Robert Best has kindly developed a method of incorporating the selection of a random Group Works card within any Slack application. Here's his video that explains how to add a slackbot with that functionality to your Slack team, and here's a link to his Google Doc file of shortened URLs for all of the Group Works cards (you'll need that file because of the length limit for URLs in the Slackbot).
Once it's in place, all you have to do is type the magic phrase ("Group Works card please" in Robert's example, or whatever phrase you choose to set) and the bot will retrieve and display a random card from the Group Works deck.
Thanks so much to Robert for developing this cool add-on for Slack users, and to Ferananda Ibarra and Jeff Clearwater for showing it to us.
Comments
Thanks for the Slack-bot
It (almost) worked as advertised. My browser only showed an outline when I asked for a new card. It also put up a banner message that asked if I wanted to enable something-or-other. When I clicked OK, the outline filled with the card.
Thanks Robert (and Fernando, and Jeff)!
P.S. Is there a URL that returns a random card? I thought there was. If so we'd need only that single URL to randomly generate any of the other (possibly non-shortened) URL's. The trouble with shortened URL's is that they can't be shared so well. Well, they can, but that shared URL doesn't allow URL Surgery to get to the whole GW page. I can imagine that sharing a URL would be a great way to get (micro-)viral exposure to the project.
Shortened URL's *DO* expand upon navigation
When you click on the shortened URL, it does expand it to the full htts://groupworksdeck.org/.... URL, so that anyone who navigates to the card will be able to start rooting around on the GW site.
If folks only look at the bit.ly link, it's not obvious where they go, but if they click it, they will figure it out.
Nice...