Tag Archives: Whiteboard

About Kerika’s Whiteboards and Canvases.

Kerika+Google users can decide whether to use Google Docs, or stay with Microsoft Office

If you are a Kerika+Google user — you signed up for Kerika using your Google ID (like a Gmail address) — your Kerika files will be stored in your own Google Drive.

Most Kerika+Google users prefer to have their files converted to the Google Docs format when they upload them their Kerika cards, canvases or boards: this makes it easy for them to edit these files from inside a browser.

A small minority of our Kerika+Google users, however, prefer to keep their files in their original Microsoft Office format.

(The most common reason for this is if you are working with complex spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel is still far better than Google’s Spreadsheets!)

If you are a Kerika+Google user, you have a choice of using Google Docs or not: just go https://kerika.com/preferences and select this option:

Google Docs format
Google Docs format

Either way your files will still be stored in your Google Drive; the only difference is whether they are stored in the Google Docs format or kept in their original Microsoft Office format.

Bug, fixed: handling references to websites that redirect to HTTPS

Some sites like Kerika.com use HTTPS all the time: every URL reference, whether to our website, within our application, or even to any article on this blog is automatically converted to a secure HTTPS session.

(We are not the only ones doing this: type in “facebook.com” in your browser’s address bar, for example, and you will be automatically redirected to “https://www.facebook.com/” even though you didn’t type in “https”.)

Always using HTTPS is good security practice, but it can sometimes lead to problems for users: unless you are very familiar with a particular site, and also the type of person who plays close attention to these things, you might not understand this process.

And even if you did, you would still find it convenient to make short references to “kerika.com” (or “facebook.com”) instead of typing out “https://kerika.com”.

When you include a URL in any part of a Kerika board’s contents, e.g. in a card’s details, it’s chat or its attachments (and the same goes for canvases), Kerika tries to get the title of that Web page so the URL reference is easier to read.

We found and fixed a bug related to this: in situations where the URL, as typed by the user, actually resulted in a redirect from the referenced website (typically a “301 permanent redirect” rather than a “302 temporary redirect”), Kerika wasn’t properly showing the Web site’s page title.

All fixed now.

Kerika’s Templates

We offer a small selection of templates, covering a wide range of possible projects, to help our users get started with new boards — and, more importantly, to help introduce the concept of templates to folks.

Some of the templates we have on offer:

We experienced some performance issues related to these templates recently which we have fixed: as the total number of Kerika users grew, the number of people wanting to use the same templates grew somewhat faster than we had anticipated, so we needed to make some back-end fixes to make sure there wasn’t a slowdown in performance.

 

You can now Copy and Paste Lines

In a recent update, we added a minor new feature: you can now copy and paste lines even if they are not used to connect any other objects on a Kerika Whiteboard.

We always let you copy and paste lines that were used to connect other objects, like in this scenario:

Copying objects connected by a line
Copying objects connected by a line

 

But now you can also copy and paste freestanding lines (i.e. lines that are not anchored at either end on anything else), like this:

Copying a freestanding line
Copying a freestanding line

 

The fact that copying/pasting freestanding lines was not possible before was actually a conscious design decision on our part, but looking back we can’t figure out why it seemed like a good idea at the time :-/

Leaving chat, and then returning

When you are writing a chat message, on a card or canvas on any Kerika Task Board, Scrum Board or Whiteboard, what happens if you need to leave that message in the middle and go look at something else in Kerika?

For example, suppose you are in the middle of writing a chat message, but in order to complete it, you need to go off and look at another card’s details, or maybe a file attached somewhere else on the board?

You can leave aside a chat in mid-stream, go somewhere else in Kerika, return to the chat, and pick up where you left off!

That’s because Kerika uses your browser’s local cache storage to keep your unsent message: it means your changes aren’t lost while you go look at something else in Kerika.

This is a handy usability fix we have always had in Kerika, but it may be one that folks didn’t realize existed…

Well, now you know 🙂

From Projects to Boards: a clarification

We used to refer to “Projects” and “Boards” somewhat interchangeably on our website, our blog and in the Kerika app itself.

There was no special reason for this: in our mind, a Project was clearly a Board, and vice-versa, and it never occurred to us that this might prove a source of confusion to anyone.

Well, we were wrong about that.

In the real world, people are very cautious about “starting a new project”, because this might involve getting formal administrative approval, budget allocation, staff changes, etc.

In other words, in the real world a “project” is a big deal.

But, in Kerika, starting a new Task Board, Scrum Board or Whiteboard is not a big deal — and that is very much by design.

Unlike so many other collaboration tools that make it difficult for you to create as many boards as you like, Kerika was always designed to make it very easy for you to redesign your work as needed: start new boards, move cards or canvases from one board to another (using Cut, Copy and Paste), and to move ideas and content from one context to another.

Many of our competitors don’t offer this kind of flexibility: either the software makes it hard, or their billing model actively discourages you from creating multiple boards.

That will never be the case with Kerika: we will always support flexibility in how you organize and manage your boards.

Still, our interchangeable use of “projects” and “boards” was definitely causing some confusion, which we have fixed with our latest release by using the term “Board” consistently and avoiding use of the term “Project”.

So, if you were a Project Leader previously, you are now a Board Admin on that board. Your rights and privileges remain the same, it’s just your title that changed.

Board Admin
Board Admin

When you start a new board, what used to be called “New Project” is now labeled “New Board” to make it clear what you are doing:

New Board dialog
New Board dialog

We hope this makes for better usability: let us know what you think.

How you can tell if your Project Team has changed

If you are the only Project Leader on a Task Board, Scrum Board or Whiteboard, you will know when someone joins a board — after all, you would have approved their invitation in the first place.

But, if there are several Project Leaders for a board, it might be one of the others who added somebody to your board, and they might not have discussed this with you…

So, Kerika makes sure you know whenever the project team on any board has changed in any way:

  • If someone has joined,
  • If someone’s role has changed,
  • If someone has left.

(After all, someone could have left the team on their own, without telling you!)

Whenever there is a change in the project team, the Board Settings button on the top-right of the board will appear in orange.

Board Settings is highlighted
Board Settings is highlighted

Click on the Board Settings button, and you will see the Team tab is highlighted: this is Kerika’s way of drawing your attention to this particular tab within the Board Settings display.

Team tab is highlighted
Team tab is highlighted

When you go over to the Team tab, you will see that the new person’s name is highlighted in orange, for a few seconds. It’s a discrete yet very effective notification from Kerika, drawing your attention to the presence of someone new on the team.

Changed roles are highlighted
Changed roles are highlighted

The same kind of notification is used when someone’s role on the team is changed, e.g. from Team Member to Visitor.

Kerika also tries to let you know when someone has left the team, by highlighting the Project Settings button in orange, and the Team tab within the Project Settings in orange as well.

Smart notifications, from Kerika — the only work management system that’s designed specially for distributed Lean and Agile teams 🙂

Attaching content to the board itself, not just to cards

We have added a new feature that should prove handy for a lot of folks: you can now add content — files from your laptop, images from your mobile or tablet, Web links from your Intranet or the Internet, or canvases — to a Task Board or Scrum Board itself.

If this sounds like something that was always there, maybe we need to say that differently: you used to have the ability to add content to a card, now you can add it to the board itself.

There are many situations we have encountered where we want to share content or a canvas with a team, but there wasn’t any obvious place to still it — no single card on the board that seemed like the right place to attach that content.

And that’s because the content we wanted to add was applicable across the entire board, not just relevant to a single card.

This was getting frustrating, so we decided to scratch our itch: a new button on the top-right area of your Kerika app will let you add files, Web links and canvases to the board itself:

Board Attachments
Board Attachments

This should make some of you as happy as it has made us!