We have long had a deep, excellent integration with Google Apps: you can sign up with your Google ID and have all your Kerika-related files stored in your own Google Drive, where you can access them independently of the Kerika app.
We are now taking that one step forward, with seamless integration with Google Team Drive.
Google Team Drives are shared spaces where teams can easily store, search, and access their files anywhere, from any device.
Unlike files in My Drive, files in Team Drive belong to the team instead of an individual. Even if members leave, the files stay exactly where they are so your team can continue to share information and get work done.
You don’t need to do anything different: the integration is built-in with the latest version of Kerika (and, since we are software-as-a-service, everyone always uses the latest version of our product!) and the integration is seamless.
We have added more options for you to add Google files to your Whiteboards.
We used to have a quick way to create, name, and add a new Google Doc to your Whiteboard:
Old options for adding content
As part of our big redesign earlier this year, we added more options for people to create Google documents from within Task Boards and Scrum Boards; now we have the same flexibility for Whiteboards:
Google document options
With this new functionality you can create a larger variety of Google Documents from within your Kerika Whiteboards:
Google Docs
Google Sheets
Google Slides
Google Forms
After you name your new document, it is automatically added to the canvas you are working on, while the new document itself is opened in a new browser tab for you to start working on.
A fun video we made recently featuring Faith Trimble and Kate King, from the Athena Group, talking about how a consulting company can function as a truly distributed team — and get great work-life balance as a result!
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.
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”.
File attached to a card
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:
Uploading a new version
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:
Google revision history
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:
Box version history
If you signed up directly with Kerika, you can access the older versions from within Kerika’s file preview:
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:
Older versions
So, that’s it: simple, easy, automatic tracking of multiple versions of your project files! Brought to you by Kerika, of course.
We don’t offer this as a regular service — because it involves some special back-end work that can be a little time-consuming — but we recently helped a bunch of users migrate their accounts over from Kerika+Google to the new version of Kerika that lets you sign up directly with us, and have Kerika store your files instead of linking Kerika to a Box or Google account.
This is the version that you sign up for when you click on the left side of our Sign Up page:
Signing up directly with Kerika
With this option, Kerika stores your files for you using our new integration with the Box Platform.
Migrating away from Kerika+Google to this new platform helps our users save money: they could discontinue their use of premium (paid) Google Apps which they had adopted only to use as a sign-up mechanism for Kerika.
Handling this migration isn’t something we do for everyone, but this is one of our oldest customers. 🙂
The exceptions shown in the Kerika server logs were clearly pointing to problems on Google’s end:
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
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‘s authentication service for login to @Kerika is throwing a bunch of errors right now, affecting a range of our users. Apologies.
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.
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
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. 🙁
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
Clicking on the File Picker button brings up the File Picker dialog:
Using the Box file picker
And this is the “copying…” message that’s shown.
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.
Did you know that you can embed a Google Map in your Kerika Whiteboards? It’s easy: just copy the Google Map’s URL:
Adding a Google Map to Canvas
And paste it into the dialog box that appears when you click on the “Add Web Content” button on your canvas toolbar:
Add Web Content
Kerika automatically figures out the URL refers to a Google Map, and shows you an embedded map on your canvas:
Example of embedded Google Map
You can do the same thing with card attachments, for your Task Boards and Scrum Boards: Kerika shows a small thumbnail of the map in the list of attachments on your card:
