Category Archives: Kerika

Posts about Kerika, the company and its people

Kerika just got better: why you are seeing this message more often

Kerika, Technology

“Kerika just got better…” is a message you are seeing almost daily, and that’s thanks to the massive 2-year effort that overhauled our old backend and made it much easier to push out changes.

We are now rolling out bug fixes and feature improvements on a daily basis, using our modern architecture. Previously we had to batch these up and do large upgrades; now we can push out the smallest changes, when we feel they are ready to go.

Under the old architecture taking the servers down for maintenance was a painful necessity; now changes can be deployed without any downtime.

All changes still go through extensive internal testing, and new features go through a lot of usability testing in particular, before anything gets pushed out.

A more detailed view of Task History

Kanban & Lean, Kerika, Usability, , , ,

It’s not often you need to look at the detailed history of a task (card) but sometimes you need to know exactly what happened, when, and who did what.

Our latest version has a much improved Task History, as you can see from these examples:

Every change made to a task is logged and the HISTORY tab of the task details dialog shows you not just who made a change and when, but also what the change was.

Where attachments were added, these are shown as links so you can quickly view it by clicking on the link.

Status changes show the old and new values for the status.

Due date changes also show the old and new due dates.

When it comes to sub-tasks (checklist items), the new history view is greatly improved:

You can see every instance of a checklist item changing, including renaming (editing), changing the assignments, and changing the due dates.

Enjoy Kerika!

We just overhauled the entire back end of Kerika

Kerika, Technology

An effort that took 2 years finally completed yesterday when we updated the Kerika app.

This massive project involved rewriting everything on the back-end of Kerika in order to modernize the architecture and set up us for a more rapid development of end-user functionality, as well as making it easier to release new versions in the future using Docker container.

Our old backend was not well designed: everything ran as a single monolithic server. Over the years we moved slowly away from that, by building new features as microservices, and while that helped a little, it wasn’t enough.

We had reached a point where it was taking exponentially more time to build new features, and we were facing operational risk as well because the old backend was poorly understood and document.

A complete rewrite was necessary, and we bit the bullet on that a couple of years ago. There was significant cost and complexity but our great team powered through all the challenges, particularly when it came to transitioning our main database away from MySQL (hosted as RDS, by Amazon) to a NoSQL model using Google’s Firestore service.

Now that we are done we can start delivering more functionality, starting with support for non-English languages.

Stay tuned for our first non-English language, which will be Hindi, to be offered in a couple of weeks.

6 Project Management Techniques For Work-Life Balance

Kerika

Once again Kerika is featured in an article, this time on the 6 Project Management Techniques For Work-Life Balance at Namaste UI.

The techniques include:

  1. Treating Work-Life Balance as a Cycle
  2. Prioritization and Time Management
  3. Agile Project Management
  4. Delegation and Collaboration
  5. Setting Realistic Goals and Expectations
  6. Regular Evaluation and Reflection

To quote from the article:

Tools like Kerika can help you see and analyze how your projects are going, so you can find patterns, things that slow you down, and ways to get better.

Check it out.

Kerika has been getting rave reviews on Slashdot and Sourceforge

Kerika

It’s been great to see the reviews come in on Sourceforge and Slashdot, where Kerika is listed as a leader in the Task Management category!  Click on the badges below to check out the reviews:

Kerika Reviews


Kerika Reviews


330k Downloads For Kerika Task Management App: How They Did It

Kerika

Website Planet featured an interview with Arun Kumar, CEO of Kerika, where he talks about Kerika journey from concept to getting 330K downloads from the Google Workspace Marketplace.  Topics covered include:

  • Introducing Kerika: What is it and how does it work?“… the fact that our users range from global automobile companies down to young children highlights the biggest advantage of using Task Boards: it is super easy for people to pick up the concept and there’s no training needed.”
  • How did it all start, and what are your achievements to this day?“We were the first to create these incredibly flexible Whiteboards that can not only contain ideas, text, and diagrams, but also files and content from the Web.”

    “Now we have users in every continent and we get 5-star reviews everywhere…”
  • How does your mission differ from the other companies in your niche?“…designing a tool that ordinary folks can use, without training. We are building “task management for the rest of us.”
  • Who are your typical clients and what problems do they have when they come to you?“Describing our “typical clients” is impossible for me, because we have such a wide variety of users.”
  • And what makes them eventually choose you over your competitors?“What we have heard consistently, from users across the board, is that they love the user experience.”
  • Can you share one success story from your customers? What was their pain point, and what results did they get thanks to Kerika? 

    https://youtu.be/U7hQEvhbIPw

  • What do you see in the future of your industry, and how do you plan to cope?“Our focus isn’t going to change. We believe very passionately that everyone else in this space is still neglecting what we call “regular folks”. We love regular folks, and we will continue to make sure we have the best user experience for them!”

The interview was conducted with Bethenny Carl from Website Planet.

How to import boards from Trello

Kerika, Technology, Usability,

We have added an exciting new feature: if you were previously using Trello, you can import that data, completely, into Kerika!

We have been testing this as a convenience feature and based upon positive feedback we have expanded this for everyone.

New users will be offered this as an option when they set up their Kerika accounts:

Screenshot showing how new Kerika users can import boards from Trello
How new Kerika users can import boards from Trello

All users will have this option whenever they want to create a new Kerika board:

Screenshot showing how all users can import from Trello when creating a new Kerika board
All users can import from Trello when creating a new Kerika board

We built this feature because we have heard from many people switched over from Trello and really liked Kerika’s user experience, features, and support. In the past they had to manually recreate their work inside Trello; now that’s all automated!

Everything is handled nicely: your Trello cards, lists, people, task details, etc. come over. Once you are done, a single click can then send out invitations to all your old Trello colleagues to join you in Kerika.

Enjoy.