Time Hack: Get Some FaceTime

Sometimes you know that your meeting guest use Apple’s FaceTime and you prefer they call you directly over FaceTime for your meeting. While few calendar tools directly support FaceTime calls, you can create a meeting invitation that will give your guests the ability to call you on FaceTime.

About FaceTime URLs

Apple’s FaceTime allows you to create a URL that will automatically open a FaceTime conversation. These URLs consist of your Apple ID username, your Apple ID email, or your phone number (depending on how you set up your FaceTime account) preceded by the text facetime://. Example FaceTime URLs will then have this format:

facetime://5558675309

facetime://email@example.com

facetime://appleidusername

How to Conduct Your Meetings Over FaceTime

For this Time Hack, we are going to use this FaceTime URL along with a Meeting Template with a custom location. First, we will set up a “Physical” location in your x.ai account. We are choosing to use the Physical Location feature due to the way these are formatted (you’ll see!):

Next, we are going to set up a Meeting Template aptly named “FaceTime.” We’ll use this “Physical” location we created to add your FaceTime URL to the meeting invitation.

By using a physical location rather than a virtual location, the x.ai system is able to use the Location field in the meeting invitation for quick and easy access. Clicking the link in the location automatically opens FaceTime on your guest’s phone!

A few small tweaks here… First, we will use a custom field on the calendar page to require that the guest enters their phone number in case there is a missed connection so that you can initiate the call if need be:

Finally, sometimes if someone is calling from a laptop or a computer other than their phone, the facetime:// URL format may not be recognized and automatically linked. You can include instructions on how to join by adding the FaceTime URL into the invitation notes as well so that your guests will have

Share your Availability to Schedule FaceTime calls!

Now all you need to do is share your Calendar Page URL, copy times into an email or copy text availability into Apple Messages and your guests can schedule meetings with you!