Hello everyone,
Following my recentposts about the protocol of different XBox apps, I decided to have a closer look at the Windows Store app of Skype. Turns out it is really easy to use!
First of all, here is the protocol’s syntax: skype:<target1>[;<target2>]?<action>[&<parameter>]
Imagine you have a contact on your Skype list with the username “foobar”. To initiate a call, you’d just have to invoke the following: skype:foobar&call Easy, isn’t it? Well, it gets even better: Skype added a protocol “alias” for the most common action. To call a user, you can just invoke: audiocall-skype-com:foobar
As you can see, it’s possible to add several targets and thereby create a group conversation or group call easily.
Let’s have a look at the actions first.
Actions
The Windows Store app of Skype uses an internal mapping to translate actions from the URI into values that can be used to look up their implementation. Interestingly enough, there are only 9 mappings, but 26 action implementations. These actions are used throughout the app and only 9 of them were made available for invocation from the protocol. (Unfortunately, some of the mappings are wrong, rendering the URI actions useless)
Here is the list of the actions included in the mapping:
- call
- Initiates a call and allows for the following parameter:
- video
- type: bool
- chat
- Switches to the chat windows of the user.
- sms
- Switches to the chat window, activating SMS mode if the contact has a phone number.
- voicemail (broken)
- add (broken)
- sendfile (broken)
- userinfo (broken)
- home
- This action takes you to the home screen. The weird thing is that you have to supply a target (even if invalid), because otherwise Skype will send you to the dialer
- dialer
- Sends you to the dialer. A bit useless, because any invalid target sends you to the dialer. The easiest way to get to the dialer is to invoke skype:
Aliases
To make things easier for you, the Windows Store app of Skype registers additional protocols, which are equivalent to the actions above.
- tel:
- equivalent to action call
- sms:
- equivalent to action sms
- message-skype-com:
- equivalent to action chat
- audiocall-skype-com:
- equivalent to action call
- videocall-skype-com:
- equivalent to action call&video=true
- message-messenger:
- equivalent to action chat; causes the target to be translated to “[1:<target>]” (e.g. “foobar” becomes “[1:foobar]”)
- audiocall-messenger:
- equivalent to action call; causes the target to be translated to “[1:<target>]” (e.g. “foobar” becomes “[1:foobar]”)
- videocall-messenger:
- equivalent to action call&video=true; causes the target to be translated to “[1:<target>]” (e.g. “foobar” becomes “[1:foobar]”)
I hope this helps you to integrate tightly with the Skype app, and to create an even more immersive experience for your users. Hopefully the Skype team will fix the broken actions in the future.
Cheers,
Helge Mahrt