Tag Archives: Task Board

About Task Boards. See also Kanban and Lean.

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!

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.

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.

Another way to stay on top of what’s happening

When you are working on several boards, we want to make sure you don’t miss any updates that might be happening elsewhere in Kerika.

There’s a new feature that helps with that: if you have open boards (or templates) with unread updates, the drop-down on the “board switcher” appears in orange:

When you click on the OPEN BOARDS button, Kerika will show you all your open boards, with the updated ones highlighted in orange:

This should help you stay on top of what’s happening across your entire Kerika world: you don’t need to switch to different boards just to see if there’s anything new.