In one of my deep trance morning coding sessions, I almost forgot about a meeting I had to attend at that time. Although I was just 3-4 mins late and people were still joining in, this was a problem I had to fix. I'm glad I found out about a default cron job integration in my system.

So I made this tiny bash script:

#!/bin/bash

URL="https://videocallapp.com/some-code-here?user=6"
# Opening chrome
/usr/bin/google-chrome $URL

Basically a cron job that runs at my routine standup meeting schedules which I set using the crontab -e command in the terminal (opens a file for you to edit, where you can manage cron jobs) and added a job in the file which triggers this script.

0 13 * * 1-5 /home/user/projects/auto-meeting-opener.sh

0 13 * * 1-5 is the cron expression that signifies - 1pm every weekday

I agree, I could've just used a Calendar integration (like on my windows sys) which would remind me but I thought this is a better automated approach (for fixed schedules). Now whatever I might be doing, whenever its time - chrome opens instantly, shifting the window focus to itself - opening the meeting link automatically - without me having to do anything.

Life's good :)