We got a text from Steve that he was helping around their cabin this morning. He was unable to join us. Just Sean and I were on the meeting. We touched base and chatted about being able to sell subs (rules and regulations) and  being able to sell parent items without having inventory in stock. Basically, sell a parent item (placeholder) and then fill in more information and actual sub inventory later on. We talked a few options and needs. Each industry is so different. Sean then bailed out to work on his own stuff. I started to go back through tons of emails from the weekend.

I fixed a couple of invoices for Trinity Fasteners and let them know via email. There were just categorized incorrectly, not a big deal. 

It was just Cory and I on the meeting. We went over a number of emails, projects, and updates. We did a few quick estimates and light quoting for custom projects. Usually they are pretty small if we can do a quick quote or an estimate.

Eric and I met to talk and chat about Springbig stuff and new code changes. He added some error handling, Trying to limit the possible bad effects that an outside server could have on our code. For example, if we make a request and they send back some random error, or something in the incorrect format, it makes our server and code look bad.

Meeting with John M at 1 pm. John and I went over files and folders and how the black box code works. We helped him get set on his way for a new and upcoming project. Small training session.

Meeting with Eric at 2 pm. He ended up texting me and we'll hit it tomorrow. Spent the rest of the time recording notes. Emails.

Danny joined the meeting and wanted some help understanding a project that he, Wayne, and John were working on. We did some drawings to help and explained some of the why behind the project that they are working on. Once Danny knows what is going on, he really likes to jump into it. He likes getting his head wrapped around it, at the concept or theory level first.

After that, we worked some on his projects. He is doing great.

Bryan and I worked on a few different projects together. He had some questions about the customer additional contacts out on the web and some new settings that he wanted to add. We ended up pulling away from all of the new settings as it was not in the current project and would put us over budget. We then worked on some of the logic for his custom inventory report. We had worked on this same report last week. This time, the piece we fixes was working better, but we had to look at another part of the report. It got deep as we were joining multiple tables together. Eventually, we decided that it would help us if we could setup some some limited datasets and then see if we could duplicate known results. It was too hard to figure things out with too many variables. We needed a tighter control set and then go from there.

Euflora quarterly meeting. Lots of talks about rolling data up and down the chain. Normalizing the data and getting deeper and deeper into aggregating the data totals, counts, averages, and quick stats. It seems like some of these bigger companies are heading more and more towards multiple corporations and consolidated financials, reporting, and need for the multi corp dashboards or universe level stuff. You can really see it if you listen to their needs. See attached for some notes from the meeting.

This meeting didn't happen. Cory and I were going to record a video for my cart favorites and the flash buttons. Instead, Sean, Steve, and Cory were talking about sales and the needs to be able to sell in bulk, including items that are not yet in inventory, and still keeping the inventory tight and manageable. That is a challenge. Steve was showing Cory and Sean a demo on his orders homepage (orders is another word or alias for quotes).

If you think of quotes, you may get hung up on the name. If you think of it as a tool and are able to name it whatever... it becomes more clear what is going on. Basically, they have clients who are requesting products and inventory. They want to keep track of the orders and/or virtual requests but don't want them (the orders) to affect inventory until they are ready to be shipped and sent out. There are also all kinds of backorder type needs. A quote, or a non inventory invoice of sorts, is the perfect tool. It just needs a little tweaking and it could be the order process. We could then track the fulfillment of those orders as they become real invoices.

Currently, one quote can have one invoice as a built-in relationship. We are seeing the need to expand and/or extend that relationship from a one-to-one to a one-to-many, meaning one order (quote) could be filled with multiple invoices. The difference between what is ordered and what is fulfilled, becomes the backorders or what is still wanted.

As part of our conversation, we also talked briefly about a possible elevator pitch for sales and marketing. Here is the brief pitch - High-end software as a service (SaaS). Anything dealing with operations and accounting. We use a standard product and then allow for custom on top of that. Click here to see more info on the elevator pitch (30 second intro into adilas.biz).

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=7089 - elevator pitch for adilas - ideas and concepts

Launching code for Eric and a 3rd party solution. Trying to make things on our side more bomb proof - error handling of their replays to API sockets and connections. We go the code launched and Eric was going to reach out to some clients and have them run some tests with live code and live API socket connections.

I spent 45 minutes working on a possible duplicate payee/user permission bug that we were notified of. There should be code to prevent users from getting multiple permissions of the same kind. They may have tons and tons of permissions, but should only get a single permission one time. I wrote some code and pushed it up to all servers. It helps do some permission assignment clean-up stuff.

12/2/20: As of today, 4.07 hours for JM

11/18/2020: As of today, 2.22 hours for John

11/3/2020: Add another argument: check for dups (yes/no)= in this case no.

Pass in a variable
Will need to cascade
Not a database change. Standard API

1)Put in documentation
2)Pass to method
3)Code to method
4)Check internally

John M or Bryan

So, I was in a line waiting to go see my daughter in a marching band performance. The guy in front of me asked me... what do you do? Here was my answer...

"High-end software as a service (SaaS) company. Anything dealing with operations and accounting. We have a standard package that we use and then we customize on top of that."

Very simple, but has a lot of loaded statements.

1. High-end software as a service (SaaS) company - This is the whole package without saying it. Monthly, service package, and full business platform.

2. Anything dealing with operations and accounting - This is another whole package type statement dealing with the range that we try to cover. Most people understand different operations and accounting pieces and even know where they have needs and/or struggles. Easy foot in the door, yet very diverse.

3. We have a standard package that we use and then we customize on top of that - This says that it is somewhat ready right out of the box and with different settings you can configure almost anything... Plus, we do custom on top of a standard piece or process. The sky is the limit. You dream it up, we'll help you wire it up!

On with Cory and Steve going over the priority to look at the new shopping cart from Spencer. Talking about code sign-off and handling the transitions between projects. Sometimes, those transitions get pretty rough and demanding. It also helps to get a second person involved either to help follow-up and/or be a buddy in order to get things done. Otherwise, they tend to just sit - too hard to break into or require a pretty heavy lift to transition into those projects. Interesting.

Working on a code review on Spencer's cart. Started getting into things and looking at the new pages, functions, and code for Spencer's shopping cart (called simple cart or short and sweet cart).

Danny and I playing with JavaScript and JQuery to popup the age prompt modal. We had things right, we were just missing the JQuery libraries being linked in correctly. Kinda frustrating, all there, but not working. We could get it to work under certain circumstances but not exactly how we wanted.

From Cory - Can't wait to do the news and update on this! Clients are going to absolutely LOVE this addition. Thank you thank you!!!

Finished up the project and also added some new advanced search options for deposit line items. You can now search for balance sheet items that are tied to deposits. The output shows up in both normal HTML/web reports as well as MS Excel exports. New code was pushed up and merged into master.

Payroll stuff - I spaced this appointment. It didn't happen. I sent Shawn a text and we'll reschedule. My bad.

Danny and I touching base. He feels like we need to focus, in order to be more productive. We tend to run around with our heads cut off and virtually change direction at every gust of wind. We are trying, but we do lack focus sometimes.

I did some permission review for a client. I then had a meeting with Kristi from McCorvey's at 9:30 am. We covered some stuff and I told her that I would send her some links to some of the snow owl theme documentation and videos. Currently, they are still using the classic themes inside of their adilas accounts.

Here are some news and updates dealing with snow owl themes:

https://news.adilas.biz/2017/02/20/snow-owl-theme/

https://news.adilas.biz/2017/03/03/snow-owl-custom-colors/

https://news.adilas.biz/2017/05/15/snow-owl-templates-and-more/

Chuck and I met and went over some things. We talked about JavaScript and JQuery and some upcoming needs there. Chuck has been working on some new headers and footers for the SAR USA firearms registration pages. He is also working with Russell and Alan to get the AJAX photo upload piece working for the registration page. Good stuff.

Emails and recording notes.

Emails, recording notes, and jumping back into some testing and code review for Spencer's short and sweet cart. Good work session.

Danny and I did a session on his new age prompt ecommerce settings. We were working with things outside in ecommerce and testing the new settings. We had to restore some of his files (git and bit bucket stuff). We ended up reworking a couple of files and did some testing. Making great progress. 

Some good sales discussions this morning between Steve, Sean, and I. Lots of talks about sales. Lots of lessons being learned. It is fun to have so many different clients, all playing in different business verticals. When you mix it all together, you get some interesting results. Lots and lots of cross over and it tends to round things out better than just a single angle attack. It does have its challenges, but we like this path and plan on continuing to service multiple different business verticals and styles. It makes it fun.

John and I looked over a project, made some changes and basically did a code review and push session. Good stuff. He seem to be doing great and jumping in and playing well.

Shannon and I were working on the questionnaire and summing up the responses. See attached. Today we were working on the funding section and starting to look into management structure and philosophy.

1 pm meet with Danny - We met and did an hour long session on making the age verification or age prompt modal work out in ecommerce. Danny and I have spent a number of sessions on this project. It is somewhat of a training project for Danny and he is killing it. I'm really happy and excited for him.

After that, I merged and launched some new code from John M. dealing with the new corp-wide setting for the sub barcode prefixes. Nice little project, and he is starting to cycle through things as well. Good stuff.

Cory and I talked about projects and worked on detailing out a new one for John M. It deals with some new arguments being passed to web API sockets for adding and updating customers. Working through things, going over requirements and notes for the developer.

Spencer hopped on and had me pull up his branch (on my local machine). He is working on 3 different Flash to HTML5 (normal web stuff) projects. We went over the new adilas barcode generator widget today and I was really impressed. You could drag and move things, capture _x and _y coordinates, toggle fields on/off, submit custom values, and other small tweaks. I liked it and it seemed pretty cool. I was impressed. This was the first time I had seen any of this project. I built the original one that was in Flash, but I was really surprised to see how it looked as an HTML widget.

Spencer also had me look at a concept piece that he was working on. I didn't give him full approval (yet), but it looked super cool. It was a UI (user interface) widget that you dragged and dropped items on the canvas to different locations. You could then see the _x and _y values changing in a different form (that could be submitted or saved to the database). Very similar to the adilas check write app where you could move fields around and then capture the _x and _y field values to save the settings. Spencer is headed to the adilas check write app (older Flash widget) next and converting it into HTML5.

As a side note, most of the new code is not HTML5, but normal JavaScript and JQuery stuff. Pretty cool.

Morning meeting and Sean, Steve, John M, Eric, and I were on there. Steve and Eric were going over Metrc issues and talking about database inserts and checking for duplicate records with the Metrc integrations. We then switched gears and started talking about other projects. Sean and Steve were talking about order of operations and needs out in mini unit land (a mini unit is a cross between a part/item and a stock/unit - sell in bulk but track by serial number). Anyways, they are working on a section that deals with orders, backorders, and being able to sell in bulk but still track all of the sub details. We ended up talking about options to flag quotes, orders, and even possible steps and/or phases. Some of the questions where dealing with how to track and manage some of those pieces.

As we got deeper and deeper, we started talking about progression and how we use different tools at different phases of a project. The first tool we use is our minds and head, if we run out of space or the project gets too complicated, we switch and go with paper and pencil, word processing documents, spreadsheets, databases, and software type packages. There is a progression. We usually need the next step as things get more involved and complicated.

This conversion, about progression and what tools to use, lead to a topic of mind mapping, flow charts, use cases, and recording other possible scenarios. If you only have 1 basic path, you may not need this kind of a tool. As it gets more complex, you need better and better tools to help you dive deeper and remember things and also make sure that certain key pieces get included. Good conversation.

Cory and Steve were going over projects. We went over a few updates, quotes, and emails. I showed Steve and Cory some of the new code we got from Spencer on the Flash to HTML5 projects. They liked what we have and excited to see where that goes. After that, Cory and I jumped in and some some more project management on a project that deals with some changes to both internal and external API sockets. She was typing and I was saying what I thought needed to be done. It worked out pretty slick. We are at least capturing some of the pieces.

Working with Danny on adding in virtual screen doors and front doors to the ecommerce portals. These virtual doors are dealing with new corp-wide settings for age prompts and age verification stuff. We did some review and started working on the actual age verification part of the project. The simple age prompt is already completed, on Danny's local environment or development system. We ended up working a lot with variable scopes and transferring values between the form scope (user inputs) and the session scope (cloud or memory).

Emails, recording notes, and talking with Sean and Chuck about flex grid tie-ins for a client. General stuff.

Steve and I met up to talk about some new flags and tags for quotes (being used as orders or a pre-state before a real invoice). As we were talking, I remembered that Alan and I had a similar conversation a couple of weeks ago. It was dealing with both quotes and invoices and being able to add sub invoice types (virtual flags) to both invoices and quotes. This was for things like normal, delivery, shipping, etc. We sent Alan a text and he jumped on with Steve and I on the GoToMeeting session. Steve is going to be headed in that direction and Alan should have his new code done (sub invoice types for quotes and invoices) in the next couple of days. Good stuff. Light piggybacking between projects.

Small thought from Steve - "You almost need to get big in order to get small." It is funny, if you start out super small, it makes it hard to grow. You just aren't deep enough. If you are big and then need to show/hide or trim things down, it takes time, but once the new interface is in place, you get the best of both worlds. You have to first centralize the data and catch it (make sure you get enough of the story to play the game). Once you have the data, you can start dealing with how to show it or display it. You can't show what you don't have, but you can hide much of what you do have, if needed. Make it look simple or streamlined. Smoke and mirrors.

Working on the web or ecommerce additional contacts for customers. Inside the main system, we allow for a one-to-many from customers to additional contacts. Bryan is on a project right now to show/hide those additional contact options out in ecommerce land. These are somewhat limited vs the ones that are internal. Trying to make them all controlled by settings. We had a good work session and talked about use cases and scenarios.

Paying bills and general to do list stuff.

This didn't end up happening. I got busy doing other things. Just got back from a trip.

11/13/20:
This is for linking add/edit expense and deposit types to the create new balance sheet item:

add/edit expense types 

add/edit deposit types 

same pages - different mode 

allow for the keyword next 

if key is passed in, make the switch to the combo - need new id and what mode the page in (dep or e/r) 

send the new id over to the add/edit bsi page 

normal add/edit bsi look for combo key - pass the type id 

tie things together 

redirect to starting place 

PM 2 

dev 4

sign-off 1

Cory and I met for just over an hour and worked through a number of different projects. Some we just talked about, recorded some notes, drew pictures, and did some light quoting and estimating on costs and hours. Good work session.

Danny joined the meeting and Cory and I chatted with Danny for a bit about a custom project that would allow an invoice to link out to all of the sub inventory media/content files per invoice. We already built a bulk merge and print feature, but the current PDF's that the company is using are all password protected and super encrypted. We can't get them to merge due to the security stuff (not even Adobe Acrobat can do it). Anyways, we went over other options and ways to help the client.

After that, Danny and I spent the rest of our session working on new validation and age prompt stuff for his new ecommerce and age verification settings. We are getting closer, working on the code, and also making some decisions on what pieces will be part of this project vs a potential future project. Sometime limiting the scope, per project, is key. Otherwise you launch into the never-ending mist of darkness (no known ending to the project).

John and I did some code review and got some new files merged into the system. After that, we switched gears and did some work on his other project that just got assigned to him dealing with dups on an API socket. He is working through things and doing great.

I was going to be meeting with Spencer, but that didn't happen. Originally, this meeting was setup for a different day, so maybe something went wrong on the communication level. We were going to be checking on the Flash to HTML5 project. I was supposed to make sure and have label printer setup for testing.

The time was spent recording notes and looking into emails. It is amazing how many emails add up from being gone for a couple of days.

I joined a little bit later today. Steve and Sean were talking about sales and updates from over the weekend. When I got on, they had a couple of questions for me and then Steve invited Alan to join us. He reported on his delivery stuff and new changes. They made some plans and I jumped in here and there. In the background, I was working through tons of email stuff.

Cory jumped on. Alan was still on so he showed Cory a demo of some of the new changes that he is working on. His delivery stuff has a bunch of new settings, new sub quote/invoice type drop-downs, and other selections as needed. After that, Steve, Cory, and I went into some projects and giving updates and progress reports on different sections. One of the subject came up about a test site for our clients. We have a 3rd party that needs to test their stuff but is currently running some tests on live data. They need their own test site, so we talked about that. We will have to charge for it, but we can get some of our people on that and make it all happen. We just can't do it for free.

We talked about a number of other projects, both small and big. At the end, Steve and Cory were going to jump off onto another meeting to continue talking about stuff. Sometimes it feels like we don't make a ton of progress, but I'm really happy with where things are going. We are getting better and better at what we do and how we do it. Some of these things take time. Good stuff.

More emails and helping Danny get his Git and Bitbucket stuff up to date. He had some internal conflicts on some of his files. We had a brief session and got him all figured out. After that, I did more emails and recorded some notes.

Lots of emails. Chuck joined me around 2 pm. We worked on uploading an image (customer receipt) for the firearm registration page. We used the customer photo gallery pages as a sample and coded his custom pages using pieces from the existing customer photo gallery.

Bryan and I looked at his progress on show/hiding additional contacts out on the web. He is making great progress. We talked about some conditional statements to help with flow and possible lack of settings. Running through different scenarios. Sometimes, all of the possibilities make it extra tough (use cases and scenarios). It is also tough when you are adding onto existing pieces vs creating brand new features. You have to cover water under the bridge, partial old/new settings, no settings, and all new settings. Lots of variables.

After our meeting, we looked into another small project that Bryan is doing for Molly. It involves using a QR code both internally and externally. The real results allow a customer to scan a QR code and go directly to saved testing results. The same QR code, if scanned internally, will simply add an item to the shopping cart. Creative use of QR codes and virtually putting codes within codes. Interesting.

Emails and recording notes.

Pretty quiet meeting this morning. A couple guys jumped on and then off on their way. Just Steve and I were left on the meeting. We were mostly working on our own stuff. Towards the end, we started talking about different things that are happening all around us. Here are a couple of notes.

Transition between independent consultant and dependables for us. Bringing people into the business. Internal teams that play well together and help advance the ball. We used to pass off countless accounts to the outside independent consultants. That is going away and we are trying to get things setup to service those clients using adilas dependables. Good stuff.

The length of time it takes is amazing. Most people want things pretty fast... In adilas, it takes years and years some times. Lots of slow cooking and simmering. That is very frustrating for certain persons and/or personalities. Slow and steady wins the race. That is a mindset.

Being able to share responsibilities and being willing to delegate. You've got to have a team. One alone can not do this. Lessons that we are learning and also watching some of our independent consultants go through the same things.

Cory and Spencer jumped on. We did record it and Cory sent the recording to Spencer. We went over some of the ins and outs of the Flash to HTML5 conversion for the my cart favorite buttons. This project is more of a redo (dress it up) vs a full conversion. The original conversion was done by Alan a few years back. Spencer will get in there and give us some proof of concepts, new layouts, and a more stylized look and feel. Most of the logic will remain as it was when Alan did the rework a couple of years ago. Good meeting.

Shannon and I had a work session on the summaries from an internal questionnaire from a couple months back. We were working on the leadership and profit sharing portions of the document. See attached for where we are at.

As a fun side note, as Shannon and I are working on this document and these summaries, we are actually prepping things for an adilas business plan. That is kinda fun. It is taking quite awhile, but we are making progress. It is one of our goals to get an updated business plan in place. Little by little. Being silly here, but in general, we are heading north!

11/17/2020: Wayne has server set up and will copy database in early hours of 11/18. Then testing will begin.

Met with Bryan for half an hour. He is working on some API sockets and trying to connect to some local software for EMV chip reading technology. We talked about some options and also put up some warnings as to not get too far off the path. Some of it looks deep or specific to Windows software developers (bridges between web and Windows operating systems).

2 pm - meet with Chuck. We had a good meeting and filled in some gaps on the SAR USA gun or firearm registration page. We added some more JavaScript, showed prompts for uploading content, and got things ready for going live. We should be able to get it pushed live next session. That's exciting. Some of these projects are training projects for our guys. They could be done quicker, but learning takes longer, and hopefully the extra time pays off later on.

Getting really close on the age verification and new ecommerce settings. Danny and I have spent multiple sessions on this project. It is getting really close. Today we were actually checking the age verification against the entered birth dates and the stored database birth dates. This project is getting really close to being launched as well. We have a lot of them that are right at that tipping point, ready to go live and become part of the whole.

John jumped in and we worked together to get him pointed in a good direction. His current project is dealing with duplicate customer records via the adilas API sockets. The project has six phases, he is on phase five right now. Making progress and in good spirits. Good stuff.

I got a call from Calvin and he wanted to show me some new code dealing with a web version of the adilas label builder. He had subbed out some code to come up with a custom grid/layout piece. He gave me a demo and talked about options. This project has been a long time coming. We are really excited to get the adilas label builder fully on the web. Currently, there is a Windows software app that Calvin created and it ties into the web display and usage of the PDF custom labels. We've done a lot of work on this project over the years. This next phase will be to replace the Windows app and make the full thing fully web ready and part of the adilas site. Taking steps, little by little, but making great progress. Once again, slow and steady wins the race.

Emails and recording notes to wrap up the day.

Not too much going on this morning. Danny checked in for a bit and we talked about some light clean-up stuff that we still needed to do for a project. After that, I spent the rest of the time going through emails, recording bills, and what not. Pretty light.

Great meeting between Chuck and I. We started out and did some debugging on some form validation and JavaScript stuff. We had to alter the way things happened and changed the order of events. We did some local testing and got his firearm registration form all prepped and ready to go live. We then pushed it up, merged in new code, and did the first live test. It went through perfectly, and we were both very happy. We even logged in and looked to see what it looked like inside of the site.

This is exciting. This is Chuck's first full wire job or custom write up. He built the landing page, the form, did all of the validation, and then we wired it up to an adilas backend database with both customer records and flex grid tie-ins. It also uploads photos and images (customer receipts) and ties things into the main customer record. Fun project. It was really fun to see him get it across the finish line. Success.

Alan and I met and chatted for awhile. I showed him some of the projects that I was helping with and he did the same. We had a good pow wow and it was good to catch up. We also lightly talked about some of the developers and some of their needs and skills. Good stuff.

Cleaning out my email inbox. Tons of messages.

Pushing up round one of the age verification code with Danny. We made a few changes and pushed up the first part of things. This includes the database update and the new session values. We'll do the rest of it tomorrow. We had to prep a few things and let the system start including those pieces without disrupting the normal flow.

Meeting with Bryan about the additional customer contacts out in ecommerce land. We got things prepped and ready for going live and then ran into some errors with the merge. We did some clean-up and had to do some branch swapping and small work arounds. We got things launched and then did some live testing. We had to make some small modifications, but it turned out ok. Crazy stuff.

Steve, Eric, Danny, and I were on most of the morning meeting. We touched base and talked about sales and other options. The deeper we go... the deeper it keeps getting - virtually expanding in front of us. We keep seeing things unfold and more and more needs for settings, permissions, and different views. Very interesting.

We are seeing more and more needs and settings out in ecommerce land (the customer portal side of things). Things keep being requested and being built out further and further. It would be really hard to dream all of this stuff up at one time. You would be completely overwhelmed. Even for us it takes time and you have to build line upon line for it all to make sense. People keep needing more and more, yet they want to be able control the entire flow and process, yet make it as simple as possible. That makes it hard.

After Eric left to jump on another meeting, Danny and I worked on launching some new code that he had ready. We did the first push last night (new session values and new database updates). We launched the rest of the code this morning. It was dealing with the 4 new settings to control the optional age verification or age prompt (yes, I'm over x years old - fill in the blank). It involves a bunch of session values, settings to show/hide the age prompt, a age to compare against, verbage for the prompt, and an option to actually match up birth dates using customer interactions. Great project for Danny. Anyways, we got it all launched this morning.

Going over projects and progress. Cory, Steve, and I all working together. Cory schedules these meetings and runs things past Steve and I. We bounce around a lot but get things going. Kinda fun.

One of the topics up for discussion today was a client that wanted a complete copy or clone of their entire production (live) environment. We talked about logistics of what would be needed, expected, and how to do and service those requests.

We also talked a lot about moving into aggregated totals and aggregated data (sums, averages, counts, totals, and stats). Some times these bigger projects need a plan, seed monies, and then time and resources pushed at them to really make them work. Along those same lines, we spent a good portion of our meeting today talking about what is needed to help these projects get off the ground. We talked about some basics for aggregated data and data warehousing such as - ETL - Extract, Transform, and Load - dealing with processes to work with large amounts of data. The extract option means get the raw data from the transactional database. The transform means take that data and change it or manipulate it into what you want it to be. You then load it or store it in it's transformed state. This helps make it faster for the next stage and you can get at the info quicker. This whole process is coming into play and will be part of where we are headed. We will for sure need it for our future fracture project. Good stuff.

Our plan is start with sales and inventory tracking. We will then get into aggregated data for the other main player groups (all twelve - expense/receipts, deposits, invoice, quotes, stock/units, inventory/parts, elements of time, customers, vendors, users, balance sheet items, and PO's). Some examples of where we are going are taking transactions or transactional data and going up to daily records and sums, weekly records, monthly records, quarterly records, and even annual records. All of these time based tables would get and hold sums, totals, and counts from the transactional data. It is almost like a reverse pyramid with transactional data on the bottom, then up to daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. This starts getting into data warehousing and doing the basics of extracting, transforming, and loading into the data warehouse the data that we want. Almost the business intelligence level (BI) once you can display it in consumable manner. We will keep heading in that direction.

Topics for the day were ideas for the Adilas Trust - internal revenue sharing and how do we want to structure time commitments, scheduling, and maxes and mins for how we play the game. See attached for more info. Working on the summaries for the questionnaire that Shannon and I are compiling. As an interesting side note, we also talked about some of the limiting factors to what we do. They are funding, access to help and support, time, knowledge, and skills and talents. We are all trying to push things forward, but it is not an even or well paved road. We hit obstacle after obstacle along our journey. The more we have to transition, the more we have to somewhat slow down - at least it feels that way. Good venue for venting and discussing things openly today. Good stuff. 

Recording notes from earlier meetings today. Thank goodness for scribbles and post-it notes. :)

Danny sent me a text and said that he had everything under control. We did not meet. I used the time to catch up on emails and recording notes from the day.

Great meeting with Spencer. We went over the barcode generator and the check write app. Both of these apps were setup as Adobe Flash widgets. We are converting them into normal web or HTML and JavaScript. Today, we played with both versions. The barcode generator was having some issues displaying correctly, but we did get to go in and do some testing on the check write app. Making progress, but looking good. We printed, scanned, and did some drawings.

Code review and push with John M. We were working on the new code to allow customers to be duplicated or not based on settings. Our original code didn't care at all. Then we added code to not allow dups. Now we have code that can work either way. We had a client that wanted multiple records per client to track their behavior. Kinda weird, but that's what they wanted. On adding a customer/client you can now specify if you want to allow dups or not, if you use the adilas API sockets. All internal actions still prevent the duplicate records.

Without getting too carried away, we ran into a bug. It was any new code, it was actually dealing with cross corp rewards and customer loyalty. We spent a little time on it but had to move on. It ended up being a setting that someone was toying with for testing. Kinda frustrating to hit the errors while we were testing new code. It made the new code tests feel flawed, even though they were fine. Interesting.

Monday morning. Steve, Danny, Sean, and I were on the meeting. I was somewhat in the background listening to the other guys talk. Steve was going through the different levels of data and how things are coming together. It is fun to watch the progression of how things move and needs that arise. Towards the bottom of the pile, you have the underlying data or transactional data (day to day stuff and the underlying pieces of the story as they play out). You then go up to aggregated data (sums, averages, counts, totals, and other stat type data). After that, you go up to data warehousing and storing big data sets and other big data type stuff. As you progress, there may be a point where you need to archive the data if it gets too big or bulky. It was fun to be in the background listening to Steve talk with the other guys about the transition between transactional data and other bigger or more big data type methodologies. Kinda fun to see the transfer of knowledge.

Going over option for inserting meta data in key pages. Danny was heading up a discussion about SEO (search engine optimization) with John M and myself. I was taking notes and the other guys were commenting and providing ideas and info. We started out with intellectual property and went from there. Here are the basic notes.

- IP - intellectual property - natural flood - you can't copyright or trademark or paten things that already exists... if we flood the area with prior art, that effectively prevents others from claiming things as their own intellectual property. Fun discussion about where we are headed. We are sharing to protect ourselves.

- SEO - buzz word - science and art of making things show up for searches and on search engines

- Seen and unseen - matching SEO content with real natural content - light talks about the history (good and bad) of SEO

- Marketing and getting a new website for adilas - we really want to get a good plan in place and then follow that plan - up until now, it has been a very natural progression that just sort of happens. We want to be more specific and deliberate on our efforts, messages, and marketing. It is time.

- We have a bunch of different levels - main website, secured content (SEO not needed - due to login and permissions), shop (ecommerce - a little bit more tricky), web/API sockets, and other pages and documentation.

- Web content - they virtually and really score your site based on responsive design (mobile ready), same domain name (traffic and visits), amount of time on that domain (frequency and length of time on certain sites), reciprocal links (who links to who), matching content (good natural content), etc. Going over the basics.

- Meta data - key words, buzz words, include photos and videos with built-in meta data

- Sometimes it is the little itty bitty things that help - small things but a lot of small things really start adding up - almost like a virtual score sheet

- We don't want to do anything that is sketchy... off canvas text, hidden things, tags and random content, etc. Play well and be honest.

- We want a main landing page and home base that deals with what adilas is and does (as a whole). This is not industry specific, but who and what are we.

- Animated story lines and time lines

- Some other links - see chat - elevator sales pitch, presentation gallery, outline, chuck's new sales tools, etc.

https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_formula.pdf - adilas formula

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=7089 - elevator pitch

https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_presentation_gallery.pdf - presentation gallery outline

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=6914 - internal questionnaire summaries (sill working on this - progress)

- Put Danny in charge of the team - pick a team, get a plan in place, set a budget, and help to roll things out.

- What do we want to sell and pitch? Up to this point, we have been pretty off the hip... we need a strategic plan as we go forward. It is time.

12/21/2020: Project finished- added 8 more hours

12/2/2020: As of today, JM= 14.47 hours
11/23/2020: Fix charts so the items show. From classic home go to reports, then reports homepage, then under sales, then category 1st.
https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/custom/quick_sales_reports.cfm
Go to this page and see what it's doing. Do some research on what you can do with cf charts. When this was built, it limited what you can show. Maybe now they allow you to show more. There was an option to have a rollover, or a legend so you could look below and see the details of the columns.

Then zip code: Also look at the zip code report: https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/custom/sales_reports_zip_code_graph.cfm
Notice the rollover ability.

If you can't get it figured out with cf charts (native to native) then you can look into js charts: https://www.chartjs.org/

Emails and light clean-up.

Working with Chuck on a new purchase date field for his wire-up project for the firearms registration page. We added in a quick switch between test and live and coded a few other changes.

Going over projects. We started out with a question about ecommerce payment types and being able to mix internal and outside 3rd party payment types as needed. Inside (once logged in a user in the system) you can mix and blend and have full control of the one-to-many relationship between invoices and payments made. They could be cash, check, credit card, merchant processing payments, 3rd party solutions, you name it. Fully open and flexible based on permissions and selections (settings and choices) that your corporation makes.

However, once you go out to ecommerce land, we only allow a single payment type and the company has to dictate what payment option will be used. We are getting into places and companies that want more options on the outside (ecommerce land). One of the 3rd party solutions that wants more options is a banking entity called Hypur. They want to be able to do Hypur payments and also allow for cash on pick-up or cash on delivery options.

We talked about a project dealing with charts and graphs. We talked about looking into a thing called chart JS (short of charts using JavaScript). Another project was the advanced invoice line items search. That report is very popular as it deals with sales and profit type reports and results. It is already very powerful but the demands keep coming. They basically want it all, quantities, dollars, items, categories, locations, discounts, taxes, subs, etc. When we are able, time and money, we want to make that report into a point and click (build your own report) type interface with tons of possible features. We have a bunch of other reports that offer that kind of functionality, we just need to circle back around and build that in on this advanced invoice line items search. As a side note, there is also a super advanced invoice line item search and results (more filters and options).

The conversation switched to GPS and full delivery type options. We talked about traditional GPS and also more modern GPS with cell phones and built-in options from Google or Google map API sockets. After that, we went over some payroll needs and options. Lots of different projects.

We dived in deeper on a few projects and got them ready to hand off. This has been a great help on both sides of the fence. We understand the projects better and the developers can hit the ground running. Good stuff.

After we chatted about projects, the conversation shifted into internal changes that happening. We are wanting to transition from outside independent consultants to bringing on new clients and servicing them using internal adilas assets and internal dependables (part of the family vs full outside care and oversight). We used to always pass off our client's needs to those who could service them (outside independent consultants and reps). We are seeing a switch and trying to bring things back inside so that we can take care of them. It may take awhile, but that is where we are headed.

Along with that, there was some talk about getting rid of the monthly commissions and just paying a bigger upfront commission. It used to be that the outside reps and consultants serviced the clients. If we are taking care of them, we want to pay a bigger upfront commission and then care for their needs internally. It just makes a better relationship, if we can do it.

Cory is playing a huge role going between sales, project management, developers, clients, and admin persons. She is connected with all of the different parties. We are starting to make more decisions and then just going for it. We still want to keep it open to allow others to make monies off of the adilas platform, but we really want to take care of the internal family (dependables). A switch is starting to happen. Having said that, we are soo grateful for the years and years that the outside independent reps and consultants have contributed and played a huge role in what is going on. We couldn't do what we do with out all of the virtual players in the game.

At the end of the meeting, once Cory left, Steve and I did some quick coding stuff and questions. We also talked about people and where they are helping and/or playing. We have a bunch of great people all around us.

When I joined, Danny and Steve were on talking about team dynamics. Danny is a drummer in a band for his church and worship team. He was making an analogy about members of a band... The ones that work out best are those who love to play together. You can have tons of talent but if you don't play well with other, it just doesn't work (over time). This is just a prediction, not sure where it is going, but I can see Danny playing more and more of a role as we go forward. He is very fun to be around and has loads of talents.

I spent some time cascading API socket settings and documentation between servers. Sent out some email about servers and observations from bouncing from server to server to Wayne. Just a couple clean-up items.

Shannon and I keep making progress on reviewing and making summaries for the internal questionnaires. See attached for our progress. Today we were going over what business verticals are we interested in and how we want to structure the business platform (SaaS - software as a service model). One of the gems of the day was a line from Shannon that said, many of our current Adilas players love what they are doing and are interested in providing solutions for things that they are personally passionate about. Following personal passions for a greater whole.

Wayne joined the GoToMeeting session and we started to go over options for emailing using our current servers and API sockets. He wanted some samples and I pointed him to a couple of pages where we build files, save them, and then send out emails. He is wanting to do something similar for long running reports and such. He has a small prototype build and was showing me. He just needed to see how to really connect it, how we are doing the files, clean-up, and emailing right now.

Towards the end, Wayne did some fun show and tell about his 3D printer and other home manager (special lighting and centralized switches and controls for his home in Portugal) stuff. Fun to see what he does outside of work. He love to tinker.

Meeting with Steve to get some code from Alan to pull into Steve's local branch. They are both using and needing certain database updates dealing with sub invoice/quote types (normal, delivery, fulfilled, pending, etc.). We basically cherrypicked some of Alan's code and put it in Steve's code branch.

Meeting with Bryan dealing with a couple of projects. We talked about the Hypur payment stuff out in ecommerce. We want to make it as standard as possible. We also talked about another payment project that Bryan is working on dealing with a connection (bridge type app) between web, local computer, and an EMV chip reader. We also spent quite a bit of time talking options and where to store those settings. We covered three different options. One was normal merchant settings, custom text (JSON objects), or web page setting (normal custom settings). Pros and cons and what not.

Met with Eric to go over a new custom shopping cart that Spencer has been working on. We got the branch pulled in but couldn't make it work. We may need to turn it back to Spencer to get some more bugs worked out of it before doing a deeper code review.

Danny and Sean checked in. They were talking about some SEO (search engine optimization) stuff, a new adilas web site (coming next year), and a plan for what they want to pitch and show to the world. John M joined the meeting and he showed me what he is learning about SEO.

I got an email with a bug report in the email. I went to check it out and got sucked in. For almost 2 hours, John and I were fixing some functions and making sure that local function variables were properly declared. I was coding and John was watching. It ended up being a small training session of sorts. We talked as we fixed things and finally got it all wrapped up. We pushed up new code and let people know via email.

At the end, I did some other email stuff and recorded some bills before going to lunch.

**Total for everyone 12/3/20 to 4/14/21: $13,837.34

3/18/21: 4.92
2/23/21: 2.83

12/21/2020: JM hours as of today: 10.31
11/25/2020: 

Chuck did a great job and checked in earlier when our original meeting was scheduled. John and I were still elbow deep in a bug fix so we couldn't meet. We ended up meeting in the afternoon. Chuck is working on a number of different projects. One of them is an RMA (return merchandise authorization) page/form for the gun/firearm dealer. It is looking good and we'll most likely be wiring it up this coming week. The design stuff is done already (mock-ups).

After that, we switched gears and talked about SEO (search engine optimization) and some ideas for a new web site. Chuck would like to use WordPress for the new site. He is quite good at WordPress sites. He is also doing some research on other sites that he likes and why they appeal to him. He showed me three sites. I didn't write them down, but here was the gist... good designs, simple yet elegant, power statements, solving problems for the consumer, removing risk, good content, good use of photos and icons, strategic use of motion/animation, targeted, simple, and enough push to help you sell things without being over the top.

Touching base on Bryan's project to add photos and customer photo galleries (upload, change, edit, etc.) out in ecommerce land. He had a couple of quick questions and we got him all setup and going in the right direction. I'm really thankful for all of his help. He pushes on projects, no mater the size and complexity. He just keeps going.

Recording digital notes from post-it notes. Sometimes it is hard to keep up as things really happen. I'm grateful for pen and paper that can be used quickly to scratch out reminders. Those simple scratches are way better than the best memory around. Those scribbles improve your memory.

Emails and recording notes.

This project is for round 2 of the Multi Vendor Cross Corp Invoice to PO project. The original project was tracked under the element of time # 1433. This project has gone through multiple phases. Will Hudson did the first round, Steve added sub inventory, and Bryan has been working on the multi-vendor stuff and other enhancements. See attached for a number of new scans. The scans that are attached are from some brainstorming that Brandon was working on but never got around to finishing. Just trying to record the story as it unfolds.

On the phone with Russell going over new changes, upcoming projects, and getting his local environment all setup and ready to go.

There were six guys on the morning meeting. There seemed to be a problem with the news and updates page (WordPress blogs and API sockets). I was working on that. I had to bypass the news and updates. I then got pulled into another error or small bug fix problem. After that, I worked with John on his chart and graph project. We were hitting some limits on how much data was being pulled into the charts and graphs. We decided to let the graphs show what they could and also show the small breakdown tables to show all of the details as well.

On with Cory. We went through a few projects. We uploaded some new code (small fix) and worked more on some server issues. Busy morning. I got pulled off to help with this and that (emails and texts and customer support requests). Cory and I ended up talking about good project management and helping to keep projects and developers in check and on task. We have a project that we may have to reel in and/or totally cut or redo. It may have gotten out too far. That happens sometimes.

Looking into making the defaults become based off of the snow owl theme vs the older classic version. We want all new corporations to be started out in the snow owl theme (newer look and feel with some other cool options). We also want to make it so that if a corporation is not yet selected, we can default to the newer or more modern look.

Fixing small bugs with the corporation chooser (multi-corporations). Emails and trying to put new fixes in place. We were having server and WordPress issues (news and updates taking forever and being really slow - timeouts).

Helping Steve with some git and bit bucket stuff - merging in new code and resolving merge conflicts. He is kinda new at some of that admin stuff.

Working on payment stuff and error handling for a 3rd party payment solution with Bryan. We got into other projects and small bugs and tracking down small fixes. We talked about labels, server addresses, and getting with both Calvin, Wayne, and Russell. We then rolled into the project dealing with customer photos out in the ecommerce land. We looked over pages, made some suggestions, and talked about CSS design options.

After that, we ended up doing some testing and found a bug. We worked on a fix for over an hour. We ended up finding that it was a name conflict between some objects. Two objects had the same name and were overwriting each other. Here is what made it tricky... we added the code, tested the code, even tested multiple times, but still were getting the error, just for one corporation, everything else was good to go. We found that the corporation had a small custom include file (custom code) that had the same variable name (for the object or structure) and that is what was causing the problem. We changed some names and all was good. That is a problem with too much copying and pasting... It works on one page so they (the developers) assume that it will work on the next page, but don't check to see if there are any name conflicts. Sometimes that gets tough if you are dealing with multiple includes... because all of the code is on separate pages (special or smaller include files).