For those who spend a lot of time dialing into conference calls you know how annoying it can be to have to dial the conference number and then the conference code–especially when the conference code is in the invite and in a format you can’t click on.

One thing I’m rolling out with my team is the standardized format above for all meeting invites: it’s a simple piece of text that one can save in an invite template (ideal) or paste in from a text file (functional enough) so that all invites are mobile-friendly.

The format

The key is to have two formats for the conference call information:

1. The mobile-clickable format (first)

2. The human-readable format (second)

The mobile format itself is pretty simple: you simply list the call-in information as a single string, like so:

• the dial-in number without any spaces or dashes

• a comma (pause)

• the conference code without any spaces or dashes

• the # sign (which usually says you’re done entering the code)

Example format

It should look something like this in your invite:

Conference Number (Mobile-friendly): 8662345689,223345099#
Conference Number (Human-friendly): (866) 234-5689, 223-345-099

Adding a leader code

And if you want to include leader information, you can append the content for that as well (often a *):

Conference Number (Mobile-friendly): 8662345689,223345099#,*324569

This format, when viewed with an iPhone or Android device, will show up as a single clickable string, and will get you all the way through to announcing yourself and/or starting the call.

Pretty simple, but depending on the number of calls one makes it can save a lot of time. Hopefully it’ll become a meme and become more prevalent.

Notes

1. This does in fact work for both iOS and Android.