Going over custom labels and being able to configure those labels through dynamic settings. Steve's next settings page is going to be for the printable invoices. They started to talk about Metrc (state tracking system). Steve was also reporting on what Mike is doing and what he is pitching and throwing. Mike owns Herbo and eXpo, two different companies that are integrated with adilas as 3rd party solutions and even virtual white labels of the adilas platform. He is pitching adilas as a possible option under some different labels and umbrellas.

The guys got into a subject of adilas phones and what we could offer there. This is a phone tree type software package that adilas acquired a few years back. It has kind of just been sitting there, being used by a small number of clients but not really being pushed. They pulled it up and were looking around the adilas phones section and pages. Getting deeper into the phone tree stuff.

Danny was saying, software is only as good as the setup and the usage of that software. I would agree. We also were talking about some of the salespersons and what they could do and offer. There are some great skills out there.

We started talking about a new shopping cart and being able to switch back and forth between a possible new look and feel and the older more stable versions. Talking about adding more cart settings. Ideas about being able to flip over to toggle switches vs checkboxes. This is a more modern look and feel thing. What we would really like is nice interfaces that have the one-pager type feel where you can do all kinds of things from just one page. It still interacts with the server, session (memory stuff), and database queries, but there is a minimum or no full page refreshes. It all happens on one page (one-pager apps). This is a more modern way of doing web code.

Steve is excited to get John helping out with some new look and feel stuff and pages. I too am excited to get John going on some GUI (graphical user interfaces) and UI/UX stuff (user interfaces and user experience). Here we go, just need the funding and the green light.

Bryan and I working on dynamic searches out in ecommerce to show and correctly display unique events and online scheduling options. Looking into conditional logic to help keep things consistent and as smooth as possible. Good work session.

Working on a new image to show progression of things over time. Decide to use bikes or bicycles and how bike brakes have changed over time. Grabbed a number of images off of web searches, just gathering resources.

Quick code merge for Eric. Working on the progression of things image (new graphic). Phone call with Eric going over projects and auto updates. Phone call with Stee talking about plans and what is going on. Lots of stuff swirling all around us. Just trying to keep an eye on potential and opportunities.

Work session with John and going over state payroll and tax withholdings for the state of Oklahoma. We had to add a new database column for some additional add-ins per state tax table record. Code review, number verification (two sets of eyes on new table values), and documentation (what are we doing and why). Good little session.

Working with Bryan on code review of the unique items for online scheduling. Small bug during checkout. We got into advanced cart logic and adding and removing items, duplicating items, and other deeper topics. We finished up and he virtually passed the code branch over to me to review and beat it up a bit.

Finished up a new graphic called the progression of things. I wanted to use bikes or bicycles to show how bike brakes have evolved over time. I have images of fixed gear bikes (direct brakes - as you pedal the bike moves forward or back). That is where things started. I then added graphic for feet, shoes, skidding, coater brakes, direct tire pressure breaks, cantilever brakes, center-pull brakes, V-brakes, and hydraulic disk brakes. Trying to show the progression of things over time.

As a fun side note, most of us, have even been around long enough to see some of these advancements in our lifetime. I was born in the early 70's and it's currently the end of the year 2022. Almost 50 years and who how fast things change. See attached for a number of fun images.

Emails and checking on an error from Authorize.net (merchant processing company). It was on their end, and we sent an email to the client explaining the issue. Light tech support.

Monday morning sales meeting. Nine of us on the meeting. I was taking notes and Sean and Steve were running the meeting. See attached for the meeting notes. Planning on doing sales meetings on Monday's and Thursdays, as of right now.

Steve and I on a work session. Looking at email settings. Then we switched over to QR codes on invoices. We got into some debugging and found an error where we were looping over a query that had 0 records. We added in a check prior to the loop and it fixed it. Deeper looks into some debugging techniques and little tips and tricks. Good work session.

Looking into needs and wants for the date/time pickers. Created a small to do list. We then jumped into unique event settings. We talked about new possible time settings (see element of time # 8004). We got pretty deep going over potential and where we want things to go. The goal is to make and create an "Any Scheduler" or an "Any" Scheduler. We also went over some look and feel stuff and where we are headed there. I showed Bryan some recent news and updates and how we are planning a full facelift for the time or elements of time section. Just for fun. Here are some our notes that we were passing between the chat session over GoToMeeting.

Meeting with Bryan on time templates and sub templates for availability

- Define what we want...

- How are we going to tie things in?

- What will it look like?

- How will they control it?

- Permissions?

- Settings?

- Availability?

- Just time slots that are open (appointments, hair salons, PT-physical therapy, etc.)

- Book a range (campgrounds, cabins, rooms, etc.)

- Internal - able to do this right now... - it would be cool to speed it up

- External - only able to do reoccurring one-to-many and unique events - we need the 1-1 (one-to-one) or one party to a certain event or place or timeslot.

- "Any Scheduler" or "Any" Scheduler >> and go online with it - what are the rules to make it easy for a user but flexible and powerful (backend)

End of year payroll stuff with John. Going over numbers for new Oklahoma state tax withholdings. He would be looking at the documentation and I would read off the code and we would compare numbers (second set of eyes to validate the numbers). We then got into the deeper code where it pulls the values and does the look-ups, queries, and actual calculations. We went through a number of scenarios. It's looking good.

Cory, Steve, Sean, John, and I were on going over project management stuff. There was an error in the gram controller, but it was poorly passed to us from an outside party. We went over some ideas and ways to make our code more bombproof, even if we get back bad data from an outside call. Talks about error handling and responding to both good and bad data.

Some of the guys were chatting about some of the new happenings and progress with clients and/or demos. Lots of stuff going on all around us. Steve and Sean were talking about the value of a recipe/build type process. The recipes can hold the ingredients and the outputs and then be used over and over again.  Inside of both cultivation processes and production processes, they use the recipe/build processes.

Dealing with recipes - This also includes things for SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses - aka accounting for general costs by attributing them to a single unit and thus incorporating the true costs into an item). Basically, you take a normal expense like the electric bill or rent and build it into the individual cost of each unit by unitizing the expenses and virtually spreading a bigger general cost to smaller pieces. Sometimes that type of process (SG&A) is required for certain manufacturing and/or production type products. Basically, they (the IRS) don't allow you to expense off the whole expense (rent, insurance, waste, electric, etc.) as a bulk item. It has to be distributed to each smaller piece. If you do real SG&A, it helps assimilate those costs in smaller percentages and thus passing on a truer look at real costs of goods sold. That's the goal.

After the guys finished up on the recipe stuff, John reported on some of his payroll updates that he is doing. He is really helping to tighten things up on the yearend processes for payroll and withholdings. Good stuff. Next, we got into some discussions about projects that get stalled out, why, and how can we help that process (meaning get them all the way finished and into production). Sometimes we have to leave certain projects due to budgets, time, and other demands. Sadly, if you are bootstrapping things (running on a tight budget), you have to follow the dollar sometimes. Even if you really want to do something, you still have to live, eat, sleep, and keep the ship afloat.

We also talked about proactive and reactive maintenance. Once again, sometimes that depends on budgets, time, and other resources. If it's not broken, sometimes we have to leave it alone or deal with it until it either fully breaks or it really needs some help. All part of the game.

Cory was talking about projects getting stalled out and how to help push them through the finish line. We were talking about this earlier but she just barely joined at 10 am. Light rehash of some of what we were talking about.

For the server meeting, we allowed Steve to talk to Wayne about emails and how things are going. Wayne was reporting on the gift cards and refactoring some of the cart logic. As soon as he is finished, he will get his code out to different parties to look at and do some testing. Cory and Wayne were doing some planning and scheduling of releases.

We then talked about passing certain branches of code back and forth and who is going to test, merge, and deploy certain things. We are trying to get better at working as a team. Some of the branches need to be strategically placed and tested on certain servers before going live. With that process, it opens up a whole new subset of needs for being able to merge, sync, and reliably deploy and execute code, branches, versions, etc. Currently, we are all pushing up code daily to a code repository using both Git and bit bucket. Wayne is the one who primarily changes which servers are pulling from which branches. Ideally, they all pull from the master branch, but we do tweak that every now and again, based on other projects, testing, requirements, etc. It's a pretty big job.

After that, the topic switched over to differences in display and page outputs. We talked about code differences, data differences, and even things like settings, permissions, and other custom code. It all plays into the mix. Light discussion on how to best help convey or communicate any errors or differences. All of those factors may or may not play in (code, data, settings, permissions, or custom stuff). It can get interesting.

All of the other guys jumped off (Wayne and John) to meet on a different Zoom session. Cory is doing a great job trying to keep up with billing and what not for custom work. At the end, Steve, Cory, and I got on a small work session and chased down a small bug in the dynamic PO labels. It ended up being a blank query for parent item attributes that wasn't populating in the correct spot. Small work session.

Props to Cory! She is really learning and growing as a project coordinator. She has a lot of traffic control and directing traffic (requests, quotes, bids, projects, promises, billing, scheduling, budgets, etc.). I've been impressed. She is doing great!

Both Steve and Cory did some planning and scheduling of things. Crazy times, right now. Things (all kinds of stuff) are going on all around us. Cory and I then jumped in and checked on some new logging and backend (hidden) histories and update logs. We were also talking about some advanced shipping options for a client. We could build out some crazy API socket stuff, do custom code, or maybe help them with a small workaround using my cart favorite buttons and custom shipping to known (repeat) areas. This is for a manufacturing company that distributes to the same customers over and over again. Anyways, we also discussed our internal deliver options and maybe building that out a bit more or connecting to outside 3rd party solutions as needed. Other project management stuff.

code review session with Bryan. He is helping me out by combining about 5 branches of code that Chuck did into one single branch. We reviewed some of the code and he will be coordinating with both Cory and Wayne to get things tested. Once tested, we will merge the new files into the master branch and push things up live on all servers. The 5 or so branches were dealing with new changes to elements of time. New time homepage look and feel, new working with time page, new printable time page, and some tweaks on the add/edit main time pages and time history pages. Good stuff. Looking good.

Bryan has really been a key helper in getting these projects off of my desk and getting them making progress and being pushed forward. I'm super grateful for that.

Pulled up the branch and started reviewing code from Bryan on the online scheduling and unique events settings and code. Did some local testing and pushed up the small clean-up changes that I made. Most likely, it will take a couple more hours to go through all of the other pages. Making progress.

Daily clean-up and recording notes from other meetings and work sessions today. It's amazing how quick all of the little notes (post-it notes) can add up, even from just one day. It may not be the most effective, but sometimes I can't record the notes digitally while on or in a meeting. Especially if I'm helping, coding, writing, or drawing. It's so much quicker to scribble quick notes and then expand on them later.

Morning meeting. Sean joined and was just checking in. Danny joined and we started chatting about different subjects. Sean had some questions about SG&A costs (selling, general and administrative costs or internal manufacturing and unitizing costs to specific units). We talked about recipes and the potential there to keep track of things and to virtually unitize different costs through the recipe/build process.

We switched gears and started to talk about pitching "potential". We already have tons of that. This is a quote from a business consultant that we were working with at one time. He said - "Part of what I pitch is hope, the potential to be and do better!". I would like to help us keep pitching potential and hope. That is awesome!

We talked about new companies and helping to keep them up to date with new training and getting them started. We talked about how much to bite off at a single time. If you take smaller bites, it works better, but you have to be willing to circle back around. If you give too much, you could overwhelm them or flood them out. Baby steps and smaller bites. It takes longer, but the experience is better over time. Basically, get comfortable and then move on to the next thing.

Lots of discussions and talk about "custom". Most software systems are just as is, they really don't allow for custom solutions over and above their base product. We, on the other hand, love custom and can either do the whole thing or fill in the gaps as needed. This is from Russell Moore, back in 2016, "Adilas is a great companion software package for any business." We can fill in or virtually fill in the gaps wherever there is a need. We got into talking about how you can virtually use any part of the system or any part of the whole. Everything is an option but not required. That really leads us to do more customization of things. We are ok with that. It is part of our model.

One of our biggest benefits is being able to pull things together in one place. We even want to keep expanding on that concept and make other homepages or bring it together type pages or sections. We talked about getting all of the settings together into one page. That conversation caused us to get into the four different types of settings (that we know of right now). We have world or corp-wide settings, group level settings (invoices, customers, products, etc.), page level settings, and user level settings. After talking about that for a bit, we got into talking about world building and where we are headed there. Literally, the deeper you get, one thing will lead right into the next, in a true system or world building experience.

The guys were talking about a client who has a running list of things that they want us to do (once we or they have some funding). That is part of world building and deals with - what do you need, what do you want, and how will we get there?

The next part of the session was me, going off and giving an impromptu history lesson on where we came from and a series of events that lead to where we are now. I was having fun. I hope that the guys liked it. We bounced into adilas, looked at numbers, projects, histories, etc. I showed them a new graphic that I was working on called the progression of things and we chatted about that. I jumped into an old Excel file that had some numbers to show growth, etc. Anyways, I thought it was a fun history or historical session of sort. Good stuff. See attached for some of the files that we were going over.

Small BioTrack merge and push for New York. Small review of other projects that he is working on.

Recording notes and looking at Wayne's add to cart testing branch (new code). Light code review. Still need to run it through some physical tests and actual use it on my local machine. Ran out of time.

Merging in a couple of branches for John and yearend payroll stuff. He still needs to run the updates, but we got the bit bucket merges done and in place.

Quick merge and push to  help Bryan with some custom code. The guys and gals need it for a demo tomorrow morning. It was gram control stuff out in ecommerce for a New York demo.

Steve and some of the other guys were on a bigger demo this morning. It was just Danny, Sean, John, Michael, and I on the meeting. The guys were talking about demos and what they like to show and what they like to gloss over (speed of the demos and interest levels). Sean then showed some of the cultivation stuff that they are setting up for an upcoming demo.

It turned into a small sales meeting. Michael reported on what he was doing and up to. Sean and Danny were running the meeting. We went back and talked more about different bids, demos, and possible options. John showed us some of the dashboard stuff that he was working on for his school projects. We would love to grab some of that type of code and put some fun stuff into play inside of adilas. This deals with dashboards, quick counts, sums, totals, aggregates, charts, graphs, and other quick eye candy. We talked briefly about our desire to build out graphical homepages for each of the main players and sections. That would be really cool.

As we were talking about graphics, Danny, who is a pilot showed a screenshot of a modern navigation or heads-up panel from an airplane. The old was way was tons of different gages, the new way is a real time visual with all of the main important stuff, right at your fingertips. That's what adilas needs, a head-up panel for your business.

Danny then showed us a small video that he was working on. It's just a quick website overview. He is just playing with ideas, timing, and concepts. Anyways, here's the link to the video.

Our next major subject was talking about display and modern design stuff. We went over tabs, horizontal nav systems, vertical nav systems, cards, titles, buttons, sliding drawers, show/hide and toggle options. Lots of visuals. That lead us into a discussion on my cart favorite buttons and how we could keep pushing on those custom buttons and improve their look and feel as well as add additional functionality to them. We talked about smaller cards with other required settings on the individual cards. We also talked about time buttons and how that could really help for scheduling. Great idea going forward for internal scheduling and fracture level controls for custom interfaces.

To expand on the button concept and/or my cart favorites. What if the custom buttons weren't just for the cart? We have similar things on the snow owl theme and the individual payee buttons that can be mapped to different pages, URL's, reports, or sections within the site. What if we took all of those things (cart buttons, quick look-ups, jump or hyperlinks (URL's), navigation, and other options and made the whole interface something that you could setup, on the fly and be specific per user. As a side note, we allow for buttons to be copied right now, if they are set to public vs private. If a public button (aka some sort of nav type button) could be copied, that could be really cool and could allow a lesser user (skill wise) to be able to get awesome functionality without having to know the whole backend processes. Just a thought.

This conversation took us over to the shopping cart, split cart, and different cart types and styles. We talked about all kinds of visual and setting based improvements that we could do over in the shopping cart land. We briefly rolled through the classic cart, the kush cart, and the short and sweet cart (different existing cart styles). John was talking about adding in settings to help with flow controls (step 1 of 3) or crumb trails (you are here - in this process or step), etc. Ways of visually showing our users where they are and what else if still coming and/or needed to complete a certain process or procedure. My biggest takeaway from the entire meeting was - "Show people, don't just tell them!".

Recording notes. Small bug fix on the shopping cart to help Sean out with a demo that he had scheduled for this afternoon. It was dealing with some light validation and math assuming that a certain value was or always would be numeric. We got it fixed and new code pushed up to all of the servers.

Date-picker research and going over code that Bryan is doing to help with our new date pickers and time pickers. We were looking over his to do list and then ended up merging in a few small changes. Pushed up changes to all servers for the date and time picker stuff. Small changes to the formatting, but it will help out tons.

Steve and I jumped on a meeting. He was showing me a little bit of stuff and we were talking about the demo that he, Mike, and Kelly were on this morning. Kelly had created a really nice outline that had a series of live links on it. Basically, she was logged into a corporation on the Herbo server. She could then split the screen and jump from her outline presentation right into the system without any migration. That allowed her to follow her outline and jump to pages that she wanted to show or demo. Pretty creative and a great way to use web-based software.

On that same note, that kind of presentation and/or demo takes quite a bit of prep work to get it all laid out, prepped, and ready to go. Pretty awesome. Anyways, Steve was going down the outline with me and going over things. As a fun side note, he and the girls (Cory and Kelly) were prepping things and they reminded him of reports that he had forgotten that we had. We have so much stuff that is available and ready to use. Sad but true, we sometimes forget what we even have, there is so much.

Steve's wife came in and he had to go and help her with something else. I flipped over and started to do more transferring of notes and recording notes from the past couple of days. Good stuff and lots going on. Busy time.

Paying bills, emails, and text messages.

Working on code sign-off for unique events. Going over things page by page. Adding notes, checking code, and light clean-up. Started getting deeper. Three smaller sessions on a Saturday (9-10:30 am, 12-1 pm, and 7:15-8:15 pm).

fixed a small merge conflict in the ecommerce header files. Jumped on the morning sales meeting. See attached meeting notes.

Meeting with Bryan and going over the "any scheduler". He was showing me an older campground reservation system that Will and Steve did inside of adilas back in 2018. It has been pretty buried and not used that much. Bryan was looking around at other different scheduling options such as Airbnb, hair salons, etc. Looking at how we do it internally (selling and booking time).

We started talking about availability templates. Basically, timeslot placeholders. Lay it out and then use it if needed. We did some brainstorming and after we stopped, I was thinking that we also need payee id (user stuff) and store id (location information). Making progress.

Beaver Mountain and looking over ecommerce/shop pages. Scheduling code review. Went pretty deep for the review. Small tweaks and changes.

Working with Aspen on world building and research. Printed her out a check.

Prep work for Beaver Mountain. Making sure that vendors, items, categories, time templates, and settings were all in place. This was on the old system - meaning the ski school system. Eventually, we created a whole new system for them to run and track their special events.

Went into to Beaver Mountain to do a live demo for Kristy and Amie for unique special events and online sign-up and registration options. Good demo. Came home with a bunch of notes and to do list items. We decided that we would run the special events on a different system as compared to the current one that is being used by the Beaver Mountain ski school. All of the flex grid tie-in settings and verbiage are different. We allow for custom but only one set of custom settings, not a one-to-many on the custom settings and custom verbiage stuff (field names and aliases).

On a meeting with Bryan. Review of the demo that we did for Beaver Mountain. Showed him some of the ideas and things that they would like based on the demo. We spent some time looking at the date-picker code. Pushed up 17 files with some code changes. Switched over to the new time settings stuff. Horizontal and vertical time views (like Beaver Mountain). Tons of time talking about the availability table (new for online scheduling). Going over plans and new time settings.

We also talked about adding links to the new public horizontal time view page from multiple different places inside the system. Bryan took some of the custom code from the Beaver Mountain pages and is making it more public and general for all of our users. He already did that (just a few days ago) but now we are trying to add links and navigation so that people can actually use it and get to it from multiple other places and pages. All part of the process of building things out. Bryan really liked the horizontal time view functionality. Good stuff!

Phone call with Calvin about Emerald Fields, Gmext, and possible Mac version of the bulk FTP uploader tool. We also chatted about some of his other tools. They have been a huge help and we, at adilas, use them every day.

Sean and Danny were talking about demos and techniques. They are prepping an outline with hyperlinks to help them navigate and show things quickly vs having to navigate the whole system to get to the same pages. Good technique.

Steve joined the meeting, even though it was his day off. We got into talking about new time settings and my meeting yesterday with Beaver Mountain (local ski school). They have been using adilas for close to 7 years now. Most recently, they are looking to use it to help them with registration for their special mountain events and races. It was unintentional, but I ended up giving all of the guys on a meeting a full-on demo of what we are doing and where we are heading.

Steve was kind of challenging me on a few things - why did you do that? What about this or that? Maybe we could do this or that, etc. We talked about it and I took some notes. I still don't fully know what direction to go and what would be best, but I took some notes. Some of it was dealing with multiple systems vs a single system, settings, custom code vs building for the masses, and individual customer records vs quick flex grid to get super simple data into the system quickly. We talked about effort levels, timing, speed, data in/out, exports, and future flow. It was a good discussion, even though I felt like I was being challenged on every front.

As a side note, when we started this project, back in 2015, we didn't have what we have now (7 years later). If we had had what we have now, it would have been a different story. All things are possible and are options, it just depends on timing, resources, budgets, skills, and where the system is at (functionality wise).

As a part of fracture and going forward, we will be trying to turn in as much stuff to settings as we possibly can. We have 4 known levels for settings. They are corp-wide (world level), group-wide (12 main players), page-wide (per page per section), and user-wide (preferences and options per person). Things keep breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces another word for it is "subs". We even were talking about things like subs of corp-wide settings and almost location-wide settings. We don't want to go there yet, but it is starting to surface. Basically, the main goal is to turn everything into settings, where possible.

Along those same lines, if you have tons of settings, you will also need different levels of users - end users (lower levels of knowledge and skill), medium or middle users (knowledge of settings, options, and configurations). You will also need the admin users or backend/systems admin persons (who is making and building the settings for the others to use). It can get deep.

It is ok to re-think the processes or re-think these processes. Permission granted! Often, education leads to new ideas. We see it in our clients all the time. We add something or teach them how to do something and almost immediately they come up with something new, different, or that now seems possible based on the last known level. We call that taking the next logical step. It's huge and big part of what we do.

The last note for this session was this - everything is breaking into subs, sub settings, sub permissions, and sub configuration options. Everything!

Cory and I going over multiple projects. More things are leading to settings. One of the projects was an auto bulk sort on invoice line items by part category. They add the items to the cart as they need to. Then after the fact, they need the invoice line items sorted differently for easier fulfillment. Once again, this would be a setting. Not everybody wants this.

On a different project, we talked about using the external alternate id field to hold special outside id numbers. This option already exits, just some people haven't used it and/or don't know about it. Technically, each of the 12 main players have a field already in the database tables called external alternate id that is setup for external id numbers or tracking purposes. One of the clients may have a special need for us to help generate and store some longer external id numbers (including special formulas and custom build out for functionality).

Talking with John about data tables. We were going over reasons why we are using older versions vs keeping things automatically updated. Some of that is just timing, knowledge, and maintenance. Other topics included CDN's (content delivery network), jQuery, bootstrap, and other outside libraries. It sure would be nice to be able to redraw the data tables and remove rows if needed. The new ones can do that, but the old ones can't do that option. Back in the day, we didn't need that option.

Other things that we want to do with the data tables are things like: sub filter, sort, export, print, and pagination. We need documentation for some of these outside libraries and other dependencies. Our projects get more complicated due to different developers, time frames (when it was built), and even level of coding ability. We have quite the mix. All part of the game. John and I were talking about creating our own documentation for some of our code use and outside libraries - how do we use it. We will use the adilas docs for this.

We also talked about testing, training, and setting up standards. We would love to even offer some sort of formal training and certification. Sometimes we end up judging some of our developers that haven't had the correct training. Natural, but unfair. The other topics for the day were the cost of transitions and having to pay bills and other life expenses - inflation and needs.

Bryan has been making videos about his project, just to document things. Small push to change eXpo payment type to Herbo payment type. Lots of talk about layers on time and availability. Bryan got deeper into reviewing the horizontal time view page for Beaver. We also talked about time buttons (this will be a sub of my cart favorite buttons but to help book and sell time - with an additional calendar tie-in as well as shopping cart functionality). See elements of time #'s 6967, 8004, and 9633 for other ideas on time buttons.

We were playing inside of Microsoft Excel with scenarios and options for web availability and layering.

Emails and text messages.

Had computer hard drive issues. I was kinda stuck. Ended up going upstairs and joined from that computer.

Couldn't get computer to boot up or reboot. Took it into the shop.

Went over to Bryan's house to work. My computer was down. We went over new settings and ideas for time buttons and tying them into my cart favorites. We wrote down some ideas in Bryan's notebook.

From 2 pm to 3 pm - Bryan and I jumped on the server meeting (from his house). Cory, John, Bryan, and I were on the meeting. Wayne joined part way through. After the meeting, Bryan and I jumped back in and worked on refining the old custom code that we made for Beaver Mountain. More time button stuff and planning. Bryan has all of the notes. I was kind of just an extra today - no computer or anything.

A couple of different sessions to work on my new local environment. My hard drive crashed, and I had to install all kinds of new software, tools, and products. Adobe ColdFusion, MySQL, Git, Bit Bucket, database updates, etc.

Eric joined the meeting and was touching base on a number of projects. We chatted about gift cards, enterprise catalog or item catalog, and the inventory snapshot project. Small sales meeting. The guys were reporting on efforts and what not. Lots of follow-ups and different communications. We have the best price for the value. Talking about bigger demos and updates. There are lots of little shops out there that need our help.

Shari O. asking questions about a client setup. Steve was showing some stuff from the Herbo proposals. Light research on using Google Meet (online meetings). We currently use GoToMeeting, just looking around.

Steve and I touching base on things. Meeting with Bryan. Merged in 10 new files for elements of time. The new code came from Chuck. John helped us push it up to data 0 for testing. Looking over Bryan's progress on his migration of the custom Beaver Mountain horizontal time view to a more generic and public accessible horizontal time view page. Bryan is also working on pulling across the add additional user/payee assignments page. Once again, custom code that only Beaver Mountain had access to and now we are reverse merging in that new code so that other clients could use that type of functionality.

Meeting with Cory to go over projects. We talked about the pick ticket stuff with elements of time. Checking on different errors. Auto emails for PDF attachments for invoices. Going over new date-pickers. Reviewing other projects. Talking about transitional invoices and reserving inventory. Mini conversion and laying claims on certain inventory items. Deep production and manufacturing type stuff.

We also got into talks about backorders, cross-corp invoice to PO stuff, and some new sub barcode requirements and settings. After that, John and I spent some time and talked about Adobe XD files and documentation for certain projects. We also talked about some Docker (server) stuff.

Bunch of random stuff. Emails, phone call with Shari O., new systems and setup options, more emails, and trying to setup and work on my local system. 

From our meeting this morning - sales technique - is there anything that I haven't shown you that we are missing? Open it up and let them respond.

The guys were going over SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses) options based on batches. Steve is willing to help with some API integration stuff for certain 3rd party solutions. We also talked about the need for flex grid tie-ins and being able to use those as a pass through in the internal cart or shopping cart. We need to be able to pass customer, invoice, time, and part number (items) information through the cart flex grid options. This doesn't exist yet.

Danny was talking about stock/units and using VIN (serial number) look-up tools and outside services to help verify user inputs. John was reporting on some new changes for the bank homepage. Light talk on layout options and using tabs, cards, and responsive web layouts. Small date format bug fix. Talking more about the flex grid pass through in the cart.

The further we go, the more settings play into the mix. We tend to build generic tools and then reuse those tools over and over again. Custom stuff for individual companies may be required, but we will try to use settings and permissions where possible. Try to make everything as data driven as possible.

Installing new software and tools from Calvin. Phone call with Eric to go over inventory snapshot project and how to get certain info back out of the system. I spent some time being stuck on a database problem.

Quick server meeting and then leading into a work session with Wayne, John, and I to get my local environment all setup and working smoothly. First off, we checked on a number of different branches. They (Wayne and John) flopped the data 0 box (quick reboot) and then we started working on my local machine. I was downloading Microsoft Office, working with Wayne on VPN's, FTP settings, Git stuff, installing Docker, and setup of my local environment. Huge work session. Lots of good back and forth while we were bringing Docker up, down, and testing settings. I took a few notes during the process. Multi-hour tech session.

Steve and Sean were talking about sales stuff and where they are heading and going. Danny jumped in and they were all talking about personalities and outcomes. Fun conversations. Adilas is such a great tool, you can watch everything... we want to keep using that! That's what we want our clients to say. Giving our clients the knowledge to help make the decisions that they need to make.

The guys were talking about maybe hiring a new salesman and doing a 60-day trial period. Just trying to get some ideas. We also talked about education and the big need for structured learning within the system and about the system.

Switched to working with Wayne and John. Got a temp file from Wayne and a dump of his local database. As we were downloading and installing things, I was asking them where we stand and what are their goals? Wayne said - I think that our goal is clustered servers on both the database and code side of things. Small talks about load balancing and not overloading our servers. We also talked about back-ups and storing all external files and images in a different way (maybe the content server or something like that). Basically, getting rid of the local file storage so that the clustering would work better for the different servers and clusters.

Wayne would also like us to switch over to Lucee. That would cut the hosting costs on a monthly basis with a big overall savings year over year. We briefly touched base on the datasource or world building project (getting each corporation on its own database). The other goal that Wayne was talking about was tracking usage based on each corporation's load and data traffic usage (bandwidth and storage). Once we have those pieces in place, be able to bill accordingly.

After that, we switched back over to my local development environment. The way that they have it setup, both Wayne and John, the local environment closely simulates the live or production environments and servers. Trying to make things be more consistent for both test and live environments. Ideally, once we get it a little bit further, some of our automated tests will make sure that things are flowing and behaving consistently. That lead us to a whole other conversation about testing and having a whole test suite. Both unit tests and migration tests.

Lastly, Wayne was helping me install Sublime Text libraries and custom packages. We also went over creating new code snippets to help me code quicker. I had tons of those on my old box, and in my old editor, got to get it all setup again on the new laptop. 

Date-picker files with Bryan. Fixing FTP and merging in code. Looking at the horizontal time view project and harvesting code. Helping Bryan push things up live based on Bryan's files and new changes. Pushed up some new code using my new laptop. I've been kind of grounded, because I didn't have everything all setup due to my hard drive crashing. Everything is getting better and I'm getting used to the new stuff.

All kinds of random stuff. Emails, local computer setup, installing Calvin's tools, Microsoft Office, printer drivers, scanner software, entering expense/receipts, antivirus stuff, and a phone call with Dusin. All over the place.

Sales meeting. Finding pain points and then addressing those pain points. Everybody was touching base and sharing stories. I did a demo on elements to time and how it works with the new pages and new horizontal time view. At one point, only Beaver Mountain Ski School had a horizontal time view page. We revamped some of that custom code and made it more global and available for everyone.

One of the guys had the idea of showing schools and being able to show multiple people at a single time. Dealing with training and education and even demos. Getting more people to see and understand things at once vs the one-on-one game we are playing right now. We spent some time going over MVP's and what is needed. MVP's could be - minimal viable product, plan, person, etc. We all need the continuous win to help us along the way. Little wins and success go a long way.

Working with John on bank transfers. Pushed up some files for Dustin. Then back on the code review stuff with John. Looking over the bank homepage changes. Pushed up the new pages for John. Yeah!

Work session with Bryan. We spent some time on the date-pickers and AJAX helper pages. Doing some debugging. We were also looking at other links and navigation to help with the horizontal time view pages. Trying to make it smoother and flow from page to page better. Small back and forth work session. Faking it along the way. We pushed up some new changes.

Quick phone call with Steve going over sales and possible strategies. It's really hard sometimes.

Three different sessions. Working on the custom data export tool for a client. Building out the web app page for the tool. Most of the logic is done, just working on the web interface and output display. Running the page live, pushing up new code and committing the changes.

Working on the custom data export tool for Trailer Solutions. Added a number of new checkboxes and if statements. Trying to make the page and export tool more dynamic.

Working on the custom data export tool for a client. Worked on making the form fully dynamic and then adding in custom pagination (next page options). The pagination took a bit of time as I haven't done that in a while. Light testing and page review.

Small sales meeting and morning meeting. Some of the guys were talking about linking things together and how that takes time but really helps with the flow of both data and logic. The ability to link things together is huge and rests on the web technology called hyperlinks. It's been around for some time, but the power of what it can do is not fully realized. That's pretty cool!

We got into talking about how we have tons of features but some of them are hidden, or no one knows how to use them. It's our job to keep pulling thing together like a zipper be zipped up. Organization, links, navigation, settings, and permissions will be needed to continue to keep pulling things together. Those are huge parts of the system.

Shari O. was talking about some new hardware that we are going to be buying. The sales guys are going to be able to give some of the hardware away to help with the setup process and to sweeten the deal for our clients and customers. That's pretty cool. We have never really done that before. Basically, taking away the barriers to entry. For example, including a free credit card mag stripe reader or whatever.

After that, the guys were talking about 3rd party integrations and the problems and disconnects that we run into with those solutions. They are both good and bad. Sometimes, they put up good money and help push the ball along. Other times, something goes wrong with either us or them (usually them) and it gives us a black eye. Meaning to our clients, they have gotten a bad taste in their mouth due to problems or promises being made (either side of the fence). We've talked about it before, but if we put as much effort and energy into our own product as we have given to outside 3rd parties, we would have a ton of stuff. Like I said, it's a bittersweet subject. It has helped by filling a role but has come at a higher cost.

Steve was talking about going back to finding and setting up smaller companies. It's so much easier to set them up and get them going (how much red tape). We then switched over and were talking about some of the sales staff and what they are doing and/or trying to do. Currently, our goal is to just get them going and help them learn step by step. It's a process.

While they were talking about stuff, I was pushing up code for Trailer Solutions for their custom data export tool.

John was reporting on some new updates on the department homepage. Eric, Cory, and I were looking at gift cards and scenarios with different settings. We had an internal email bug reported to us and we started looking into it. John was the lead and doing most of the debugging today. Bryan joined us as we were checking things out. Sort of a grouped effort. We spent quite a bit of time looking at the email stuff. We pushed up some new code and John will get with Wayne later today to finish things up. We did what we could for current time. It will need more attention later.

More work on the custom data export tool. It is getting really close, and I pushed up new code. Writing out some documentation and getting some screenshots. I had to install Photoshop to edit the screenshots (my hard drive crashed, and I didn't have that installed yet). Recording notes while waiting for the program to download and install. Sent an email out with the screenshots and the web link to the export tool. The export tool has a series of checkboxes to show/hide data or sub data relationships. You can filter it and it shows JSON data for customer info. It also includes customer additional contacts, flex grid tie-ins, customer log notes, media/content files and data uploads, etc. Pretty deep customer-based export tool.

Scheduling time, doing research, and planning for some custom code that is needed for Beaver Mountain. Went in and made a whole to do list inside of my digital scratch file. I'll be working through the list. I spent some time reading over my notebook notes from meetings with the client. Transferring hand scribbled notes into digital to do lists.

Logged into their new system and spent some time going through corp-wide settings, locations, snow owl look and feel, and ecommerce settings. Feeling better about the project and making good progress.

Met with Bryan briefly to talk about projects. He had some family over and we had to cut it short. We'll hit it again tomorrow.

Checking emails before the server meeting. Once the meeting started, we went over some of the changes that we have been working on with internal emails, output formatting, and changes. Wayne is working on things and going through a process of elimination to figure out what else is still needed. Cory and Wayne were talking about scheduling and plans for new feature releases. We also went over some other projects and gave small reports to make sure that everyone was on the same page.

Cory and I looking into an inventory disconnect. She was calling it a ghost cost out in inventory. It had a similar feeling to a project that we would like to call internal cost corrections (ICC). Anyways, the error ended up being that the company had duplicate vendors and the code was grouping things based on the vendor's name, thus creating a missing vendor and its data.

The fix is to make sure that the vendors don't have duplicates or redo the code and make it loop over vendor id's vs vendor names. The id's would always be unique. Anyways, we talked about work arounds and ways to fix the data and get the vendors and items fixed and merged together. There already exists a tool for that, we just have to talk the client into to using it.

Work session between Eric, Cory, and I. We were testing and going over gift cards and trying to see if we could push some things up to data 0 for live testing. We looked over code, made some back-ups, and then did some code review. We ended up pulling the code branch onto my local machine and did some testing instead. We found a few problems.

After Cory left, Eric and I made some plans for moving the project forward in smaller pieces. Currently, there are too many system level dependencies and things that deal with the entire application scope variables and values. We are going to push it up in smaller pieces or waves so that the dependencies become less of an issue. It may take a few days (vs a single quick push) but it will make it smoother. Good plan.

I got behind. Recording notes from the past couple of days.

Danny, Sean, Steve, and Michael were talking about sales and sales leads. They were also talking about other sales related topics like Ag (cows and farming), CPA's (accountants and do they have or see a need), state compliance centers, fees for merchant processing, etc. They were also talking about other point of sale systems and pros and cons of those systems. The conversation went out to Uber Eats and other delivery services.

As it kept going, Steve was encouraging the guys to keep looking for the pain points and then being able to solve and help out to relieve those pain points. Sometimes the users or possible clients see a system and start thinking about the future workload to get a system up and running. That can scare people away. We are looking for solution minded people who are looking for a system.

The guys were talking about asking for other leads and trying to keep it simple. Helping them to basically fill in the gaps where possible.

Phone call with Steve. We were talking about ownership and year end 1099's. Emails and text messages. Random to do list stuff.

Work session with Bryan going over projects. We talked about date-picker stuff and then moved onto scheduling. I was pitching a small proposal to add in a temp roster for the horizontal time view. This would be a JSON formatted setting that would allow you to pre-load in certain people to your horizontal time view. It's not real availability, but it was a step in the right direction. I did a bunch of drawing and brainstorming with Byran. Most of it was on the fly. He recorded a few notes.

We then switched and got into deeper availability and the layered calendar options that we are planning on building. This flow would allow us to prep or overlay a schedule or virtual availability schedule over the main calendar (elements of time). We went over ideas for flow, logic, and what it might look like. We determined that there were 3 main steps. For a single assignment, we would need who it was that was being assigned? The who could also be the what. For example: are we setting the availability for a person, place, or thing? That's step one. Step two would deal with a date or a date/time range. These first two steps would always be required. The third step would ask if we need to reoccur or duplicate those new availability settings. We would need to select that option, only if needed. If used, we would copy or duplicate the existing settings in bulk.

We got into tons of details and ideas. Lots of drawing and brainstorming. Bryan and I were even playing in Microsoft Excel and doing some fake table layout and data input stuff for the new layer tables. We would like to think of the new overlay functionality for the calendar as layers or availability layers. This will end up being part of our "any" scheduler. Behind the scenes, we will have the real elements of time (that already exists). The front or overlay layers will be for things like employee scheduling, non availability, holidays, web availability (options for online booking), etc. Fun stuff.

Phone call with Eric. Making a plan for deploying the gift card project. We have already rolled it out a few times but had to pull it back due to some random errors. Our next deployment will be staged or done in waves to get rid of the system dependencies that exist at the application level and the session level.

Recording notes and digitizing post-it note entries.

New code with Eric for gift cards. We also decided that we would add the adilas quick search to the classic homepage in the top header as well as all other pages. That was the only page that has/had a built-in quick search, so we didn't think that we needed it in the header as well. We have had requests to put it on all pages, even if it is already there. Some users use the quick search as a primary navigation tool.

Cory joined us and we went through some scenarios and did more testing.

Quick sales standup meeting. Everybody was reporting in and what they were doing. The focus was on continuing to gather information. Maybe looking into multiple sales channels. Most of our clients could benefit if we could provide services or help them sell their stuff through multiple channels.

For us, we will continue to make calls, doing email campaigns, and online research. The guys were also talking about different angles and circling back around on different companies. Danny was saying that sometimes the easiest person to sell is a salesperson. Lots of groundwork. We even talked about teaming up with others to bring a bigger team or group effort.

They spent a bunch of time talking about SG&A (selling, general, and administrative expenses) for internal production. We will be looking deeper into production and manufacturing companies. More gathering info and solving pain points. That's where we shine. Lots of talk about selling support, training, no contracts, and price points. Ideally, we want to help people do well and succeed.

John was reporting in on some new look and feel changes. We will be pushing up some news and updates that talk about a blanket number of changes. It would be too much to cover every change that is coming down the pipeline. The main goal is to help standardize the look and feel. Some of this will be done with page level settings per page - what to show/hide, verbiage, aliases, rules, etc. There is a progression of things! It just keep going!

Planning with Bryan. The topic of the day was brainstorming on the "any" scheduler or any scheduling stuff. We talked about a number of different steps and what we could save and where.

1. We will use JSON page level settings for simple and advanced (shifts) rostering. Thinking about a number of different tabs going across the page for the new settings. Tab 1 would be simple full day rostering, tab 2 would be advanced shift level rostering, tab 3 would be shift settings, and tab 4 would be the web availability stuff listed below (in number 2).
2. The more advanced stuff will be saved in the layers or availability layers. We have already come up with 3 sub steps of that process. Click here for more info about the web availability layers. As a note, the web availability layers would be saved in a database as individual records vs JSON object storage. It will help us look things up and map usage/availability levels better.
3. We will offer a number of different, user defined, saved favorites. These are custom reports with saved search criteria. Some of these may be calendar views, horizontal time views, vertical time views, and other custom reports. Here are a few links with some ideas. See element of time #'s 8004 and 6967 in the shop.

Good brainstorming session and going over ideas. We got pretty technical and did a lot of drawings. It's fun to see how things progress and the progression of things.

Building out the unique and special events for Beaver Mountain. Going through the checklists from my notebook from an in-person client meeting with Beaver. Small time and flex grid code changes. Pushed up some files.

Meeting with Aspen on her world building research and visual timelines project. Light training and history of adilas. Printed her out a check. Pitched an option for co-ownership for part of adilas, llc - MMLLC - multi member LLC stuff.

Emails and merging in some code for Dustin.

Working on Beaver Mountain special events. Small bug fix on the classic add/edit parts categories page. Adding in new vendors, part categories, and items for Beaver. Setting up ecommerce images and ecommerce settings. Tons of new product images.

Working on Beaver Mountain stuff. Merged in some changes. Small tweaks to internal elements of time pages. Working on code.

New user accounts for Kristy and Amie for Beaver Mountain. Working on formatting on ecommerce pages and micro tweaks to code.

New custom data collection page that submits data to the paperwork or registration form. Custom code for Beaver Mountain special events.