We made it easier to make changes to the workflow of a Task Board: now a Board Admin can simply drag a column on the board to the left or right to reorder the board.
Here’s how it looks:
Dragging columns to reorder them
Tag Archives: Task Board
What’s in our latest release
A ton of bug fixes, most of them so obscure that no end-users ever spotted them, but since we track our error codes seriously we make sure we fix stuff that no one even knew fixing. Some of the bug fixes are truly obscure, here’s a few from our latest version that’s easier to explain:
- There were some problems related to how our iOS app was updating that were a result of Apple deciding not to support Progressive Web Apps anymore. (Thanks for nothing, Apple.)
- When a person renamed a file attached to a task or board, the file was appearing as having unread updates (orange highlight) to the user who made the change.
- For our Kerika+Microsoft users, we needed to make sure the correct OneDrive icons were appearing where files were attached to tasks and boards.
- Also for our Kerika+Microsoft users: OneDrive files are better support for users of our Whiteboards feature.
- When a text field could potentially be auto-filled using the browser’s saved values, if a user selected a saved value it wasn’t displaying properly. (Thanks to a breaking change in one of Chrome’s many, many updates — seriously, why are they releasing new versions every week?)
- Dates shown for non-English users will now appear in the locally selected languages.
- If a user opened a task on the mobile apps that had been found by doing a search, editing the task’s title was showing HTML characters.
- Handling situations better where two people were making changes to the same task at the same time: users are warned if someone else has made changes that would get overwritten if they saved their own changes.
- Improvements in the new user experience: this is, frankly speaking, a never-ending quest for us!
- Fixed a situation where a new user who didn’t complete their signup returned later to Kerika: the language selection that’s the first thing that a new user does wasn’t working properly.
- We made it easier for people to stop getting their 6AM task summary emails; we really should have done this a long time ago.
- Fixed a long-existing bug that finally surfaced that omitted some tasks from the 6AM emails.
Kerika + Twine: a great partnership for freelancers everywhere
We are thrilled to announce a partnership with Twine, a global expert network that major companies are using to outsource all kinds of work:
- Designers
- Animators
- Musicians
- Filmmakers
- Photographers
- Marketers
- Developers
- Illustrators
Twine has over 500,000 registered members already, and is growing fast — and we are thrilled to be partnering with them to help Twine’s freelancers and clients get more done using our Task Boards.
Twine’s users are exactly the kind of folks that Kerika was designed for: creative people, developers, freelancers and businesses that need to come together quickly to execute on a project. In an environment that’s that fast-moving, having access to a task management tool that’s designed specially for remote and distributed teams, with a design that’s simple enough for anyone to get going with, is essential.
And that’s where Kerika can help Twine’s community.
As part of this partnership we will develop custom templates that can help Twine projects get going faster. And that’s just a starting point: we hope, over the coming months, to deepen this relationship!
We made it easier for people to join board teams
Board Admins can now invite people to join their boards as Team Members or Visitors by simply sharing a unique link that’s created for each board. We added this function because some of latest users include schools that want to add large groups of parents to boards with a single action. Here’s how it works:
When you open the Board Team dialog (as a Board Admin), you will see a new option at the bottom, called Let People Join Using a Link:
Clicking on this will bring up a dialog that let’s you create links for adding people as Board Admins, Team Members, and Visitors:
For additional security, separate links are created for each role: Board Admin, Team Member, and Visitor. When you turn on one of these options, Kerika will create a special link that you can then send to a large group of people to join you board.
(We obscured the link in the screenshot above, for our own security!)
When you create a link, it’s also automatically copied to your clipboard for easy pasting in an email or chat.
If you are concerned that the link may have been compromised, perhaps because the people you sent it to have carelessly passed it on to others, you can always turn it off: turning off a link will automatically make it useless for future use.
You can then create a new link if you want to.
Try it, and let us know what you think.
A naming change for Done and Trash
We are making a change to the names of the Done and Trash columns on Task Boards, to make it easier for new users to understand what these columns represent.
The Done column will become Completed and the Trash column will become Deleted.
Looking at the demographics of our new users, we found that over 80% had never used any kind of boards before, and we think the new names will be easier for them to understand.
This is just a naming change, there’s no difference in functionality.
Using Kerika with Microsoft 365
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!
It’s easier now to see how many checklist items remain
We made a small UI improvement that makes it easier now for you to see how many Checklist items (subtasks) remain open on a card:
A number will appear next to the Checklist icon when you are looking at tasks on a board: this is the number of open Checklist items for that task. We don’t show the total number because it’s the remaining ones that are more important, but if you hover over the number a tooltip will show you that as well:
It’s now even easier to catch up on changes in attachments and checklists
The orange arrow that appears at the top or bottom of a column when there are unread updates that are out of view has proved to be a very useful and popular feature, so we have extended the concept to work inside of tasks (cards) as well: if there is an unread change to a checklist item, or attachment, that’s out of view for you, an orange arrow will appear to help guide to you it:
The way these orange arrows work is very intuitive: just click on it to have the view scroll up automatically to show the next unread checklist item or attachment.
You can now add chat to cards in Done and Trash
Previously, when a task card was moved to the Done or Trash columns on a Kerika Task Board, it was frozen: no changes of any kind were possible.
We have loosened this restriction a little: now you can add chat to these cards. We found there were situations where someone needed to add a comment on a card after it had been moved to Done or Trash, so we are being flexible!
It’s easy to see which boards have been updated, from your Home
We made it easier to see, at a glance, which boards have unread updates when you are at your Kerika Home page:
Boards with updates on them that you haven’t caught up on are indicated with orange text for their titles.