7/27/21: Expanding email templates from 5 to 10.

Surface sub invoice types on sales and profit report

7/23/21: $$600

7/2021: Bryan will add flex attributes to EOT's

Going over code for managers and admin timeclocks with John. We did a page the day and were using it as a template for changes on the other reports and pages. We were going through the good master code and replacing code on the other reports. Everything worked pretty well until we got to the admin time clock report page. This one goes a little bit deeper and we had to do some custom modifications and such. Good work session.

Small side note, sometimes it helps us developers to get into tons and tons of data. It helps us feel like a real user and instantly we are looking for ways to show/hide things, shrink things down, simplify, and sum things up. It is good to see the amounts of data and flow from the user's perspective at times.

Talking about new updates to the query params project (security upgrade stuff for SQL injections). We then talked about new time settings and adding in flex attributes to elements of time. That would be huge and would be super cool. I then shared with Bryan some of where I'm headed with new elements of time settings and changes to time templates (tons more time settings).

After that, Bryan wanted me to look at his custom project for a guy who is making some kind of wikipedia type style forum. We looked at some plans, layouts, and talked about storage and logic and flow. Making progress.

Recording notes from last week and different entries that were recorded on post-it notes and needed to be digitized.

Merging in code for Dustin and his bulk batch functionality for cultivation pages. Talking about ways of speeding up the deployment process and getting new clients and customers (corporations) up and going quicker and quicker. New systems and doing data imports. We talked about ways of getting things setup quickly and being more and more efficient. We then moved into QR codes and what they can and should do. We went a little deeper on this topic and went over some known uses of QR codes.

We then started talking about projects for Bryan. We would love him to start working on flex attributes for elements of time (in-line database extensions for time and time templates). We also talked about getting Bryan to help clean up the shelf (existing code that hasn't been fully tied in). We know we have projects like sales tax version 5 (v5) project, invoice due date project, and many others.

Steve and Cory were talking about inventory forecasting and usage pages. Watching and monitoring supply and demand of items and such. Inventory planning type functions and options.

Towards the end of the discussion, Steve and Cory were talking about independent reps and consultants and some pros and cons. We have had great results in the past, however, things are changing and we are on purpose trying to bring things more internally to provide those services from inside of adilas. This is a conscious effort. We will continue to work with a few select individuals, but all new accounts will be helped and supported from internal resources. That's the plan.

Cory, Steve, and I were on an hour long meeting going over a outline and adding some details to the proposed phases of the project. Brandon has the outline on his home computer. We also did more planning and work and decided that the next steps are to go through all of the documentation and doing some looking around.

We had six or seven guys on the morning meeting. Dustin and Steve were touching base on the bulk batch options for the cultivation homepage. Dustin was reporting on some of the changes and asynchronous querying that he is working on. Making progress, just not quite finished yet. They were also talking about new pages, options, and settings for a general nursery (growing different plants and trees) type flow and options. It is amazing how many new settings need to play into each industry and/or vertical. We have some similar things, but even that would need to be tweaked a little bit.

After that, we had Steve checking in with John on servers, me checking in with John on the payroll and timecard project, Danny checking in with Steve and Sean on some sales stuff, Steve asking me about some inventory planning (future supply and demand stuff), and other small meetings. Eventually, we all just ended up working on our own things and projects. 

Working on some documentation and ideas for new settings for elements of time.

I've got a project coming up that needs some new settings for elements of time (calendar, scheduling, and events). I woke up this morning and couldn't stop thinking about some ideas for some new settings. I scribbled them down on a 3x5 card (front and back). I was saying a prayer and the ideas kept coming. Kinda fun. Also, the other fun thing was almost being able to see how to do some of these things and the potential that they could unlock. Really fun.

Anyways, here are the ideas. After I got them all scribbled down, I texted Steve to see if he would want to meet for a bit to go over the new settings and ideas. We jumped on a GoToMeeting session and he and I had a good 45 minute chat, with drawings, proposals, pitches, and lots of ideas going back and forth. Good session. Here is an expanded version of some of my little notes and scribbles.

- Dealing with time templates - what if we allowed for a basic mode and an advanced mode? Some people may not want to see all of the pieces. The basic mode would be what currently exits and/or something pared down from that. The new advanced mode would allow for all kinds of other settings, verbage changes, field name aliases, special instructions, sort order (where the fields show up), settings, required options, etc. The time templates page would have a toggle switch to go between the basic mode and the advanced mode. There would also be links directly to the advanced and basic modes from the list of time templates page. Same permission, just a toggle switch between the page modes.

- We already do this with customer database field names (allow for field names to be controlled). We want to do the same thing for elements of time. We will use the db_field_settings table to store specific info (field name options) for each time template, if the users wish to. If not, we will use a default set of data stored in the db_field_settings table for basic time_templates. We will use the field called db_table_name to store the value "time_templates" to store the default values assigned to corp 1. Just like the customers stuff. For each time template, we will change the name from "time_templates" to "time_templates_[555]" where the number will be the corp specific time template id number. Tons of sweet options there already. Aliases, defaults, placeholders, build your own drop-downs, required yes/no, max, min, show/hide, sort order, etc. As a side note, we currently let the main time templates handle the show/hide options. Somehow we may need to sync those up and/or figure out which one is the master. For right now, I'm still leaning on the time template being the master and the db_field_settings table holding the naming, aliases, special directions, defaults, etc. I hope that makes sense.

- On the advanced time search page. I would really like to add a master template switch at the top of the page. This would be a drop-down form field that shows all of the time templates. If a time template is selected (or preselected through a URL.template value), at the top, and submitted, then the page would be able to virtually slim down based on the settings, naming, and custom pieces per time template. The current advanced time search has everything plus the kitchen sink. If a template is selected, then the page could only show those pieces that are turned on, the correct naming, the correct filters and search criteria, and hide all unused sub searches as well. The time template settings would also affect the sub time searches and use the correct verbage, info, naming, show/hide, filters, etc. Basically, be able to dynamically convert the advanced time search page into a time template specific search form or page. That would be super cool. Also, if a template is selected, the search results could also translate and show the correct fields, verbage, settings, and make it feel round trip (search, results, and details). Higher in this entry, it is alluded to the fact that we could control the page with a URL value (URL.template) and then we could link to it, store quick buttons, etc. That would be really handy.

- On the sub flags and tags, we need some more template settings. You can turn 5 different sections on with this sub (one of the bigger subs). A section within the sub tags and flags, was one that that was added later on (for phase tracking and location moving) it deals with possible sub tie-ins (PO's, invoices, quotes, etc.). Currently, we can't control that piece through settings. It just kinda got added out of necessity vs through the normal development process (planning). All we need to do is go in and add those settings, flip some of the old values (existing data) and make it more straight forward as people set those things up in the future. Along those same lines, the sub flags and tags may need some help on the output and display and the add/edit process. All of those pieces were altered and got the sub tie-in hardcoded to them. We may need to remove or make that more settings based.

- On sub flags and tags, I would like to be able to show the last flag or fag on the main. It holds the data right now, but doesn't show the entry. Light tweak to make it show up on the working with time page and the printable time page. Also, check the searchability of the last known flag or tag on the main, through the advanced search.

- There are two pieces of the main elements of time that we can't control via settings yet... they are the make private and admin only checkboxes. We need to be able to turn those two settings on and off. Currently, every element of time automatically gets those. They are not used that often and need to become settings so that we can show/hide those options. As a side note, those two settings do have some hardcoded text values like "private" or "admin only" that show up on other reports and report types if someone searches for something that is marked as private or admin only. Just a heads up. We may want to limit the verbage on these settings.

- The general amount field on the main elements of time is currently locked to showing dollars. I would love to add some settings to allow that field to be named and formatted. I was thinking of dollars and cents, decimals, plain (no formatting), and integers (remove the decimals). That would make it more useful. For example: I have a time template called mileage and I use the general amount field to hold the number of miles. It holds the correct value but when I pull the report, it always shows the miles in dollars and cents vs just a plain or decimal number. Anyways, I think that could help. Also, along those lines, there are some budget and estimate settings (different settings but still tied to the main element of time)  that could use similar number formatting options.

- What about allowing for the sort order of the fields? This is more complex, but it would be cool. You could put whatever makes sense to you first and move other fields around (up and down or sorted). We may have to circle back around to make sure this is possible.

- Recently we added a thing called flex attributes to the customer section or player group within the system. The flex attributes are virtually real in-line database extensions. We allow for new fields to be configured, added in, able to search, able to show-up, etc. These flex attributes are datatype specific (dates, times, strings, numbers, decimals) vs just plain text fields like the flex grid tie-ins. We eventually want to add these flex attributes to all 12 main system wide player groups (customers - already, invoices, quotes, parts and items, stock/units, elements of time - coming soon, I hope, employee/users, vendors, PO's, expense/receipts, deposits, and balance sheet items). One more thought on this topic of flex attributes. We may need some flex attributes on a global scale (able to cross time templates) and we may need time template specific flex attributes. We may want to do the global ones first, then limit or tighten things down for the time template specific flex attributes after the global flex attributes are added and stable.

- Horizontal grids - show time blocks with main categories or values going down the left and time across the top. We would love to allow for saving settings, allowing for special homepages, and custom buttons, just like my cart favorite buttons. See element of time 6967 for more info on horizontal grids. This is a form of blocking out times and who or what is scheduled, called for, or booked. Ideally, we want to be able to configure these horizontal and vertical time views, so that we could have and use more of them. That would be really cool. Once again, see element of time 6967 to get more details and information on horizontal grids. We used a custom horizontal time view for the Beaver Mountain Ski School. They have been using it for 5-6 years now. We would love to keep building off of that type of a model and make it even more configurable and savable without tons of custom code. Make it a tool for all of our users.

- Visual blocking of time... both horizontal and vertical blocking or showing bars or blocks of time. This is a visual way of showing what is booked and what is not booked or called for. Both directions, horizontal (side to side) and vertical (up and down). We need them both. We currently have the time slot view which is close to vertical blocking, but it still needs to be more bold and handle the blocking in a better way. The logic seems to be there, but it still needs a little visual help to really bock and virtually claim those slots or segments of time. It might be nice to ask for certain visual blocking right from the advanced time search - kinda like a report type. We already have a calendar view, time slot view, grouped view, and detailed view. Maybe add horizontal block view, and vertical block view. That would be cool.

- We would like to add in some dynamic dates. These special dates would allow reports to be saved with the dynamic dates vs a physical date range or custom fixed date rage. The dynamic dates would and could be things like: current day, current week, current month, current quarter, current year,  yesterday (prior day), last week, (prior week), last month (prior month), last quarter (prior quarter), last year (prior year), tomorrow (next day), next week (future week), next month (future month), next quarter (future quarter), next year (future year), etc. These would be really handy, so that saved reports could just pull relative info (based off of the current or today's date value), without having to worry about updating or flipping date ranges. Anyways, I think this will be awesome and we could use it all over the system on other reports and pages. Especially, wherever we are saving reports and pulling up saved data. These dynamic dates may make it super awesome and powerful.

- Be able to use the calendar view and calendar overlay for tons of new reports. Be able to save almost anything in an calendar type view. That would be awesome. Once again, the dynamic dates, mentioned above, would be really cool with this. Maybe even have an advanced search page that could save and filter the data and then show it on a calendar type report view. Great visual for what is happening on what day over time. We could call it the advanced calendar page or report. It would also be super cool if we could point subs of time to some sort of calendar type report or other visual time blocking type report. Currently, most of the subs only show up in detail view (normal tables with rows and columns). Being able to see the subs in other report formats (calendar, time slots, time blocking, horizontal, vertical, groups, etc.) would be sweet.

- On the template settings (techy stuff behind the scenes), currently, when adding and editing a main element of time, you have to pass in the template settings when adding or editing the main element of time. I would like to automate this process. It would make it easier for the developers. This is more of a behind the scenes switch on the methods and method calls. Most of those template settings don't change very often. We should have the methods themselves do the look-ups and make the changes (adds and updates to the fields on the elements of time table). This would really simplify the add and edit main elements of time processes.

- Being able to control the names and settings on the subs is going to be huge. This means what they are called (like sub dates and times, sub comments, sub sign-off's, sub flags and tags, sub payroll, etc.) and what fields they hold. Be able to change that on a per template basis. It also includes the sub fields and what they are called. For example: Say the default sub section is called "Sub Dates & Times". We may want to rename that "Amenities" or "Sub Bookings" or "Project Timecards". We could also control the field names with the sub section. Say the origianl or default field name is "Sub Title or Caption". Say you wanted to change it to "Extra Booking" or "Follow-up Reason" or "Sub Event" or whatever. Being able to change what the main things are called and also what the sub fields, within each sub of time are called and how they act. That will be a game changer. Here is a list of the current subs of time.

- On the working with time page, make the add/edit subs easier. Add in buttons to help with the add new process. The current way is just a simple link. It kind of gets hidden. Make it a little bit more bold and obvious.

- Some of these settings and concepts would be super cool for the fracture project. We really want to hide whatever we can, show what we need to, and allow for the whole thing to be dynamically (through data vs code) controlled and configured. That would be a super cool piece for fracture. See the above entries for some ideas.

- Futuristically, we would love to be able to switch elements of time between time templates. Currently, you get one time template and that is it. We don't allow an element of time to switch templates due to all of the background settings that are being held, monitored, and used.

- We may also need to add in some settings to deal with the general name for elements of time. That is very broad. Each time template can be named individually, but we have had clients that want it called the calendar, scheduling, etc. We may need some bigger corp-wide settings that control the main name and smaller abbreviations. For example: The defaults may be "Elements of Time" and "Time" for short. However, they could be set to Calendar, Lessons, Schedules, Reservations, Rentals, Bookings, Assignments, Tasks, To Do's, etc. The more that people can call it what they want, the less they end up fussing later on. That key piece of speaking their language is huge.

- It's not all code, some of this is just planning and dreaming

- It may be nice to use a spreadsheet to help with some of the planning. We have lots of rows, columns, and complex data that is needed for the planning portion.

- As a side note, it was so tempting to see a need, and then jump and try to fill that need. I on purpose spent some additional time (hours and hours), trying to get ideas and thoughts out of my head and on to paper (virtually) so that all of the pieces became public knowledge. My normal urge was to figure out a portion of it and then just do it vs writing all of these things down for the benefit of others (and myself).

Recording notes. Also working with Eric on testing and pushing some code for his cross-corp loyalty point stuff. Lots of back and forth with Eric, pushing up test code and running it live on a production server through a temp scratch file type approach. Also merged in some code for Dustin.

John and I met up and went over some code for the holiday chooser and payroll project for timecard flags and total time. We are making great progress. We took a break from this project (crazy summer stuff like training conferences, vactations, family stuff, and busy schedules) but getting back to it. We are doing great, but sometimes it is hard to rebuild prior momentum.

Today we finished up the manager's time clock page. John is going to take the same things that we did and tested today and cascade them to three other reports that have similar report/output. Small tweaks and changes, but he has a nice working model to follow now.

Updating account information with Kabbage - business funding and line of credit. They shutdown during Covid to help with payroll protection loans. They are coming back online and trying to get some of their old clients back. Spent some time reviewing documents and submitting online applications to be re-accepted as one of their clients.

Shannon and I met up and did some Q and A stuff for a company called Twinkle Beds. They are looking to use adilas for the CRM functionality (customer relationship management). They had some questions regarding security of data, affiliate programs, tracking commissions, payroll, and using the flex grid. Shannon and I went through a number of possible use cases and made some notes. I ended up sending Shannon our notes and she will communicate with the client.

Cory, Steve, and I going over projects. We spent most of our time working on two projects. One was some special data mapping and exports for Emerald Fields and the payment processing project for the bill recycler and coin recycler. I took some extra notes on each project and have them saved on my local computer under folders for each client.

Small side note, some of the our old ways of doing stuff are starting to bite us in the rear. Things like letting our independents or reps do their own marketing, using the adilas name, separate branding, etc. Not the end of the world, but it is making it more difficult to figure out who is building, supporting, and selling what. We are currently in a phase where we are trying to bring more of those pieces (services and hardware) back under the main adilas umbrella. It may take some time, however we are making great progress.

Talking about sales and being our own style. Lots of people have their own take on how and where to do marketing and sales. I was advising the guys to be their own style. Right now, we'd rather the guys and gals do what they feel like vs waiting and waiting and never getting out there. Something is better than none at this point. Granted, eventually, we do want a plan and a process, but we'll take whatever at this point.

Steve was working on an API socket usage report. Some of the servers (dedicated boxes for certain clients) have a ton of third party usage and activity (3rd party API sockets). We need to keep a close watch on this. The 3rd party API sockets have even brought down a production server before, due to the number and size of the API socket calls. Another variable that we need to be aware of.

Eric joined the meeting and was working with Cory and I on some cross-corp loyalty points logic. We pushed up some code and had to reverse it back out. Not quite right. It's ok to go backwards, if needed. Sometimes, that is the best direction.

John and I working on code sign-off for the payroll project that we are working on. We did some line by line checking and testing.

Once John bailed out, I got on a small meeting with Eric and did a small cross-corp loyalty points merge for Eric. After we pushed things up, we got some complaints and rolled back the changes. We'll hit another day.

Quick meeting with Bryan on query params. We made some plans and touched base.

Dustin joined the meeting and he and I spent the rest of the time testing and doing some error handling on some of the code that he is working on. Lots of testing, validation, and soft error handling (easy roll over options). Good work session. We pushed up some new code.

Working on getting the Kabbage line of credit back up and all linked in. They have been off line for awhile due to Covid and payroll protection loans. Made numerous phone calls, emails, and logging into banks and the Kabbage account.

John, Alan, Cory, and I got on a small weekly update. John and Cory were touching base on projects and priorities. After that, Alan and Cory touched base on some projects. Alan is working on sub inventory, tiered pricing, and had a few questions about sales tax on subs and tiered pricing. Good reports from both of them (John and Alan).

After the other guys left, Cory and I spent some time going over projects, code sign-off procedures, next steps, and cause and effect chains if there are errors or issues. We touched base on the paypod project scope and also the custom data push for Emerald Fields and custom database tables that they need.

Meeting with Chuck. We haven't been able to meet the past few weeks due to training conferences, vacations, and crazy summer stuff. Chuck is wanting to get going on some new website status and analytics. I told him to coordinate it with Danny, Marisa, and John. He has the full go ahead other than coordinating with the others on the web site team.

We jumped into the presentation gallery project. Chuck is starting to code more of the pages in web code vs just being mock-ups inside of Adobe XD. We went over some questions that he had regarding certain pages, layouts, and content. It is fun to see it starting to come into real code vs just graphics.

We also talked about that we have a number of Adobe XD files from other R&D projects in the past few years. We are not going to be doing anything with those files right this minute, but we have tons of stuff dealing with fracture, click through mapping, and virtually what is in the closet. Tons of potential there. Brandon has the original XD files.

Chuck would like to get a few new Adi (blue adilas dog) images from the artist. We chatted and Chuck is going to follow-up with the rest of the web team on ideas and choices. The last topic of the day was other projects and reworking existing pages.

There were a bunch of guys and gals checking in. Kinda fun, Cory was on the meeting and coordinating with the developers. We had some guys jumping on certain bugs, and others working on other things. It felt pretty cool and we got a few things done and pushed up. I was working on a corporation stats issue. We used to have two corp stats methods (functions to get corp stats). The new code broke up one of the stats methods into a third corp stat function. The error was dealing with exceeding the size of a possible function or method. We got it all fixed. Dustin and John were working on another small bug. Good work session.

Working on a custom time view - horizontal time view report for Cinnamon Creek Campground. Using pieces of the Beaver Mountain horizontal time view report to recreate a similar function for a campground and their sub amenities - such as the archery range, the challenge course, the luau firepit, service projects, and cooking pavilions and kitchens.

Meeting with John and doing some code review for the payroll holiday chooser portion of the timecard and total time payroll projects.

On a phone call with my dad. He is working at a church owned campground as a volunteer (service missionary). They are having major struggles keeping track of scheduling, changes, and sub amenities (things to do or schedule there at the camp - like a challenge course, an archery range, food pavilions, kitchens, special events, and service projects). We talked about a number of ways that adilas could help them virtually fill in the gaps and help them track some of the smaller pieces. They, the church, already has a booking system for the main pieces, it just isn't very easy to get in there, make changes, or keep things up to date. They, the service missionaries, are having to do data exports, printouts, spreadsheets, and tons of manual - by hand writing - changes to the schedules that they are getting. Lots of pain.

I did some planning and brainstorming on some new and older settings that we could use. Here is a small list.

- See element of time 6967 in the shop for ideas on horizontal time view reports

- Time across the top, main category down the left side, show a visual relationship based on time. Configurable horizontal grids for time.

- Name each horizontal grid template

- Be able to create new horizontal grids, assignments, filter by search criteria, edit, delete, search, view, etc. We would hope that eventually, each horizontal time view would even get its own URL address (quick and easy access).

- Possible new settings - setup times - start/end, block sizes, and what would show down the left side (people, users, customers, vendors, locations, items, hardcoded lists, etc.)

- Other settings - what will it look like? What will be pulled? Make the whole thing configurable.

Expecting a phone call but it didn't come in until later, after lunch. Doing little odds and ends.

Fixing an error with a missing ending tag for the query params. I was merged in last night but wasn't pushed up until the nightly deploy from the master code branch.

John checked in on the payroll and timecard project. We talked about a plan and John took some notes. After that, I kept working on the query param stuff for Bryan. I ended up finishing up some code review and merged in a small branch of code.

Working with Bryan. We went over some of the cfqueryparams and other projects. We talked about a custom wikipedia type page and search format. Light planning and layout conversations. At the end, I did some more query param testing and code review.

Steve, John, and I talking about printable flyers and getting printable information into the hands of our guys and gals - sales and marketing. We used to have a small dynamic flyer section that built flyers on the go with custom contact info. Those flyers have not been updated with our newest stuff. We may have to go back and do some upkeep and maintenance. It may be worth it to check it out and fix any errors.

Steve and I spent some time talking about funding, budgeting, expenses, payables, and other business stuff.

Both Wayne and John were on the meeting going over server speeds and stats. Wayne was showing some logs and pages. Steve and Wayne were looking at logs and server availability and usage. Some of the clients keep growing and are putting more and more demands on the servers. Looking at pure traffic. They got into comparing usage, stats, CPU's, RAM memory, connections, data bandwidth, for some of the bigger boxes. We decided to upgrade a few of the boxes with more specs and options.

Servers can only go so far. If we can streamline the code, it helps way more than just adding new CPU's and more server memory (RAM). That also takes time though. We may have to come up with a balance.

Switching to Emerald Fields and their custom data dumps. They have tons of data but not knowing all of the data relationships. Too much data and they want us to help minimize those technical and almost back-end level needs. Steve and Cory met with Josh on 7/8 and discussed what he needs. As we talked about it, we came up with some thoughts. See below:

- Lots of our API sockets deal with simple data calls and showing that data. The Emerald Fields API sockets are more of deeper look into the database as a whole vs just simple pointed API sockets.

- We need to plan, quote it, break it into pieces, and then follow-up on the smaller pieces. Sometime, too big of a bite is harmful.

- Wayne said - it is like they need a custom report, but instead of giving them a finished report, we are building them new database customer report tables - where they can then pull and filter data from a more raw type source. Interesting view. We build custom reports all the time. This one just happens to be a custom view or custom dataset, in database mode or version, vs a normal custom report.

Lots of guys checking in. John M. checked in on his payroll project. Dustin was showing and talking about AJAX stuff on his new cultivation pages. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (asynchronous data going back and forth). The new AJAX stuff helps with quick loading of pages and data. Dustin was looking into an error  message from Metrc. Sean checked in on the SAR custom gun registration stuff. Steve was talking with the guys and checking in on server speeds and stats.

Steve and Dustin were talking about companies growing and dealing with load times and more and more data. Part of the game. Steve and Dustin were then talking about allowing the user to control what loads first, second, third, etc. This is part of what we want to do for fracture - allowing settings and presets to show what needs to load first, second, etc. Help the customers get their data quickly and in the correct order. What is your flow?

Tons and tons of emails. I was out for the week.

Paying bills, scanning receipts from the adilas training conference - back in June (I have been busy since then) and checking on payables, banks, and new payments.

Small bug fixes with Dustin. Pushed up new files and code.

Scanning receipts and helping to merge in some code from Dustin and his bulk cultivation tools. First round.

General emails and a specific email to a client regarding what they wanted and needed for a custom data export. Lots of questions and trying to get the correct answers from the client. Their needs will dictate what we make and/or deliver.

Built a small test page to pull and show client data. They had some questions on queries to use on their own system. I went in and built some super simple queries to demonstrate what they could do and the integrity of the data. Lot of playing with and testing the sample page. I uploaded new changes like 15 times, as I was building it. Trying to make a page that helped and pointed them in a good direction.

Phone call with a loan officer. Emails, text messages, and recording notes. General to do list stuff.

Shannon and I were supposed to meet but it never happened. She and her husband had gone to meet with a friend/client and the meeting went over. She did text me later on and told me what was going on. No problem, that opening allowed Cory and I to go on a deep dive into chasing down a somewhat hidden issue or problem. Glad we got it fixed.

Originally, we were going to have meeting with the Paypod folks. Cory found notes from 4/29/21 meeting with Aaron Stone and Bryan has a recording from meeting. We will review and determine steps of project/strategize. Will wait to meet with Aaron until we have next round of questions.

Just Cory, Sean, and Brandon were on the meeting. Cory asked me to help chase down a small invoice line item but. We looked and looked, but couldn't find anything. Finally, Cory found it after looking everywhere else. It ended up being on some new code that was added for mini units and sub inventory stuff. It took both Cory and I to find it. I honestly would have missed it, if it were just left up to me on this one. I was checking everywhere else, but Cory found it and we got it fixed. Great catch on her behalf.

Danny, Sean, Steve, and I were on the morning meeting. John popped in later. Steve and guys were talking about finding the sweet spot between clients, needs, custom, standard, training, setup, deployment, and satisfaction rate.

There were some questions posed by Danny about some of the existing ecommerce settings and switches. We were talking about being able to turn ecommerce shops on/off based on rules. You can already do that, we just may have to either revisit it and/or roll some of the newer code that Danny and I did backwards a bit. We got close, but we are slightly off the mark of what is needed. That target keeps moving and changes depending on the clients wants and needs. Eventually, we need some good logic mixed with pretty (look and feel).

There is a trend toward more and more settings. Each person wants to do things completely different with granular control levels.

Lots of talk about the use of ecommerce. It is a client portal, a customer portal, ecommerce, online bill pay, message marking portal, etc. Maybe just call it "portal activity". Sometimes things get pigeonholed into smaller pieces, when the potential is really quite large.

Towards the end of the meeting, the topic returned to networking with business owners. Maybe focus more on production, manufacturing, and cultivation stuff. We are deep enough to handle this and there isn't as much competition in those areas. We currently have a huge head start in some of the those areas.

Working on a custom data import for a client. They provided me with the .csv files (comma separated values) and I did 4 different uploads for them. Some of the upload and data imports were for parent attributes within the parts or individual inventory items section. The other uploads, including some new code and logic, were on the core items or parent parts or items section. Light work combing data, doing imports, and running small spot checks on the data, once uploaded. I will need to turn in these hours to Cory as this was a billable project.

Bryan joined the meeting and had a couple of questions. He needed some training on doing sub inventory searches and how to pull some of the sub info back out of the site. We then spent some time trying to find a small bug. We went over some balance sheet logic and info and did some training there. Hopefully, Bryan will take that info back to a client to help them get going in the right direction.

Looking over a business loan application. Light research on a lending company and looking over some loan and funding docs. The lead came from Craig and Steve. Just looking around and checking things out.

Meeting with Alan and Cory. Alan is pretty deep into sub inventory settings out in ecommerce land. He and Cory were going over questions and going back and forth a bit. After Alan left, Cory and I worked on some small data table fixes for a printable vendor list. We also talked a little bit about cash flow and ideas for getting the funding that we need.

Weekly meeting with Chuck. We have missed a few due to vacations and the training conference. It has been about three weeks since our last check-in meeting. Chuck and I chatted about a bunch of different things. He is looking to grow his Swann Haven business a bit more. He is trying to do more booking and reservation type websites and such for clients using WordPress plugins. We chatted about the game of chasing funds and getting paid from clients.

Chuck has added in a bunch of new changes to the adilas docs project. He has added in sales and logging SOP's (standard operating procedures), new developer training modules for bootstrap and dynamic grid systems, and tons of other code snippets and templates. Looking good.

We then switched to the sales and presentation gallery. He is making progress and things are looking good there. This is more of a slide type interface that allows you to jump wherever you need to. The pages or slides are pretty simple and they allow for talking points. This is more for a sales rep or salesperson to engage and cater a demo or meeting with a client vs a client going through things on their own.

Along the lines of the presentation gallery, Chuck has asked for some more content on the system players and the core concepts. I told him that Shannon and I would try to work on some of that stuff for him.

We ended up talking about sales and networking opportunities and just getting out and talking with people. Towards the end of the meeting, we started working on a file merge and push up to the master branch for his new changes for the adilas docs project. Great meeting!

Danny, Dustin, Sean, and I on the meeting this morning. They were talking about a small mini mobile app for push notifications. Danny was asking Dustin about his experience with mobile apps. After that, Danny and Sean were working together on some other pieces. When I wasn't needed, I was recording some notes from other meetings.

A bunch of random things. Emails, phone calls with a client, helping Aspen with a basic webpage (small learning assignment), recording notes, reviewing other pass entries.

Bryan called in but was on the road and unable to meet.

Danny texted me and we jumped on a GoToMeeting session and worked on some code to help make some of the ecommerce error messages show and look better. It sounded pretty easy, but we got in to it for over an hour. Lots of moving pieces.

Emails, small to do list stuff, and recording notes.

Shannon and I took a little bit of time at the first of our meeting to get on the same page with our current project. We are still out trying to harvest ideas for the infographics or informational graphics that we've been pushing up to the developer's notebook for the past couple of years. Sometimes we go so fast, we forget to try to harvest and/or harness some of the assets. Shannon and I are working on going back and picking up some of the pieces that have either fallen through the cracks, been swept under the rug, or got buried in the pile of never-ending changes.

We talked about using Shannon for internal client care and training. This could be fun and add a change of pace.

Shannon was gathering more info and doing some research. See attached for some of the things that she is gathering and picking up. Lots of notes back to prior elements of time and developer's notebook entries. While she was doing this, I was conditioning some pages on the adilas university site to point to the correct domain name and sub domain names. This is basically the www to data0 transition for the adilas university site.

We took the last 15-20 minutes and did a small show and tell session to explain where both of us were at on the project. See attached to see where Shannon is working.

Cory, Steve, and I on a meeting. It was going to be a server meeting, but it ended up more on a sales side of things. Here are some of my notes:

- Making a dumbed down version of our product and/or platform. Small pitch to small employee or project timeclocks and timecards.

- Having some of our guys go out and do some prospecting and getting people signed up for demos. They don't have to do the demos, they just need to talk to people and plant some seeds.

- We are looking for that person that says yes, I want this!

- If we get too overwhelmed, we could always turn it off, like a faucet or a hose

- Target business people

- Still our main goal is to help people be successful

- Mixing and finding that good balance point or sweet spot. Seek out that sweet spot and enjoy it when you find it.

- Allowing Cory to control the door or virtual gateway - amount of new development and custom code

- Breaking things into smaller and smaller pieces

- Our clients are standing on the shoulders of giants. Sometimes they want to own some of the code that they feel like they are paying for. They are building on top of millions and millions worth of development. A wise man once said, using other people's money to build out your product is a great strategic move. All others benefit from this type of operation. Kinda like a piggy back ride. We pay for something, then someone builds on top of that, and eventually, someone else will build on top of that. Kinda like a snowball type effect or model.

- Switching gears, we were talking sales and consultants. Sometime people have a hard time with the term "mine" - meaning don't touch and/or interact with any of "my" clients, "my" code, "my" ideas. No one really owns the clients or other assets. They play a part of the whole. We were talking about "mine" with regards to clients, areas, business verticals, my code, my ideas, my processes, my whatever. Lots of pieces inside of adilas are somewhat built on this community type project basis.

- A small discussion on the cost of what it takes to get a good adilas system. The analogy was brought up, how much does it cost for one or two good employees or dependables? Adilas is way less than that, and look at the value it brings to the table. Just having fun.

- At the end of the meeting, Steve and Cory were talking about clients and other projects.

Danny, Steve, and Sean were on this morning. Danny and Steve had already been chatting for a couple of hours when I joined. Talking about sales and ideas. As the meeting progresses, Sean and I ended up talking about the process of growing up as a company. Sometimes people don't take us serious because we are not huge or don't charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for our products and/or services. That is so funny how that works. If it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, it has a certain perceived value. Very interesting.

Adilas is a hidden gem! Nobody knows about it. Part of that was a strategic choice at one point. We are now getting ready to be seen for what we are vs hiding in the shadows. That still scares me, but things are already heading in that direction.

Sean and I were talking about different verticals and how we can help and serve those clients. It takes all kinds of clients to really round things out. We need their problems, our solutions, their people, our people, and then mixing that all together. It creates the flavor that we need. The diversity can be a positive help to that flavor.

Steve and I then got in to some talks on acquisition costs and what it takes to get a new customer/client on the system. We also talked about selling what we have and/or building or refining certain pieces. Steve has done an awesome job selling this package for years and years without it being all the way finished. We had multiple clients using it for free even before we were a company and could legally take any money. They, our clients at the time, had needs and pain and were willing to use a software package that helped relive some of those pain points and/or burdens.

As we focus more on sales, we may need to tweak the balance between development and sales. We may have to throttle back or slow down on development and increase on person to person networking and sales.

We met up and talked about invoices, invoice line items, tables, joins, and data connections. Pretty deep conversation at a techy level. They are going to do some testing on smaller datasets to make sure that they are getting the raw data that they need. Once we validate that, we will go to the next step. As a back-up, they may need us to produce some custom exports and data dumps to help load their outside remote database (extra database for analytics). Working through the process.

As part of the meeting, we did some explaining, drawing, training, and light mapping. I sent them copies of two of the existing methods that we use calculate invoice line totals and sales and profit reports. Hopefully, that will help.

Dustin and Cory joined the meeting. We were looking into Dustin's new cultivation and batch process actions. He showed us some small bugs and enhancements that he is working on. We talked about some possible strategies and he took some notes. It is looking good and we should be within a few days of getting the current version launched and pushed up live. That is exciting!

As a fun side note, Dustin made his local environment look really cool with a custom dark theme on the look and feel. It looked very professional and fun. Throughout the meeting, Cory and I would ask questions and Dustin would respond. Some great back and forth with ideas, flow, and user experience stuff. Once again, looking great. Some of the things were form on the top, bottom, how much to scroll, filters, flow, show/hide buttons, verbage changes, etc.

We want to keep things at a minimal but still make it fully functional (as far as what is currently done) without rolling into weeks and weeks of more development. Kinda putting a temporary cap on things to get them up and going, instead of creating the never ending feature creep type scenario.

One interesting takeaways from our meeting was the concept of creating a dynamic, user controlled, environment that allows for data to be started, gathered, structured, categorized, and a full end-to-end process all through settings and automation. Basically, it was the concepts of the data assembly line and a user controlled (dynamic) data assembly line. Phases, locations, moves, bulk functions, printing labels, batches and batch controls, removals, new items, etc. All in one place and flowing towards an end goal. Pretty cool.

The last thing that was brought up was how recipe/builds could help in manufacturing and production systems. It could be pretty cool.

Recording notes and transferring scribbles and scratches from post-it notes to digital.

Cory joined the meeting and was checking on some server errors that happened over the weekend. John was able to reply and respond to some of them. I helped where I could as well. Some of them are random and when and how they happen. No new changes were made to the code, but sometimes it is like it gets overwhelmed and/or can't find itself or gets buried with requests or something. Kinda random.

I tried checking on a query param error but was unable to find it. I spent a good half an hour. The client that reported it, was unable to duplicate it again either. Cory is going to notify the client that we looked but were unable to find any problems. If the error occurs again, we will try to duplicate it and look deeper. Otherwise you are virtually hunting for needles in haystacks.

Steve and Cory did a small session working on ecommerce and auto logins for clients. They got into app icons, preset client variables, auto login links, and other email options. We also talked about being able to expose some of the pieces, like email functionality, to our clients that they may not even know about. It's like the really cool functionality gets buried or requires a deep dive to make it surface or be in front of them.

I have a meeting later today with Dustin. Steve wants me to help him get his current code pushed up to the servers and merged in with master. Sometimes projects and code take so long that it becomes really hard to merge them back into the master branch. Everything has a shelf life of sorts.

Lastly, we talked about getting some of the new SOP's (standard operating procedures) up and into the adilas docs section. From everything to setting up new corporations, to configuring ecommerce settings, to how to log a perspective client. Good stuff. We are making progress and trying to get everything into a centralized and usable format. 

Danny and Steve were chatting and checking in on the message marketing options and what the next steps are going to be. We talked about a small little mini app that would be native to the client's phone or device that would ping the correct servers for the correct client id and any possible message marketing options. We talked about making it native for android and iOS (apple). We drew out some ideas and concepts.

Alan had some questions about sub inventory and adding new custom and automated logic out in ecommerce land. We went over all of the different fields and the data that we record and store per item (part number), per parent line item (invoice or quote or PO line item), all sub inventory values, and what options we have there. Alan was lightly proposing a change so that the main time sub inventory tables would just hold the packages (main lot, batch, or package info). We would then build another table to handle and track the sub inventory transactions in a new table. Currently, all of that is done in one table, but it expanding and somewhat bloating the table. Lots of talk about ideas and options and timing.

We are not planning on jumping on this project right this minute as we have some other fires and things that we are working on. When ready, we will circle back around and check things out. I also mentioned to Alan that we need to make these tables easy to get data into, easy to pull reports, totals, sums, and also be able to go (virtually) backwards in time based on dates. We also talked about histories and the need to add histories in for sub or child inventory. Quite a bit of talk about some future plans, including adding some more backward compatibility options and look-ups for the custom data tables (sub string, sub numbers, and sub dates). Currently, we can get the data into these tables pretty easy, but searching them requires lots of joins and virtual jumping around.

Meeting with a client or perspective client at my home. This gentle man knows Bryan and wanted to ask me a few questions. Bryan arranged the meeting and myself and the guy (Ron) got together for a small talk, chat, and question and answer session. We talked about the adilas model and how custom development fits into the mix. Nice little meeting.

Meeting with Bryan. We were going over query params and looking at files and branches. We also got into some iframe stuff and showing different websites within the adilas application.

Steve and I met and talked about all kinds of stuff. We chatted for almost two hours. Here are some of my notes.

- The process of being willing to dive into the unknown

- Need for project management

- Standalone declarations - How to incorporate those pieces and tie everything in to the financials. The standalone declarations allows (futuristically) a user to move and virtually declare or make a statement one way or another. For example: Say you just needed to declare some revenue, for some reason. It wouldn't have any backing (no supporting docs or history) but it allows you to just add it to certain places within the financials. This would allow you to make any change and/or adjustment that would be needed (revenue, cost of goods, expenses, assets, liabilities, equity, etc.) without having to have a special balance sheet item or entity. Just because it exits (or will be) doesn't mean that you would use it for everything. On purpose, it would stick out like a sore thumb. Ideally, you would only use these adjustments if you did not have another tool to do the job naturally.

- Starting and finishing projects. Our guys seem to love to start things but we are having a problem with getting them all the way across the finish line. That seems to be pretty normal. We don't like it, but we will try hard to help these guys get in there and help them finish things up.

- One small step at a time. It's hard to go faster than that.

- The shelf - We build and develop and then put something on the shelf. That is a big pain to us. We pay and pay and then we can't even use it - right then. The further we go, the deeper the shelf seems to be. It almost has layers and layers within layers. If it gets too old, it gets hard to bring it up to speed with master code branch, just because things happen and change so quickly. Interesting cycles. It's part of the game.

- We would like to use Cory more as the manager for the projects. She already coordinates tons of the pieces, we would love her to be even more involved. Along those same lines, we would like to extend more authority to make calls on flow, direction, speed, and budgets. Good stuff.

- We have to be careful of the mindset of "got to do the whole thing". We do way better if we take smaller bites, do it, finish it, and then cycle back around. If we bite off too much, we tend to get in so deep, the end or end goal becomes blurry and it makes it hard to finish and/or even know where the finish line is located. We keep trying to get the small victories. That seems to help. The really long hauls wear everybody out and sometimes you don't feel very successful, even if you finish.

- One technique that we use and have used is to launch things (pages, features, or projects) and we don't link to them (keep part of it hidden). You have to know that they exists. We then build and test, build and test, and then start showing it to others. As it becomes more stable, we fully build the navigation and path to the door of the virtual area or functionality. We have had great success doing it this way. If we do it this way, we get code merged into master quicker, it is still somewhat hidden, it can get pushed on without breaking anything, and the developer feels like progress is being made. It also has the opportunity to get others involved to help fuel on the project - both financially and mentally. Having a buddy is amazing!

- The conversation turned more towards sales and networking with different people. We would love to get some of our developers out in the filed more, have them open their mouth and just talk to people. We have people who can do the demo, the training, etc. We just need people to talk to. Plus, if a developer is out in the field, they then to fix things that need just a little bit of loving. Rounding off the edges. Good stuff.

- We talked about setting a base $1,000 setup fee. This includes turning on the lights, doing the logo and colors, basic settings, and some one-on-one training. The monthly could then be set on top of that. The monthly could be whatever we deem to be a value for the client. The primary range is between $17 and $987 per month. That could depend on the client and their size and needs.

- We are trying to draw lines and set boundaries. Work in progress.

- Helping our guys get their projects across the finish line. In the meantime, if they are done with their projects, let's get them out and get them talking to people (networking and stirring the pot). We will still pay them their normal rate, we just need people to talk to. Along with that, we log everything in the system. Once a lead shows interest, we can setup a demo with one our people (Sean, Marisa, etc.). Good plan, we just need to work that plan now.

Wayne, Steve, Cory, and I on a server meeting. Currently, most of the servers are doing pretty good. Thank you to Wayne!

We started to talk about some other projects that Wayne has started. One of them is a transition between a file called Application.cfm (traditional application structure code - line by line - notice the .cfm file extention) and a newer concept called Application.cfc (more functions, method, components, and trigger based events - notice the .cfc file extention). This project is part of a bigger project where we take tons and tons of settings (literally hundreds of settings) and put them into a corporation type object in memory so that we don't have to hit the database so many times for each setting.

Wayne would like to work with Alan and then transfer this project over his way. After Alan works on it for awhile, we may end up transferring it over to another developer to get it finished. Some of the developers don't like to do the tedious or super repetitive part of the project. It is more fun to solve the project vs having to make hundreds of similar changes to existing pieces. It is hard to motivate them to keep going and get things finished up. The really good ones seem to loose momentum and motivation once the bigger push or challenge has been fixed. That's pretty normal.

Our plan is to help use Cory to help follow-up and figure out if we need to add pressure, pull certain projects, and/or transfer the guys to different pieces of the same or different project. Otherwise you get lack of motivation and even burnout. Everybody has to push through certain things, but we may see what we can do to keep things moving and flowing.

Some of the projects are super high level system architecture type projects and some are just routine maintenance. Not all projects are created equally. :)

Towards the end of the meeting, Wayne was having fun showing us some food and cooking stuff. It is fun to figure out what makes these guys tick and what they like to do with their free time.

After Wayne left, Cory and I jumped back into doing some custom code quotes for a client. They have some needs in the delivery arena and we were trying to put together some options and solutions.

Cory and I connected over a Zoom session. The GoToMeeting channel was busy with a Friday sales meeting. We tracked down a small bug dealing with a query param that needed to be rebuilt. It ended up that it was missing one little equal sign on one of the attributes. That was enough to cause it to error out. We were only able to find it by rebuilding a few lines of code from scratch. It was kinda hidden and not very easy to find.

We then spent the rest of the time doing some quoting and talking about other project.

Meeting with Eric. We were going over plans and cost/benefits of sales tax automation and integration. Eric, Steve, Cory, and Mike Roundtree had had some other meetings and Eric was reporting on what they covered. We went for a few rounds and talked about options and existing pieces. We are going to have to create some kind of custom hybrid solutions as this particular project doesn't have a straight one-to-one or one-to-many type feeder. It gets much more complicated.

We talked about using expense/receipts and custom expense types that will end up hitting and/or reducing the tax liability and the offsetting the sales tax aggregates (new table that sums up sales tax aggregates). We also spent some time talking about specific system generated expense types per corporation or globally set expense types. We are seeing a need for three such system generated expense types. They deal with reducing the sales tax liability (default), any transfers to revenue due to earned credits, and lastly any fees, interest, or penalties. If we can automate those three buckets (normal, earned credits, and fees) that would be awesome.

Eric and I talked a little bit about special accounts and how things like loyalty points are kinda like funny money (phantom type accounts - not really real or harder to put a direct finger on it). We talked about possible options of using a hybrid system like invoices and sales tax aggregates to build up the sales tax liability. Then using expense/receipts and special mappings to special expense types to help with the three known values that happen with paying for and/or accounting for sales tax. Once again, these three special buckets or expense types would be: A liability (still owed or taxes collected), amounts transferred to revenue (claimed as revenue due to credits, earnings, or discounts), and finally some sort of fee or penalty type amount.

For now, we are going to stick with what we know and start building in that direction. Before we jump to fully automated, we want to get the manual pieces in place and flowing in the correct manner. We talked about other new possible settings such as start dates, mappings to special expense types, etc. Lots of good ideas. The next step will be to put a plan together and then go from there. Good meeting.

Helping Steve with some looping logic and prefilling arrays to help match with his other math and pagination options.

John, Cory, and Alan checked in and gave reports. We ended up looking up an edit PO cost bug. It was recording an extended cost for the main parent item not the individual cost per item. We got it fixed and pushed up the new code. Small discussions about different projects, new settings, and sub inventory rules and logic.

Steve and Alan got into a discussion about web pricing, tiered pricing, and items out in ecommerce land. Lots of moving pieces.

John checked in but was unable to meet for very long. His apartment was having issues and he is going to have to move out due to water damage and flooding.

I spent the rest of the time working on the adilas university pages and changing domain names and such to handle the sub domain name changes we did a few weeks ago. This was a small catch-up project as some of the other sites have already been updated. This was the last major piece that was still hanging out there.

Recording notes from other meetings.

Met up with Shannon. I has been a few weeks. We did some catch-up and I reported on how the conference went and lessons learned. Good stuff. We then started back on info graphics and trying to harvest some of the existing pieces that we've already done. As Shannon and I talked, I was reminded of a few little things that are on post-it notes and in notebooks that needed to get finished. It was good just to get back in the mode.

I fixed a small error with the online glossary. It was flipping folders based on session values vs sticking with certain hardcoded values.

Cory joined the meeting and had some questions about sub inventory and PO line items. We looked at it and then texted Alan to see if he was working on anything in that area. We tried a few things and everything seemed to be working just fine. We ended up tasking Cory to see if she could get on with the client who was having an issue and see if we could duplicate and/or record what was going on. We couldn't find it in our tests and experiments.

Dustin and Sean checked in. Small chit chat and then they bailed out to work on their projects. I was doing emails and recording notes.

John had some things come up at home and was unable to meet. I spent the time reviewing code from Bryan and tons and tons of query params. Work session.

Going over code and changes that Bryan has made. Small code review work session on query params.

Chuck had to cancel. He texted me yesterday and said that he wouldn't be able to make it.

Eric and I pushed code to end a custom loyalty points program for a client. After that, Sean and I looked into a possible problem with new sub inventory tables. We ended up getting Alan on the GoToMeeting session and going over things. It looks like the table creation code wasn't handling unsigned decimals correctly. We looked into it and Alan sent me a fix that I uploaded to all servers. He will go back and fix any other problems. This is all dealing with new tables, not existing tables.

On a GoToMeeting session with Alan. We were looking over the limit to my invoices permission. I was driving and Alan was pointing me in the direction to go. We made a few changes and then backed them back out again. It appears that the permission is already correct. We determined that the new permission is held in session scope. So, if they don't login/out then it behaves as if the permission was not changed. We used to go to the database for every page, but that ended up being hundreds of thousands of database pings per day. We opted to tie the permissions to the sessions. They don't change that often. A new login will auto flush the session scope and get things up to date.

We also spent some time talking about the conference. We would love to do a developer's conference with just our internal team of developers. Alan was also proposing a small joint project that we do and go through as a team as part of that developer's conference. Basically a way to introduce, practice, and get buy in from our developers on the processes and procedures. Sounds fun, great idea!

This didn't end up happening. But originally, there was a third party solution that was going to come on for a meeting. A client wants to use them. Tentative meeting.

Cory and I had a good work session. We were looking over limiting view invoice permissions. It seemed like it wasn't working on the new invoice homepage. We did a little bit of research and reached out to Alan.

Next we talked about some bug tracking options and we determined that we would track them under one element of time and then just use sub dates and times to do the actual but tracking. We went over a few scenarios and did some playing around.

Our next little work session was talking about costs and revamping our quote spreadsheet. We made a detailed view and changed things around. We also made a super basic view that is quick and dirty. We are hoping to use the quick and dirty one for projects under the $1,000 magic line. We have a number of quick $300-$750 projects that will fit nicely in the basic view. It seems that once a project crosses that magic line of $1,000 - we have to really up the game as far as what is needed, requirements, features, etc. See attached for a copy of the new quote templates (spreadsheet)

Shari O. joined the meeting and Cory and Shari O. talked about clients and accounts receivables. Nice little meeting.

Individual Part Number Demand 

Meeting with Steve McNew and Steve Berkenkotter. Both Steve's were on for a bit. Then Steve Berkenkotter had to bail out and just Steve McNew and I chatted and went over some things together.

Here are some rough notes:

- Trying to push more on sales

- Ideas on prospecting with customers and doing demos

- We will need to keep building out the info graphics - a good image speaks a thousand words

- Refining the installation plans and deploying new clients - getting them going well and properly

- Steve Berkenkotter's top 3 on the tick list, as of right now - 1. Sales, 2. Work on earn and burn ratios, and 3. Servers (being able to split up databases - datasources and/or world building project - bus to motorcycles transition)

- Top 5 things from the conference that we just had from Steve McNew - see attached - 1. Helping Kelly with an installation plan, 2. Working with Sean on deployment processes, 3. Bug tracking and getting things tighter, 4. Communications and collaboration within our team, and 5. Projects and planning pieces (heading toward fracture).

John and I touching base. Trying to get the payroll, holiday chooser, timecard flags, and timecard totals project done by end of the week. We also touched base on some other projects and plans.

Steve joined the meeting and he and I went over the new user/payee/vendor logs project. This is new and will be similar to the customer logs, but more internal vendor related with an HR (human resources) type flare for internal use and communication. The project is just in the planning stages right now.

Dustin was checking in on his bulk move by batch number project. Sean checked in as well. After checking in, they both bailed out to work on their own projects. I spent the rest of the time reading some new whitepapers from Steve McNew on different subjects. Merged in some custom labels for Danny.

Answering a technical email about tables, joins, and data modeling for a client.

Emails, recording notes, paying bills, and scanning receipts from the trip to Colorado.

This meeting did not happen. Bryan didn't pop on the meeting so Cory and Steve and I just kept going with what we were talking about.

Cory, Steve, and I going over projects. We just got a request to limit the ecommerce logins and the ecommerce hours of operation. Most people want their ecommerce site open all the time, but we got some requests where the client wants to deeply control who is logging and when they can buy and/or purchase things. Kinda interesting.

Steve and I talking about settings and even getting multiple settings (kinda a grid of sort). This would allow for things like, allow login yes/no, allow online bill pay yes/no, allow message marketing yes/no, etc. We already have all of those settings, but what if someone wanted to control when those things happen. Right now, there is just a single master switch for each of those pieces. The matrix (grid settings) would be more of time based thing per weekday. So, basically, we go from 3 or 4 settings to multiple per day of the week. We talked about pros and cons of doing this. Yes, you get more granular control, but you also make it a little bit more complicated. There are definitely pros and cons.

We then got into a discussion on building out the logic for the tiered pricing schemes. currently, we use a set of rules and assignments to make things happen. We are seeing even deeper needs and wants and wishes. Pricing can get so tricky at times. The ground keeps moving under our feet. Some of it is just display and smart logic but some of it is deep deep stuff. We call it smoke and mirrors, but sometimes it even goes beyond that (almost to artificial intelligence - A.I.).

Eventually, the conversation lead to gram trackers, mini conversions, and being able to mix and blend quantities, weights, and deeper inventory tracking options. As we keep going, the boundaries keep getting pushed further and further. Very interesting.

The last topic of the day was in sales. We were talking about what makes a good salesperson. They tend to be really nice and/or a virtual man hunter. It can be really hard to find that perfect mix. We also talked about the pros and cons of small clients vs bigger or medium sized clients. There are pros and cons to each of those options. One thing that we are going to try is to include some training and setup money when pitching the system. Instead of charging $350 to do a setup. It really needs to be up around $1,000, just so that we can get in some good training as well. That is important for the sticking factor (having them enjoy it and stick to it). Anyways, we are learning as we go.

After I finished up with Kelly and Steve, I was supposed to get on a meeting to help with a demo for a mattress company. My daughter Aspen (almost 18 years old) was sitting in my office. She had come in partway through the meeting between Steve and Kelly and I. Anyways, she was sitting there quietly listening to the conversation. Once I jumped off of that meeting, she, nicely, started quizzing me about what we were talking about. We had some good discussions and she made some valid points.

As a follow-up, later on this same day (more around 6 pm ish) we had another small talk. She was doodling on a piece of paper and writing things down. Just for fun, I have scanned in the doodles and notes she was making and taking. Some of it may not make sense, but it was part of our conversation.

Meeting with Kelly and Steve to talk about plans and goals. Kelly is trying to help us make some of our own goals and plans. Because we do custom solutions, we tend to be pulled wherever the money and funding is vs building out our own dreams. Kelly was making some small pitches and showing us some trends that she has been watching. She is taking adilas numbers and pulling them into a spreadsheet to show month over month results. Great little tool. I'd love to build that same type of thing into adilas. Good ideas!

Some of the other topics were pricing, amount of effort it takes to chase down payments, overhead, management, as well as A/P's and A/R's (accounts payable and accounts receivable - who we owe and who owes us). We talked about services (consulting, training, oversight, marketing, custom code, design work, etc.) and how valuable those pieces are. The need to be involved with social media and building up the education and training side of adilas.

Currently, the reoccurring monthly fees for using the adilas system are doing great. We always want more, but Kelly was pitching ideas of reoccurring services (called managed services) and seeing if we could get more of that going. Lots of good ideas and what not. Good meeting.

Steve and I working on some query logic. Then talking about funding, developers, sales, and direction that we want to head in. We have all of the pieces, we just need people to get out there and help turn over some leads so that we can get our product in front of potential clients. It's all right there.

Eric and I on a Zoom session removing some older custom code for older custom loyalty points. Pushed up some changes and physically removed/renamed some files on data 3.

Emails, recording notes, and setting up basic schedule for month of July.

JM: 3.35(7-28-21

Catch all for time spent in sales and fieldwork

Pushing up recordings and videos from the training conference, emails, and recording notes. Scanning in a few pages of notes from the adilas training conference.

Meeting up with Bryan to look over some code and push up some query params.

Great phone call with Steve. We both pitched a few ideas back and forth. Steve wants to ramp up the sales engine a bit. He was talking about taking some of our developers and such and having them beat the streets (whatever their style is) for a couple days a week to stir up some leads. They don't have to do everything, just stir up some leads and then we'll get the others to follow-up, consult, and give demos. Basically, Steve's idea is to get off the wagon and push for a little bit vs just sitting on the wagon and wondering why it's not going very fast. We had a great little chat. Good stuff.

This id will be the catch all for time spent by adilas support on setting up permissions for new HQ employees.

This meeting didn't happen. We ended up on a different meeting with Cory and Steve.

Cory, Steve, Sean, and I touching base on a number of different projects. We started out with some questions on connecting to special hardware and what those configurations need to be. At some future time, we may need a hardware expert to join the team to help with setup and configuration between hardware and the web. Sometimes that gets kinda tough. The web doesn't do much there, most of the tweaks and changes come on the device and through small applications loaded on the system or through drivers or something like that (little mini apps and settings).

We started talking about settings and permissions. A client wants to allow a person (user) to go to a certain place (say timeclocks or timecards) and not be able to see certain things. This topic spun us off into a small discussion about permissions, settings, functions, and even sub permissions. Eventually, (we know that is a bad word) we see the permissions being a combo of both settings and permissions. For example: Say the main permission deals with something like timecards or timeclocks. Then, deeper, inside the permission, there may be sub permissions or settings. Eventually, all of the functions of that permission may need to be available for or part of a sub selection. Both settings and permissions may end up being combined and will make some sort of hybrid type system at some point. Just looking down the road a bit. Just for fun, there is another example: Say invoices - within in that, you could have functions like add, edit, void, remove lines, make payments, searches, limits, histories, exports, etc. It can get deep really quickly.

We worked through a small quote for a client dealing with some new permissions. Part way through, we had to fix a small error on one of the pages. The new permission was dealing with show/hide options for salary and wages being shown on the timecards and timeclock records. As we got deeper into it, we found that the manager's permission already hides those pieces but the admin timeclock stuff does not. We did the quote and got some options ready for the client.

We switched and talked about some feedback from the  conference. We talked about getting buy in on some of our future plans and pieces by pitching what we've got. After that, Steve and Cory were batting a few things around dealing with other projects and follow-ups. Cory has been amazing and is doing a great job! Huge thumbs up!

Here are some other small things we chatted about: They got into talking about vendor types (small flag for vendors to be either expense vendors or inventory vendors). Reports, exports, and being able to save certain reports. We flipped back and forth between the conference, upcoming plans, and fifty other topics. Just for fun, Cory was saying that she got a bunch of good feedback from the clients who were at the conference. We, as a team, are a pretty crazy machine when people see us in person. That is kinda fun.

We then talked about scalability and how things like alignment, balance, projections, and confidence play into the mix. Cory was saying that she feels like the things that her yoga instructor tells her about herself apply to business and our adilas team. Good stuff.

The final topic of the day was an MVP (minimal viable product, plan, person) on the payroll side of things. A new facelift, revamp the clock in/out section, and make it a standalone mini project (gateway or doorway into the bigger system - the teaser section). We would love to revamp that little project. We then talked about how to fund that and how to move forward. Making plans!

Putting my office back together after the conference and training event. There were a bunch of guys on the meeting. They were reporting in and checking in.

We were talking about info graphics and how those simple images and diagrams can really help our users and clients out. During our conference, we were reminded of a saying "big dumb animal pictures" that was told to us back in 2018. What that means is make the images super simple, it has nothing to do with the mental state of the images, just think children's books or big and simple images. Some of Marisa's presentation slides were great and very easy to understand. We will keep going here and keep making progress.

Talking with Steve about the "BI" (business intel or business intelligence) servers. Basically, Steve and Cory were trying to figure out the name for the top level servers. We have used master server, enterprise level server, aggregate server, the brain, intelligence server, etc. I think that we are going to use "BI" or "Business Intel" server. This is where all of the data normalization and system roll-ups with take place. Steve and I talked about showing some of our clients what we have already automated and pitching a manual type interim to help that get going and do some R&D (research and development) for what the automation needs to look like.

We also talked about the sales presentation gallery and using that for sales and other demos. Basically, a super simple (big dumb animal pictures) set of slides and pages that allow a person to see discussion topics very easily.

Multi-day conference in Salida, CO - birthplace of adilas.biz! If you spell Salida backwards, you get Adilas - All Data Is Live And Searchable

Small Recap:

The adilas team meets almost everyday via GoToMeeting and Zoom meetings (virtual online meetings). Having said that, we have not had an in person conference for almost 3 years. Our last major conference was in September of 2018. The live event was much needed.

The adilas team met up on Monday evening and did a small meet and greet - ice cream social. We then went over to the hotel and conference center. We setup up systems and did some testing. Crazy, but sad, the hotel was having major Internet problems. We setup some mobile hotspots, but it just wasn't enough.

Tuesday morning we started the conference but the Internet was super slow and was dropping the GoToMeeting session, audio, recording, and even basic site browsing was going super slow. We tried using the GoToMeeting options for the first two sessions. After that, we ended up just presenting to those who were on site. There were about 20 individuals there on site. Once we dropped the GoToMeeting piece, the whole attitude of the conference shifted. From my personal opinion, the change was for the better. Much better flavor and things started to flow much better.

We had more folks join us live on day two and day three of the conference. Great stuff. Those who were there were treated good and everybody was learning new things. As a huge shoutout, three ladies spent a ton of time on training content, slides, and presentations (including timing, samples, etc.)

Zoom meeting with Danny, Kelly, Cory, Marisa, Sean, and Shari O. to go the last minute details and logistics for the training conference. Brief overview of the training slides that will be used. The ladies did a great job on prepping the content and training materials. Kelly went over some of the slides and the timing that we are shooting for. Great back and forth with lots of input from the different parties and persons.

Paying bills and prepping for the conference.

Recording notes from the week. Lots of post-it notes. It sure feels nice to get the stuff recorded and then to throwaway the smaller notes. It feels like progress. Stacks and stacks of them. It may seem inefficient, but it works for me. It doesn't interrupt the meetings, but I still can scribble down what we are talking about and what's going on.

More emails and getting back with people. Trying to get caught up. Sometimes you get so many emails, it feels like quicksand, you answer one and get 10 more...

Pushed up a couple of small branches for John. Some spelling errors, typos, and some default templates with some of the new pieces in the pages and templates (mini style guide, without really calling it that).

Emails and research for a client. Dealing with a data upload and other requests that they had and/or needed.

Now basic value and estimated value are dynamic and they show up on report

Merging and fixing conflicts for the modal message marketing project for Danny. Both Steve and Danny have been playing tag team on this project and working on different sections and functions for the same project. Kinda fun. Pushed up new code and ran database updates on all servers.

Code review with Danny on the modal messaging (time id 2001) or message marketing project. We did some code sign-off, merging, and pushing code. We weren't able to finished the whole merge. Still kinda only halfway done right now.

Work session with John on the payroll and timecard project. We were getting lists of payee/users, running validation on permissions and selections, then doing logic and looping to create arrays of structures (lists of objects or advanced data sets). Nice little work session. Most of the new work was being done on a new payroll and timecard totals report that John is working on.

After John and I got done, Steve and I worked on some joins for a new recipe/build report that showed items not on recipes but still in inventory. Special request report from Kelly for a client.

Bryan joined the meeting and we looked at some code for the eXPO e-checks and simple SMS (text message stuff) validation. Pushed up some new code for testing.

Meeting with Cory and John. More requests for payroll and HR (human resources) type functions and features. We then got into more ideas on doing super detailed job costing and automation ideas. After that, we talked about some other places that needed light clean-up and loving.

We would like to remove the top portion of the community funded projects and/or make it more live and dynamic. It is currently static and it gets old because nobody is in there updating things.

There seems to be more and more page level settings that are needed. This seems to be a constant need. These new settings allow users to determine how things work, flow, what happens or doesn't happen, look and feel, etc.

Here are some other random notes from the meeting:

- Small talk about dealing with trade samples and inventory tracking of the samples. Some places want to track it and some places don't want to track it. Kinda a grey area. Yes, we can do it, but some people don't want it, yet they still want to record when things are given out.

- Recipe/builds and elements of time. Steve is working in those areas and building some advanced production and manufacturing type features and functionality.

- We talked about 2D license scanning, hardware issues, and hardware calibration and setup. This got into talks about our role in setup and deployment, dealing with hardware, setup, and drivers (things that we need but don't control in order to make everything work together).

- At some point, we will need a hardware person who can help with some of these integration type questions and requests. That person may end up being part of our deployment team. We also need an updated list of recommended hardware options and what they do.

Touching base with some of the guys. Eric was asking some questions about the sales tax aggregates and what the next steps will be. We started drawing some ideas and pitching ideas and thoughts dealing with flags, accounts payable, locations, expense/receipts, and bank transactions. We got into some settings on the balance sheet. We got into different levels and what levels do and hold what.

For example: Dealing with the sales tax liabilities. The balance sheet has one line that shows the total liability. The A/P's (accounts payable) shows more details. Then the underlying E/R's (expense/receipts) show even more details that tie into banks and expense types (virtual chart of accounts for expenses).

The locations are the key. They hold the sales tax values, the sales info, and the tax liabilities based on line items assigned to those locations.

After that, I switched over and helped John with some logic for a bit.

CSV upload for a client. Combing data and small tweaks to upload the files. I had to switch corps and split files to get it to work. Light mapping and pointing code to work in a certain way. Promised it by end of the day. Barely made it.

On the phone with Calvin going over the upcoming conference and touching base on the online label builder project. He is really swamped right now with a project for his son. As soon as he surfaces again, we'll get him going on things that we want and need for the online adilas label builder project.

Work session with John on his payroll project. We spent most of our time on the timecard summary report and prepping things for that page and report. This is a new report that has to be built from scratch. Good practice for John. Most of his projects have been just fixing existing pages. This one is new from the ground up, using some new database fields and values that he has added for part of this same project. Good stuff.

Working on a CSV data upload for a client.

John was reporting to Cory and I about some of his projects that he is working on. We got into some questions and discussion about new icons, buttons, and standard page layouts and styles. He reported on the payroll timecard pages for timecard flags and total time calcs. Cory was getting some screenshots to show a client. We did a small walkthrough and want to figure out a good breaking point for this project. It just keeps going (feature creep). I think that we have found a good breaking and stopping point.

We then flipped over to standard pages and templates, another project that John is working on. John was excited about a product called Microsoft Visio - for design layouts, flow charts, and future possible layouts.

Alan and Cory were touching base and going over projects. Alan has been working on some new ways to help and handle custom page settings. He has already been pushing up some new files. We talked about giving all of the guys and gals a heads up, due to the new changes. We talked about timing for deployment of the new changes and making sure that we are all ready, in case anything goes wrong.

I gave Alan some training assignments for the upcoming conference. He will be doing the whole last hour, the techy stuff for all of the developers. At the end of the meeting, Cory and Alan were going over some other small changes and requests. Trying to work on our communications.

Spent half an hour with Chuck. Talking about training and projects. he wanted to know about the upcoming training event schedule and some other questions. Also, he and his team are adding an online live chat option to the main adilas.biz website. I may end up using Chuck as a project manager or project coordinator. He has the skills.

We got into the value of education and the importance of vision. I'm excited to see where he ends up. I feel like we haven't even tapped into his full potential.

After that, Steve and I looking at email settings, following logic, and looking into some other projects. One that keeps alluding us is the invoice due date and header project that will turn people (companies) off if they haven't paid. We really need it, but it got shelfed for a bit. Because it gets old, it sometimes makes it hard to use. This may not be perfect, but image that code has a shelf life. If it isn't used quick enough or soon enough, it becomes old or stale. We looked into what it would take to revive that project. It's a couple of hours, just to dig it out and then more to fix it. We'll get to it, but sometimes we hurt ourselves by leaving things on the shelf too long. It comes down to time and money (resources).

Quite a few of the guys were on the morning meeting to check in and what not. John was talking and asking about style guides and decisions on where we are going (design, look and feel, and code wise). Steve was saying that things keep morphing and evolving, hard to perfectly put your finger on it.

Working on message marketing with Danny and adding in some new customer log types.

Bryan and I pushing some code for new API sockets dealing with delivery drivers (persons), and delivery vehicles. We made a couple of small tweaks and pushed up files.

John and I met for half an hour to go over some questions. He had some thoughts and questions about the upcoming training event.

After John left, I did some prep work for an internal email and worked on a schedule for the developers (day 4 of the training - adilas internal day). Good stuff.

Going over schedules for the upcoming event and training conference. We also talked quite a bit about the sales tax aggregation project and the next steps (other part of the equation). We are getting close to getting the automated feeder (virtual feeding of daily aggregates to the balance sheet) part done. After that, we have to figure out the accounts payable portion where the company either pays things off (actual expense/receipt tied to a bank transaction). We already do tons of other payables sections for paying off things on account (splits), reimbursements, paying down PO's, stock/units, floorplans, etc. Paying down sales tax will be similar with a couple special twists to make sure that we have all of the pieces wrapped up. Should be fun. We also need to figure out the part, incase a company gets to keep some of the sales tax as a commission and/or credit.

The last topic of the day was dealing with eventually automating payroll to a level where there are virtual watchers and feeders and helping those liabilities get automated.

Meeting between Steve and I. Going over costs, funding, and plans for the upcoming training conference. Steve was brining up 3 main aspects of a business (our business). They are: development, deployment, and oversight (keeping your people going). We spent quite a bit of time talking about funding, payables, and plans.

- The value of our team members - huge asset

- We also sketched out the adilas training day (day 4 of the conference)

- We are hoping to talk about sales, servers, infrastructure, tech support, training, project management, deployment, oversight, design, layout, internal core development, and custom development. That's a lot, but we will try to fit it all in on the Friday, day 4 of the conference. Just with the adilas family, team, and staff.

Danny and I going over his message marketing project. Small code review and going over pages and flow. Light work session. I made a few suggestions and Danny took some notes. We did some planning and worked on the main footer code that pops up the modal message marketing piece.

Cory and Wayne joined for the server meeting. Things are going good. We did talk about some communication levels and when to deploy the new changes that we are making. Trying to help keep the apple cart (our main system) as stable as possible.

Steve and Wayne were having fun talking about solar panels and alternate power sources - just for fun.

At the end of the meeting, Cory and I were talking about the upcoming training meeting and who was going to do what. Making plans.

Fixing some merge conflicts for Steve on his files. We talked about some major changes that Alan has been making, dealing with page level settings. We are currently trying to refactor, standardize them, and plan for moving forward. There are tons and tons of corp level settings, page level settings, and user/payee level settings. That is part of what we do.

Recording notes, emails, follow-ups, and small code changes. Work session.

Bryan joined the meeting, but we had to reschedule due to the penny off rounding error in recipes. He hung out for a bit and then we decided to reschedule.

Cory and I going over projects. We got into a discussion about - being able to search for all of the pieces - "all data is live and searchable". The deeper we go, it becomes a challenge to keep up with all of the new changes. The thing that brought up the topic was the new sub invoice types. They have been added in, but have not yet been fully exposed to all searches and export pages. As we develop things, we need to keep rolling out the searchability of those features.

We talked about payroll and state tax calcs and getting people involved with helping us to do that maintenance work (all 50 states and their payroll taxes and state withholding formulas). We may end up getting John to help out with some of that payroll stuff. He is already working on some other payroll and timecard projects.

We spent the whole last part of the meeting looking into a math level (rounding error) issue for recipe/builds. Not on all recipes, but we were having a penny off error in Steve's production pages. We made lots and lots of changes. We ended up rolling things back, so as not to cause problems. Kinda nuts.

Shannon and I had a good little work session. Shannon was doing research and recording notes for good elements of time (in the developer's notebook) that had some content and images that we could harness for the R&D gallery and concept gallery (photo galleries). See attached for her notes and research.

Going along with the harvest type mentality for the day, I showed Shannon some of new Adobe XD files that I got from Jonathan Wells. Super fun and I was trying to share the dream with Shannon! Lots of potential and vision out there for the taking!

While Shannon was doing her research, I was working on an old training site that Russell did way back in 2015. No ones knows about it. I went through a few of the pages, fixed some links, removed some really old stuff, and pushed the files up into the master code branch. This is the address: https://data0.adilas.biz/training/ 

It is kinda fun to try to harvest some of the older stuff. It's old to us (me) but some people have never seen it. Almost like a little treasure hunt. I'm trying surface what I can without going super deep and getting majorly involved (aka sucked into the black hole). Other small changes and pushing files up and live on the servers. Fun little project.

Emails and added a small button and some icons to the ecommerce customer portal page (view my account, once you get logged into ecommerce). After that, John and I looked over some of his payroll and timecard flags project.

Danny and some of the crew on the morning meeting this morning. There was a small sales theme going on in the meeting. Danny was commenting about sales and getting good communications between sales and the developers. The developers, me included, build and build, but don't let anybody know. Constant moving platform. Good communication is key. We talked about ways of improving those communication lines.

I ended up showing those on the meetings some of the Adobe XD files that I got from Jonathan Wells, just the other day. It was like Christmas. I was showing them stuff, zooming in, panning out, scrolling, drawing, and pitching some of the ideas and concepts for fracture, new shopping carts, and the adilas café. For the record, Brandon has a whole folder that has tons and tons of Adobe XD files that were done in 2019/2020 by Jonathan Wells. All of it was graphic R&D and research. Very much a little treasure box. Here is the file path (www_adilas/extras/jonathan_wells/xd_from_jonathan)

Marisa  was on the meeting this morning as well. She was getting excited to see some of the prototypes and mock-ups. We want to start harvesting some of those R&D projects. Lots of work and efforts have gone in there and some of the mock-ups look great and make us (and our clients) excited. As a small side note, we somewhat switched gears and talked about outside investors and seeking outside funding sources. I pointed them to a document that we made a couple of weeks/months ago that talked about some of our plans. We called it the questionnaire summary report from an internal questionnaire. Here is a link to the doc (pdf) - questionnaire summary. Light talk about investors and seeking funding. Danny, Marisa, Sean, and Steve were chiming in. Good meeting!

Trying to play catch-up and recording notes - transferring from paper to digital.

Emails and transferred notes form post-it notes to the developer's notebook in digital format.

John and I went over a number of smaller and random questions. We did a little work on the payroll and timecard flag project, worked on custom CSS and pulling in default success and error message colors. We also did some other links to payroll settings, and light review of where we are headed.

Met with my daughter Aspen Moore. She has been taking an online class dealing with writing HTML and CSS (web code stuff). We met for an hour and she taught me what she had learned. She did a great job. We got her paid and cut a check for her out of the main adilas system.

Alan, John, Cory, and I were on the meeting. We started out with Alan reporting on some of his projects. Alan gave me a list of ideas and topics for the upcoming training event for the internal adilas core team. They were things like: SOP's (standard operating procedures), get all the developers on the same page, flow and unit of the code, getting more into the adilas docs, cool tips and tricks, writing script, query params, abstract DAO (data access objects), services and models, debugging, and unit testing. Great little list.

Next we got into some new corp-wide settings. We will need to go back and do a database updates to backfill some data for new corporations. The new code doesn't default certain values like the older code did. We will build it into the new code, processes, and database defaults - so that it becomes a fixed standard. We will still let them edit it, we just need to make sure that the correct defaults are being set.

Alan then reported on his code changes for the web page settings (tons and tons of custom corp or page level settings). He is doing a project to refactor all of those calls and pieces. We are trying to standardize our code wherever possible. Cory and Alan touched base on a few other projects as well. Kind of a small priority list of sorts.

In between the meeting with Alan and the meeting with John, Cory and I made a few small spelling and verbage changes to our code.

John Maestas then reported to Cory where he is at on the payroll and timecard flag project. Cory took some screenshots. John also reported on his new page templates and trying to help Chuck get some templates and defaults for the adilas docs project. At the end of meeting, John was asking about some other projects to fill in and keep him busy. We have plenty of those.

Chuck joined the meeting and gave me a report on what he is working on. He has done a great job. Here are a few of the things that he is working on.

- New live chat feature for our main website

- Changes to the adilas docs project. Added a new training page, videos, new components and code, and working on some new education mode or bigger dynamic show/hide tool tips. We want to use some of those education mode pieces as we transition over into the fracture project (future project or future release).

- He showed me some progress on the presentation gallery and some alternate layouts. See attached for some screenshots.

- We finished up by talking about the WordPress back-ups and some light direction there.

A few different guys on the morning meeting today. Some of them were talking and chatting before I joined. Steve had me help with a small math fix for a number that was getting formatted with commas and such. We made some changes and pushed up some new code. I then helped John with some permission checks and changes on his payroll project. the other subject for the morning meeting was some of the guys were stating some requests that they would like to see in our group meeting and training meeting here in a couple of weeks. I took a few notes.

Recording notes and catching up on the developer's notebook entries.

Emails and pushing up some new info graphics to the photo gallery page.

Signing up for lodging for the upcoming training event and conference. On the phone with Shari O. going over plans and details for the conference. Talking about flyers, hardware, projectors, power supplies, snacks, meals, handouts, schedules, etc.

Harvesting images and info graphics for the R&D photo gallery and other concept art work. See the online photo gallery for more info. This photo gallery was designed for a teaching tool for Brandon.

Shannon and I did a small work session on researching and harvesting some info graphics from past meetings. We posted the screenshots and drawings as they happened, but we are needing to gather them into one single place. Shannon was doing more research (see attached for her progress) and I was actually exporting images and attaching them to a new photo gallery called the R&D gallery.

We have so much to offer, we just need to get it out and make it available for others to consume and view and use as needed.

We started out and Wayne wasn't on the meeting to begin with. Steve and Cory were going over some page and report sort issues. Very random, it works for some corporations and not for others. We may have to look into actual data to see if that is the issue.

Wayne joined up and we checked in on a few small topics. Most things are going very good. No major issues to report.

Helping Danny with his message marketing and being able to popup and hide the actual messages and modal message marketing output. It turned into a small training session. I'm not sure if he wanted that or not, but that's what ended up happening. After that, Steve and I worked on some time templates and trying to figure out what settings on elements of time would work best for a specific client need.

Bryan and I jumped on a meeting. He has a number of branches that are done and just needing to be pushed up. We went over some plans and briefly looked at some of the code. Bryan also wanted to know if there were any other projects that needed some loving. I sent him over a couple of emails that I had on my plate for some bug fixes and a small code branch that I started, but never finished. After Bryan left, I went back to the ones that were done and started going through things with a fine tooth comb. Got two more big files done. Minor tweaks.

Recording notes, emails, and other clean-up from the day.

Recording notes from this morning and setting up my calendar for June. Summer is coming, some crazy times ahead. If not crazy, at least random. :)

Meeting with Steve McNew - consultant and software engineer who is helping us refine, define, and standardize our processes and procedures.

He is working on some adilas docs and whitepapers - structure and design behind what we are building.

We started out our meeting with me reporting to Steve McNew (steve mac) about harvesting graphics, creating training curriculum, and refining some of our processes. All of those are things that we are trying to nail down and get ready before the upcoming training conference in the middle of June. Steve then asked about some of our refinements that we are making and also asked if we could quantify (counts, status, ratios) any of our claims. He is trying to get me to think about taking what we do (normally) and being able to repurpose those same tasks as marketing messages.

Here is an example of taking the normal and making it into a marketing message: I told Steve that we moved and migrated some domain names and servers. Tons of code changes and database reference changes (hundreds of thousands of path and pointer changes). With that project, we created a new database, field/column level, find and replace tool. I explained it that way, how I just wrote it. Steve said, you could take that same thing (find and replace tool) and say something like - Able to handle end of life transitions in a fast and effective manner. His way sounded a lot cooler than mine...

Steve showed me some of the white papers that he is working on. See attached for a small screenshot. He is starting to take our old images, graphics, and core concepts and mixing them with other technical documents. Our goal is to slowly step towards a more refined stack, role, and define what tools and techniques we use to get there. We talked about promoting and highlighting some of our proof of concept pieces, end-of-life tools and transitions, cost-benefit analysis, etc. Basically, using what we already do and adding to it to bring it up to par (a higher level, whatever that may be). This means using our concept drawings and analogies and putting more technical terms and drawings to make it seem more professional.

We went over some other topics such as document templates, risk management, and connecting the dots. We have a ton of content and do a lot of good things already. We just need to bring them out more and fully connect all of the dots. Along this way, I was amazed at how I could say something and Steve would rephrase it as a virtual marketing message. I would explain something and he would take the same thing and flip it so that it sounded cool. Sometimes with just the slightest word, phrase, or verbage change. Almost a virtual positive spin on things... like lemons to lemon-aid type flip/flop. Lots of opportunities.

Towards the end of the meeting, Steve showed me some quick and dirty drawings (simple boxes, flow charts, arrows, and text labels). He wants to help us capture the how and the why. That is awesome. Exposing the layers and looking at things from different perspectives on what we are doing and how things flow together. That sounds exciting. Great meeting.

Here is a link to an online drawing app that Steve recommended.