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

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

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

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

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

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

- The value of our team members - huge asset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working on a CSV data upload for a client.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some other random notes from the meeting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paying bills and prepping for the conference.

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

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

Small Recap:

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

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

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

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

Marisa got a bunch of shirts for adilas with the little blue dog avatar (ADI). The guys and gals looked great in the adilas shirts. As usual, Mrs. Shari O. took great care of us and had snacks and lunches for us each day.

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See attached for some of my notes... I will also put a few of them there below for searchability. My notes that are attached have a lot more details. I just wanted to capture some of the tweaks and user requests that we picked up from the conference. Not all of my notes are just what needs to be updated (for the record), most of my notes were dealing with what the guys and gals were presenting:

- Request - We should not allow new default payments as "show" they should be hidden by default - this is dealing with money types under more options under the corp admin page.

- Request - They wanted Venmo as a payment type

- Request - Remove the Flash option for my cart favorite buttons - under personal profile

- They went through all kinds of setup and settings - being consistent to get things out of the system later on

- Request - Adding in a date picker to the add/edit pages in elements of time. It is currently there, but if you have the HTML enabled SummerNote editor, there is a conflict between the two features. They both use a form of jQuery.

- Small side note on the presentations - Kelly was doing slides on a PowerPoint, Marisa was driving (clicking through adilas), and Danny was presenting - fun combo and good flow.

- Prototyping and then expanding those things

- Request - On the customer log notes, try to add in the date pickers and the SummerNote HTML editors (small conflict)

- Request - On the balance sheet quick search - be able to pull the balance sheet by that date, using the quick search. That would be pretty cool!

- We sure want to get back to a project called "known issues report" - Helping to find things that are known problems or disconnects

- Request - On sub inventory templates, it needs to default to active. Currently it defaults to inactive.

- Kelly and Steve did a great job showing some down the road cause and effect relationships for categories, inventory controls, and other sections in the inventory controls section. Great little session.

- Request - On the advanced part and parent attribute search - They may or may not want some of the inactive parent attributes on that report. In the Farm and Ranch demo site, there were tons of inactive parent attributes that were showing up. Small clean-up.

- Use of the word core - parent cores, child cores, etc.

- Request - On smart group buttons, the description modifier does not currently change the sub description. It only changes the parent description. It should change the sub as well.

- The power of being able to save your own reports

- Save time and money, adilas has a solution built-in (talking about ecommerce, but it could be anything)

- Request - On ecommerce, change some of the verbage on the photo image sizes - make them square (item pictures and item category pictures), if possible. Say something like 750 (_w) x 750 (_h) vs 750 x 553. Square works better on the web, helps make it all line up correctly.

- Request - On ecommerce, the parent attributes on ecommerce show all items with certain tags. We need those counters to filter what was/is really available - For example: Drinks(2) - but when clicked, only 1 (one) showed up. It would be better to show Drinks(1) and then show just that one. That shouldn't be too hard to fix. Maybe just look to see how those item counters and counts are calculated.

- Request - On login into ecommerce, it would be so awesome to have a new setting to say - Where can we take you after a valid login? My details, shop home, make a payment, etc. that would be cool! Basically, let the client/users dictate where to send their customers upon a valid login. Right now, they always just go to a single page and then have to click from there where they really want to go.

- Request - Build a customer marketing link builder page, this would be a page similar to the add/edit my cart favorite buttons (limited), but thte main feature would build a link, add to cart, set a discount, tract a campaign, add a coupon, auto login, etc. Build whatever link you needed, without knowing all of the techy stuff behind the scenes. Make the links so that they may be used in marketing messages, emails, texts, ect. The person who builds it, enters info into a form and the form (backend logic) builds the correct link for the client. Basically a special marketing or link builder tool.

- Request - Add some terms to the glossary such as: Modal, ADI (the blue dog avatar).

- Request - Make the "all help files" more flexible and be able to search the descriptions as well. Currently, it only searches titles for the help files.

- I can't wait until we can show the daily balance sheet over time - multiple day report running over or off of the aggregated totals

- Request - Look into the add new B.S.I. item process - We may need some more flexibility on the account and item groupings. Also, a request was made to allow for setting up the expense types and deposit types right from there as well. Basically, a one-stop shop for balance sheet setups.

- The value of education and being able to help set people and users up for success

- Understanding logic and cause and effects

- Idea - It sure would be cool if due dates could show up on a calendar type view - think of showing all kinds of stuff on a calendar type approach or view

- Request - New settings - Expense/receipts and locations on line items. Also, B.S.I. bump up or down values. More settings.

- Take time and read the page errors and info stuff - We are trying to help - Slow down just a bit

- There is a need for some cash flow and budgeting tools - This would be awesome - Maybe round 2 on the financials

- Request - Ice-down dates and being able to "post" on invoices and PO's - Posts only exist on deposits and expense/receipts

- Data visualization and customized dashboards - We haven't even scratched the surface yet - It's time!

- Request - On the media/content homepage and media/content advanced search pages - It would be nice to output or show the reports in Snow Owl data tables to help with exports and visual displays

- Following your interests and be yourself!

On Friday, June 11th, 2021 we had an internal conference day for just the adilas team. We went from sales to internal code to ideas and plans. All over the place. See attached for my notes. Many great things were discusses. Once again, this was an internal team meeting, but we don't mind sharing what we were talking about. :)

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The attached notes are better formatted, but I wanted to push some of them here for searchability:

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Group Sales Meeting

Marisa, Danny, John, Cory, Sean, Steve, Dustin, Shari O., Dawn, Brendan, Steve (mac), Brandon, Chuck, Alan, Kelly, Bryan

- Kelly was saying that there is some public records per states

- We may try to pull our own list

- Questions... who, what, where, how good, etc.

- Maybe look at a sample of 10

- We may need a more focuses approach

- What about different industries?

- We need to get the name out there

- Kelly was pitching a social presence

- Do we know anybody who wants to do the social stuff

- Word of mouth

- Testimonials

- Some new video graphics

- To the penny, to the gram, every day

- What about small streaming commercials – focused and pointed

- Kelly recommends that we maybe focus on a slightly larger pool

- Dawn – maybe focus on start-ups or that small to medium range

- Get them at the beginning – maybe even tradeshows

- It is a pain in the but to switch over – pain creates options for change

- Focus on services... deployment, oversight, consulting, training, best practices

- How can we deploy something easily and repeatable?

- It is tough to get some of the people started, but once they get all in, they tend to stay

- Kelly has done this over and over again

- Using the professional resources that are available

- From Kelly – Help get the clients all the way in – full system and platform

- Getting the success on the first implementation and then building from there

- What about focusing on those who are having trouble and/or are struggling

- Dawn loves the support, training, and feel good part of it – duplicate that feeling to others

- How quick can we respond – we jump pretty quickly on custom needs, development, training, and support

- Get more testimonials from our clients

- We have some experience to offer to those who want it

- What about pitching best business practices

- It's ok to be non-traditional

- Being Relevant!

- Focus on helping over sales – from Steve (mac)

- Simple things that bring the relevant pieces

- Social webbing – group effort

- Danny, straight up, I don't want to be the social media guy! We have to find the right person and/or persons (small little team)

- We are not QuickBooks... what does that mean? Be our own style!

- Packaging this platform based on the target audience

- Formulating a plan – ease the lift – maybe a monthly meeting with some planning

- Influencers and YouTube options

- Small info tips...

- New age marketing – we have to play to the current market

- Big Dumb Animal Pictures – super simple

- We have to do a cost analysis to see which one(s) make more sense for us

- John, what if we setup our own little social piece (aka maybe the adilas cafe) – we could allow all of our users and power users to pitch and promote – we may need to approve things, but we have tons of very knowledgeable people and users

- We are looking for engagement – back and forth – a relationship – maybe get an intern to help handle this

- Danny – Switching over to the modal message marketing

- How to save the app to your phone

- Make the email piece better

- Small web tool to help with building special html links to embed promotions, direct add to cart, discounts, campaigns, etc. A simple form to help with the backend tech of those URL's and web links.

- Maybe, we need to upgrade our email platform. It is a small holdover from years gone by.

- What about the delay on the outbound emails?

- Marisa – maybe outsource things as needed

- Steve – would like more input on the bulk tools

- Better filtering and target marketing

- Steve wants to work direct with Dawn and Branden

- Matrix and target marketing – even predictive

- Maybe a little itty bitty (super small) native app on the different phones – iOS, Android, etc.

- Steve wants to get into possible predictive marketing

- Steve – looking for great feedback and even ideas and dreams...

- Archiving, saving for later, dismissing, etc. We have the data, what do we want to do with it? – Wet clay...

- Danny – Going back to past clients

- Version 1 vs Version 2 – type attitude

- What kind of clients do we want? We may not want certain kind of clients.

- We love people who like details and are willing to play

- We love people who take things to the fullest level

- We love people who just need a small little piece – there is a gap in their current model and they need some help. We can then grow from there.

- Do a full comparison of what we offer

- Pitch what we do differently – we help deploy and maintain your ERP

- White glove approach

- Playing with the tools that we have and flipping those into marketing messages

- Chuck – maybe check out some groups on Facebook

- Blog posts, articles, info snippets, quick videos

- Talking with Kelly – how have we helped small businesses become bigger or big business – showing the potential – dreams to reality

- The small goals to achieve – steps to get to the next level

- Small goals lead to bigger goals – getting some small successes along the way

- Clients and expectations – not all money is the same – budgeting and planning – what kind of client do we want

- Reoccurring revenue vs one-time revenue

- A quote is just one of many pieces that needs to be done

- People, skills, and cogs in the wheel

- We all care... where would you and your skills fit in best

- Seeing the bigger picture

- Maybe looking at personalities and figuring out the mixing and blending of our options and resources

- Slowing down and taking the time to see where we are at? Virtual time travel – child, youth, adult – as a company

- What's the difference between a goal and dream? A plan!

- The internal group summary that we did... a great start

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Second session - Servers & Infrastructure - Refining Our Processes - Tech Support & Training - Project Management

Steve wants us to show the online label builder

- We had some good talk about where we want to go

- We pointed to our internal summary report

- Steve McNew – helping with the strategic marketing plan, technology road map, timelines to position, plans for action

- Scale – can we grow and can we shrink

- Conversation between big and small – perspective – big and small (sales, number of team members, lines of code, etc.)

- Molly – Is adilas the big guy or the small guy? Think of code (lines of code). We could be considered a big guy if you were looking at code and functionality.

- We like being small (ish), but what if we are big already

- If we want to grow, that means that we want to get better – grow in a good manner and sustainable manner

- The underlying services that support the whole

- Be your own style!

- Steve McNew – old classmate with Steve Berkenkotter – guest speaker – part of the adilas team to help us get some things more standardized – processes and procedures

- Defense contractor for the military – 28 years

- Testing, software, management, auditor

- He has already called, interviewed, and talked with a number of different team members

- He did a 20 page audit and report on what he was seeing

- Getting into some testing and processes – he would like to see more of this

- Not trying to derail the train – we are trying to polish the Ferrari (spelling – awesome car)

- Whitepapers – catering to a higher audience – going beyond stick figures and into technical docs – not everybody will want to read some of these, but there will be some that require it

- Steve B – if we try to sell our product to those who can't afford it, it doesn't really work. They have to be able to pay for what we do (really do – billing for our time and efforts)

- Fin-tech – financial technology

- Using whitepapers as part of our marketing plan

- John M – unit testing – confidence of the developer team – currently only Wayne and Alan are doing this (unit testing)

- Going to ease into this – refining our testing plan

- Version control and when do we update these systems? The older way was wild west... we may want to figure out some specific micro builds.

- It would be nice to keep track of the versions and options.

- The balance between core and custom development

- The application needs some spring cleaning – what is being used, what isn't, what is going slow, etc. – Refactoring

- Priorities – customer priorities or our internal priorities – what is the mix and blend of these pieces

- We all ware many hats... we may need to define that so that we don't overstretch ourselves

- We all use (and can use) the system in different ways – how do we translate that information to our clients, other developers, and other team members (upstream and downstream)

- 2 minute videos – no more

- Work instructions – even giving it to someone who has never done anything in the system

- Danny – Shoutout to Steve and Brandon – we have done great – what is coming next? Resources?

- Talks about earn and burn ratios

- Prices have to match the services

- We are a growing business

- Kelly – going from 1.5 to 10 (millions) – that is a huge change

- We are competing with companies that are hugely funded... what do we want to do?

- There are some real things in our path – there is tons of potential – what do we want to do with it – also, sometimes there is shelf life on potential or advantages

- We don't want debt – however, there is a time for debt – cost analysis and being smart about it

- Making choices, but also being willing to fail

- Marisa – look at our new website

- Steve – there are some percentages of adilas that are available – not looking for vulture capital (just being silly – vulture vs venture)

- Someone looking to take on some risk but helping us to get to the next level, without taking over the company

- Kelly – pitching our vision and business plan – we have to define the vision – Danny seconded the define the vision before looking for the funding – goals, sales, budgeting, maintenance, and getting a business plan.

- Adilas Trust option – co-founders

- Possible option – Maybe take some of IP (intellectual property) and sell that to a new entity and then restructure those new pieces

- Dustin – thoughts on corporate structure – we are all on our own little islands – Ferrari to a tricycle – frontend compared to backend – splitting up those pieces and functions – he wishes that we could be more collaborated.

- John – teams and buddy projects – small sub teams – full stack (all levels) vs specific skills or somewhat limited skills – this needs to be part of our plan.

- Sean – we already have some small teams that are working on some of these projects – cogs of the wheel – buddy tagging the workflow and processes

- John – the adilas docs project – and being able to go to it and also add to it – working on standardizing the pieces – filling in the gaps

- Danny – Navy Seals – two is one, and one is none – at least two on a project – two-by-two

- Kelly – scale – having a back-up

- Danny – accountability back and forth

- John – confidence levels

- Kelly – what about a succession plan?

- John and Dustin – real life buddies and how they help out each other – seeing a different angle or perspective

- Marisa – tooooooooo much weight gets put on single persons

- Kelly – relieving pressure and helping with scale

- Marisa – Cory, Kelly, and Marisa – wonderful training slides, presentation, and delivery for the conference. Awesome job!

- Alan – modularize things – able to be reused – code concepts can relate to business functions – one to many relationships – translating knowledge into real life and different scenarios

- Chuck – last summer Chuck was on a joint project with he, Russell, and a different John. It worked out awesome – Keep pushing towards that kind of rollout of the project

- Molly – thinking and coming up with ideas. Keep it going!

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Next Session - Deployment & Oversight - Design & Layout - Internal Core Development - Custom Development 

- Deployment – where are we going and how can we make this all work – team effort

- Shari O. – first touch and setup corp, Sean and Shay first hour or so, Sean helping to coordinate the next steps and pieces

- Sean does a great job of reporting back

- Report on things, record the notes, get back with us to help us keep pushing

- Doing great with testing and prototyping

- Kelly – who is on settings, who is on planning, maybe even looking at pre-deployment options

- Before Kelly even does a demo, do some consultation – figure some things out without doing any pitching or selling. This is called listening.

- What are you looking for, wanting, expecting, hoping for?

- Make the demos custom to the pain points or key wants and needs

- The prep work is huge to help them be successful

- This platform is not a turn on and go type system – there may be pre demo, consulting, custom planning and demo, then custom hand holding to get them going down the road

- Picking the point of contact... who is going to own this thing?

- Owners, managers, and users

- Users want the easy button – Steve calls this the tail wagging the dog vs the dog wagging the tail – what is and how can we get buy in?

- Tools are great, but solutions to problems and pain points are even better

- Give to get! If you give too much, it can get you into trouble.

- What is the cost to fixing things... on the other hand, failing does help with major learning – there has to be a balance

- We tend to remember pain – setting people up for success

- Often users are looking for a quick switch. This system takes work. Please sell it that way.

- Not going to custom too quickly – learning the manual way – then automating it

- User buy in – light pain and then helping them learn a better way

- Change proposals and scope of work – setting up boundaries

- Feature creep – setting that scope of work – cause and effect of what they want and what they give – expectations and timelines

- Sometimes I start with NO – interesting

- A saying no - sandwich... Yes, I'd like to, no, I can't. Yes, I would love to help do this... - people think that no is a bad word

- Having a plan to say yes, vs just saying yes

- We like to please people – that is awesome – what does that cost?

- Help make the plan to say yes. Maybe, no (first), however we could do this...

- Making things repeatable

- What are the internal costs to do deployment?

- Say $350 for a setup fee – does that cover it? If yes, great. If no, where does that put us?

- Maybe on the setup, prep, an activation fee (define this – turning on the lights), setup and deployment fee (range), training, custom code, imports, labels, etc.

- We like to cater to everyone – that had bitten us

- Actual prices and then use discounts if needed. You can't really ever raise a price after the fact.

- Back-up our prices

- Use adilas to run adilas!!! This is our communication tool, let's use it.

- We are good at the dreaming and software building part of things, we need some major loving on the service side

- There is demand!

- What pulls at our time - It is time, money, skills, etc.

- Kelly – earn has to be more than burn

- Flipping the demand to sales or services that could be provided

- MVP – minimal viable product, plan, player, etc.

- Intangibles

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Next Session – Show and tell! What are you working on?

Calvin – Advanced file and folder finder, resize images, convert images

Brandon – harvesting assets from element of time

Steve – parent attributes report, items not on a recipe (manufacturing), modal message marketing for customers, log notes for vendors and employees (payee/vendor logs), backorders homepage, mini units, auto add item (quick PO behind the scenes), bulk update on the vendor – master copy paster... :)

- Branch 122 – fun

Bryan – cfqueryparams – stop SQL XSS (database hacks – cross site scripting)  - SQL injection – converting from dynamic queries to secure dynamic queries - Example: Corp_id = #Trim(some form or URL var)# or Corp_id = <cfqueryparam etc, etc,> - this stops the SQL hacks

Bryan is also working on eChecks for eXPO, Hypur checkout in the shopping cart (eComm), new API's for delivery (with documentation and samples)

John – Payroll project to allow holiday date picking, timecard flags, timecard totals (pre summing the math to go faster and lead towards bulk payroll), new timecard reports showing grouped sums and totals.

Page templates and style guide defaults with Chuck – Going from old school tables and links to the newer grid and mobile ready code. Part of the adilas docs project. Build once, use many (effective copy and paste). Basic templates (3 new ones). New information icons and popups (modals). Style guides and usage of those pieces.

Servers with Wayne

Chuck – Huge new web site!!! Awesome Job!!!

Global Design Dashboard, adilas docs, and new presentation gallery (sales tool).

Danny – message marketing, custom labels, sales team meetings – hats off to all of us! Keep listening and keep finding solutions. Open table – follow your highest excitement and be yourself! Be happy!

Alan – enterprise level catalogs, refactoring code (custom page settings), standardizing code for speed and reliability.

Random comments – Cory really liked having access to all of the team members, right here at the conference. Marisa – great to meet everyone – keep floating the boat. Sean – he likes the team. Molly – loved watching and wants to be involved. Chuck – idea of everyone joining slack

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JM: 3.35(7-28-21

Catch all for time spent in sales and fieldwork

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some rough notes:

- Trying to push more on sales

- Ideas on prospecting with customers and doing demos

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

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

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

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

Individual Part Number Demand 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recording notes from other meetings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- The process of being willing to dive into the unknown

- Need for project management

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Target business people

- Still our main goal is to help people be successful

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

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

- Breaking things into smaller and smaller pieces

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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