At work we have daily standups using Zoom and my colleague Ryo asked if it was possible to automate the opening of the Zoom app in the correct meeting group at a specific time every day.

Steps:

  1. open terminal

  2. crontab -e

  3. 57 8 * * 1-5 ~/openZoom.sh

  4. 'esc' and ':wq' to exit crontab

  5. create ~/openZoom.sh with the following :

    #! /bin/bash -l

    open https://zoom.us/j/

  6. chmod +x ~/openZoom.sh

Crontab syntax

I have used 57 8 * * 1-5 ~/openZoom.sh and I will break that down command by command:

  • 57 - minutes past the hour
  • 8 - hours
  • * - day (month i.e. it could be fourth day of the month)
  • * - month (i.e. it could be 2 and thus February)
  • 1-5 - day (of the week, I have used 1-5 so Mon-Fri)
  • ~/openZoom.sh - executes the ~/openZoom.sh file