Eric and I pushing up some code for semi-live testing on the Herbo server. We then rolled into a discussion on the mini aggregate project for inventory quantities. We were drawing and going over ideas and options. Eric was talking about the difference between snapshots (current view of something without dates) vs normal aggregates with dates and possible roll-ups. Great conversation. We spent some time talking about flow, options, timing, and how the project would come together.

We have been calling this project the mini aggregate project, but it may end up being called the inventory snapshot project. It all deals with the quantities per location and how we are going to track it. Our final solution may end up with a process table that gets a new record when a new data or inventory snapshot is finished. We will then use the current snapshot linked with a well indexed (daily or just today's data) query of the live data transactions. That will give us the inventory quantities per location that we are looking for. It will save tons of time as the system won't have to historically go back over time to get the previous quantities.

Lots of talk about the process tables and basically waking up a built-in process. Have it check the process table and then do the requested action. When done, it makes a record in the process table and then goes back to sleep. Automated tasks and scheduled task stuff.

At the end of the meeting, John and I looked at his site and worked on setting up special top header level links and icons for his account.

Chuck and I did a small work session. We were working on the limited flex grid settings and moving all of the fields into smaller sections and horizontal tabs. Kind of a small dynamic surgery of sorts. Good work session.

Helping John with his local environment. We were seeing some duplicate hardcoded or system maintained items in his parts lists. Light clean-up and making notes about what might be happening.

As a follow-up - we ended up figuring out that the automatic or automated testing is what was adding in the extra or duplicated hardcoded parts or items. We found that out on 6/2/22.

Joined the morning meeting and there were 8 people on the meeting. They had done a database clean-up on data 0 and there seemed to be a small bug with some of the records. Originally, we thought that the problem was with the customer logs but it ended up being the payee/user table. We had to shut things down for a bit while we did a quick restore on just that table. Most of the action was done by Wayne, John, and I. Kinda like surgery on the database.

Once that got settled, we flipped over to looking at duplicate records on the local development databases and development environments. We found that the problem was actually the way the automating testing was being done. It was running over and over again (just locally) and thus creating duplicate entries. We'll fix that and clean things up.

John, Cory, and I going over the progress, questions, and making decisions on the discount engine project that John is working on. Nice little report.

We were going to be meeting about mini aggregates but ended up on a 2D barcode scanning project. Eric and I looked over some code, did some tests, and worked on a special interaction between forms, URL's, backend Adobe ColdFusion, and frontend JavaScript and JavaScript redirects. Deep interactions and passing data back and forth. Hopefully getting closer. Sometimes you have to go pretty deep to make everything happen that you need it to do. All kinds of submission, parsing, redirecting, and logic.

Tons of emails. Reading, responding and deleting (my favorite thing to do).

Started working on a custom query and data export for a client. Ended up doing some database look-ups and research. This was for 710 Labs. Partway through I got a text from Steve asking for some help. We jumped on the GoToMeeting and chatted about some code and options really quick. He is building out some custom reports to show total running time for some of our guys and gals and summing up sub dates and times (elements of time stuff). Then back on the research and custom data export project.

Back cycling through emails.

Meeting with the 710 Labs and Hoodie Analytics group over a Google online meeting. We are going to be providing them some data that they can crunch and make available for our mutual client. We had Wayne, Cory, and I on from the Adilas side. Good meeting and they answered all of our questions. After that, I jumped on to the GoToMeeting account to check in. The sales meeting was going on there. I only got the last little bit but sounded good and plans were being made and things were being followed up and reported on.

Back recording notes from this week and end of last week. I have a list of post-it notes and I cycle through them to transfer from pen and ink to digital. Part way through I was recording some notes on the add limited flex grid settings page. Chuck was reworking that page. I decided to check it out (the new changes). I ended up doing some light re-tweaking of that page to make it work just a little bit better. Small side trip to tweak some code.

Recording notes from last week.

Doing emails and looking over things. Steve and Sean were on the GoToMeeting touching base. Eric popped in and we pushed up some code on the Herbo server for Sean to do some testing on the barcode and 2D driver license scans. Sean and Eric went back and forth with different tests. As part of the testing, we were getting random errors from the scans, barcodes, and mag stripe swipes. We were getting different results by scanning the same card. Sometimes dealing with hardware has its own little quarks and issues. We were also having some browser issues. We end up deciding that Eric would purchase some new hardware and we would test it from there.  We were just getting inconsistent results using the existing hardware. That makes it really hard to debug and program accordingly. Not sure what was going on.

Eric and Cory were talking about the inventory snapshot project. After that, Cory and I were looking into a small bug on the loyalty payments. Cory was asking for a progress report on the bike shuttle project. We booked some time to work on that the next couple of days. Too many other little things that pull us away from the bigger projects. We spent the rest of the time checking on other project and schedules.

Going over code with Bryan on adding the customer terms to the invoice due date project. This is a small new little extension of the original project. The first round allowed for a single corp-wide setting to set the number of days out until the due date. For example: 10, 15, 30 or whatever. We would then take the invoice date and add those days to get the new due date.

The new piece that Bryan is adding will allow each customer, based on the customer terms, to get a virtual different treatment. For example: Say you setup the corp-wide default as add 15 days to the invoice to create the new due date. Now, if you have a client that needs a net 30 or a net 60, it will read that in and adjust the due date accordingly. You still have the corp-wide or world level default, but you can also get more granular, clear down the individual client level.

The code isn't quite ready, but super close. We spent time going through scenarios, a small work session, and we should be able to launch the rest of the code either later today or tomorrow. It's really close.

Checking out some JavaScript code on the main add cart payment and checkout page. The older code was only looking for one submit button. We recently redid the page and added in a second submit button. The old code would enable and disable the button if a user tried to use too much on the loyalty program. With the new page having two buttons, it would disable the submit button, thus letting the loyalty points go negative. Small oversight. Basically, the page with two submit buttons worked in every other situation, it just didn't take into consideration the over allotment of loyalty points. Lots of edge case scenarios. It's hard to test for every possible combination. Anyways, we got it fixed.

Team meeting with Trinity Payment Solutions. Rich and Jenn from their team were online with us. We had Steve, Cory, Sean, Shari O., and myself on from our team. We did some small intros and jumped into the meeting. Rich from Trinity Payments was mostly talking and we were asking questions.

One of the biggest topics was dealing with chip, EMV, swipe, unattended, ecommerce, and manual keyed transactions (ways of using a merchant account). Rich was stressing the question - How are our clients taking the card? That is a huge key on how their accounts get setup. We spent quite a bit of time talking about chip (EMV card readers) and swipe technologies. There are better rates for chip as well as more protection for the actual merchant if using chip or contactless transactions.

We went over and talked about different scenarios. All new accounts will go through Jenn (our rep) on their side. Rich and I will work on the main adilas merchant account and see if we can get things switched over to them. They need a copy of our existing merchant account statement.

Jenn provided Shari O. with some good contact info. Shari O. and I logged it inside of adilas in the client logs. Good thing we use adilas to run adilas! Good meeting.

Working with Bryan to push up new changes for the invoice due dates and options to use individual customer terms to override the new corp-wide settings. Launched the new code, ran new database updates, and pushed up new files to all servers.

Next, we switched gears and spent the rest of the time planning the next steps and phases of the invoice due date project. Bryan was typing and recording the notes and I was spitting out ideas and requirements. We will end up breaking this next step into smaller and smaller pieces. Just trying to get the main brainstorming and planning out of the way. From what it looks like, the next step will be an email history homepage and new email history table. We already send emails for invoices, PO's, quotes, statements, and custom emails. We will start by logging those and then moving on to automated emails for invoice due dates and collecting monies (being silly, in Chuck's terms - the nagatha - email reminders on monies owed).

I'm grateful for Bryan's help in planning out these projects. He also has time to then go in and work on them, that is huge. Time is a rear commodity and resource. If you just have time but no skills, you are stuck. If you have tons of skills and no time, you can't make it very far. If you have both time and skills, you can get a lot done.

Morning meeting. Steve, Sean, and Shari O. were on and going other things. Quite a bit of talk about the internal email system and likes and dislikes. We are currently using an add on service from Newtek that we setup 12-15 years ago. We may need to look into beefing up that system and making it more a big part of our services. It works for me, but some of the folks are having issues with delays or not getting the emails.

Next, they switched over to sales, people, new recruits, and permissions. Steve is building a new way to capture hours and time spent on projects for the guys and gals. He is using and harnessing sub dates and times, as part of the bigger elements of time pieces.

Eventually, it was just Steve and I on the meeting. Steve and I were talking about the client portal and how that is heating up. The client portal is basically a mix of ecommerce, customer/client login, special features, message marketing, scheduling, online bill pay, submitting documents, uploading content, a message center and other things. We already have a bunch of this built, but we can also feel the water heating up there. This will be very important as we keep moving into fracture. The whole client side of the application will be huge. We'll use settings to show/hide and expose certain pieces. Then, our clients (the users and their companies) will be able to use the client portal to expose certain pieces of their business to their customers and clients. That piece is very important. Anyways, that whole piece and concept is really starting to heat up.

Lastly, Steve and I were touching base and talking about options for reselling merchant processing and being able to gain revenue from passive sources such as merchant fees and merchant processing. Basically, a client signs up with merchant processing for their business, then we help hook them up through adilas, because they are using adilas to run their business, we get a small kickback from the ongoing reoccurring revenue stream from the merchant processing fees. It's small, but we are hoping to get in there and let it add up over time. Anyways, we are looking in to being a reseller of some of those services. Good stuff! 

chuck and I working on look and feel for the advanced time search. Currently, it has a number of search forms stacked on top of each other. Currently there are seven different searches that you can do from the advanced search page. The new page will use vertical tabs and will show each section in a different section. That should help.

As part of our meeting, Chuck and I went over some small tweaks and small code changes that we have made to some of the new pages over the past couple of days/weeks. Small stuff, just trying to keep Chuck up to speed on any issues and trends. After that, he and I touched base on budgets, hours, and plans. Good little meeting.

Adding in notes and details from meeting this morning and from yesterday. It takes quite a bit of work to keep caught up. So many moving pieces. Things change daily.

Working on a custom data extraction query for 710 Labs. Pretty deep query with loops, logic, and output validation. Posted a live file online. Also sent a copy over to Wayne to do some formatting and process the output on a daily basis. We are playing tag team.

Emails and light tech support.

Quiet morning meeting. Sean checked in but that was it. I was doing emails and looking up a possible bug on the bank balance drill-down link from the balance sheet. Kelly reported a possible bug, just checking it out. Light research on bank dates, normal transactions vs verified dates.

Cory and Wayne were going over data 16 server issues. It seems to be quieting down but we have little hiccups here and there. Wayne reported on the new corp-wide settings and corporation model object stuff that he and Alan are working on (DAO's and services). It is getting pretty close, and we expect to get some new code tested, pushed up, and fully deployed by end of the week, or first part of next week. When it is ready, we will launch it on the Herbo server for doing some live testing. We went over a couple of other server related projects. Small updates and reports.

After the server meeting, Cory and I briefly looked at the bank drill-down bug that Kelly had reported. We decided to make a small change. After that we talked about a client's need for some maintenance on a merchant account type that we are not really wanting to support. We will look into it but may or may not commit to doing the maintenance. Currently, we only have one client on that particular service and it may cost of a couple of thousand to do the upgrades. We'll have to see. We will commit to getting a guy in there to check it out but we will wait until we hear back from them before taking the bigger commitment step and repairing everything. This wasn't our fault, the vendor of the merchant processing code made changes and thus are forcing us to make upgrades and do unscheduled maintenance, on our dime. Not very fun. We'll check it out.

Helping Bryan with a small query error on his new project for email history tracking, inside of adilas. I then pushed up a small fix for a bank drill-down (get more details) and sent out some emails. Research and playing around with the new GoToMeeting features. Installed the new app and did some test runs. Small tweaks to the custom data query and data extract for 710 Labs. Pushed up a new file.

Paying bills and recording notes from earlier today. Prep and getting back into the bulk flex grid tools project for the bike shuttle company.

Back working on the bulk edit limited flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. Pretty deep logic. Lots of dynamics. Created a new branch and pushed up code to keep track of progress.

Working over the new GoToMeeting interface with Steve. They are in the process of changing their interface. We were working on setting up a new dynamic look-up function for a single sub inventory attribute and its value. Small work session. Steve was building the new function and I was helping and directing him.

Working on the bulk edit tools for limited flex gride for the bike shuttle company. Today the goal was working to populate the dynamic drop-down menus in the bulk edit process. We made some good progress. As part of that process, we exceeded the length compacity of the main search method. We are going to have to break it into smaller pieces. Fun stuff!

Phone call with Eric about his 2D barcode scanner project for driver license scans. Talking about hardware integration and some of the challenges of mixing hardware and web stuff.

Back working on the bulk flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. We have to split up one of the functions or methods. It got too large and exceeded the limits set by Adobe ColdFusion for a single function. I'm currently breaking it up into two smaller pieces vs one big, huge piece. Light yet deep surgery on the underlying code.

On with Steve and Cory talking about dynamic data fields and custom software development. Lots of needs for sub phases, sub locations, and data assembly line stuff. We need to know the data points, the flow, and the processes. That also means we need to know the pain points and other important pieces of the puzzle. Instead of guessing, we need real communication and a working knowledge of what they want their workflow to be like. Basically, where, when, and what to do or grab.

We talked about checks and balances, virtual stops, actual stops, and other critical data or checkpoints. More needs for that data assembly line type environment. As a follow-up, we will be looking at setting up some client meetings before we quote anything and/or make any promises.

Admin budget meeting. We had Steve, Shari O., Cory, and myself on the meeting. We started talking about software as a service (SaaS) models and how the service part of that is really a key component. It comes down to taking care of and training your clients. As we keep going forward, we would like to include and pitch more of our services to our existing clients and to our future clients.

We got into some budgeting, working on spreadsheets, doing actual look-ups, and talking about revenue, expenses, and budgets. Good session. Once we finished that, we went through and both Cory and Shari O. had a small list of questions and things that they had questions about. We looked at new expense type on the P&L, talked about owner permissions, sales, and future and upcoming. Steve really wants to focus on doing more with sales.

In closing we also talked about options of moving from Adobe ColdFusion to Lucee, as a reoccurring cost savings. We haven't committed there yet, but looking in to it. We get charged every month for using ColdFusion on a per month, per box/server basis. We could potentially remove that ongoing cost if we switched over. As a note, Wayne has already experimented with this a little bit out in AWS (amazon web services) land. He setup a full adilas environment that ran on top of Lucee vs ColdFusion. Both backend server engines run on CFML (coldfusion markup language). Lucee is the open source version vs Adobe ColdFusion is the high dollar commercial version. Just recording this for history sakes. Anyways, a good meeting.

Notes and budgets were sent out to all parties after the meeting.

Phone calls and submitting a ticket to tech support with GoToMeeting to help provide some feedback on their new app and online meeting tools. I created a support ticket and also entered some comments on the online GoTo forum for their meeting tools. I was suggesting the following things:

- I'd love to see a thinner line for the drawing tools. The new one has what they call small, medium, and large. They are all, even the smallest, way too big. The older or classic version used a much smaller version of the drawing tools (actual lines that it made). The new ones are five to ten times bigger than the old ones. Imagine a big, huge highlighter marker vs an actual pen tool. It was just way too big (the drawings themselves).

- The old system allowed for tons of right click special options. None of those existed. I used to use the right click options to switch colors, flip between mouse pointers and pen tools. I would also erase all drawings from a quick little popup menu. I would like to see those tools come back into play.

- The new drawing tools seemed more edgy and not as smooth. It would cut pieces out and add extra tapered ends and such. I wasn't very impressed.

- Not everything was negative, I did comment that I liked some of their new features such as: the undo and multiple undo option (on the drawing tools). I also liked the semitransparent drawing options where you could see through the drawings to the underlying text, graphics, or screen.

Anyways, I hope the feedback helps.

Eric popped in and wanted to check some code for his 2D barcode scanner for the driver license scan project. We pushed up some test code and then he worked on some other little tweaks. As we were talking, one comment that he made was dealing with having the full development environment. That made all of the difference. He didn't have the 2D scanner for the first part of the project. Once he got all of the pieces, that really helped because he had the full development environment (all hardware and all software pieces - together). Just wanted to make a note about that.

Anyways, we had a different project that went on for months and we were missing some of the hardware pieces. We actually never got them. It was all a third party thing. It, the project, was a disaster and our developer had to push up code, have someone else test it, make changes and then repeat the cycle over and over again. Very painful. The ideal is getting the correct tools and pieces into the hands of the developer who is assigned to the project. Let them test and develop their own stuff without having to rely on other or outside parties.

Eric and I spent some time talking about the new GoToMeeting app and likes and dislikes about it. The app seemed to be hogging system resources and was not very light. Eric also put in his vote for checking out Discord, for our online meetings and internal communications.

I spent the rest of the time going over tons of new emails that came in over the weekend.

Cory and I were talking about projects and who was assigned to what. Small recap and checking in on different projects and small progress reports per project. After that, I worked on merging in some new code for Eric and the 2D barcode scanner code. I had to fix a merge conflict and then push new files up to all servers.

Special client meeting on Cory's Zoom account. The goal was to cover and go over internal ways of monitoring and tracking quality control issues for a client. The user wasn't super familiar with adilas, but wanted a full-on system that could hold and track all of his pieces and processes. He works for a company that uses adilas but didn't know much about the existing tools. The underlying goal was a deep level of tracking for quality control within his processes. He's in the food and food production industry.

From what I was hearing, it sounded like a number of possible sub location or sub phases type stuff (data assembly line concepts). The need seems to be the ability to setup and manipulate the environment, setup standard and custom data points, and control the flow (start/stop/controls) of the processes. For our upcoming fracture project, I would really love to build in user controls that help people setup the sub systems, sub locations, sub phases, sub categories, and sub flow of data (forms, steps, or processes). The other important part of the data assembly line concept is the ability for the users (companies) to change, add, edit, remove, delete, and make their own processes more efficient. The concepts of the data assembly line have been on my mind quite a bit lately.

Kelly joined and was basically running most of the conversation. She just jumps in and sort of takes over. Some people really like that. She was talking about blending time, scheduling, inventory tracking, histories, and permissions. She really has a talent with consulting, talking, pitching ideas, show vision, and helping to make the sale or up-sale. Very interesting to watch and learn.

I also liked how she explained ERP (enterprise resource planning software). She said - "we track both money and goods, thus making it a light ERP system." I thought that was a good and simple definition. She also said, after the meeting, "The goal is moving the client from a problem based approach to a solution based approach. Get them excited about the possibilities." I enjoyed watching her work with the client. Kinda fun.

Eric and I jumped on a phone call. He and I were talking about the inventory snapshot project (was called the mini aggregate project for inventory quantities). Talking through ideas, requirements, plans, and even deep backend tech stuff. We talked about different phases and parts of the project. Concepts, planning, development, future rounds, and even deployment. Good stuff and making progress.

If we get everything planned out and going in the right direction, I was telling Eric that we could even do a mini sprint or small team effort to cascade the new logic to all of the pages that use parent inventory and sub or child inventory. Basically, any pages that would be dealing with the item quantities and inventory snapshot stuff. That could be quite a few pages. If we have a guideline or a handrail, we should be able to make that happen.

Meeting with Bryan and going over progress on his email history project. He is making great progress and was able to show me new database tables and even some visual usage of the new pieces. It's coming along. I was also really proud of him for having a plan and then going back to the plan to make sure that each part was completed and documented. Good stuff.

Recording notes from earlier today and some from the end of last week. It takes quite a bit to keep up or try to keep up with all of the changes and happenings that go on. Every day is a holiday!

Working on a custom report that Cory wanted me to look into. We recently changed a few things on the report but a client was saying that it was not showing the correct values. I went in and looked around, did some light research, and then did some page clean-up. The page had been built using other pages and lots of copying and pasting. Most of what I was cleaning up was code that was commented out and not used in the current report or application. Sent about 1.5 hours doing a clean-up job. Added a few new columns, pushed up the updated file, and let Cory know. She will get with the client and have them run it and fully test it on live data. This was a special retail report for a Canadian retailer.

Steve and Sean were going over ideas and talking about demos when I joined. After that, Steve had a couple of questions about a custom data function and redoing some of the error handling so that the function would auto return a default, if the real results were unknown. Basically, a form of soft error handling and smoothly rolling past 0 record counts instead of showing an error.

Working through a number of new emails. John popped in and had a couple of small questions. Nothing too crazy or pressing.

Alan and Shari O. joined our server meeting today. Wayne was reporting on the server settings and new corp-wide setting object code. Both he and Alan have been working on that project. It is getting really close to being launched here in the next couple of days.

Wayne was also talking about a different data export project and doing some validation and text normalization. Basically, a way to check for special characters and then replace them (the special ones) with a normal or standardized character. For example: take different spaces as a sample - there are big spaces, narrow spaces, thin spaces, non-breaking spaces, special width spaces, etc. - all of those would just be converted into a normal space vs the special characters. The same is true for double quotes, single quotes, bullets, dashes, spaces, and all kinds of other special characters. Wayne got a new library from Ben Nadel to help standardize some of those special characters. All part of keeping good data that can be used by us and by other parties (for example - in the data export for a specific client).

We talked about moving and combining servers and sites to save money. This is mostly dealing with clients who have one or more dedicated boxes. If they shrink or close some of their locations, they don't want to pay for multiple boxes (servers or VPS's). Wayne was talking about some possible hybrid type solutions and being able to configure and setup multiple datasources and folders (sub sites) per box. This is a prep step for the datasource project or world building stuff that we would like to get to eventually.

This topic lead us into some talks about different clients and options for data storage and archiving data. As a side note, Cory was being very careful about trying to protect us and make sure that we are covering our costs. Just because we can do something, doesn't always mean that we should. There is a balance between time, money, effort, and promises made. It also plays into - what are our future plans? We talked about billing, value, perceptions, and making sure that we really cover our true costs.

Alan and Wayne got into talking about the new settings and changes on that side of the fence. We really want to keep moving that project forward but may need to wait a couple of days so that Cory can help with the testing and tech support side of new releases (system wide changes being released to all servers). Towards the end of the meeting, they were talking about dates, times, and coordinating deployment and rollout of new changes. That is awesome.

Everybody except for Steve, Cory, John, and I left. At that point, John gave us a small report on what he has been doing. He reported that his billing was in, times had been recorded, he is working with Dustin on some server training, doing other server maintenance, and working on other projects. Cory is really trying to make sure that communication channels are up and going between Wayne and John. Trying to make sure that we aren't duplicating efforts and everybody is on the same page.

Phone call with Shari O. to talk and go over progress with the changeover of Adilas, LLC from independent sub-contractors to multiple member owners (percentage ownership - part of the MMLLC that adilas is becoming). We talked about some documents that needed to be signed and notarized. I will be doing that and then getting back with Shari O. later today. The transition is going great, and we are well on our way.

Reading over documents, and going to a notary to get things signed in order to submit paperwork. Signed some paperwork for the audit agreement and payment plan stuff.

Meeting with Bryan and looking at some queries for showing the email history for the invoice due date project (next phases). Bryan had to take a couple of calls during our meeting (other projects or follow-up from clients). Anyways, while he and I weren't working, I was scanning things in for Shari O. and also recoding info for Shay Legg as a member of the MMLLC of adilas with a small ownership percentage. Semi multitasking. I'm not very good at that. Anyways, we got Bryan all figured out as well.

Recording notes from today and yesterday.

Joined the morning meeting and Eric was on there. We did some experimenting with the new GoToMeeting settings. As a result, we were starting and stopping the meeting. Every time I rejoined, someone else was there. I talked briefly with both Sean and John by starting and stopping the meetings. Playing with the settings. Both of them just checked in briefly. Kinda random morning.

Good meeting - Going over the advanced time search page. Chuck is reworking that page. It is a huge form and has multiple smaller search forms all on one page. He is rearranging them into vertical tabs to show each one separately. That will really help. Here are some of my other notes.

- Chuck would really like to use drop-downs or predictive text drop-down selectors vs open text entry fields.

- Elements of time - very powerful but almost overkill - sooooo much data and sooooo many settings. How can we narrow that down? We talked about a couple of different analogies - cover the walls (imagine all the plumbing and wiring being shown vs a nice looking wall that is pained and has pictures on it), a hood covering the car's engine (style on top and complex and even dangerous below the surface), icebergs vs mountains (how much are you seeing at a time).

- Being able to pull data as needed using things like AJAX (asynchronous data being pulled in just in time, based on user inputs and requests).

- Sort of big and confusing - what does this do? How about that? How can we educate our users without making it look complicated?

- Make the whole thing (elements of time) more consumable - plans for fracture - break it down - Ask our clients and users, how do you use it? Offer preset settings or feature packages - such as: basic calendar, appointments, rentals, bookings, project time tracking, etc. Keep it small and tiny and lead the users along to get it setup correctly and not be intimidated by the number of options.

- Simple interfaces that are to the point and optimized for smart phones, mobile, and responsive layouts.

- Do some market research on how people use it and what they want.

- More dynamics and allow for the users (or preset settings) to change the naming and make it more dynamic. This would be from the top down - what do you call it? What does it do? What is shown, hidden, defaults, etc.? Allow for dynamic naming, layout configuration, and flow of data. At the highest level, almost the data assembly line type concept. If the preset options don't do enough, allow for a build your own layout system (super configurable).

- I mentioned to Chuck that we had some other plans for time templates and dynamic settings that we want to build into the next level (fracture project). See elements of time # 8004 for more details.

- Timing and budgets - sadly, it may take months and years to get all of this done. We have lots of changes that we would like to do. All in good time. Keep floating, watching timelines, budgets, and available funding. We'll get there.

- For fracture, we talked about some sort of education mode. This could be small popup walk through guides, wizards, tutorial helps, or whatever. Along with this, if we show little popup helpers, keep track of what has been viewed and what had not yet been reviewed. Be able to reset if needed.

- Chuck and I also talked about date pickers and time pickers. We looked at a few samples. Ideally, with the new UI/UX changes, we will be able to add both date pickers and time pickers to all pages that need that type of user input fields or selectors.

- The value of a team. We don't have anybody who can do everything to the fullest level. Plus, that would take way too long. That's where the team comes in. We've got backend guys, frontend guys, designers, database guys, coders/developers, project managers, dreamers, admin, and managers. Good stuff! Keep going in that direction.

All kinds of random stuff. Emails, phone calls, fixing voided invoices with credit card payments, updating our credit card info with vendors that have our credit card on file for different services (we got a new debit card with new expiration date). Talking with Shari O. Talking with Eric about the inventory snapshot project. Reading and research on merchant processing and costs and pricing (wholesaling processing). Going through a PDF presentation from Trinity Payment Solutions. Small bug fix on the add/edit flex grid page. Pushed up new files. Recording notes. All kinds of little to do list items.

Steve and Sean going over weights and processes to mix and sync data and flow with Metrc (state compliance stuff). After that, Steve and I were talking about merchant processing. I got the go ahead from Steve to keep pushing that ball forward. We also briefly talked about the Adobe ColdFusion conference coming up in October. We may want to put something together to help get the team out there and have a good time (team building stuff). Lastly, Steve and I chatted about schedule and time off and trips that we both were doing (summer stuff and family stuff).

Talking with John about time pickers, payroll projects, and other stuff. Working through a list of new emails.

Meeting with Chuck to go over some time questions (elements of time section). We talked about some formatting issues, how special flags and tags work, and other time questions (as a general topic - time - one of the 12 main player groups). We looked at his current project to redo the advanced time search page and other verbage and layout type questions. Small tweaks to code and pages.

Online meeting with folks from Trinity Payment Solutions. Going over questions, filling out a new merchant account contract and signing digital documents.

Filling out paperwork and trying to sign things. Using an outside 3rd party tool. It was blocking some of the fields that needed information. Signing up for a new merchant processing account.

Switching over to the bulk flex grid tools and features project. Making a number of changes to the new tools for the bike shuttle company. Splitting up one of the big standalone methods into smaller pieces (it had reached its size compacity - based on Adobe ColdFusion requirements for sizes of methods - exceeded 65,000 characters for a single function or method). Working on splitting things up and light testing.

Sean was showing me an error on ecommerce, under a setting called show and sell subs only. We looked at the data and the flow and then got in a little bit deeper. I took some notes and will look into it later today. It was not a quick fix. Email and briefly talking with Steve about sales and upcoming projects and events. Something is always moving around.

Wayne and I were on a meeting with a 3rd party solution that is doing some outside analytics for a company. We were going over data definitions and making sure that we are all on the same page. We have created a custom data export for them and already started providing them some data. They had a few other requests and just needed some further information. After the meeting was finished, I texted Wayne to see if he had any questions. Other small to do list items.

Changed some GoToMeeting setting. Emails, recording notes, and other to do list things. Looking into a bug dealing with ecommerce and showing and selling individual subs only. Deep in the code looking around.

Looking into a small bug with ecommerce and show and sell induvial subs only. While looking into things, it got pretty deep. By my count, just for fun, I counted six to seven different technologies all being blended together. There was AJAX, jQuery, vanilla JavaScript, JSON objects, normal HTML, SQL, and ColdFusion loops and variables all mixed together. That's a lot of technologies. I got as far as I could and then texted Alan to see if I could setup a meeting with him tomorrow to help fill in the gaps. Good stuff.

Emails, light tech support, and general to do list stuff.

GoToMeeting session with Bryan. He was showing me his progress on the email history project. This is a sub section of the invoice due date project. Part of the goal here is to automate some email options based on the invoice due date. Anyways, he is writing some scripts and services to show an email homepage, email history search, and linking everything together. Looking good.

Working with Steve on some reverse logic to allow both valid record counts and 0 record counts from a certain method or function. The built-in response for a 0 record count was to through an error. It was quite strict and we had to loosen things up a bit. Steve needed both options for a new report that he was doing. Working with him through the logic portion of the page.

Sean had some questions about recipes and doing builds or running the recipe/build processes (build and sell, kits, groups, presets, just in time packages, etc.). We looked around and did some demos and went through some suggestions. We also talked about options for my cart favorite buttons and other ways to add bulk items to a single shopping cart.

After that, we spent a little bit of time talking about the balance between level of detail and ease of use. We talked about how certain things need to be tracked as inventory and other things need to be treated more like supplies. Eventually, we got into some discussions and examples of how those different things hit the P&L, invoices, and the bank.

Wayne reported on some server issues and other projects that he and others are working on. Towards the end, we also got a report from John. After that, Shari O. and I spent some time chatting about different things. Not all of it was server related, but just taking care of business.

Alan and I on a 3-hour GoToMeeting session. We were looking into a small bug on ecommerce for showing and selling subs. Most of our time was doing debugging and testing. We would make changes, test them locally and then push them up on one live server where we had access to a client's live data. Tons of back and forth testing and debugging. Alan and I were dealing with complex data structures - AJAX, JavaScript, jQuery, JSON, ColdFusion loops and variables, all intermixed. Quite deep and pretty taxing - mentally. We ended our session and only had a few minor tweaks to make and some light clean-up. I'm grateful for Alan's help. I wouldn't have made it without him. Lots of moving pieces and mixing and blending of technologies (server-side and client-side).

Emails, reporting on some changes that Alan and I made, light clean-up on pages, pushing files to all servers, and reading through more emails.

Sean and I were talking more about recipes and recipe/build processes. It would be so cool if we could add in a quick way to work with sub inventory (currently missing but on our wish list). Imagine if the cart could pick from the oldest open package by default (maybe a setting), then allow the person who is building the actual output (some sort of fulfillment) to make the final decision (which sub package something really came from). Sean also had the idea that we could run it like we do with quotes or sales from ecommerce. We allow the parent items to be set and then the subs added in real-time as the invoice gets fulfilled or generated. There may be other possible settings options as well. Great ideas. This would really help in certain industries and being able sell bulk subs or preset kits or invoice groups (specials, packages, etc.).

Going over emails. That seems to be a big part of my day. Cory joined the meeting and we touched base on some projects, servers, and clients. One of the underlying topics was "timing" and how important timing of certain things is/was. Good stuff.

Chuck is currently working on the add/edit elements of time page. It is pretty big and pretty dynamic with lots of possible combos and show/hide scenarios based on time template settings. He is doing a snow owl (theme) facelift on the page. We also talked about a number of other fun topics.

- Chuck recommended, for fracture, what about preset color pallets vs full custom colors. We may need both options (presets and build your own custom look and feel color pallets). See a screenshot for a picture to see what WordPress does for preset color pallets. Trying to get ideas.

- As a side note, we currently are revamping things to show different visual displays for the snow owl and classic themes. Lots and lots of extra code and it may eventually effect load and run times. On average, Chuck was saying that we end up with almost triple the amount of code, going from an older original file (just classic) to showing both classic and snow owl theme options. That also translates to more code to maintain and keep updated. Lots of moving parts. When we do the fracture project, we want to make it standalone product. Basically, the old code will support classic and snow owl themes but fracture will only support the new fracture options. Simplify the code that needs to be maintained.

- We talked about using more content and page loaders - using asynchronous loading and asynchronous processes. We also talked about big reports and either using in-line asynchronous loading or doing some kind of build report to file type process. Especially for big or huge files (over 500+ records at a time - say 1,000, 10,000, or up into the 100,000+ records - we have some reports that could output millions of records). If we do a asynchronous process or build to file, we will also need notifiers, emails, text messages, or some other type of push/pull type communication. This may be a nice feature for fracture and future development.

- Going along with the huge reports and data tables, mentioned above - for fracture, we may want to build in the BI (business intelligence) levels and have sums, averages, counts, and other aggregate values right from the start. Sometimes we have users pull 10,000+ records, just to get counts and totals. Let's help that data (the BI level) rise to the top and be available so that we don't have to output and show all 10,000+ records. They may only want the aggregate values anyway. If they want more info, we could allow stepped drill-downs by month, week, day, items, categories, or some other grouping. That will help the record counts be much smaller unless they really want to see all of that data. Once again, we could do the asynchronous or build report to file type process for super huge reports.

- As long as we are talking counts, sums, averages, maxes, mins, and other aggregates for fracture - we really need to think about adding in visual homepages or graphical homepages with dashboards and other quick data references. The details are great, but that is only one of many possible views. We could use calendar views, timeslots views, horizontal grids, vertical grids, grouped reports, details, and other fun dashboard type interfaces. This could include charts, graphs, quick counts, trends, etc. Once again, at the BI level (business intelligence) on showing the data. Allow for drill-downs, filtering, exporting, saving reports, or refining a search if something different is needed. Quick access to the data.

- Push and pull communications - push notification is we (the system) pushed the notification out to the user or group of users (text, email, phone call, browser message or prompt). Pull notification is, you, as a user, requests or pulls certain types of information. Currently, our most common form of communication is pull notifications. When building out fracture, we would really like to be able to define more options for push and pull notification and communication channels.

- We circled back around and were talking about survey's, market research, and asking for feedback before we build the fracture project. As a side note, there really needs to be a plan and then help everybody build towards that plan.

- As part of the plan for fracture, we really want to build out a style guide and get the primary elements in place before anybody else builds the other pieces of the plan. We want it to be consistent, all the way through the build and deployment process. Everybody who then works on the fracture project would be expected to follow suite and follow those plans, guidelines, and style guides.

- Chuck and I talked about checking out competitors and their pricing and then building some marketing based on that research. As we were looking around, some of the other products out there have a smaller starting price but then you have to add on tons of modules or multiple by locations and by seats (active users). We want to pitch the whole thing as a package and then make it so configurable that it could appear small, medium, large, or extra-large. It's all done by settings, permissions, and configurations. Anyways, we really could use some more market information and data before building out fracture.

- Eventually, the fracture part of adilas will need to be its own mini app (fully mobile ready). We may have to scale things back, down, or allow custom configuration options. A full on adilas mini app would be super cool.

- One of our last topics for the day was dealing with costs. We will provide different levels and/or packages that all work and blend together (integrated solutions). If something else if wanted, it will cost and be built out as custom. We love custom and it's part of model. We need to keep that in mind for fracture. With custom, also needs to come cost. Just for fun, Chuck was saying... "I could hand out gold bars on the corner and still get complaints. If they want us to round it out, stamp it, or trim it to make it lighter - we get to keep the gold dust or shavings". We were just being silly but... it's real - custom needs to cost accordingly. That's important. I think that we are getting better at that and really trying to pass on costs and other services to our clients. It has been a learning process. We need our business to make enough money to keep it going. We offer some really great stuff. Our prices need to reflect that.

Great little discussion on fracture (future project - redoing the adilas interfaces and system). I had a bunch of post-it notes with notes on it after the meeting. Chuck really has some good ideas and is forming a vision of what he would like to see the fracture project become. He is great asset. I'm excited to see where it goes!

Looking over a custom data extract and export code. Taking notes and making plans. Trying to explain the data definitions and relationships. Emails and text messages to both developers and clients dealing with the data definitions.

Emails, explaining and sending notes and code samples to developers and clients. Light clean-up on a research project that I was working on.

Emails, phone calls, and cleaning out my inbox. Recording notes from past meeting and work sessions.

Small little impromptu sales meeting with the guys who were on the morning meeting. Sean, Michael, and Steve talking about gun dealers and firearm sales (current and future clients). Tons of fun discussion and them making some plans to get with our existing clients to see if we could help speed things up, make things better, or add in needed connections and functionality. They are excited to stir the pot and see what they can make of it. Michael has some prior firearm sales experience and he's an experienced adilas user and manager.

The topic switched over and Sean and Marisa were talking with Shari O. and I about the bike shuttle company. They did some training with them yesterday and just doing some follow-up. They will be doing some more training next week.

All four of the admin team were on the budget meeting. Good stuff. We flowed between topics and looked at banks, numbers, financials, and P&L (profit and loss statements). We did some budgeting, talked about current projects, and went over a number of other topics. Brandon was taking notes and sent those around via email after the meeting. As a side note, we are really going to be pitching our other professional services as that is a great way to add monies to the reoccurring model that we already use and play along with.

Working with Bryan on a data table error on his new email history project. We got it resolved and he is off to the races again. Getting closer to finishing things up for that step of the invoice due date project. The reason that this project deals with the invoice due date is that overdue or approaching overdue invoices will be mailed out to help collect payment. Eventually, the email actions will be automated. This step of the project is just getting the existing manual email processes documented and being recorded in an email history step or process. Prep stuff for future development.

Huge email back and forth with the underwriters at Trinity Payment Solutions. We are in the process of switching merchant processors. They had a number of questions about our business model and how we do certain things. They wanted clarification on billing practices, pricing, and contracts. Spent quite a bit of time giving them answers and explaining what we do. I went into tons of details and provided links, logins, screenshots, statements, etc. Just for fun - we are a high-end SaaS (software as a service) company, dealing with operations and accounting. We have a standard package that we use and then do custom work on top of that. Mini elevator pitch.

Chuck and I jumped on a GoToMeeting session and were looking at a new date picker and time picker that works with SummerNote (web-based HTML editor for custom HTML enabled notes and comments). Good stuff and looking over documentation and making a few tweaks. Light feedback on progress and direction. Trying to standardize things.

Recording notes and transferring scribbles on post-it notes into digital entries. Recording notes from yesterday and today.

Steve and Sean were touching base and going over client needs, BioTrack API, and sales stuff. After that, Steve and I jumped in and worked on his custom report for internal time management (recording hours on development projects). He does such a great job pioneering paths and spends both time and effort virtually clearing the path for others.

We talked about working directly with our clients and being able to coordinate with both clients and users of our system. That is huge. Steve loves to ask questions like: What do you want? Could you test this? Can I get some feedback on this flow, process, or functionality? Good communication and the more we listen, the better our product gets.

Meeting with Cory and going over projects, doing some quotes, and talking about small tech support issues. We looked into a duplicate permission issue on one of the servers. Cory was also reporting in on certain user requests and feedback that she has been getting. I'm glad that she is helping people and then passing along the info. Towards the end of the meeting, we were going over some budget type talks and stuff.

Looking over code on Bryan's email history stuff. Small little tweaks. Spent more time briefly looking over the code. There was more than 30 pages that had changes being made. Small back and forth to get a few things fixed and refined. We merged in the new code and Bryan ran all of the database updates while I was prepping the next step and pushing up files. We got everything uploaded and Bryan did some testing. Light plans for the next steps and next phase of the project - automating the invoicing and email reminders based on the invoice due date.

Worked on a new tool (backend admin tool) for restoring a user's prior permissions. Got on a meeting with Chuck and went over some time formatting and general questions. He is working on the add/edit elements of time page.

Steve and I were talking about the top 3 projects that Wayne is working on. Those 3 projects are paring down two huge settings tables. The datasource project (being able to point different corps to different databases on the same server) and moving all of the images over to the content server. We briefly talked about each project and the status of what we have going on. We will be launching some new code on the first project tomorrow morning. The new code was pushed up to the data 16 server this morning and some of our clients were helping and doing some testing. Making progress.

Both Steve and I were talking about size of companies that use adilas. We tend to find the smaller companies that really need some help. That is awesome and we'll take it. Having said that, sometimes, for the small guys, we are almost an overkill (too much system). Ideally, we would fit somewhere in between small and medium. That seems to be our market. Anyways, we had some talks about sizes and where we are shooting for.

Cory joined us and we were going over projects. She and Steve were chatting for a bit, and she switched over and chatted with me about projects. We looked into a small error out in ecommerce. Making plans and talking about developers, projects, timelines, and plans.

Wayne was reporting on the paring down of the two big tables. One is mostly done and the other will be starting here soon. That is awesome and part of three known big projects that are preventing us from being able to cluster servers together. More changes should be coming in the next week or two. We will also be removing the extra database columns once everything settles down.

Once the database tables (the two big ones - corporations and afb_corp_settings) have been pared down, we will be flipping the main database engine over to MySQL InnoDB tables. Most of them are MySQL MyISAM tables right now. Our users won't be able to tell, but it will open up other options such as transactions, clustering, and line level locking. That is exciting, to see some of those things on the horizon.

We also spent some good time talking about the size of the adilas content server. Eventually, we would like to move all of the images, scans, photos, logos, and custom files over to that server. Right now, each data server holds its own photos and images. That will need to change as we dig in deeper on options for clustering the data servers and putting more than one Adobe ColdFusion servers together in a cluster configuration (multiple servers working as one bigger server).

Some time was spent discussing server level configuration and options for both clustering and configuring main primary datasources (access to specific databases). Wayne suggested that he, Alan, and I get together and do some brainstorming and planning to fully flush things out. Sounds like a great idea.

Next, we flowed into a discussion about naming conventions, standards, using session values, unintentional overwriting of variables, and data entry errors. All parts of the bigger puzzle and keeping data going, flowing, and being consistent. We talked about using dynamics and allowing our users to define those names. Some of the places in the code, we use a simple name as a singular value and other places it is used as a plural (adding an "s" to the end of it). That lead to some conversations about data input, validation, and micromanagement. Validation, maintenance, and training are big parts of the process. Our goal is to keep refining the pages and the processes. Keep making it better and better.

Wayne had some questions about custom shopping carts and how to turn certain settings on/off. Other topics covered in our meeting were things like - memory management, changing the environment (intentional and unintentionally), user settings, mixing variables one thing at a time (what we are changing and releasing), and being able to push up code for testing to multiple servers to get more client participation before going live on all servers with new (bigger) updates.

John was reporting to Cory and I about his progress on the discount engine - remake and redo project. We talked about cleaning up bad user data and helping to push the ball forward. We are planning as if for years (looking towards the future). Lots of one-pager reset stuff. Even though the new discount engine will only be a single page, it has tons of moving pieces. Some of that research and development will be used in other places, as we get it fully functional and stable. Looking good.

John has been using tons of parallel arrays to get some of the inter-page filtering done. Lots of moving parts and pieces. We also updated and talked about updating the help files (process of doing it on data 0 and then cascading new changes to all other servers - both live and local development environments).

Planning with Bryan. Working on the process of helping to automate the emails for invoices, quotes, statements, and customer emails. Earlier today, Bryan was working with Shari O. and watching her work on emails and taking notes on her current processes. Trying to help where we can. We can gain a lot of information (gleaning) by watching others do their work.

Fixing a small bug on the email history stuff that Bryan and I launched yesterday. The fixes were for some code out in ecommerce land. Going through tons of emails. Recording notes from earlier today.

Going back and working on recording notes from yesterday. If I keep my virtual plate clear, I tend to have more time to do things as they come up vs having a huge pile on plate.

Alan, Wayne, John, and Cory were on working on some bugs and issues when I joined the meeting. They launched some new code and most of it went pretty smooth. They were working on some stuff out in ecommerce land from the new changes to how corp-wide settings were gathered and pulled. They seemed to have it under control.

I was rolling through emails and text messages. As things calmed down, some of the guys and gals headed out to other meetings and appointments. I pulled down new code and had to spend some time reconfiguring my local environment, lots of new changes. I ran all of the local updates and then got back on the meeting with Wayne to ask him some questions. One of my questions was dealing with case sensitivity of the new settings. In the database, all of the settings are lowercase with underscores (like_this_for_example). When I looked at the new settings and how they are stored in the new database tables, they are stored in all caps with underscores (LIKE_THIS_FOR_EXAMPLE). I just wanted to make sure that he knew that there was a difference. It seems to be working so we'll just go with it, but we may have to circle back around and do some clean-up (for consistency).

Working with Chuck on the add/edit time (elements of time stuff) page. He did a whole new revamp and added a new look and feel to the main add/edit time page. We spent some time working on both the date pickers and time pickers. We tweaked some settings and added a time picker that could either do just hours and minutes or one that can do hours, minutes, and seconds. Small tweaks and checks (logic) to make the right one show up at the correct time. We merged in the new code and pushed it up to all servers.

After we pushed the code and Chuck left the meeting, I went back and cleaned up and removed a custom black box page for the adilas shop that had some custom code for the add/edit time page. That's a good feeling to remove or get rid of a black box page. They play a role, but sometimes also create an additional maintenance burden. Good stuff.

Spent a good 45 minutes working on the bulk flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. Then I got pulled off to look at a payroll bug. I had to get Alan's help to resolve the little bug. It dealt with the depth of the new complex data structure. It used to be structure (object), query, column name. The new complex data structure is object, object, query, column name (one level deeper). After that, I ended up on a phone call with Bryan to help him get his local environment back working again. We got it somewhat finished and ran out of time. Lots of new tweaks and changes.

Steve and Sean were going over sales leads and talking about pushing more on bowling pro shops. The conversation got into the need for certain custom tools per industry. Steve and Sean then talked about flex attributes (custom data points) and how those could be configured into industry specific tools (for bowling, it is ball specs and drilling holes and sizes - techy bowling stuff). I chimed in through chat about limited flex grid as well. That is a great tool and allows for one-to-many relationships, out of the box. Lots of options.

Both Steve and Sean had to take off around 9:30 am. I rolled over into recording notes and doing emails.

Back working on the bulk flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. Got back into the section that deals with dynamic drop-down menus and building those on the fly if the page is in edit mode.

Working on an email for the guys at 710 Labs. They had some questions about a custom data extract. They wanted more info and more conditional logic pushed back to them via the export.

Working with Cory on project management and going over a number of quotes for new projects. She had a big list of projects and client requests. We also spent some time and looked at a couple of small bugs, random things, and small fixes.

Meeting with Bryan over GoToMeeting. We started into some questions on automating discounts and then into sub inventory. Bryan had been working on a project to show sub attributes on save as PDF invoices. The sub attributes already existed in the other invoice views, it just wasn't on the save as PDF version. We merged in the code and pushed the files to all servers.

Recording notes from today's work sessions and meetings.