We have a great new Export feature for all Task Boards (i.e. Kanban Boards) and Scrum Boards.

The Export feature is simple, elegant and powerful, and is available to all Project Leaders, Team Members and Visitors on the project team.

To access this feature, simply click on the Project Info button that’s shown at the top-right of each Kerika Board, and you will see the Project Info display (that we have talked about in an earlier blog post):

CSV format is useful if you want to want to take data from Kerika and put it into Excel or some other analysis tool;

HTML format is useful if you want to print material from Kerika, or insert it into Word, PowerPoint or similar tools.

With both CSV and HTML exports, hidden cards are not exported: this means that if you are currently choosing to hide some columns (by using the Workflow button), or hide some cards (by using the Tags filters), then the cards that you are not viewing right now will not be part of the export.

When you export a board in CSV format, you get the following data, for each visible card:

Column Name: e.g. Backlog, In Progress, Done, etc.

Card Name: e.g. “Create PR news release”.

Card Description: e.g. “We need to create a PR news release once our latest version is ready…” (Rich text will be converted to plain text, since CSV files can only deal with plain text.)

Status: e.g. Needs Review, Needs Rework, etc. (If the card doesn’t have a special status, “Normal” will be shown.)

Due Date: the date the card is due, if a date has been set.  (If the card doesn’t have a Due Date, “Not Scheduled” will appear.)

Assigned To: a list of names of the people the card is currently assigned to.  (If the card isn’t assigned to anyone, “Not Assigned” will appear.)

Exporting could take a while: the exported data are put into a file in your Google Drive or Box account — depending upon whether you are using Kerika+Google or Kerika+Box — and when the process completes, you get an email with a link to the file containing your data.

It’s a similar experience if you do a HTML export; however the format of the data is different, giving you an indented set of attributes for each card, like this example from a Kerika+Box project:

One caveat about exporting HTML: if you open the results in Google Docs, Google shows a preview of the output, and that doesn’t look good: instead of rendering the HTML, Google actually exposes it.

Here’s an example from a Kerika+Google project:

The export feature can be used for many different purposes, of course: the most common scenario we envision is people wanting to include material from Kerika in their analysis and presentations.

And, of course, one use would be for government agencies that have to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, or other Sunshine laws.