Category Archives: AI

AI Helper can now work within boards and individual cards

We have very significantly improved the AI Helper to now work as an assistant within Task Boards, and even within individual cards (tasks) on a Task Board.

To use, click on the AI button that appears on the bottom right corner of the Kerika app, on the desktop or mobile. Here’s an example of what it looks like, for desktop users:

Screenshot shows the AI Helper that appears when the a desktop user clicks on the AI Button that appears on the bottom-right corner of the Kerika app.

Let’s take a closer look at the components of the AI Helper pane:

On the top-right corner are buttons to access old AI Helper Chats, and to close the AI Helper pane:

Screenshot of the top part of the AI Helper, showing buttons on the right: a grey button to access old AI chats, and a magenta button to close the AI Helper pane.

Old Chats

The old chats are shown in reverse-chronological order, with the most recent on top:

Screenshot showing an example of old AI Helper chats.

You can resume any old chat at any time, if you want to return to a particular discussion you had with the AI Helper. It’s useful to keep different discussions in different chat streams, because that helps the AI Helper understand more easily the context for your requests.

Quick Actions for Boards

Within the main body of the AI Helper, shown whenever you start a new chat, are some Quick Actions:

Screenshot showing the Quick Actions available within the AI Helper pane, when the AI Helper is invoked from a Task Board.

These are:

  1. What should I focus on today? A common question that many users face, particularly when they are working on a large project, with many tasks underway and all in different stages of progress.
  2. What’s overdue or at risk of slipping? Something that’s particularly important to project managers (Board Admins) who need to make sure everything is going well, not just their personal tasks.
  3. Give me suggestions for improving this board. This can help everyone, but Board Admins in particular: the AI Helper can take a look at the entire board and see if the team is using Kerika to its fullest capabilities — are the columns, representing the workflow, optimal? Are tags being used to gather together related tasks? And so on.
  4. Suggest any new tasks I should add. Here the AI Helper looks at all your tasks and tries to identify any steps that are missing from your project’s workflow.
  5. Draft a status update I can share. If your manager keeps asking for status updates (and they really shouldn’t, because with Kerika you can add them as Visitors so they always have a real-time view of what’s going on!), this handy Quick Action will take care of drafting a status report for you.
  6. Show me what I can do with this board. This is another way of making sure you are using Kerika optimally to achieve your project goals. The AI Helper can identify tasks that need priorities and due dates to be set, and much more.

Quick Actions for Cards

There are Quick Actions for individual cards on Task Boards as well: you can see these when you open the AI Helper after having opened the card first.

Quick Actions shown when a card is opened on a Task Board.

While the AI Helper focuses on the entire board when no individual card is open, here the AI Helper focuses on a single card. The Quick Actions are:

  1. Is this task on track? The AI Helper looks at whether there is a due date or priority set, and whether the task needs a checklist of sub-tasks to make it easier to get the task done.
  2. Break into subtasks. A handy one-click way of getting a complete set of sub-tasks that will help get this task done faster and better.
  3. Improve this card. The AI Helper can improve an individual card in many ways: suggesting better task titles or details/descriptions, use of tags, due dates, etc.
  4. Bring me up to date on this task. Kerika is ideal for globally distributed teams working across different geographies and timezones. (The Kerika team itself is a globally distributed team, and has been from the very beginning.) This Quick Action summarizes activity on this card in an easy-to-understand format.
  5. Is this task connected to any others? Very helpful when you have a lot of things going on in a large board, with many tasks underway.
  6. Draft a status update I can share. Another handy way to deal with managers who insist on (daily?!) status updates.
  7. Show me what I can do with this card. Similar to the Quick Action for Boards, but focused on a particular card.

We would to hear from you on how well the AI Helper works in general, and whether our Quick Actions can be improved!

Our AI Helper just got better

Our AI Helper just got better at creating new boards and templates: although it looks the same as before, behind the scenes it now can do Web searches to find relevant material to use for building what you need.

This means that you can now make more general requests to the AI Helper, like “make a board for me to learn about AI agents”. To build this board, the AI Helper will automatically do a Web search to find the best articles out there that cover AI agents, and then build a learning board for you.

New AI Helper for starting Boards and making Templates

We have made substantial improvements to the previously released AI Helper to make it more useful for anyone who wants to start a new Task Board or Template.

Creating New Boards

The AI Helper is always available when you want to start a new Task Board:

Screenshot showing the Start New Board dialog, which contains the new CREATE WITH AI button

What’s different now is that clicking on the CREATE WITH AI button will open a new AI Helper pane on the right side of the window:

Screenshot showing a Kerika Home page with the AI Helper dialog open in a separate pane on the right edge of the screen.

The AI Helper has asked the user which of several accounts to which he has access he wants to create the new board.

If you have access to multiple accounts — for example, if you are working with different organizations or companies that all have their own Kerika accounts — the AI Helper will first ask you which account you want to create the new board in.

(If you are working in a single account, which is true for the vast majority of Kerika users, the AI Helper skips this step.)

Screenshot showing the AI Helper pane asking what type of board the user wishes to create.

The AI Helper offers some suggested areas, as shown above. You can choose one, or simply provide more specifics about the kind of board you want to create.

In the example below the user selects the first suggested category: project management and task tracking:

Screenshot shows the AI Helper offering suggestions to help the user clarify what his new board should focus on.

Unlike our first (experimental) version of an AI Helper, the new version is much more interactive: it provides suggestions and prompts to help the user think about what the new board should do, and, in particular, what kinds of management and collaboration problems they are currently facing.

If you have something very specific in mind, you can skip the back-and-forth with the AI Helper and provide a specific request, like this example for a board that contains all the steps necessary to start a new business in Washington State:

Screenshot shows an example of a user request that is very specific.

Given a specific enough request, the AI Helper can quickly suggest a board that will meet the user’s needs:

AI Helper offers a preview of a proposed new board.

The AI Helper doesn’t immediately create a new board; instead, if first offers a preview so the user can confirm the new board will meet their needs.

If the preview looks good, the user can ask the AI Helper to make the new board (this step can take a little time):

Once the new board is created, the AI Helper give a quick link to it:

Screenshot showing that the AI Helper has created a new board

Here’s the new board created by the AI Helper: as you can see, the AI has also created appropriate and helpful tags, assigned the work to the user (since the user hadn’t said anything in their request about working with a team), and even estimated how long each task might take and assigned due dates accordingly.

Screenshot showing the new board created by the AI Helper
Click to see a larger image

Creating Templates

Creating templates works in the exact same way: for example, the user could have asked for a template to be created using the same reference source (Washington State’s Department of Revenue Guide for Starting Businesses).

This is what the output looks like:

Screenshot showing a template created by the AI Helper
Click to see a larger image

Mobile & Tablet

The AI Helper is available on phones and tablet as well; the user interface is, naturally, a little different to accommodate the more limited screenshot

Please give this a try and let us know what you think!