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

Chat & Meet in SignatureCommon 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

Signature buttonThe 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
Public corporate profile / Download vcf-file CallTo Microsoft Teams WhatsApp LinkedIn Facebook RSS Feed Blog | +12 3456789 | you@domain.com
Company name | Registration info | Street, City, Zip code Google Maps

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

More Info buttonThe 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.

Link typeLink
E-mailmailto:you@domain.com
Callcallto:yourcallerID
SIPsip:yoursipID
Chatim:yourimID
Telephonetel:yourcallerID

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

Download buttonBelow 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.

Microsoft Teams Microsoft Skype Microsoft Skype for Business Cisco Jabber Cisco WebEx Teams Zoom Slack GoToMeeting WhatsApp

Some other communication icons for you to use;
MailTo Chat Chat CallTo Telephone Voice Chat Voice Chat Webcam Webcam
Email Email CallTo CallTo CallTo Chat Chat Chat Chat Chat Headset Camera Webcam Video Chat Webcam Webcam Microphone Microphone
Person Add Contact Calendar Home Home Office Building Work Directions Location Location Location Hyperlink Hyperlink Hyperlink Hyperlink
Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Xing Reddit WordPress YouTube Twitch Discord TikTok SnapChat RSS Feed Google Meet Google Maps

Download: signature-icons.zip

Tip!
Instructions about inserting images into your signature and how to link them to a website or application can be found in the guide; Creating, using and managing Signatures.

For a step-by-step example for adding a Teams icon and chat link to your signature see; Add a “Chat with me in Teams” link to your email signature.

Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams

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

Link typeLink
Chathttps://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=<youremailaddress>

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

Skype Microsoft Skype

Link typeLink
Callskype:skypename?call
Video Callskype:skypename?call&video=true
Chatskype:skypename?chat

More info: Skype URIs

Skype for Business Microsoft Skype for Business

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

Link typeLink
Calllync15:youremailaddress
Chatsip:youremailaddress
Chatsips:youremailaddress
Chatim:youremailaddress
Calltel:youremailaddress
Callcallto:youremailaddress
Meetconf:youremailaddress

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

Cisco Jabber Cisco Jabber

Link typeLink
Chatxmpp:youremailaddress
Chatim:youremailaddress
Calltel:youremailaddress
Callciscotel:youremailaddress
Callsip:youremailaddress
Callclicktocall:youremailaddress

More info: Integrate Cisco Jabber with Applications

Cisco WebEx Teams Cisco WebEx Teams

Link typeLink
Chatwebexteams://im?email=youremailaddress
Meetwebexteams://meet?sip=youremailaddress

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

Zoom 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.

Link typeLink
Meethttps://zoom.us/j/YourPersonalMeetingID?pwd=password

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

Slack Slack

Link typeLink
Chat / Profilehttps://workspacename.slack.com/team/yourmemberid
Chat / Profile (enterprise)https://organizationname.enterprise.slack.com/user/@yourmemberid
Chatslack://user?team=teamid&id=yourmemberid

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

GoToMeeting GoToMeeting

Link typeLink
MeetCreate a personal meeting room via GoToMeet.Me
Your URL will become; https://gotomeet.me/YourPersonalMeetingPage

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

WhatsApp WhatsApp

Link typeLink
Chathttps://wa.me/yourphonenumber
Chat (api)https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=yourphonenumber

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