Tag Archives: Calendar

About syncing due dates with Google, Microsoft, and Apple calendars.

Using Kerika with Microsoft 365

January 22, 2024Kanban & Lean, Kerika, TechnologyAccount, Box, Calendar, Document Management, Google Apps, Microsoft, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, WhiteboardKerika

We have made a very big extension to Kerika, by integrating with Microsoft 365: now you can sign up using your Microsoft ID, and have your files stored in your own OneDrive account!

Kerika+Microsoft works the same was as Kerika+Google and Kerika+Box: you can use your existing Microsoft account to sign up and login to Kerika; there’s no need to create and remember a new password:

When you upload files to your board for the first time, you will be asked to choose a preferred cloud storage: if it’s Microsoft, then you will be asked to give Kerika access to a single folder in your Microsoft OneDrive:

After you allow Kerika access to your OneDrive, Kerika will create a single folder in your OneDrive that it will use for all of your Kerika-related files:

That one top-level folder is all that Kerika will ever use: inside there Kerika will automatically manage all the subfolders you need to sort your different Kerika accounts (yes, some folks have more than one Kerika account!) and your board.

Kerika doesn’t go snooping around or altering any other part of your OneDrive!

Files you add to your Kerika boards will be automatically shared with everyone on the board’s team: Board Admins and Team Members will get read+write access, while Visitors will get read-only access.

As folks join or leave your board team, access to all the files on that board will be automatically managed by Kerika, freeing you up from all the admin work that other tools make you do.

You can even create new Office 365 documents from inside Kerika, and have them shared automatically with your board team:

And we have always had the ability to sync your Kerika due dates with your Outlook calendar, so that completes everything you need to get the most of Kerika+Microsoft!

Tasks and Due Dates in Kerika

January 2, 2019Agile & Scrum, TutorialsCalendar, Kanban, Scrum, Task Board, Teams, Tutorial, WorkflowKerika

A new tutorial video, part of our ongoing effort to create short learning opportunities for our new users, each focusing on one aspect of using Kerika.

This one is all about getting stuff done: scheduling and managing your work, using Kerika’s Task Boards and Scrum Boards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5sZ2R3eoQg

The 6AM Task Summary Email is back

September 19, 2018Agile & Scrum, Team CollaborationCalendar, Kanban, Preferences, Scrum, Task Board, Task ManagementKerika

We used to have a feature that let you get a task summary email from Kerika everyday at 6AM that summarized all the things that you were responsible for that are overdue, due this week or due next week.

When we introduced the Views feature, we thought perhaps this 6AM email was not needed any more, so we took it out of the user interface for a few months — although people who had previously been using this feature continued to get their daily emails.

It seems like we underestimated the usefulness of this feature: new users started asking for something just like it, so we have brought the feature back. (And thanks for helping us understand we had screwed up in taking it away.)

You can access this feature from your Preferences page:

“Responsible for” includes not just the items that were assigned to you, but also items on boards where you are a Board Admin (and, presumably, have some responsibility for.)

This email can show your tasks organized in two different ways, and, if you like, you can get both sent to you every day:

A typical task summary, where tasks are grouped by date, would look like this:

The board names and card names are also links that you can use to open the relevant work item.

Enjoy, again.

Bugs, fixed: edge cases where due dates on tasks weren’t being reflected correctly at the card level

February 12, 2018Agile & Scrum, Bug FixesBug, Calendar, Kanban, Scrum, Task ManagementKerika

If you create a list of tasks on a card on a Task Board or Scrum Board, Kerika does a bunch of stuff in the background to make sure your view of what’s due, at the card level, board level and account level, are always correct.

We found a couple of edge cases where the due dates on tasks wasn’t rolling up correctly to the card level, potentially giving users a misleading view of what was currently due for them:

When the last task with a scheduled due date was removed (deleted) from a card, this wasn’t correctly adjusting the due date for the card itself.
Similarly, when the last task with a scheduled due date was no longer scheduled, this wasn’t correctly adjusting the due date for the card.

Both bugs have been fixed. They were real edge-cases, so it’s likely that most users never noticed them in the first place, but still…

Managing multiple Due Dates became easier

October 30, 2017Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Scrum, Usability, WorkflowKerika

We have made it easier for teams to manage multiple Due Dates within the same project, especially when a single work item (as represented by a Task Board or Scrum Board card) contains many different sub-tasks, each of which could have a different Due Date.

Where a card has multiple tasks, each with different Due Dates, the range of dates is shown on cards to make it easier to understand the “time footprint” of the work item as a whole.

Here’s an example of a card with two open/remaining tasks, one of which is due today and the other tomorrow:

When viewed on a Task Board or Scrum Board, Kerika will show the range of dates involved for this card:

This provides better context, better usability for users who work with due dates: at a glance you can see the overall “time footprint” of a work item that involves several sub-tasks.

The What’s Assigned to Me and What’s Due Views are now smarter about handling multiple due dates for the same card: if just one task within a card is overdue, even though the card as a whole isn’t yet overdue, this is shown in the Overdue column in these Views.

Your 6AM summary email (which you can turn on optionally) now lists the due dates on individual tasks within cards, as these become overdue or due this week or next week.

Tasks within card can now be assigned to multiple people

October 24, 2017Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Kerika, Scrum, Usability, Views, WorkflowKerika

With our latest version, a task within a card (on a Task Board or Scrum Board) can now be assigned to multiple people, just like the card itself.

This makes it easier to handle more complex work items that contain a large number of tasks, each of which may require more than one person to handle.

To make this work, we have also updated the What’s Assigned to Me and What’s Due Views to make sure everyone who is assigned to a task, where tasks have multiple people responsible for them, sees this clearly.

What’s Overdue: another convenient Highlight

October 23, 2017Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Scrum, Task Board, UsabilityKerika

We have added another way to highlight cards on Task Boards and Scrum Boards:

What's Overdue Highlight — What’s Overdue Highlight

This option lets you quickly spot all the cards on a board that are overdue, and it does so in a smart way:

If a card’s overall due date has passed, this card will be highlighted.
More importantly, if a task within a card is overdue, even though the card as a whole isn’t overdue, this card will also be highlighted.

This smart highlight makes sure that you are aware of everything that’s overdue, even it is just one task that’s buried within a card on a large board.

Here’s what the highlighted board looks like:

Your 6AM summary email now includes Tasks

October 20, 2017Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Preferences, Scrum, UsabilityKerika

All Kerika users have the option of getting an email sent to them at 6AM everyday, in their local time, that summarizes all the cards that are overdue, due this week, and due next week.

(Actually, we have two options for this email: you can get these cards summarized by due date, or by board. Or both.)

This is turned on by default for new users but you can change your preferences at https://kerika.com/preferences.

We have improved this email to include Tasks as well as cards.

This required some smarts in the code to handle scenarios where a Task’s Due Date is different from the Card’s Due Date, but we managed to do this nicely.

Enjoy.

Sorting by date got better

September 15, 2017Agile & Scrum, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Scrum, UsabilityKerika

We have improved the Sort by Date feature to allow you to sort in ascending or descending order of Due Date.

Sort once, and the sort will be in descending order: i.e. the due dates closest will appear on the top of the column.

Sort again, and the sort will be ascending order: the closes due dates will appear at the bottom of the column.

We made it easier to sync your Kerika Due Dates with your Calendar

August 14, 2017Agile & Scrum, Kanban & Lean, UsabilityCalendar, Kanban, Preferences, Scrum, Usability, WorkflowKerika

We made some user interface tweaks to make sure people are aware of a really great feature in Kerika that’s existed for a while, but was buried in a Preferences screen that not everyone paid attention to: you can have your Kerika Due Dates automatically show up on your Google, Microsoft or Apple Calendar.

Well, that’s buried no more: we have added a Calendar Synch button in a more prominent place on the top-right of the Kerika app:

Clicking on this button will let you choose the type of calendar you want to synch with:

(Hint: you can have your Kerika Due Dates synch with more than one calendar, if you like.)

Pick your favorite calendar type, and you will see detailed instructions on how to set up syncing of your Kerika Due Dates. Here’s an example of syncing with Apple Calendars:

The URL is personal, and should be kept confidential. (That’s why we aren’t showing it in the illustration above.)

The URL is long and random so it will be impossible for others to guess, but it’s not a good idea to share it with others unless you really want them to know all your Kerika Due Dates, e.g. if you have an assistant or delegate that helps manage your daily schedule.

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