New Slack app gives access to Eve Online in-game information

Hey guys,

today I like to talk to you about the Slack app “Erik’s EVE tools” I developed for Eve Online players using Slack.

Eve Online and Slack

Many of you may already have heard of Slack, the popular team messaging app for businesses. Since the basic version is free to use, many alliances and coalitions in Eve Online have started using Slack as their main communication platform for fleet pings and internal information exchange and collaboration.

Now there is even is a public Slack for Eve Online called tweetfleet. This Slack allows pilots from all over New Eden to chat and exchange information. Check it out if you are not already a member.

Custom Slack apps

One of the big advantages of Slack is that you can extend it with custom apps. The Slack App Directory literally has 100s of apps ready to be installed. Some apps will allow you to connect your Slack with other web applications, like Twitter, Google Drive or GitHub. Just to name a few. Others provide productivity enhancements in form of bots that help you organize to do list etc. And they are all free to use.

However, I could not find any Eve Online apps for Slack. So I decided to build one myself. The app is called “Erik’s EVE tools” and is available now available in the Slack App Directory.

What this Slack app does

This app extends Slack with three new commands that gives users access to in-game information from Eve Online. They don’t have to leave Slack and switch to another app or browser window, but instead get the needed information right within their current Slack channel. This is much faster and more convenient.

These three new commands are:

  • /eveprice: Displays the current Jita prices for any requested item in your current chat channel. This information is only visible to the user who executed the command. Only one item can be requested at a time, however all items with matching names and prices will be displayed. All price information is retrieved from EVE-Central.
  • /evestatus: Displays the current online status and number of active players on the TQ server in the current channel. This information is only visible to the user who executed the command.
  • /evetime: Displays the current date and time of the Eve Online game world in your current chat channel. This information is only visible to the user who executed the command.

Example

Here is an example how it looks like:

If you enter “/eveprice astrahus”, you get the following result in your Slack channel:

How to install the app

If you like to install the app for your Slack team just go to the Slack App Directory and search for it. Alternatively you can also visit the installation page directly. Its free of course.

I hope you found this article interesting. If you have any comments, questions or want to give feedback, please leave a comment below!

Best regards,

Erik