Time Hack: Stash a Slash

Use a shortcut to schedule meetings faster

One of my favorite x.ai features is using a slash command over email. A slash command takes all the details and preferences from a Meeting Template and hands off the scheduling to our AI assistants who will send your guests available times and follow up if they are unresponsive. Plus, you don’t have to confirm the meeting details over email. Amy and Andrew just start scheduling since they know the type of meeting you want already based on your Meeting Template. All that’s left to do is find a time that your guests are free.

The lack of a confirmation step is my favorite part of slash commands, making them truly fire-and-forget. If I need to specify an exact time, of course, I will use an ad hoc meeting, but if I just want the meeting on my calendar and don’t care when, I use slash commands.

But that’s a rookie time hacker trick!

You can also hide slash commands in your emails. When you sign up for x.ai, you will likely receive a test meeting request from JenBot, our friendly testing bot. In the email, JenBot requests a meeting with you by CCing Amy. It looks like this: 

The highlighted portion appears to be JenBot requesting an ad hoc meeting using natural language, right? Look closer… Do you see it?

Here’s a hint. This is one of the meeting templates configured in JenBot’s account:

I hid a slash command in the email to obviate the need to click dozens of meeting confirmation emails every day. It is simply a lowercase o preceded by a forward slash: “/o“. The “.o\” is just there to hid it in a silly emoji.

The silly little emoticon (/o.o\) at the bottom of my email actually invokes a meeting template, making it look like an ad hoc meeting. But in reality this is a fire-and-forget slash command meeting request! The /o invokes the meeting with no further action required from me (or JenBot). Note that it will not work with another letter immediately preceding the slash, we did not want to accidentally schedule when you say, “either/or”.

/o.o\