will automatically open that. This is for instance used with Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack and WhatsApp.

Note:
Some protocols may not work as expected when using Firefox as the default browser. The default protocols for Firefox can be configure via; Menu-> Options-> General->  Applications

Download: Applications icons for your signature

Below is an overview of small 16×16 application icons you can use within your signature. These and larger icons are also contained in the zip-file you can download.

Some other communication icons for you to use;
    
     

Download: signature-icons.zip

Microsoft Teams

For people outside of your company to be able to communicate with you, federation/external communication need to be enabled.

More info: Create deep links to content and features in Microsoft Teams.

Skype

More info: Skype URIs

Skype for Business

For people outside of your company to be able to communicate with you, federation/external communication need to be enabled.

More info: Lync 2013, Lync 2010, or Office Communicator 2007 R2 becomes the default application for protocols after user signs in

Cisco Jabber

More info: Integrate Cisco Jabber with Applications

Cisco WebEx Teams

More info: Add Links for Cisco Webex Teams Meetings or Spaces with webexteams Protocol

Zoom

You can safely share your Zoom Personal Meeting ID when you also enable the Waiting Room. This is enabled by default but it is always good to  check it first.

• You can find you Zoom Personal Meeting ID on your Profile page.
• You can enable the Waiting Room on the Settings page.

More info: Personal meeting ID (PMI) and personal link

Slack

More info: Deep linking into Slack
and: Create a link to a member’s profile

GoToMeeting

More info: How do I create a personal meeting page?

WhatsApp

Make sure you use your full international phone number without leading zeroes or a plus. Also don’t use any brackets, dashes or other characters within your number; Only use numbers.

More info: How to use click to chat