Category Archives: Team Collaboration

Posts related to collaboration within distributed teams.

How we manage your document versions

September 13, 2016Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityBox, Google AppsKerika

Kerika helps you (and your team) manage multiple versions of a document, and it does this so smoothly that you might not even have noticed…

Here’s how it works: when you add a file to a Kerika card or canvas, it shows up in the list of attachments, like this:

If you then attach another file to the same card or canvas that has the same name and file type, Kerika automatically treats it as a new version of the same file, rather than a completely different file:

In the example above, when a Team Member adds another document called Foo.docx to a card that already has a file attached to it with the same name and file type, Kerika treats the new document as a new version of the old Foo.docx rather than as two documents called Foo.docx.

How you access all these old versions depends upon how you set up your Kerika account:

If you are using Kerika+Google, these files are being stored in your Google Drive, and Google will manage the versions for you: you can find this under the File menu in Google Docs

And pretty much the same thing is true if you are using Kerika+Box: Box will take care of the older versions automatically, although their user interface is slightly different

And what if you signed up directly with Kerika, without using a Google or Box ID?

We provide an easy way to get to older versions of a file for users who signed up directly: when you are previewing a file, click on the Older versions of this file link on the top-right.

Kerika will show you a list of all the old versions that are available for that file, along with details on who uploaded those versions, and when:

Automatic version tracking

April 23, 2016Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityBox, Direct Sign Up, Document Management, Google Apps, Kanban, Kerika, Scrum, Task Board, WhiteboardKerika

Another great new feature: if you upload a file on any card, canvas or board with the same name as a file that’s already attached to that particular card, canvas or board, Kerika will automatically keep track of these as being different versions of the same file. This makes it even easier to organize all your Kerika project files.

Here’s how it works:

Kerika lets you add files to any cards, boards or canvases, on any of your Kerika Task Boards, Scrum Boards or Whiteboards.

There’s no limit to the number of files you add, nor any limit on the size of these files.

When you add a file, to a card, board or canvas, Kerika automatically uploads that file and shares that with everyone who is part of your board’s team. You don’t have to do anything: Kerika makes sure that all the Team Members have read+write permission, and all the Visitors have read-only permission.

These files are stored in your Google Drive, if you are using Kerika+Google, or in your Box account, if you are using Kerika+Box, or with Kerika if you have signed up directly with an email address.

That’s how Kerika has always worked; what we have added is an automatic versioning feature that checks when you add a new file to see if has the same name, and type, as a file that’s already attached to that particular card, canvas or board.

If the file name and file type match something that you have already added, Kerika automatically treats that new file as a new version of the old file, rather than as a completely different file. This makes it really easy to manage your Kerika project files.

Here’s an example: this card has a file attached to it called “Foo.docx”.

If a Team Member adds another file to this same card, also called “Foo.docx”, Kerika will treat that new file as a different version of the same Foo.docx, rather than as a completely different file:

Accessing these older versions is easy: if your Kerika files are in being stored in your Google Drive, you can get the older versions using the Google Docs File menu:

If your files are being stored in your Box account, you can access the older versions from the menu on the right side of Box’s preview window:

If you signed up directly with Kerika, you can access the older versions from within Kerika’s file preview:

Clicking on the Older versions of this file link on the top right of this preview will give you a list of all the old versions of this file that Kerika has:

So, that’s it: simple, easy, automatic tracking of multiple versions of your project files! Brought to you by Kerika, of course.

How you can tell if your Project Team has changed

September 10, 2015Team Collaboration, UsabilityNotifications, Scrum, Task Board, Usability, WhiteboardKerika

If you are the only Project Leader on a Task Board, Scrum Board or Whiteboard, you will know when someone joins a board — after all, you would have approved their invitation in the first place.

But, if there are several Project Leaders for a board, it might be one of the others who added somebody to your board, and they might not have discussed this with you…

So, Kerika makes sure you know whenever the project team on any board has changed in any way:

If someone has joined,
If someone’s role has changed,
If someone has left.

(After all, someone could have left the team on their own, without telling you!)

Whenever there is a change in the project team, the Board Settings button on the top-right of the board will appear in orange.

Click on the Board Settings button, and you will see the Team tab is highlighted: this is Kerika’s way of drawing your attention to this particular tab within the Board Settings display.

When you go over to the Team tab, you will see that the new person’s name is highlighted in orange, for a few seconds. It’s a discrete yet very effective notification from Kerika, drawing your attention to the presence of someone new on the team.

The same kind of notification is used when someone’s role on the team is changed, e.g. from Team Member to Visitor.

Kerika also tries to let you know when someone has left the team, by highlighting the Project Settings button in orange, and the Team tab within the Project Settings in orange as well.

Smart notifications, from Kerika — the only work management system that’s designed specially for distributed Lean and Agile teams 🙂

UI tweak: removing the “Add member” button from card details

September 1, 2015Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityKanban, Scrum, Teams, Usability, WorkflowKerika

As part of our work on combining tags and colors, we have been cleaning up parts of the Kerika user interface that had minor inconsistencies.

One such inconsistency — in our view — was that you were able to add people to a project team from within the card details dialog itself:

This button has been there in Kerika for a very long time, but it doesn’t really make sense to have this capability within the card details dialog: it just isn’t the best place to decide to add someone to a project team.

Instead, in our new layout the Project Settings dialog consolidates all the board management in one place, including adding people to a team, changing someone’s role within a team, and removing someone from a team:

Easier to tell who moved a card to your board’s Trash

August 18, 2015Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityKanban, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, Trash, Usability, WorkflowKerika

When a Team Member deletes a card, it just gets moved to the board’s Trash; it doesn’t get immediately deleted from Kerika’s database even though it disappears from your view right away.

That’s because the “delete” action in Kerika is really a “move to Trash” action: you are removing something from view, but not necessarily getting rid of it for good.

Any Team Member can delete a card, but only a Project Leader can completely and permanently get rid of it — in other words, “taking out the trash” is one of the privileges reserved for Project Leaders (and Account Owners).

The Trash column is normally not shown on your Task Board or Scrum Board, but you can bring it view easily by clicking on the Filter button:

With our latest version, it’s easy to see who moved the card to the Trash: we show this right on the card itself.

Filtering by People: a new feature

August 12, 2015Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityKanban, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, UsabilityKerika

When you are working with a large board and a large team, it’s often useful to see just those cards that are assigned to some people.

For example, you might want to just see those cards that are assigned to you, so that you can focus on getting your stuff done and not get distracted by everything else that’s going on.

With our newest release of Kerika, we have made this both possible and easy.

One quick menu choice, within our new Filter dialog, will make it possible for you to filter your view of a Task Board or Scrum Board to just see the items assigned to you:

If you are a Project Leader, you might want to filter your view of a board even further, and Kerika makes that easy:

This view is particularly handy if you are trying to deal with staffing issues: for example, if one person has called in sick, you can first filter your view to show just the items assigned to that person, and then add more cards to your view to see how busy someone else on the team is, if you are thinking of offloading the sick person’s work to someone else.

Filtering by Status: a new feature

August 11, 2015Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, UsabilityKanban, Scrum, Teams, Usability, WorkflowKerika

Here’s another way that Kerika makes it easy to manage really large Task Boards and Scrum Boards: you can use the new Filter dialog to show just those cards that are flagged as having a particular status — for example, you could view just the Critical items, or just the Needs Rework items:

Kerika has several flags you can use to identify the state of the cards on your board:

Ready to Pull: this means the card is ready to be picked by someone within the team, in accordance with the project’s workflow.

In Progress: this signals the card is being actively worked on by someone; it helps call out which cards are active, among several that may be assigned to the same person.

Needs Rework: this calls out the need for a “do-over” of some part of the work — e.g. if a design fails review, or work was not done as expected on a particular card.

On Hold: this indicates that the person assigned to that card has put it aside temporarily, usually because the person got diverted by some other work (which presumably is now marked as “In Progress”).

Is Blocked: not good; it means that the person who has been assigned that work is not able to progress as they would like to, due to forces beyond their control. Time for the Project Leaders to intervene!

Critical: hopefully this gets used sparingly…

Use Kerika’s new Filter by Status capability for your project status review meetings: it’s easy to see which cards are going well, and which ones need help.

Using Custom Workflows in Kerika

August 10, 2015Agile & Scrum, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityAccount, Kanban, Kerika, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, Usability, WorkflowKerika

A new tutorial video that shows you how you can customize the layout of any Task Board and Scrum Board, and — more importantly — switch any board from being a Task Board to being a Scrum Board, or back.

Only Kerika lets you have several Backlogs within the same Account, and easily pull cards from different Backlogs into the same Scrum Board if you want to combine work items from several Backlogs into the same Sprint.

Using the Trash in Kerika

August 7, 2015Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityBox, Document Management, Google Apps, Kanban, Kerika, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, Trash, Usability, Whiteboard, WorkflowKerika

A new tutorial video that shows you how the Trash works in Kerika (like a Recycle Bin): you can retrieve any card, canvas or even entire projects or templates that got deleted by mistake!

How to use Planning Views in Kerika

August 6, 2015Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Team Collaboration, Technology, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, Usability, Views, WorkflowKerika

A new tutorial video, featuring our so-very-soon-to-be-released new user interface, that shows you how you can use Planning Views to manage your due dates, across all your Task Boards and Scrum Boards.

Get more done, with Kerika

Task Management for Remote Teams