Teams and Deep Links
Unless you’re a programmer, you might not be aware of deep links and how Teams uses these special form of URLs to navigate to find information. Deep links are used extensively within the client. For example, if you use the Get link to team option, you’ll get a URL like:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/team/19%3a3380a323d4114b3193cd0ae15ef116b1%40thread.skype/conversations?groupId=e141d2a4-a14c-4865-928e-31f13397d9de&tenantId=a662313f-14fc-43a2-9a7a-d2e27f4f3478
The link means nothing to humans, but Teams finds it terrifically interesting as it can use the information to navigate to the team.
Deep Link for a Chat
In any case, a deep link can also be used to automate operations, like starting a personal chat with one or more Teams users within your tenant. In this case, the deep link is much simpler. The link below starts a chat with Brian Weakliam, or, if the user has already chatted with Brian, continues that chat:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=Brian.Weakliam@Office365itpros.com&topicname=Chat
Creating an Email Signature with a Chat Link
This leads us to the idea of putting a chat link in your email signature. Both OWA and Outlook support the creation of HTML format signatures so there’s no problem to insert the link (Figure 1). If you have problems, compose the signature in Word or another editor and paste the results into Outlook or OWA (and yes, it would be nice if the two clients used the same signatures).
The new signature complete with chat link is inserted in outbound messages. Recipients can click the link (Figure 2) to start a chat using either the Teams browser or desktop (if available) client. The link only works when the sender and recipient are in the same Office 365 tenant.
This is the kind of small detail that amuses us when we find it. Learn more amusing and interesting details about Teams in Chapter 13 of the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook!
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