Speed dial from email signature

[Welshbird]

My boss has just askied me how he can dial direct from an email signature...

The problem is that everyone (certainly in the UK) seems to have thier signature in the format +44(0)5555 567890

To dial, we need this without the zero and without the brackets.

Does anyone have any bright ideas?

Thanks,

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

 

[zbnet]

I fear you are stuck, Fee.

It's not like you're the only person to be confounded by this, nor the first - see this post from James O'Neill 4 years ago:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/jamesone/archive/2007/06/19/campaign-for-real-numbers-update.aspx

 

[Welshbird]

Boo. I'd just love to give him a solution for this!

Might have to write him an app??

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

From a development point-of-view, you might be able to script your mail server to parse incoming emails, and add some markup around phone numbers that are in the wrong format. Then, when the phone retrieves them from the mail server (or when they are pushed to the phone), they'll have the modified version with dialable numbers.

Here's a link to Apple's docs on the phone link scheme. That document links to a couple of RFCs on the various formats in use, and a regexp to match the numbers should be fairly easy.

In a nutshell, you'd be creating a link using the "tel:" protocol, where you can specify the number to dial, something like this:

McBlah Waffle and Drone, Solicitors. Tel: <a href="tel:05555567890">+44(0)5555 567890</a>

I've not tried this, but I reckon it's a goer

I don't know what his iPhone / mail server setup is, nor which mail server is in use, so it may be that this isn't an option for you. Worth mentioning, though

Dan



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[Welshbird]

Cheers Dan! I'll pass it to the appropriate people.

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

 

[robbieguy2003]

What Dan said, I reckon that'd be the easiest way to skin this one. I know sod all about doing clever stuff with exchange but on a Linux Mail Server that'd be a fairly trivial thing to get done.

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits

Rob

 

[zbnet]

Exchange 2007 and 2010 include Transport Rules, which allow a certain level of 'fiddling' with a message in transit when it matches a certain set of criteria, but unfortunately editing content isn't one of the supported actions.

You can add extra content to the body text (like an email disclaimer for outbound email), but you can't alter existing body text.

 

[BillyRayPreachersSon]

We still don't know which mail server is being used. Fee: can you find out and let us know? There's little point in guessing about things that might not be appropriate for the situation.

You can add extra content to the body text (like an email disclaimer for outbound email), but you can't alter existing body text.

So if exchange is the mail server in use (which we don't know), an extra footer could be added that mirrors the first, but with the addition of the dialable number markup. Then, the boss is trained to ignore the first footer. Simples.



Coedit Limited - Delivering standards compliant, accessible web solutions

Dan's Page [blue]@[/blue] Code Couch:

http://www.codecouch.com/dan/

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The Out Atheism Campaign

 

[jpadie]

whatever the current mail server it would not be difficult to insert another as a gateway (which would allow content manipulation).

 

[Welshbird]

Tis Exchange.

Fee

"The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen