Today, a tip, nothing to do with Agility other than being a move towards a world where technology makes life better, not worse.
The story
You’re on the move, and that important meeting is about to start. Your iPhone’s in your hand, but now you’ve got to find the invite. Wait, you remember you set up the dial-in number as a contact… but what’s the meeting code? Aaahhhh!!!!!!
Here’s a tip if you’re setting up online meetings. This works for an iPhone, I don’t own anything else, so please test it on your own smart phone and let us know in the comments how it works for you.
If you have a dial-in that’s a phone number, and a meeting id, and the nice electronic lady asks you to dial “#” at the end, there’s a way to set up the meeting invite so all your attendees could just tap once on the meeting reminder when it pops up on their phone – and they’re in!
The Tip – help your attendees
Enter the whole number and meeting ID in the following format, and iPhone users can just tap on the screen when the reminder pops up, and it will dial automatically.
Format: “+1 (555) 123-4567,,,999999999,,0#” where 999999999 is the meeting ID.
Explanation:
When the reminder pops up, touch the number to dial. The commas are 2 second pauses, so they allow for the call to be connected.
(If you want to put in a hard pause, use a semi-colon. The phone will them display a message “Dial <number>” that you can tap again and it’ll dial. E.g. “;0#” at the end means you will need to touch again as the phone asks “Dial 0#” so just touch where is asks and the hash is dialed.)
Why the “0” before the “#”? It’s a workaround for the iPhone bug that has a number ending in a “#” fail to dial. Neat, huh?
Note, don’t put a space into the meeting ID, the phone will take it literally and this tip won’t work!
So this trick would mean I could simply tap my screen once when the meeting reminder comes up and I’m into the call.
Sub-Tip – help yourself
If you’ve already received a meeting invite, open the appointment in your calendar and edit it to match this format, that works too. I’ve found that keeping the number in the meeting location field works well.