Well, it's a new year. I'm excited to see where things go. Great year, last year. Tons of new developments and definitely a small sense of standardization and normalizing was going on. Often, they say that a team goes through different phases: Forming, storming, norming, and performing. I'm really hoping that we are going through the normalizing phase - who knows, time will tell. Yee haw!

Pretty quiet on the morning go to meeting this morning. I started out and doing emails, merging code, and working on some data imports for Industrial Tool & Supply. They are hoping to go live tomorrow morning. I was working on a new digital upload that has almost 4,000 items that they missed giving us the first time. Going through the file and doing some clean-up and prep work.

Back on some data uploads for Industrial Tool & Supply. Combing and prepping data files.

Working with Shannon to get more adilas user guide info. We worked on info for my cart favorites, my stuff (personal settings and options), and reoccurring and automated options.

More work on a digital upload for a client. Working on a CSV/session upload. The CSV file has all of the original data. I then break it into pieces and store it in the session scope. Where I'm working now, we will grab the data from the session scope and run the updates. This is a new process, we haven't done this yet.

Just for my records, if I ever need this tool again, it saved under a file named: migrate_session_parts_from_csv.cfm

Working on the update inventory count logic for the CSV/session data transfer. Finished things up and ran the file live. We used one CSV file to update and add about 4,000 items. That was broken up into about 188 different PO's (vendor specific). Pretty cool.

Back working on more logic for a quick part or item number and quantity upload using a CSV file. This is a custom upload tool for Industrial Tool & Supply. They have a ton of MS Excel files that have items and quantities. We will end up converting them to a simple CSV file (under 500 records per file) and them uploading them into this special update inventory counts tool that we are building.

Finished up some work and testing on the CSV file upload for doing inventory updates. Got it far enough to test a couple of times locally. Still haven't tried it live.

Went into town to help Industrial Tool & Supply going live. We had a great day and lots of progress was made. I ended up working with numerous different persons on their individual tasks and what not. The morning was hopping and I was bouncing from place to place and station to station. By afternoon, things had calmed down and I was able to even click a few things off of the tick list. I have a number of small pages of notes and will be working on those pieces in the next couple of days. Lots of good in-sight on what they do and how they want the system to work and respond. There are ways around right now, they just want certain things emphasized and/or sped up (shortcuts, callouts, and easier processes).

Steve and I were talking about some sales options and where we want to go. Fun reports back and forth on what we are learning, how we can keep funding projects, and where we could go. Maybe hit the development pause button and do some more sales. Every client we talk to has so many ideas, needs, and different ways of doing things. We love it when we show a client and/or tell them what they can do. They end up saying, you can do that? Yes, you can do that! That is awesome.

We are seeing a need for a more personalized model. Get people out in the field, talk to people, help train people, take notes, listen, and get things planned, funded, tested, and built. That would be awesome. Steve and I are looking into getting out and helping with more setups, custom code, consulting, etc. We will bring that back to the table. We will be charging anywhere between $50 and $100/hour based on what we are doing. If we bid something out, it will be at $100/hour. If we are on straight hourly, it will be somewhere between that range. That is way we could help out as well.

We also talked about making our morning meetings shorter and what time we are available to meet with other people. That will help out as well. We have tons and tons of great ideas and concepts listed and noted in our developer's notebook. We are so busy, that it gets hard to circle back around and really harvest some of those ideas. The goal will be to circle back around where possible and help feed out the projects to the people who can and want to do them. Good stuff.

The last half of the block, I was working on some custom data updates and migration stuff. Industrial Tool & Supply had given me a file with about 4,000 items that needed to have their part or item descriptions updated. The original file (a couple of days ago) was missing the descriptions so we have to circle back around and update a number of items. I built a small took to upload the CSV file and then loop through and update only items that had matching item numbers and descriptions. Small clean-up routine.

9/9/19: Cory has completed customer tax categories in the cart, customer purchase histories from advanced add to cart, reoccurring eots, alt text for barcodes. 

Drea is going to complete new corp wide show email contact settings, Louisiana metrc update.

Waiting on delayed inventory counter (wasn't totally working- need Alan to take a look), also waiting on sub inventory updates as Bryan is still working on these...

Cory is working on most of these updates and will check with Drea on her status. 

Customer tax categories going through the cart, customer purchase histories being available as a quick look-up from the advanced add to cart, and update for inventory counts and new delayed inventory counter (check with Alan to make sure everything is uploaded on this one). Reoccurring elements of time, alt text for barcodes, discount engine for Josh, labels for Calvin, loyalty points for Eric, sales tax update, etc. Bryan had some new ones for 15 new flex grid fields, new corp-wide show email contact settings, maybe check with him as time goes by.

Custom uploads for a client. They gave me multiple sheets of MS Excel data with part numbers (items) and quantities. I was formatting groups of around 200 ish and then uploading them using a custom tool for Industrial Tool & Supply.

Bryan and I got together and did some code checking and merging. His new code adds a small history message when emailing an invoice. We also spent some time looking at a custom job that he is building out for his own purposes. He, Bryan, does a lot of project management on his own custom projects that he is running. He showed me a few new pages that he is working on to take his project management code from his MS Excel files (current) to an adilas build out (custom for Bryan at this time) to run his project management. The new pages that Bryan made have a super simple add process, quick edit buttons, quote, invoice, and hide buttons as well. It shows all current projects as well as the last few months of projects. Behind the scenes, he is querying sub dates and times, action status logs, and invoice payments and invoice histories. Pretty good little mash-up and custom wire job, using elements of time, quotes, customers, invoices, sub dates and time, and flex grid. It is cool to see how people are able to mix and blend the different players and sub players (groups and sub groups) to get what they want and need. That is what it is all about.

Spent some time finishing up the inventory counts and digital uploads for a client. This was going through a huge Excel file and uploading blocks of 200 records on a CSV file. The system would then take that data and run the proper updates and math to do an update PO to get the counts correct. This was done using a custom tool built for the client. We uploaded 44 CSV files for just over 8,000+ unique items and over 56,000+ in total quantities. Easy, over half a million in inventory.

Reviewing things with Steve. We talked a little bit about a new email server for adilas. Currently, we are using an existing shared account setup by Newtek to run all of our emails through. Going forward, we may want a little bit more control and/or get our own email servers vs using the normal Adobe ColdFusion. Wayne is the server guy and might be able to help us out there. Good stuff.

Steve was talking to a rep and I was overhearing their conversation - lots of talk about ecommerce and how to get people logged in and tons of other ideas and topics. As part of the conversation, I heard him say - "Adilas is clay - what do you want?" I love it and I've heard it before from others, just not sure if I have recorded it. We have a custom business solution that is configurable.

Wayne popped in and we were talking about email server options. He is super smart and has done tons of that. We spent some time talking about security features, queues, etc. Wayne is also doing some automated tests and is helping to harden up the servers. He is hitting some of our servers as if he were an outside hacker. That helps us see where the vulnerabilities are (in some ways). We also talked about options for testing, staging, and production environments on all servers. This deals with different code branches and how to virtually use three different code sets, three different databases, and even three different sites (web addresses) where we could simulate live data and other variables. We have never been able to do that. Basically, we could duplicate live data for testing and staging and then play in a semi-live but non destructive manner. That would be super cool.

See sub notes

On with Eric. We basically just touched base and made a deeper plan for tomorrow. I passed him my latest notes and we'll hit it tomorrow. He was going to use the rest of the session to get caught back up and reoriented on the project. It is crazy how much we (all of us developers) lose when we bounce between so many different projects. It almost takes a focused effort to get back into a project and re-getting the juices flowing. Sometimes that transition time can really be a pain. Long story, made short, we have big blocks of time the rest of the week and into the week after. Good stuff. 

On the phone with clients going over ideas and options. Some of them want some closer hand-holding as part of the setup process. We talked about a couple of options and I told them that I would reach out and talk to Steve about those things.

Steve and I got on a call and went over a number of things. There seems to be a very high demand from our clients to get certain pieces and/or features in place. We are almost getting pressured by our clients and some of the adilas reps. We are trying our best but there are only so many hours in a day. We have to figure out a way to manage all of the demands.

Here are a couple of small pieces that helped me out. Most of this came directly from Steve in our conversation...

- Reach out to local adilas users and see if they want to pick up some moonlighting options to help train other users

- If needed, we could get some of our top reps to reach out to clients to get a relationship built there

- If a company is really struggling, try to figure out why? Is it training? Interface? Flow/process? Expectations? Requirements? Bad setup? Forced timelines? etc. Some of these things take time... you can't just say go and have everything in place. It may take hours, days, weeks, months, years, or somewhere in between - depending on the task, how deep, timelines, budgets, talent, etc.

- We need to focus on what we do well. If other products and/or services are needed, that is great. It opens up options for the adilas marketplace and/or adilas world type concept. We have to charge for what we do and/or provide.

- Analogy of Lewis and Clark (explorers finding their way across the western united states by river and canyons) - Some days we may get 10 miles further down the path and other days we may be recovering from sickness and/or portaging raging rapids. We are exploring as we go.

- If a company wants to... we recommend that they do a pros and cons list and then make a decision. What is gained and what is lost. Not every solution is right for every person. We have a ton to offer. Do they want what we are offering or are they looking for something more or something less?

- Steve was saying that we should have three main parts to the puzzle - 1st - hit the sweet spot (are we a match with our clients on what is available, offered, and prices). 2nd - Who is going to help them along the way (initial setup, getting started, training - qualified help and/or skilled help). 3rd - Ongoing and helping to bring the clients along as changes are made, upgrades happen, new options open up, and keeping up to speed with what is going on and/or available.

Anyways, a good set of phone calls. We are learning every day and slowly making progress just like Lewis and Clark in our adventure. Good stuff.

Talking with Molly about adjustments to the inventory values (current inventory) as well as cost of goods sold (items already out the door). Some new questions coming up with sub inventory and how the details are being spread into smaller and smaller pieces. We would like to look at a quick calculator type tool to help out with problems and/or adjustments. How could we use an update PO to help adjust costs diffs? Does it belong on an update PO or some other tool? Great questions.

I put a couple of links out for her through chat to help with research on ICC (internal cost corrections)

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=ICC - research on ICC's

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/community_funded_projects.cfm?projects=1015 - rough quote

She showed me her current process. She started out by going to the grouped inventory page.

- The grouped inventory page is where they (our clients) then to see the cost problems - quantity of 0 with an existing cost

- She is pulling every usage page (per item) and going page by page to see if she could find the problems and/or issues.

- Per location, current quantity times the current cost should equal the in/out extended total - see screen shot

- She adds a positive and a negative (no change in quantity overall) but we need to alter the cost diffs.

- If we could check if the current cost times the current quantity matches, then great. If different, show a flag and allow the change/update.

- She would really like to have a tool that allows for a recalc of the extended costs (both on the inventory side and the cost of goods sold - both sides of the fence).

Bryan and I met and did a good session and worked on a number of different projects. We started looking into what it would take to add a new category (main professional group) for the adilas market and adilas world. After that, we rolled into a small research session on a small bug when showing and filtering sub inventory based on a sub barcode. The problem seems to be that the sub barcode is sticking (entered into the database) as the package gets created, but not being passed when the product gets used. We spent quite a bit of time looking into and doing some research on what the problem is and what is needed. We setup a time to work tomorrow to get in and start working on the bug fix. The fix will have a few different sides and/or pieces to make it all flow.

After the meeting, I was doing emails, running inventory updates for a client, recording notes, and other clean-up stuff. Busy day.

Steve and Dustin were on the morning meeting. Steve had a quick question about a custom report for owners. We talked about some security hashes that could help the report be more secure. The admin report needs to be outside the secured environment and kinda a quick access link to a quick breakdown report for admin users. Steve has the report built, he is just adding some security and then going to add an access point from inside the secured environment.

I got a call from Russell. We talked for quite a bit about some custom client needs and how best to proceed with those requests. We also spent some time talking about using Bridgerland or BTech to help build out some of the fracture type pieces. The term "Fracture" comes from an idea that Steve had back in June of 2017. Everything in adilas seems to be fracturing and breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. Just discussions at this point, but basically a centralized brain (backend engine) and then a deployable front end that could be hosted on any client server or through a commercial web host. No special setup and a fully customizable frontend interface. The whole thing would talk and/or communicate through API socket connections and back and forth API traffic. We talked about ideas, options, etc.

If I were to put together a small fracture tick list, it would be something like this: (just ideas)

- Customizable look and feel (corp-level, department level, user level, and whatever in between)

- Preset defaults with ability to tweak out the defaults and settings (good starting spot and/or basic structure - starting templates)

- Permissioned out and/or micro permissioned (down to the functions per section)

- Settings for layout, settings for display (show/hide, sort order, aliases, instructions, required yes/no, validation rules, etc.) - As of right now, we are seeing settings on 4 different levels. They are world (corporation or business entity), groups or system player level (customers, invoices, deposits, expense/receipts, PO's, parts/items, vendors, users, stock/units, balance sheet items, quotes, elements of time, etc.), page level settings (what will show/hide, sort order, placement, flow, etc.), and finally, user level settings and defaults. How do I want to play the game (at a personal level)?

- Existing structure and flow, but it could be modified. Basically, a template of the starting procedure and/or process but make it able to be modular (build mini data assembly line type options per procedure/task). Think of our model with the mini bubbles and/or pods. These interface with flow, permissions, time, flex, and mapping clear out to the accounting levels.

- Real in-line database extensions. This allows us to provide a basic starting point (database tables and template flow) but also allows for things to be expanded and/or contracted (lessened) based off of configuration. These database extensions could be data types and allow for numeric, decimals, text, dates, on/off toggles, and even long text or JSON storage.

- Be able to save and build any kinda of report or data export - using existing tools

- graphics, charts, graphs, and other summary type options

- Support of both transactional data (what happens day to day) as well as aggregated (summed or pre-calculated values)

- Digital story telling, using characters, relationships, cause/effect choices, consequences, etc. World building concepts.

- Configurable interfaces and functionality per business vertical - click of button to switch layouts and/or processes.

- Customizable (data or logic hooks or black box technology) on client side, server side, and display and logic sides.

- Responsive and/or mobile ready

- Tons of flags, tags, and special callouts

- Be able to tie everything to time or elements of time. This could allow for groups, categories, types, sub locations, sub phases, sub status, etc.

- The list goes on... Most of the ideas have been recorded somewhere in the adilas developer's notebook pages. A great resource, it just may take some time to review and categorize. 

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Back to other topics, Eric popped in and we made a few more notes and decisions on the sub special account tracking stuff (gift cards, loyalty points, in-store credit, etc.). After that, Wayne jumped on and we talked a little bit about email servers and what is needed there. I spent the rest of the time recording notes and reviewing to do lists. Busy times.

Eric and I worked on the sub special account tracking stuff for a bit. We made a few new notes. See attached.

I got some new code from Shawn dealing with 2018 W-2's and 2018 1099's. Looked over the code, made a few changes, and pushed to all servers. Sent an email out to Shari and Drea to help do some checking.

Shannon and I jumped on a GoToMeeting session. We went over a number of projects. The original goal was to work on the adilas user guide content. We ended up going over the new graphical sales report, custom email addresses for clients (mini project), and talking about populating the adilas market or adilas world with reps, consultants, and developers. Mostly just a work session today. Shannon was happy to get some new projects to work on in her spare time.

Working with Bryan to fix some sub inventory and sub barcode bugs. We added some new filters and changed how some of the reports filtered the data. We also built a repair page to fix existing sub barcodes that are live on all of the different servers. Bryan and I tag teamed to update the live serves. Bryan sent an email update to one of the reps that was looking for these changes.

Went in and met with the folks at Industrial Tool. Lots of great training and other ideas (idea farming and harvesting). We had some great discussions and I took pages and pages of notes. Some of the huge takeaways for me are:

- The need for more toggle on/off settings

- Make things standard vs plain one-off black box code (custom code)

- Customer purchase history and letting that play in as part of the pricing engine

- Need for full and integrated gift cards

- Show/hide discounts (even if they are applied)

- Showing items that are on order (ordered and/or coming in) on part usage pages

- Helping preset customer tax categories pass into the cart

- Being able to flip flop printable invoices based on invoice types - customer invoices go to 8.5x11 and counter sales (quick cash sales) go to the 3" mini receipt format

- Getting rid of all of the extra verbage and explanations on the pages (this is my bad - I was trying to help them know what to do - but it is becoming less and less needed and more just in the way - it may be a great setting to toggle on/off - almost like training wheels)

- Lots of new requests to run the ++ (advanced add or edit to cart line items) off of profit margins vs mark-ups and discounts. This is somewhat industry specific, but certain industries really try to make a certain margin on certain pieces. It actually changes depending on the categories and the items. Pretty interesting.

- Multi-tills and/or cash drawers - how to flag and tag the different invoice payments and transactions

- Vendor discounts and vendor terms - clear out to due dates on the expense and PO side. We also have a huge need for due dates on the invoice side. That project is coming, we just need to get back to it (see code branches BWM-33 and ram-37).

- It sure would be nice if we had a check write queue and/or a bulk bill pay list - currently, most of the bills and checks are done one-by-one. You can trick it and put in a specific phrase and then search the checks for that phrase and you get a quick list, but it may be cool to actually build it out to a slightly better system for paying bills and writing checks. Interesting how everything goes from can you do it once... to can you do it fast and in bulk. It comes down to speed, speed, speed.

Part way through the day, I went to lunch. After lunch and before heading back, I was walking around to clear my head and started thinking... wow, if I could make these requests into corp-wide settings, it would save tons of time and effort in making all of these different corp-specific black box custom code pages. That was a fun concept and I was able to start thinking in an different light/view point. Good stuff.

Steve, Dustin, Wayne, Eric, and I were on the morning meeting. I gave a small update on my "on site visit" yesterday with the tool company. Tons of new notes and pages of ideas and requests. Wayne wanted to talk about ways of standardizing code, and how things get implemented. He pitched a couple of fun and good ideas. He had us look at an article about ways to use Git (version control software) and have a number of different stages and/or branches. He was also explaining about how he could implement things like this inside of adilas. Super talented and we've never even been able to consider some of these concepts. Very interesting. Here is a link to the article... not exactly this process but some similarities.

https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ 

After Wayne was finished, Eric and I chatted about the sub special accounts homepage and what that would be and/or look like. We made a small plan and then Eric jumped off. Steve and I then started talking about how some of the developers are really wanting to jump in and play the game. We talked about Russell and what he wants to do, Wayne and what he wants to do, Alan and his goals, where Calvin is at, Dustin, Spencer, etc.

Right about that time, Eric popped back on the meeting and was asking Steve about some ideas and concepts of revenue sharing and how we could build things out to a more and more stable working and development environment. Eric was talking about how much better adilas as a whole would be if he was able to build out core features and projects vs doing the custom one-off implementations all the time. Some of these developers work and work and work and then their projects are done. Most of them want something that is reoccurring and/or can be reused over and over again. That seems to be a trend. Very interesting, almost the exact or similar topic that we were on. While Eric and Steve were talking, I was listening and making some mental notes. We don't know which way to jump yet, and we don't want to overload the boat so that it tips (get too far extended by debt and/or payables), but there are some awesome opportunities right in front of us. We have a great talent pool that we know, like, and have the skills to do what is needed. We just need to figure out how to keep funding the journey. That is awesome.

From Steve - he thinks that we have crossed a new checkpoint. We are having guys with talent that are virtually knocking on our door saying - I want in.

Russell's word - "Dependable" on what we called the people on our team.

Steve was also talking about some supplemental experiments with salespersons and people helping to push our product out there. We are going to start funding some small sales missions and covering certain individuals for 10-20 hours a month doing sales. If they get a sale, they are able to charge their normal setup and/or consultant rates. If they are prospecting, they will be on a small adilas budget to help them cover prospecting time and maybe some gas money. Basically, a small "low to no" budget sales force, but helping to augment and/or supplement the sales efforts. Fun stuff.

Towards the end of the session, I took some time and recorded some notes. To some, it may seem like a waste of time. To me, it is what I do and that's part of the job and/or what I like to do. I gain from it in big ways. Whatever I write, I have to think about it, record it, re-read it, and it improves my memory going through that exercise. Anyways, that's why I write so much. Once it is down on paper (virtual and/or physical) I can refer back to it and it lessens the stress load. There is an old saying, the faintest scratch on paper is better than the sharpest mind.

Meeting with Bryan to go over discounts. We have some requests to allow for better permissions and/or reporting on discounts that are being applied. I have some notes on the subject on my computer. I also passed some notes over to Bryan through the GoToMeeting chat. Some of my notes are listed in a sub comment.

Wayne, Spencer, and I jumped on and we did a quick review of the short and sweet cart interface. We are going to be trying to work through API calls, AJAX, JQuery, and PHP for this project. This is somewhat of an experiment. Wayne and Spencer were talking about wishes and goals as well. Wayne would really like us to use unit testing, different Git (version control) branches, and not rely so much on FTP (file transfer protocol). Good demo and good discussion.

Up early trying to figure out a sub inventory search and/or sub barcode search error. We had a bug reported and I watched an online meeting recording between Molly and Steve where they were going over the error and what was causing it. The error seems to be a disconnect between the sub inventory id (transaction id) and the sub reference number (how packages get related together). Anyways, I spent a couple of hour and tried to crank out some changes. I pushed them up and tested them and everything worked for me.

As a side note, the guys had to reverse the changes later in the day (I was out of the office). The new code fixed some things but made other things worse. One of the new things was dealing with Items being scanned and then coming into the shopping cart at a $0 value. It wouldn't happen all the time, but enough that they reversed the changes. We'll hit it again and test it deeper and more thoroughly. Alan was the one who helped reverse the changes out.

Russell and I jumped on a GoToMeeting to go over the custom email options. It was pretty deep and we spent over an hour and a half, just on the different settings. See attached for my notes. We did record it, but the we were using phones vs computer audio, so there is no audio. Basically, it was an overall review of the custom email settings, templates, custom variables, and usage options.

My big takeaway from the meeting with Russell is how deep the adilas system can and does go. Some of the tools are for end users, customers, reps/consultants, frontend or junior developers, and full on backend developers. There are tons of different levels. Think of layers of a cake... some are independent and some need to stack on other layers to make the whole. Anyways, see attached for some of my notes.

We also discussed how to work with the little slide out gear on all of the snow owl theme pages. Here are a few notes:

- This deals with the slide out menu on the right side of the page. It allows for custom links to settings, help files, videos, courses, etc. (the little gear icon).

- it get populated from the footer (automatic)

- the variables get set in the locig portion of the page (main page)

- a good sample is top_secret/secure/parent_attribute_categories.cfm - it has multiple help files, videos, and settings
- another sample is top_secret/secure/sub_inventory_templates.cfm - multiple settings

Paying bills and recording notes. Transferring notes from post-it notes (quick scribbles) to real elements of time entries.

Alan, Steve, Dustin and I were on the morning meeting. The first little bit was each person reporting on what they were working on and what issues are still outstanding. Steve had a couple of questions for Alan and Dustin. They are following up on different tasks. I spoke with Alan a little bit about our plans for some changes in how the sub inventory and sub barcodes were going to be searched and filtered.

Next, I gave Steve a small update on my meeting with Spencer and Wayne from last week. He asked for some drawings on what was going on. I explained that Spencer was at a turning point where he was going to be needing access to actual data. He doesn't know Adobe ColdFusion very well yet, but he is a PHP master. PHP is another open source server side scripting language. Wayne and I decided that we would let Spencer build out his new prototype in PHP and use the adilas API sockets to get and pass data back and forth. That sort of spun us off into a small discussion on where are we going and how are we planning on integrating all of these pieces. That, of course, is a whole other topic. We touched on the need to build out the adilas API sockets (play at the wall - allow outside data connections) and how that would fit.

Calvin jumped on and a couple of the other guys bailed out. Steve and I had a good talk with Calvin. Our current project with Calvin is an outside label builder for custom and bulk labels. Part of our conversation was helping both adilas and Calvin get our communications being built up and on better levels. We chatted, got on the same page, and will hopefully be back on task next week. Calvin still has some other projects that he is working on right now. Good meeting.

Steve and I then spent some time talking about how the trend is kind of going toward 3rd party solutions and 3rd party build outs and then trying to inter connect them with internal adilas flow and processes. This took us back to a subject of PHP and other adilas API socket connections.

Eric popped in and had a couple of questions. He is building an project for sub special account tracking stuff like loyalty points, gift cards, etc. Some of our discussions today were dealing with page flow and naming conventions. We talked about having a new sub homepage for the special account tracking stuff. We then talked about how the user would have to let us know what special account type they were looking for information on, and then what that process would be like as they walked from step to step, adding filtering, and then finally results with drill-downs. Lots of concept level talks about flow and data. Good stuff and I think that Eric is making some good progress. We'll still need to tweak and refine things, but progress is being made.

Lots of emails and other things, just trying to get caught up and going. After that, Steve and I jumped back on the discussion about PHP, adilas API sockets, playing at the wall, internal vs public files, what servers would look like (just Adobe ColdFusion boxes, just PHP boxes, or dual setup of both ColdFusion and PHP per box). We have some questions that we will be asking Wayne about options and direction. We also made some good break trough's by noting which files and servers were private (owned and controlled by adilas) and which files and servers were public (owned by 3rd party and/or outside entities). Just adding what was public and what was private, really helped the conversation and get both Steve and I on the same page.

What we are seeing is that we need to keep pushing for a full separation between the data (database, storage, and access to the data), the logic (functions, methods, API sockets, and flow), and the actual display (what things look like, where they focus, and what they do or don't do - visual interfaces). Those three things data, logic, and display are huge. The more we separate them, the more modular our application becomes.

We didn't spend a ton of time on this... but all of our discussions were somewhat pointing to the greater and greater need for the adilas market (adilas world) to play a part in the puzzle. Currently, we have a saying "Play at the wall" for the adilas API sockets that we expose to the outside public. That wall is basically the access point between the adilas database and logic and the outside world. We are almost seeing a 2nd wall (virtually speaking) starting to form up. That second wall or outer wall is the adilas marketplace and who has what, who offers what, how is it obtained, or who has made pieces that  virtually are able to be plugged in and/or integrate with adilas core functions and functionality? I'm betting that the open market will end up playing a bigger and bigger role as things progress. Our challenge is how to manage that as it grows. Good stuff.

Email tech support and answering some questions from our developers. Some of the questions were about migrating data, sending emails using built-in adilas tools, and database questions about invoices and how we are controlling the id numbers and counters.

Spent some time going through the requests (lots of hand written pages) from the tool company. Put all of the ideas on paper to help sum things up. Associated some times and budgets to the different projects. Lots of internal tweaks that would be nice and quite a few custom requests as well.

Called and talked with Bryan about media/content and copying and moving files (client uploaded files). He is working on a project that needs some document management and the ability to bulk upload and move client files around. That code already exists as part of the media/content pages and functions. He is just trying to refashion (reuse and reformat) some of it and put it on a custom page to help with a process that a client requested. He was running into some errors. We talked about it, but may have to reschedule as we need to be on a computer vs over the phone.

Getting things your way - the power of a custom solution. Steve and I were talking about core vs custom development. Where we are at right now is letting clients step up and have us build certain features. There is no possible way that we could shoulder all of the requests. We just can't give away anything for free right now. The companies that want to play and pay, they will succeed. Custom software as a service (SaaS) allows our clients to build out their own dreams and processes.

We were talking about finishing up some of the existing projects. Sometimes we like to dream and keep building and building. Maybe we need to circle back around and finish some of the outstanding projects. Steve was talking about - is this mission critical or can it maybe wait or hang out a bit? We are trying to get a better handle on this.

Yesterday, Steve and I were talking about mixed server technologies. Steve was also saying, as a reminder, that as we keep building, if we have outside services or 3rd party products, they will constantly need updating and keeping up with the new changes that keep coming. Even though some of the new pieces may look cool and be all gui (graphical user interface) and such, you still need them to be updated with the functionality that keeps rolling out the door. 

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Dustin was working on some cultivation stuff and had an issue with a pound sign (#) not passing through his page flow. We jumped on and did a little work around code to help him out. I spent some time and reworked the sub inventory searches for parent items as well as sub barcodes and sub RFID tags. I made a couple other simple changes and tested and pushed up some new code. Eric popped in and had a couple of questions as well. Pretty quite morning.

At the end of the session, I pumped out some quick changes to an employee report for Beaver Mountain Ski Area. Pushed up the code and let Debbie know that the new code was up and online.

Working on a custom list of projects for a client. Transferring project details from paper to a Microsoft document for a better visual display.

Looking over code with Bryan dealing with a custom multi file upload. Lots of smaller sub loops. He is hoping to upload multiple documents and then do a second loop to tie the same documents to other pieces (elements of time, quotes, and PO's).

Emails, recording notes, and light tech support.

Emails and tech support. Recorded some notes from a conversation between Steve and I as we were going over some custom project quotes. Started working on a custom invoice for a client. They provided a number of pages with circles, x's, and lines. I'm just following those notes and building the custom invoice.

Eric popped in and we went over how to record a simple touch history (only record a history if a change is made) for the sub special tracking accounts (loyalty points and gift cards). We also talked about what details we wanted to record when that change was made. He had some other questions about my cart favorite buttons and helping a company get a single button master and then have all other users in that corporation use those master buttons. We talked about what is needed and he took some notes. Basically, we just flip who owns the buttons in the background and change some permissions from normal add/edit/create to view only. Pretty easy.

After meeting with Eric, I kept building on the custom invoice for the client. I stripped out tons of the possible options. I think that they will like it, the new invoice is very simple and basic. Just for fun, I took off: all stock/unit stuff, line item photos, line numbering, tax categories, discount columns, sub inventory attributes, all payments, any possible flex grid, and options for elements of time. Super plain jane, but that is what they wanted.

So, we had a client request a PO/Order wish list. This would be something that all parties could add to (what do we need and/or want). Once it is saved, it could be reviewed and then converted into a new request PO (order) or a whatever. This could be per vendor.

I was talking to Steve about it, and he had tons of ideas. This is not a real project yet (keyword yet). Here were some of the things that he was talking about.

- A reorder homepage

- Maybe have a backend system that helps with weighted values (what sells, how fast does it move, how long does it take to cycle, profit margins, etc.)

- We talked about meta data (data about the data) on each item. We could review, bulk add, remove, ignore, etc.

- Steve really wants to be involved with this project

- We talked in earlier days about a reverse shopping cart. Currently, the shopping cart is used for quotes and invoices. Wouldn't it be cool if we could do the same thing for making an order and/or wish list.

- Steve kept talking about an algorithm to help with the weight and the way the items were treated (basically a backend super program that helps make decisions)

- Settings, how to figure those values, rules, assignments, etc.

Anyways, just wanted to record a couple of those ideas. Once again, if possible, Steve really wants to be involved with this project. 

We had a client that requested us to remove all top page verbage. These are the small (and sometimes big) paragraphs to help orient the user to what is going on. These are not the full help file, but an intro paragraph of the basics. If they were removed, the page would feel like the meat of it begins quicker and we could fit more on the page (visual real estate).

Anyways, as part of a bidding process, we put that item on the list as a possible upcoming project. The verbage on the bid/quote said something like this: Remove all top page verbage (thousands of pages) to make it look more simple - new user setting that affects each page layout.

As Steve and I were going over this, he recommended that we don't fully remove it based on a user setting, we just move it over to the slide out gear menu on the right side of the snow owl theme. That was a good idea. I like that. We are  trying to put helpful and needed assets over in that slide out drawer (gear menu). Basically, we could clean up the pages and still have the basic instructions only a click away. I wanted to record the idea as that may be a project for another day.

On site reviewing a custom project quote with a client. We went over the possible custom projects and I explained them, where additional details were needed.

Doing some planning on a project to help make the customer tax category stick through the shopping cart. Currently, we only show it and warn if not used correctly, we want to really use it and auto populate it all the way through. This seeming little project will end up touching the main cart session scope, advanced add cart lines, edit cart lines, update cart pages, duplicate to cart, quote to cart, and a number of custom files. It has some teeth and some roll over order of operations. We will have to interject logic based on settings, allow for bulk changes and bulk recalculations. It could get deep.

We got a report from Alan on the delayed inventory update stuff. You can now save your work, delete/remove some records, reset things, and then finally process the saved pieces. We are really close to getting that launched and online to let people start playing with it. Good stuff.

Eric jumped on and had a few questions. After that, Wayne jumped on and we went over some server things. Wayne is in the middle of a task to move about 70ish corporations from an older data 1 server up to a newer data 11 server. He is just doing prep work and practice runs right now, but building up for the actual migration process. He had some questions and a lot of them are dealing with different files on different servers. We know that we need it (custom code options), but it does make some of the standardization process more difficult. Anyways, we chatted about a number of options and even pitched a couple ideas back and forth about using includes, config files, and database storage of either values or objects (JSON stuff). Lots of good talks and discussions.

Eric came back on and had some questions on how to deal with optional database joins and displaying conditional output. Where this comes from is we allow the sub special account tracking transactions to be either tied to a customer, an invoice, a payee/user, or just generically tied to text entry (not a real database item). This allows our gift cards, loyalty points, and other sub special account tracking accounts more flexibility. I showed him some pages where we already do similar type logic (media/content and flex grid).

In between times, I was working on helping the customer tax category to stick. This is for customers that are say set to a tax category of wholesale, resale, government, etc. They are not taxed, but often a retail item will be setup as normal taxable or with tax included. My current mini project is trying allow the non taxed customers to get the correct auto tax categories as they go through checkout and cart creation process.

Do some end of the year database and file back-ups for adilas.

If possible, spend some time looking at Spencer's short and sweet cart interface.

Turning this back to Will. Brandon couldn't get to it. Have Will get with Brandon and collaborate.

Brandon, Shawn and Shari need to get in and work on it.

Working on the new customer tax category settings and coding things in the shopping cart to follow suite. Trying to add new code to all add line items functions and also added new code to help with switching and/or assigning customers to the cart.

Bryan and I were going over options to expand the flex grid. We currently have 15 custom fields. We have a client that wants us to double that and go to 30 custom fields. We talked about it and came up with 3 possible options. They are:

1. Expand the current flex grid to allow for a total of 30 custom fields. We also talked about possible JSON (object level) storage within the flex grid tie-ins.

2. We build it out similar to sub inventory attributes and parent attributes - with custom columns, data types, and make it unlimited. This is kinda along the line of real in-line database extensions. This would be super cool, but caries a higher price tag. The benefits are real data types (numeric, dates, text, toggle/boolean values, etc.) and also fully unlimited.

3. The other option is a custom black box database table to help them specifically get what they want and what they need. This one takes a little bit more consulting and time with the client, but may end up being the best solution.

We took some time and put some light price tags on each solution. We also talked about how each one would be rolled out. Bryan is going to check with the rep and client and see which one they would like to do. Once we know, we'll circle back around and do more planning.

The last item of the session was looking at the sub inventory sales and invoice report. We had a request to help with a timeout error that was occurring. We looked at the page and upped the timeout option. Really, that page needs some loving to really make it hum and run super fast. That will have to be another day.

First topic of the day today was talking about the talent pool that adilas has access to. Steve and I chatted about a number of the different developers, reps, consultants, and sales people who are helping us to play the game. We talked about how best to keep funding those efforts and endeavors. Good stuff, but you do have to be creative.

I showed Steve an update on where we are for the customer tax category project that I've been working on. We also briefly talked about a new sales flyer and where we are headed with that venture. Lots of moving pieces. I worked on more code for the invoice side of the customer tax category project. This helps with invoice line items being added after the fact and still being able to maintain the correct tax categories if an item is added later on.

Eric popped in a couple of times and has a few small questions. We talked about touching base almost daily until we could get a firm grip on when we could have the sub special account tracking stuff done. This deals with loyalty points, gift cards, etc. Eric also had some questions about doing custom work or internal adilas work. He mentioned, that it would be so cool if we had all of the custom one-off pieces that he has built, inside of the main adilas platform. That would be super cool. In the meantime, we are gaining ideas and knowledge of what is wanted and what is needed. Sometimes we have to play the custom one-off game until we either know enough about the needs and wants of our clients or we get the correct amount of internal funding to build it as a core piece.

Wayne popped on and we chatted with him about moving and migrating a couple of companies from servers to other servers. Basically, a company that has a dedicated box, just acquired a couple more companies that are on another server. They want everything under just one roof on the same server. As we were talking, Wayne had a couple questions and ideas. He brought up the fact that if we wanted to, we could split all of these databases into smaller single corp instances and run them on their own databases vs deploying things in a shared or semi-shared environment. We talked about pros and cons and I shared a little bit of history with Wayne on what we have been calling the world building project. We have wanted to do this (getting people off the bus - splitting up the database) for years and years. Looking forward, I'll bet that Wayne will end up helping us out there. Good stuff.

Spent the rest of the time coding on the customer tax category project, emails, paying bills, and trying to get some verbage together for a new news and update on the customer tax category changes.

Working on customer tax category settings out in ecommerce land.

Jumped on with Dave and we went over some progress and details about the assisted living stuff. Dave is gathering information and creating flow charts, ideas, and mapping things out. He showed me some of his new charts and graphics. See element of time # 4147 in the shop for notes from our meeting. We are trying to gather all of the pieces that are relative to that project on that element of time. Here is a link:

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4147

Working on ecommerce logic to help with customer tax categories and settings. Made a few changes and posted some prep code.

I got a call from Steve about one of the servers. It was having problems. We chatted about options and we ended up jumping on and flushing some of the old queries. That seemed to help everything start flowing again. Steve and I talked about our current server company and what possible options we have going forward. This topic will come up again, for sure. It's on our radar, but hard to perfectly figure out just by talking. It may end up being a combo of outside parties, technology, inside talent, budgets, goals, maintenance, and backing (financial and personnel). The game keeps going and expanding.

Steve and Dustin were talking about new processes and using some new and fancy display options. After that, I helped Steve with some JavaScript calculations and some small page changes.

Wayne popped in and he gave a report about some of the server issues that happened yesterday. It sounds like a company was trying to pull multiple queries that had 2 million records per query. Basically, a log jam in the database. As we were talking about things, we were talking about moving from a purely transactional database, to a more aggregate type environment (aggregate meaning sums and totals vs individual transactions). Tons of data is awesome, but we need to limit the transactions and how many we are trying to chew up per bite. Some of the reports need to be re-written to be more efficient. Nobody wants to read and look at 2 million lines... all they really want is the totals, the counts, and the sums from that data. We may need to filter the data and better display it in a drill-down type basis.

Wayne was talking about DAO's (database access objects) and getting the queries in a more standard location and where to access those assets.

We are making progress and making things more stable. Sometimes when our users see an error, they instantly go back to what things were (older past errors) and then they fear the worst. That is just human nature. These are some of the growing pains. As a funny side note... Wayne was saying, other companies that seem light and fancy, they will have the same issues as they grow, their day will come when they are up against the wall and have to move from transactional data to a more aggregate type model.

Wayne was also talking about dynamic services vs just static boxes (dedicated servers). Basically a way to throttle resources vs setting up a static environment with specific resources. We were also talking about roll over protection and other mirror type values. We lightly were talking about how we may be out growing our current hosting company. We may start looking into AWS (amazon web services), Google, and/or other bigger players. Currently we are using Newtek and they have been awesome for years and years.

There was also some talks and discussion about a new pricing model based on usage, storage, bandwidth, requests, etc. We would love to get there but it still seems to be out there a bit. We were also talking about stats and then also projecting those stats out to our users. Some of this may require us to setup things per instance or per client. Random side note, I wonder if we were to go back to the drawing board and start with the end goal in mind. Would that change things? How, why, and how deep? Do we want that?

Maybe help our clients run based on sizes and needs. We grew from a small shared environment into a semi dedicated model and then into a fully dedicated model. We now have multiple dedicated servers. Wayne was saying something about Docker (spelling) containers and how to group things and somewhat create a virtual playground or virtual cluster per corporation or per company. Once we get them into the container of sorts, we could then expand that contain as needed. SaaS (software as a service) and how to expand and grow things.

Funny quote from Steve - "We need to get Wayne on a faster horse." Meaning, we may need to help Wayne get on an environment where he is not so limited (existing dedicated servers, structure, and physical boxes). Maybe we need to move more to the virtual playground.

Steve had some ideas about using more of the invoice homepage type mentality. Basically, we had an older report that pulled in the last 30 days worth of transactions. We totally changed that page to pull quick counts, graphs, charts, and sums. We then only show the last 15 records (really easy on the system). They users can flip/flop between daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly reports at the click of a button. All of the values are queried and pulled using a technology called AJAX (go get just the data and return without refreshing the whole page). Then, if they want more details (actual transactions), we have a number of other reports where they can filter the data to smaller and smaller levels. Steve would like us to do more and more of that to help eliminate the full detailed transaction searches. Great idea.

Towards the end of the session, I spent some time and built in a pre-check query for the advanced invoice line items search. If it has more than 100,000 records trying to return, it shows an error and requires the user to filter the details down a little bit. Apparently, this was the query that brought down data 8 yesterday for a bit. The company that was running the query tool was searching for over 2 million records in a single report. They were running back to back queries of the same size. That big of a bite created a data log jam in the database (table locking for joins then processing and doing calculations on 2 million plus records per query). That eventually caused us to reset the whole server. As a side note, that same query tool joins about 5 tables in order to get the results. If you do that for a couple thousand records, no problem... if you do it for millions and millions, at a time, it is a problem.

Bryan and I met over a GoToMeeting session to talk about a custom media/content (drag and drop files) page flow. He is dynamically creating quotes, PO's, and elements of time to help with ordering, shipping, etc. As part of this process, the client wants to add one document to the process and have it cascade itself to all of the new PO's, quotes, and elements of time (basically a bulk upload and tie-in to the different players from one spot).

Anyways, we were working through things and got to a point where we were running into problems due to the way the page was looping. We decided to do a single upload and then remote reference all other pieces to that original upload. That really helped to define what the goal was. We ended with Bryan having some clear direction to help make things work. He was going to keep pushing on things and then get back together if he got stuck.

Reminder for me: Follow-up on graphical sales flyer, custom emails, and adilas market.

Shannon and I met over a Zoom session (Steve was using the GoToMeeting session for a sales demo). We got going and I showed Shannon a few of the things and projects that I was working on. Limiting certain query tools to 100,000 records or less, maintaining customer tax category settings in the cart, etc. In a small way, they, the current projects, played into some of our other discussions. By way of a report, Shannon said that she had been working on some content for the new graphical sales flyer. We spent most of our time talking about what we really want there. The sales flyer is not done and is somewhat of an open book. We want to make it fun, visual, and really get what they are getting and/or getting into in front of them. Mixing those pieces will be a challenge.

We talked about all kinds of things that normally may or may not be on a sales flyer. We talked about being a good fit, explaining the open market concepts (adilas market or adilas world), setting realistic expectations, steps for success, how to set an attainable goal, how to eat an elephant (step by step or bite by bite process vs trying to take down the whole thing at once), cause and effect decisions, training, setup, self-serve model, and how custom plays into that mix. Shannon took a number of notes and I passed her over some links and documents that had some good ideas. We setup another meeting for next week. Our plan is to keep chipping away at things and hopefully come up with a great sales tool that inspires and also educates our client base.

Here are a couple of the links that I sent to Shannon.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3957 - notes from a training session in Denver. Search this for the key word "Kelly". We recorded a session where Kelly Whyman, power adilas rep, was talking about setup, training, and steps to success with the adilas platform.

https://data0.adilas.biz/intro_to_adilas.pdf - older PDF sales flyer with some light info about adilas and our model.

Met with Bryan again and went over some of his new changes from earlier today. We did some local testing and prepped some things for live testing. He is much closer now and it is looking good. It still needs a little bit of clean-up, but at least it is doing the task now. Good stuff.

Spent some time recording notes and documenting things. That is part of my job.

Working with Steve on some JavaScript to help with a new production build (internal builds) page. Lots of dynamic notation. Steve has been working on main flow and carving out some basic pages. He is then pushing things off to Dustin to help shine it up and make it look pretty. Steve wires it up (round 1.0) and then Dustin takes it to the next level (2.0). Good plan.

Eric popped in and had some questions on how to assign his sub special account tracking things to customers, payee/users, etc. After that, he and Steve were talking about future and upcoming projects. Steve was asking Eric about his backend skill sets vs his frontend design skills. We even got into some project management talks as well as backend database architecture. Eric has quite a few skills that are very marketable. We also talked about internal core projects as well as outside custom projects. Good conversation.

Steve and I were talking, briefly, about our direction for the future and near future. Good stuff. Our goal is to keep working on the system, building new pieces, refining some of the older things, putting a new coat of paint on the application (look and feel stuff), and figuring out the master plan of where we want to go. We have so many ideas out in the developer's notebook area... it would be so cool to gather all of that up and really make a plan.

The master plan could include things such as: database structure stuff (world building), graphical homepages, server structure stuff (universe level), fracture account ideas (things that we have learned and ways to break things into smaller and smaller pieces and settings), API socket access points, custom look and feel stuff, 4 different setting levels (corp/world, player/group, page/section, user settings), as well as additional rounds on balance sheet, elements of time, and subs of subs. This could also include all kinds of system stuff such as watchers, feeders, triggers and other ideas that are out there. That would be really fun, a huge project, but really fun.

Final touches on Bryan's custom wire job for Global Design. It is a really simple page that creates quotes, elements of time, PO's, and expenses - all from one tiny little form. The last part that we were testing was the file management piece. Once a file is uploaded, it has to do the upload and then loop over all of the other items (PO's, time, quotes, etc.) and create similar file (media/content) references. We did some final tweaks and then did some live testing.

One small side note... After testing a couple of time, we had quite a bit to clean-up because each time we used the tools it made so many different things. Kinda interesting. Good stuff but you can make a mess of things pretty quickly if you don't know what you are doing. The power of a bulk wire job. :)

Working on passing the customer tax category information through the ecommerce pages. Did some testing and pushed up the files to all servers. Did some live testing. Sent an email with some info and verbage to Drea to help with a new news and update post.

Started working on a client request for better access to customer purchase history. I added a new link to help filter the customer's invoice line items directly from the customer log page. I then started working on a new popup window to show the customer purchase history per part number (small or limited version - last 10 entries), if the user was using  the advanced add to cart page (using the ++ advanced link for adding new items). This should really help with clients and users who depend on contract pricing and have different price points per customer. Great idea from Codie from Industrial Tool & Supply.

Wayne and Steve were talking shop about ways to configure clusters and groups of servers. Lots of talks about AWS (amazon web services) and how they monitor and provide tons of sales stats. Talks about monitoring API socket calls, queries, requests, emails being sent and received, storage, bandwidth, etc. They were talking about using the stats as the base level and then we would just do a mark-up on top of that value. There may be some thresholds and bench mark values, but we could really change our pricing model. Steve would love to almost give the software away for free and then we just charge for processing and storage.

They were also talking about letting the billing cycles run automatically based off of the stats plus mark-up. They then switched to a small demo of the Docker containers and Docker servers (ways of managing a number of like instances and virtual machines). Lots of ways of deploying and configuring mass numbers of servers and also keeping things synced up and ready to go. Lots of talk about breaking every corp into their own database instance and spinning things up on multiple different servers (clusters of servers). Tons of fun world building stuff.

We may end up needing to store and make accessible certain data and values between different servers and still allow bouncing between different corps and even different servers. Fun new levels of what is possible. Once we start breaking things up, it may allow us break up other thing (pieces and functions) within the adilas environment. We honestly don't even know what is possible and what may end up shaking out of this restructure. Pretty crazy.

Eric and I spent some time working more on the sub special accounts and special account tracking stuff. We setup some time for next week to get in there and really start polishing things up and doing some finish work. There are quite a few pages and backend methods (functions) that have been built. The next stage is going over things with a fine tooth comb and helping the mock-ups and alpha releases become more stable. Good stuff.

When I wasn't on the meeting, I was building the customer purchase history page to help show the last known prices per item per customer. This will really help out those who do either contract pricing and/or have a variable pricing model.

Spent some time working with Steve to try to roll some of his JavaScript calculations back and forth. We could get them to go one direction (populate and calculate) pretty easy, but we were struggling with rewinding things and making it recalculate. Just normal stuff. Later on, Eric popped back in and had some questions about flip flopping between FORM and URL scope variables. I showed him a number of examples, where we do the same thing on other pages. He caught on really quickly.

Working on the customer purchase history popup and section. Finished things up and pushed up files online. See attached for a small screen shot. The new button/page are accessed by using the "++" advanced add to cart page, once a valid cart is started and a customer is assigned to the shopping cart. As a side note, the same functionality also exists in the edit cart line item mode. Great for clients who want to do contract pricing and that may have variable prices based on a per customer deal and/or relationship.

Working with Will and doing a first round code review on his transitional PO project. A transitional PO is in between a request/order PO and a live/closed PO. Not really tied to inventory, but already holding per-payments on the PO (assets on the balance sheet as a pre-payment for inventory). Will spent some time and we went through the code and looked at stuff. We went over code, pages, flow, and actual output (browsing the pages). We are about 90% done and ready. Once a few other things get tied up, Will is going to turn it over to me for final testing, merging, and deployment. It was looking good.

On the morning meeting with Steve, Alan, Wayne, and Dustin. Checking up and getting caught up with what happened over the weekend.

Notes from Wayne about server stability and processes

Infrastructure - We have greatly increased this portion. We would like to fix how we deploy code to the servers. Currently we are just using FTP and are able to push code as needed to different servers.

Code - The last couple server issues have been code related (bugs, poorly written code and queries, or loose code). These code problems are currently affecting our servers as much or more than the infrastructure process.

See attached for a small proposal from Wayne about how to configure our environment. Wayne would like to look into Lucee vs ColdFusion. I put tons of notes on that physical PDF upload.

We talked about some costs and also options going forward. We talked about DNS (domain name servers - where are things pointed), SSL's (secure socket layers - https stuff), emails and texts, etc. We can virtually push some of the logging into the AWS CloudWatch services. Amazon also has some other servers that we could harness and/or use. Some of the other services are AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report, and Amazon Route 53.

Steve was asking questions about how we could make an adilas user group (power users - adilas community) that could be linked and/or joined to different companies or different adilas clients. Almost an extension of the adilas reps and consultants - who wants my skills, I have a power user account, and that could be tied in to anyone's account (based on permission and access). All secure, but also very mobile. Basically a way to separate users and clients.

We also talked about splitting up the databases (world building) into corp-specific databases (smaller single databases) and then working on the mixed or cross-corp queries. In the background it could be tons of different services and even computers, but in the frontend, the presentation seems singular and very streamlined and smooth. This also opens up more revenue options for our developers to help code cross corp or consolidated reports and such.

Some talks about future white labeling options and how we could setup adilas as a platform and then allow them to pay the AWS bills and they pay us for usage of the code.

The rest of the talks circled back around to the code and how we create and deploy our code. Lots of talks about automated testing and getting all of that stuff super stable. Being able to up-scale to handle bigger and bigger loads. Alan popped in and also brought in the possible option of down scaling as well. No one likes to talk about this, but we need to think about both side of the coin. If we are on a dynamic environment, we could virtually scale up and/or down. Once again, it comes back to a two-part puzzle... you have both code and infrastructure.

Alan was talking about how to encourage our developers to run more of a test driven code structure. This will be a cultural switch. If we make it so that the system becomes the bad guy, we could help to change that culture. We've done this before, when we first introduced permissions and such. We talked about training, tooling, and guidelines to help some of these developers. Most of the talks today have dealt with changes to infrastructure - we also know that there is possibly a bigger conversation about the code development side of things.

Where are we going and/or heading? Eventually, some of the adilas functions and features will become components and virtual standalone pieces (modules of sorts). We need the flexibility of a Legos type scenario... multi interlocking blocks that could be mixed and blended as needed.

From Steve - I'm seeing lots of our wish list boxes being checked with these new proposed changes.

From Alan - This seems great for scaling. Hardware is one of the hardest ways to scale. If we could turn it into a service, it becomes easier to manage. Alan was also talking about scaling up and scaling down. Make sure you can go in both directions. How much weight are forced to carry... being able to absorb or extend as needed.

We can make the whole presentation more seamless. Currently, we send clients to data 10, data 11, etc. If we go more in this direction, it just runs more seamless and we scale things in the background as needed. In the background, we almost need a platform babysitter that helps us know what is going on and/or what is available.

Our clients tend to like - our pricing, our possible functionality options, and how easily we can customize things.

Dealing with timelines... We are seeing this transition between 6 months to a year. Maybe even more. We will start on it immediately, but it still may take some time to roll these things out. Also, we can only see so deep, there may be some unknowns that hit us as we get into things. Alan was saying some of the fun development sayings such as the last 10% takes 90% of the time and other things like that. It always gets crazy. Slow and steady wins the race. Lots of good things on the horizon.

Working with Wayne over a GoToMeeting session to setup some new accounts at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Tech support and emails.

Met with Bryan to go over the progress on an older project for some cross corp mapping. We looked to see where he is currently and then made some suggestions on where we want to head. This is not the full deal, but a small stepping stone towards the application flex grid project (future cross corp mapping tool).

Emails, phone calls, and light research on other vendors that are contacting our clients. Watched a few videos and got some good ideas. Recorded some notes in the adilas customer logs for the client. It's a big world out there. Yee haw.

On the morning meeting. Dustin was on with me in the morning. Eric came on around 10 am to 11 am. Eric and I worked on some logic for the sub special account tracking stuff (loyalty points and gift cards). The other project that I was working on was some black box and custom barcode generator mapping for a client. Took over three main pages. The PO lines items, the view parts page, and the add/edit parts page. All of those pages have a number of links to the barcode generator page.

Working on some more black box pages for custom barcode labels. Also started looking into showing requested amounts (items on order) in the part's usage section.

Keep following up on graphical sales flyer, custom emails, and adilas market.

Shannon and I got started. She asked how things were going, so I gave her a small run down of some the current projects and direction that we are going in. Lots of moving pieces. After that, we spent about half an hour recording some notes about our model and how it works best (right combo of clients, demands, requirements, and expectations). Lots of good notes and what not. Shannon recorded them on a working document. See attached. As a side note, there are more notes from other days, but at least our new notes have also been pushed up.

Working on showing items that are on order (requested) on the parts usage page.

Meeting with Steve and Dustin to start off the morning. Dustin had a couple of questions on ways to track some of his internal code changes. We talked strategy for a bit. Steve then had a question on a client's custom label. It was duplicating one of the fields. We dug in and found that it was a sub inventory attribute that was virtually sharing an id number with another sub inventory attribute. It was appearing to duplicate the data due to the numbering of the attributes. Random error. We went in the backend and fixed it. We haven't had any other complaints about that, so we are assuming that somehow both attributes got assigned the same reporting number.

As Steve and I were fixing the sub inventory issue, we were talking about sales, customer support, and how we are hoping that these new server configurations are going to help us out. We also talked about getting someone to help Shari O. - she is getting buried and needs someone to help. We also talked about some other ideas to think about while we are breaking up the bus (analogy of getting people off the bus and onto their own motorcycles or cars - aka world building). Here are some of the quick notes:

- What about mini options for AWS servers... Currently we have multiple dedicated servers (with fixed number of processors, RAM memory, and fixed hard drives for storage). What if we took those bigger boxes and virtually broke out a new virtual instance for each of our clients. If it could work, it would be almost like a mini virtual dedicated box per client. Just an idea.

- Steve would really like to split out users from corporations (allows users to exist as their own entity and also as part of a master list). Then, we could bridge people over and across and allow users to jump between corporations as they get assigned. We currently can do this, within a single box or cluster. It would be awesome if we could do this on a universe or global scale. Any user (has a single account) and could be interconnected and/or have access to any other corporation (world) based on permissions and being bridged over. Think of home planets and bridging people from worlds to worlds. (digital passports and what not)

- Currently, we (adilas admin) are the only ones who can bridge users between corporations. If it went out further... we could allow individual parties to allow/invite other users to come in and help with any projects and also set connection durations (how long they could virtually stay). If we empower the users to create those relationships, that takes the load and the liability off of the admin adilas team. Good stuff.

- Steve really wants to help out workers and/or dependables

- We would really like add some visual upgrades - CSS and settings. As a side note, settings are going to be huge going forward. We are seeing at least four levels of settings - corp (world), group (system players), pages, and user settings.

- Steve and I were looking at some stats that Wayne had gathered for us... crazy to see those stats and this is just one month from the data 0 box. We would love to see all of the servers and all of the stats, side-by-side, and compare. That would be crazy.

- The deeper we get, the more settings and being able to toggle things on/off (custom setup options) are going to play in. We were even talking about new settings for ecommerce and companies that allow for new customer/client accounts to be setup. What fields do they want to show/hide, what ones are required, what special instructions, what names or aliases, what sort order, etc. Everybody wants crazy deep levels of control on how they set things up.

- Steve and I talked about the pros and cons of the black box options... on the one hand, we can configure any page to do whatever we want. On the other hand, if we go black box vs building a new setting, we have to do the same thing over and over again. Sometimes the speed of the black box option actually creates more work later on. The longer route is building a setting, but it then becomes easier to manage that later on, plus less duplicating code.

Back working on the project to show on order, requested, or pending items on the part usage page.

Talking with Calvin over a Zoom meeting about the adilas label builder application. He has been off on other projects and this was just a meeting to get back into the project. We briefly talked about goals, priorities, and options. We also talked about putting some of his Windows based tools out on AWS for Mac users. Somewhat of a small workaround between Windows and Mac stuff.

Finished up the small project to show the items that were on order, requested, and/or pending on a per item usage basis. Added a number of new values, links, and even a small mini report on what those values contain. I also merged in some code and did some live testing. I sent an email out to a client about some new changes. See attached for a couple of small graphics that went along with the email.

Working on a small clean-up script to help with a client that normally does their sales with tax included, but for some reason, they rang up sales with a different tax category. Basically, the taxes were still collected (totals are ok) but the individual tax amounts were not in the correct database columns. Built the update script and ran it on the live server. Fixed over 200+ line items. We also worked with the client and showed them what they were doing and how to fix the problem. The source of the problem was actually their customers and the tax category settings that were stored per customer. We got that fixed, got the incorrect records fixed, and hopefully all is good to go.

Eric popped in and we went over some existing code for changing prices and auto calculating the in-line discounts based on the price changes. We also talked about building on what you have vs rebuilding from scratch. Steve and I did some prep on a new code merge and to get his local code branch merged in with the master code branch. I will be working more on that after lunch. Mostly prep work as of this morning.

Working on merging in new code from Steve. Close to 50 files that have some new code and/or changes.

Met up with Steve and Bryan over the GoToMeeting session. We were talking about cross corp transactions. Things like invoices to PO's and mapping vendors, part categories, and physical items or parts between corporations. Bryan showed us some progress of where he is at and Steve was helping to make suggestions. Bryan and Steve are going to be meeting again tomorrow to keep advancing the ball.

More work on merging in Steve's new code branch. Some of it deals with customer birth dates out in ecommerce land.

Finished up the code merge for Steve. I had to do it in three main sections and then some sub sections between those main sections. First we launched some of the new code to allow customer birthdates out in ecommerce land. Those values had lots of new session stuff and new method to add, edit, and look-up the birthdates. I then did a bunch of custom code that Steve has been working on. At the very end, I had to circle back around to the ecommerce section and add some files that relied on the new session values (I had to make sure that the session values were being passed around, before adding new code that used them). Not bad, but kinda a late night.