Category Archives: Bug Fixes

Recent bug fixes, large and small.

What’s in our latest release

Bug Fixes, Kerika, , , ,

A ton of bug fixes, most of them so obscure that no end-users ever spotted them, but since we track our error codes seriously we make sure we fix stuff that no one even knew fixing.  Some of the bug fixes are truly obscure, here’s a few from our latest version that’s easier to explain:

  • There were some problems related to how our iOS app was updating that were a result of Apple deciding not to support Progressive Web Apps anymore.  (Thanks for nothing, Apple.)
  • When a person renamed a file attached to a task or board, the file was appearing as having unread updates (orange highlight) to the user who made the change.
  • For our Kerika+Microsoft users, we needed to make sure the correct OneDrive icons were appearing where files were attached to tasks and boards.
  • Also for our Kerika+Microsoft users: OneDrive files are better support for users of our Whiteboards feature.
  • When a text field could potentially be auto-filled using the browser’s saved values, if a user selected a saved value it wasn’t displaying properly.  (Thanks to a breaking change in one of Chrome’s many, many updates — seriously, why are they releasing new versions every week?)
  • Dates shown for non-English users will now appear in the locally selected languages.
  • If a user opened a task on the mobile apps that had been found by doing a search, editing the task’s title was showing HTML characters.
  • Handling situations better where two people were making changes to the same task at the same time: users are warned if someone else has made changes that would get overwritten if they saved their own changes.
  • Improvements in the new user experience: this is, frankly speaking, a never-ending quest for us!
  • Fixed a situation where a new user who didn’t complete their signup returned later to Kerika: the language selection that’s the first thing that a new user does wasn’t working properly.
  • We made it easier for people to stop getting their 6AM task summary emails; we really should have done this a long time ago.
  • Fixed a long-existing bug that finally surfaced that omitted some tasks from the 6AM emails.

 

Bug, fixed: the Views count was incorrect in certain situations

Bug Fixes,

We found and fixed a bug that reported incorrect counts for some Views (on the Home page), that was triggered when users did a particular sequence of opening a View, applying the Assigned to Me toggle, and then returning to the Home page.

It was an edge case that took us a while to figure out because our own team didn’t see the problem happen; it only affected a few users.

Views on Home Page
Views on Home Page

The counts shown on your Home Page, under the Views tab, should be correct now.

Bug, fixed: our Pricing Page wasn’t showing up correctly.

Bug Fixes

Thanks to our users in Belgium and Finland for pointing this out to us: our Pricing Page wasn’t displaying correctly in browsers that had their default language set to something other than English.

This was happening only sporadically, and only in Chrome; other browsers like Microsoft Edge were handling it correctly.

Chrome was trying to localize text for non-English users before the language resources were ready; this problem had actually been fixed in the latest version of Polymer  We are using ‘app-localize-behaviour’ of Polymer’s app-localize-behaviour (1.0.2).  Turned out we were a version behind in updating our use of Polymer.

 

Bug, fixed: making sure your Daily Task Summary gets sent at 6AM

Agile & Scrum, Bug Fixes, , , ,

We recently found and fixed an odd bug related to the optional 6AM Daily Task Summary email that you can get from Kerika: if you had toggled the preference setting for this email — from ON to OFF, and back to ON again — the email was getting sent at 8AM instead of 6AM.

Daily Task Reminder
Daily Task Reminder (click for larger image)

Essentially a coding mistake on our part, and one we didn’t notice (and none of our users noticed, either) for a long time because no one would try changing this preference setting very often.

The bug’s been fixed.

Squashing even the tiniest bugs is important

Bug Fixes
squashed bug
squashed bug

What have we been up to lately, you ask?

Fixing bugs. Lots and lots of bugs, all minor but we don’t like to have any known bugs at any time.

We recently implemented some new error reporting services so that we can trap server and browser exceptions more efficiently.

This threw up a bunch of errors that we hadn’t been aware of before. Obviously these were minor, since no one had observed any ill effects before, but it’s long been a point of pride for the Kerika team that no known bug gets away alive.

So, we have been cleaning up even minor server exceptions, and obscure Javascript warnings from the browser console, so we have a completely clean slate.

One advantage of having a clean slate is that it makes any new errors immediately more visible. If you get used to ignoring some exceptions/warnings because you know they are not important, your team eventually gets desensitized to the presence of these errors and warnings, and bigger, more important issues start to get ignored as well.

Best to squash all bugs, no matter how small.

Some minor bug fixes

Agile & Scrum, Bug Fixes, , , ,

We did an update yesterday that included a bunch of minor bug fixes and usability tweaks. (It also included a ton of behind-the-scenes improvements to our architecture and product development processes, but if we did our job well you shouldn’t see any of that change…)

  1. When the Kerika server is being updated (to a newer version), your browser will no longer keep trying to reconnect while this is underway.

    We have some code in place to help fix broken network connections: if your browser can detect that it’s connection to the Kerika server is broken for any reason (usually a network error), the browser will automatically attempt to reconnect.

    This doesn’t make sense if the server is down for planned maintenance.

  2. If you are working in multiple accounts and you decide to switch between them, we offer your choices in a more logical way: all the account owners you are connected to are listed alphabetically, and then each account owned is listed alphabetically.

    Our previous display was kind of random making it hard to scroll through a long list of accounts. This affected only a very small number of users who were working on many different accounts, but still…

  3. Now that we are encouraging our customers to converge around service accounts, we are trying to make sure these service accounts don’t get too crowded from the perspective of any single user.

    We have always had the ability to “favorite” some boards (and templates) so you can have your own personal, curated list of boards that you care about — and so you can ignore the rest — but now we have made it easier for Board Admins to move their boards to the trash or archive (or to restore them later) so they can help keep the commonly-shared service account in a more useful and relevant state for all the users within that account.

  4. A really small thing, but we decided to change the Sort by Status feature on our Task Boards and Scrum Boards so that On Hold cards appear at the bottom of the column, below all the others.

  5. Bug fix: if you changed the name of a board using the Board Settings dialog (assuming you are one of the Board Admins), the new name is now reflected immediately in the breadcrumbs.

  6. If someone who is currently a Team Member on your Task Board or Scrum Board is made a Visitor, he/she will not be removed from the current card assignments.  This makes it easier to change your mind if you decide you want that person to be a Team Member after all: just change this person’s role in the Board Team dialog, back to Team Member, and all the old card assignments will be there.