Timing is everything when you send email

Kerika,

We occasionally email all of our users, when we have released something significant in terms of functionality or usability improvements.

On average, we probably send these emails 2-3 times a year, although we release software updates much more often.

Not every software update is announced in a mass email, although all the improvements and changes are always noted on this blog: unless the changes were big enough to require some additional explanation, we prefer to let users discover the new features on our own.

What we have noticed with the last couple of announcements is that the timing of the email makes a very big difference in terms of how many people actually open and read the emails.

Here are the last two emails we sent:

Timing is everything
Timing is everything

 

The “Release 62” announcement was actually far more significant, in our opinion, than the more recent “Release 66” version, at least in terms of UI changes and new features.

But, the Release 62 announcement went out mid-day on a Monday, and it was largely ignored as a result: only 9.7% of people opened that email.

The Release 66 announcement, on the other hand, went out on a Saturday afternoon, and had nearly double the open rate.

We think the simple explanation is that there was less competition for our emails on Saturday afternoon: fewer emails from colleagues and fewer crises to attend to.

We had long suspected this to be the case, but never had such clear proof that timing is everything when you send email :-)

Join us at the Lean Transformation Conference

Agile & Scrum, Government, Kanban & Lean, Kerika, , , ,

Once again Arun Kumar, Kerika’s founder and CEO, will be speaking at the annual Lean Transformation Conference organized by Results Washington.

This conference is all about Lean and Agile in the public sector: thousands of folks from state, county and local (city) government agencies will be attending, and as usual Kerika will also have a display booth on the 5th floor of the Tacoma Convention Center.

Arun’s topic this year is “Can You See It Now? Visualizing your Lean and Agile Workflows”.

We look forward to seeing our Washington users at the conference; please do stop by our booth or sign up for Arun’s talk!

 

Google Apps last Friday

Kerika, Technology

It looks like we were on the bleeding edge of Google’s problems last Friday (Oct 9): fairly early in the day, Pacific Time, we started seeing authentication failures from Google related to our Kerika+Google users.

The exceptions shown in the Kerika server logs were clearly pointing to problems on Google’s end:

Google Errors
Google Errors

 

What was a little frustrating for us — and our beloved users — was that Google itself didn’t seem to be acknowledging any problems until fairly late in the day:

Oct 9 Google Apps status
Oct 9 Google Apps status

By this time — almost noon, Pacific Time — dozens of Kerika users had been affected. We tried to let folks know via Twitter that there was a problem, and continued to monitor the situation through the day:

Google eventually acknowledged the problem as it became clear that it was widespread.

By mid-afternoon, the issue was largely cleared up, at least as far as Kerika was concerned, although it is possible that other apps, which also use Google for authentication or Google Drive for storage, were affected for much longer.

Once again, our apologies for everyone who was affected.

Google Authentication Errors

Technology

We are currently seeing a bunch of errors from Google with respect to their authentication service — which lets you login to your Kerika+Google account using your Google ID, and they seem to be affecting a wide range of users.

Here’s a sample of what we are seeing:

Google Errors
Google Errors

 

This error normally shows up when a user is logging in with a Google for Work ID, e.g. Google Apps for Business or Google Apps for Education.

What’s surprising today is that we have seen at least 1 user with a regular Gmail address have this same problem, which is theoretically impossible.

Right now there’s not much we can do but wait this out. The problem seems to be small enough that Google is not even reporting it on their Google Apps Status Dashboard. :-(

Bug, fixed: Team Members weren’t getting notification emails when they were assigned cards

Agile & Scrum, Technology, ,

Our thanks to Tatjana and Steve from Ducks Unlimited in Canada, who helped us track down a bug that was stopping notification emails being sent properly when a Team Member is assigned a card on a Task Board or Scrum Board.

(Board Admins were getting these emails when people’s assignments changed, but not the Team Members themselves.)

We fixed this with our latest release.

When you add an existing Google or Box file, we copy it into your Kerika folders

Technology, Usability,

If you use the “file picker” that’s built into Kerika to add an existing Google Drive or Box file to a card, canvas or board — for a Task Board, Scrum Board or Whiteboard — you will see a message that says the file is being copied.

This is the file picker:

File picker
File picker

Clicking on the File Picker button brings up the File Picker dialog:

Using the Box file picker
Using the Box file picker

And this is the “copying…” message that’s shown.

Copying message
Copying message

So, what’s happening?

Well, Kerika stores all your Kerika-related files in a set of special folders within your Google Drive or Box account, if you are using Kerika+Google or Kerika+Box, and these are organized neatly into folders corresponding to each of your boards.

Here’s what the folders in your Box account look like (you can learn more by reading about how Kerika integrates with Box):

It’s a similar structure if you are using Kerika with Google:

Keeping all the Kerika files together in a set of related folders makes things cleaner for you: when you look at your Google Drive or Box Account, you know exactly what’s being used by Kerika, and what’s other stuff.

And this is why we make a copy of your existing Google Drive or Box file when you use the File Picker: it enables us to put a copy into your Kerika-specific folders, where it is easier to share with the rest of your project team.

Leaving chat, and then returning

Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, Technology, Usability, , , ,

When you are writing a chat message, on a card or canvas on any Kerika Task Board, Scrum Board or Whiteboard, what happens if you need to leave that message in the middle and go look at something else in Kerika?

For example, suppose you are in the middle of writing a chat message, but in order to complete it, you need to go off and look at another card’s details, or maybe a file attached somewhere else on the board?

You can leave aside a chat in mid-stream, go somewhere else in Kerika, return to the chat, and pick up where you left off!

That’s because Kerika uses your browser’s local cache storage to keep your unsent message: it means your changes aren’t lost while you go look at something else in Kerika.

This is a handy usability fix we have always had in Kerika, but it may be one that folks didn’t realize existed…

Well, now you know :-)

Kerika is now a Box Pro Partner

Kerika,

We are pleased to announce that our technical collaboration with Box continues, and Kerika has now been named a “Box Pro Partner” reflecting the strong ties we have built between the two companies as we continue to integrate with Box’s cloud services :-)

Box Pro Partner
Box Pro Partner

Amazon burped a little on the weekend

Kerika, Technology,

We use a number of Amazon Web Services, including one called Simple Queue Service which Kerika uses to handle communications between our main project database server and a separate server that handles the Search function.

  • As with all search engines, Kerika’s Solr engine does a full indexing of the database only once: when the database is rebuilt for any reason (which happens very rarely), and after that it does incremental indexing which means that it only looks at changes made to individual boards, cards, and canvases.
  • Using a queue helps us manage the load of traffic going to the search engine server: in the unlikely event that a lot of people make a lot of updates to their Kerika boards at the same time, Solr won’t get overwhelmed with a sudden burst of new indexing.
  • There are lots of ways to implement queues in software — in fact, studying queuing theory is a standard course in all computer science programs — and at this point most apps, like Kerika, prefer not re-invent that particular wheel: instead, it is more cost-effective to use some standard queuing facility that’s available as part of the underlying platform.

AWS works very well in our opinion — it has very high reliability across most of its services — but like all software, it isn’t entirely infallible.

Over the weekend we observed a small handful of errors in our services logs where it looked like SQS had a temporary problem.

We cross-checked this time period with other activity on Kerika, and determined that about 7 Kerika boards may have been affected: not in terms of any data loss or corruption on the board itself, but in terms of some changes not being updated in the search index.

Now, 7 boards is a tiny portion of the entire Kerika project database, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands of boards, but we are glad to have spotted the potential for trouble and have re-indexed the data on these particular boards.

If we did our job well, no one will notice.