Some Kerika users — specifically those who had signed up directly — had trouble logging in if they had left Kerika running overnight on a browser.
Their browser was endlessly refreshing itself, bouncing between the /app and /setup URLs. There was a workaround (type “https://kerika.com/logout” to clear Kerika’s cookies) but the workaround was far from obvious, so obviously some people were inconvenienced.
(Would have been a lot more had it not been for the Christmas holiday season!)
This has been fixed now. We found a problem with the configuration of our NGINX web server software.
We have offered free accounts to small nonprofits and schools/universities from the very beginning of Kerika’s existence, but this was always on an ad hoc basis: someone would occasionally ask us for a free account for their school or nonprofit team, and we would agree.
Looking back, we found that we agreed to almost 99% of all the requests that ever came to us: the only situations where we turned someone down were
When we couldn’t figure out what the nonprofit was doing, or even whether it really existed. (Having a domain for your school/nonprofit really helps, even if it is not in English.)
When the school was for-profit, (We dodn’t see why we should subsidize for-profit organizations.)
When the organization was essentially a governmental entity that was getting funded through public money in a normal way.
With these caveats aside, we have tried to be very generous and helpful for small organizations that are doing philanthropic work, or are schools.
But our old process for dealing with these requests was really haphazard, and when we implemented our new billing system and improved account management features, we also made it easier for us to grant nonprofit status to a much larger group of organizations, providing they are small teams.
Our new process makes everything much easier for schools and nonprofits: we are whitelisting entire domainsso that everyone from that domain who signs up automatically gets a free Academic & Nonprofit Account.
This means that only person ever needs to make a request on behalf of a school or university: if that gets approved, we will approve it for everyone from that school/university.
With a free Academic/Nonprofit Account you can have up to 10 people working on boards owned by that account: it doesn’t matter how many boards you have, or how big these boards are.
If you need more than 10 people, you will need to sign up for a Professional Account, which is $7 per user, per month (normally billed annually, as $84 per user).
Here’s a partial list of schools and universities we have already whitelisted for free service:
Adler Graduate Professional School, adler.ca
American Quality Leadership & Educational Management, aqlem.com
Arizona State University, asu.edu
Austin Community College, austincc.edu
Australian Pacific College, apc.edu.au
Bethlehem University, Palestine, bethlehem.edu
Boston University, bu.edu
California State University, Fullerton, csu.fullerton.edu
Campbell University, campbell.edu
Carnegie Mellon University, cmu.edu
Catholic Education Diocese of Wagga Wagga, Australia, ww.catholic.edu.au
Clemson University, clemson.edu
Cochise College, cochise.edu
Coconino Community College, coconino.edu
College Euroamericano, Monterrey, colegioeuro.edu.mx
College La Grange du Bois, Savigny Le Temple, clg-la-grange-du-bois-savigny-le-temple.fr
Colorado State University, colostate.edu
Cornell University, cornell.edu
Crefito-3, Sao Paulo, crefito3.org.br
Drew, drew.edu
Duke University, duke.edu
Edmonds Community College, edcc.edu
Escuela de Educacion Secundaria Tecnica No. 5 de San Martin, Argentina, galileo.edu.ar
Everett Community College, everettcc.edu
Faciplac, Brasilia, faciplac.edu.br
Fundacion de Estudios Superiores Universitarios, Medellin, fesu.edu.co
George Fox University, georgefox.edu
Humboldt State University, humboldt.edu
ICDL Colombia, icdlcolombia.org
Iḷisaġvik College, ilisagvik.edu
Indiana University, iu.edu
Institucion Universitaria Colegio Mayor del Cauca, Colombia, unimayor.edu.co
Instituto Potosino de Investigacion Cientifica y Technologica, Mexico, ipicyt.edu.mx
Instituto Superior de Ciências Económicas e Empresariais, Cape Verde, iscee.edu.cv
Instituto Superior de Formacion Docente Salome Urena, Dominican Republic, isfodosu.edu.do
Iowa State University, iastate.edu
Kalamazoo Valley Community College, kvcc.edu
Kirtland Community College, kirtland.edu
Kuruwi, Cabo San Lucas, kuruwi.edu.mx
Lane Community College, lanecc.edu
Macquarie University, mq.edu.au
Maricopa Community Colleges, maricopa.edu
Michigan Tech University, mtu.edu
Mid Michigan College, midmich.edu
Milwaukee Area Technical College, matc.edu
Mount Holyoke College, mtholyoke.edu
Mount Wachusett Community College, mwcc.edu
Mundo Sin Fronteras, Oaxaca, sinfronteras.edu.mx
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Tawian, kuas.edu.tw
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, ntust.edu.tw
Newman University, newmanu.edu
North Carolina State University, ncsu.edu
oc.unlv.edu
Oregon Health Sciences University, ohsu.edu
Ośrodek Szkolenia, Krakow, straz.edu.pl
Paul Cuffee School, paulcuffee.org
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, pcom.edu
Yesterday we had our first instance of “leaver’s regret”: someone asked us to delete their Kerika account, and we acted promptly upon receiving that request.
Too promptly, as it turned out, because a couple of minutes the ex-user changed her mind. But by then it was too late: we had completed closed her account and deleted all the associated data.
Maybe we should be a little slower in responding to these requests? Deleting/closing an account is an irreversible action: we scrub all the boards owned by that account, and we don’t have any way of getting that data back. Our goal in implementing this process was to be very faithful to our privacy promises, namely that your data remains your data; it’s never Kerika’s data.
But, faced with this leaver’s regret situation, we are now thinking that maybe we should wait, for up to a day, before acting on these requests.
We have made this easier: you can go to the Manage Account page inside the Kerika app and you will see this section at the bottom:
Closing Kerika Account
Clicking on the Close My Account button (and the subsequent confirmation dialog box) will generate an email to Kerika’s Admins, who will then manually close the account.
We have decided not to automate the actual account closure step since it is irrevocable: once your account is closed, all the boards and content on those boards are deleted and cannot be restored.
To help users, we usually wait for a few hours — up to a day at most — before actually deleting the account, in case someone wants to send us an “Oops, I didn’t mean to do that…” email.
In an effort to reduce the possibility of Kerika’s notifications ending up in your spam folder, we are making a bunch of changes: one that’s already gone into effect is that all notifications generated by Kerika — for example, when someone sends you a chat message, or you get your 6AM Task Summary email — will come from the same sender: notifications@mailer.kerika.com.
It would help us a lot if you whitelisted this sender email, either for your own personal email, or ideally for your organization’s entire domain.
This isn’t something that you will see, as a customer, but we have spent several months improving our internal systems for managing users, accounts, payments and invoices.
We used to do things in a very ad hoc way before, as we concentrated all our efforts on improving the Kerika app, but we realized earlier this year that we had reached the limits of ad hoc approaches and needed a lot more automation to handle growth.
Everything, pretty much, is now automated: our admin staff can quickly look up any any user or account, see which payments have been made (online or offline), and manage changes to accounts.
Our new billing system makes it much easier to manage your Kerika account, and one of the feature we built is easy online access to your Kerika transactions:
Billing History
Please note that we are not showing retroactive data: only transactions entered into after August 2018, when we rolled out this feature, will show up.
If you purchase subscriptions, or do other actions like request a refund, Kerika prompts you to update your Billing Information:
Updating Billing Information
This information is needed to complete a transaction:
Your name or organization (school, college, nonprofit, company, government agency…) are used to ensure invoices and receipts are addressed to the correct person (the purchaser).
Your phone number is needed to handle any problems we face processing your invoices or purchases.
Your address is used to create invoices and receipts, and to check whether we need to charge you Washington State sales tax.
At the bottom of this screen you can optionally include Billing Contacts: people who need to get copies of all your transactions, such as your organization’s Purchasing Department or outside accountants/bookkeepers.
We store this information securely: as you may have already noticed, all access to Kerika servers is done using SSL/HTTPS, and within the Kerika virtual network, our servers communicate with each other using SSL as well.
We never ask for your credit card information: we use Stripe to handle all online payments, and we never see your credit card at any time.
If you pay by bank check or electronic funds transfer, this information is handled by Bank of America: details of these transactions, such as your bank information, are stored only at Bank of America and not stored on the Kerika servers.
With the new billing system that we will be rolling out next week, Kerika will also be adding a slew of account management features that will make it much easier to purchase subscriptions, manage teams and handle your payments.
Manage Account options
The Manage Account screen has a new layout, with three tabs on the left: Account Summary, Manage Users, and Billing History.
Account Summary
This page has several sections, starting with your Account Name at the top. When you create an Account, you can give it any name that you like, and on this page you can change it if needed. Changes to the Account Name are shown instantly to everyone who is viewing boards owned by your Account.
Next is a section that lets you manage your Kerika subscriptions. You can see which plan you are currently on — Individual, Nonprofit or Professional — and switch to a different plan if needed.
People on a paid Professional Plan can manage the number of subscriptions they currently have (you need enough to cover your current Account Team, which consists of everyone who is currently a Board Admin or Team Member on the boards owned by your Account.)
Managing your Professional Plan is easy: you can increase the number of subscriptions you have, or decrease them.
Manage Professional Plan
All subscriptions have the same end-date: this makes annual reviews and renewals easy for Account Owners. You can also decide whether you want to turn on, or off automatic renewals of your subscriptions.
Changing number of subscriptions
In the example shown above, the user is increasing the number of subscriptions from 20 to 25. The system reminds the user that he needs at least 20, for the size of his current Account Team.
Confirm purchase
With our new billing system, it’s easy to make purchases online, or request that an invoice be sent to you.
Online purchases are handled by Stripe, so Kerika never sees your credit card information.
If your Account currently has a credit balance, because you had reduced the number of subscriptions, this is reflected in your purchase: by default a credit balance is applied to future purchases, but you can also request a check be mailed to you if you don’t plan to use your credit balance.
If you are located in Washington State (in the USA) we may be required to charge you Washington State Sales Tax. You can specify whether this applies to you by updating your BillingInformation:
Billing Info
Your Billing Information contains just your address and phone number; we never ask for, or store, your credit card or bank information.
Updating Billing Information
One useful new feature we have added is the concept of Billing Contacts:
Billing Contacts
Billing Contacts can be any set of people who need to get copies of all your Kerika transactions, e.g. your manager or Purchasing Department. Every purchase will generate a PDF for the transaction which will be automatically emailed to all the Billing Contacts for the Account.
Billing Contacts can include people from outside your organization, e.g. if you use a bookkeeping service from another company. Billing Contacts only get copies of your receipts and invoices; they don’t have access to your boards, and are not considered part of your Account Team.
Manage Users
The Manage Users page has been enhanced as well: you can see at a glance who is currently part of your Account Team, and now it is possible to invite someone to join the Account as a whole: previously people could be invited to join only a specific board.
Manage Users
For each member of your Account Team, Kerika will list the date when they joined your Account, the date of their last login, and the total number of boards where they are currently a Board Admin or Team Member.
This makes it easy to see at a glance how active someone is, if you are wondering whether to continue paying for their subscriptions.
(Note: in some cases the “Joined Team” information may not be available if it was months or years in the past; we didn’t start tracking this information until we started building the new billing system.)
Selecting a member of your Account Team offers additional actions:
Account Team actions
Clicking on the View button gives you a more detailed view of particular member of your Account Team:
Account Team Member detail
One new feature is you can see the IP address last used by the team member: this can be helpful in security reviews.
With the Manage User button, you can also remove someone from your Account Team altogether, demote their role to Visitor (across all boards owned by that account).
Remove from Account Team
Billing History
Going forward, all transactions — including online and offline payments — will be tracked automatically by the new billing system.
We will start keeping a history of your transactions going forward (we won’t have all the old transactions; sorry) and they can be accessed through the Billing History page:
Billing History
If you have an overdue invoice — and we sincerely hope you don’t! — you can pay it online, or request it to be resent to the billing contacts for the Account:
Overdue Invoice
Summary
The new billing system took a lot of work, over many months, but it was long overdue: our old billing process was largely manual, and somewhat error-prone.
Unlike some of our competitors, we understand that even though Kerika is software-as-a-service (SaaS), not everyone is set up to make online purchases. That’s why we have made it equally easy for people to receive invoices and make payments offline, e.g. by bank check or funds transfer, and have these transactions show up inside their Kerika account with the same flexibility as online purchases.
All of this should go live at the beginning of next week!
