Use mailto: and other link types with the Quick Links Modern Web Part

More link types, more flexability

The SharePoint Online quick links webpart is a great webpart. It lets you quickly and easily put a variety of nice graphical links to other related resources throughout your intranet or even the internet.  

The issue is however the links are limited to only https URLs and sometimes you may want a link to send an e-mail, chat or place a call to someone such as the helpdesk. Since these link types are not supported you really don't have much of a way to accomplish this and it is a fairly common ask I've seen on the Microsoft Tech Community over the months. 

**Update. Quick Links now support mailto: as a link type, so you no longer need to use this for mail links. However it still holds true for other URL types like SIP etc. 

URL Shortening to the Rescue

So when I see this come up, I let people know the best way around this is to make use of a URL shortening service. There are a whole host of them out there. Make sure you find one that supports any type of link translation. The only I found and got working is TinyURL Setting a URL is simple and straight forward. Just type in for the e-mail link mailto:youremail@domain.com and click the Shorten button. 

Copy the returned URL and use this URL on your quick links webpart on your SharePoint page. 

Now clicking the quick link will open a new e-mail message using your default mail client! 

Quick Links for Chat

Creating links to chat with a chat contact is handled pretty much the same way as using mailto: e-mail links. To setup a chat use SIP:user@domain.com for your link to shorten. This will open the default chat app and chat with the person with a click of the mouse! For all your Microsoft Teams Organizations this is a great way to have an article with a call out link to chat with someone instead of sending an e-mail! 

I know it's a simple task but sometimes the obvious doesn't show up for us, when an easy solution is there for the taking! Hopefully this helps a few folks out to get desired results!