Faux Basecamp to Slack Integration

Get Basecamp notifications in Slack for free without custom code.

A few weeks ago, Slack rolled out a very useful email integration. I didn’t think I had much use for it at first because Slack drastically cut down on the amount of email I receive.

The one thing I still found myself regularly flipping back over to my email window for was notifications from Basecamp, the project management app.

Slack does not officially integrate with Basecamp as of this writing, though there are a few community-built integrations and a paid connection through Zapier. I held off using one of these solutions because I didn’t want to pay for a service or set up a cron job with webhooks that I might have to monitor. Checking my email was a low-cost alternative.

When I logged in to Basecamp the other day, I noticed that you can specify a different email address for notifications than the one you set up your account with. This means you can use the new Slack Email integration to funnel Basecamp notifications into Slack. Awesome!

Email notification settings on Basecamp allow you to set an email address that is different from the one you created your account with.

I quickly set up the integration to post to a private channel, and uploaded Basecamp’s icon for quick visual recognition. Then I grabbed the email address Slack generated and changed Basecamp notifications settings.

BINGO. Works like a charm.

Email integration settings on Slack

Do you want to set up this integration and use the Basecamp icon? Here is a handy version that is already in the correct aspect ratio. You’re welcome.

Basecamp/37 Signals owns all rights to this image. I just found it online and cropped it to a square aspect ratio.