Homepage for Cannabis Production

This homepage will provide views of current inventory, and allow all inventory to be processed and packages as desired.

All functionality currently exists however this page would speed up the process by completing the internal builds on the fly.

On the morning meeting with the guys. We started out with Wayne asking questions about payee/users and how they can and do criss-cross and how they can cross between corps. We talked about options and why we did what we did. We got in to migrating parts, items, and PO line items. We then has some conversation about splitting up databases, indexing, and other processes that could either optimize the data processing and data retrieval process.

Calvin and Alan popped in, they were working on labels on the content server. Alan helped Calvin wrap some of his code in a try and a catch. It was awesome and he was able to push the cfcatch variable. That allowed us to figure out what we needed to do to fix it. Super cool.

Steve and Alan - "We break things and then we fix them." Fun little saying.

Alan would like to rework the forgot password project. He wants to rework the security and how that process would work. He would like to beef things up a bit and make it more bomb proof.

Alan would also like to work with Wayne on breaking code into smaller blocks and working in a more MVC (model view controller) type model. Basically, making baby steps and making things into a more object oriented code base. Alan was talking about encapsulating and modularizing functions, data, and components. Lots of code reuse and minimal duplication. Question - Build new or build on what you have? We are leaning towards refactoring existing code vs re-writing new code. Adilas' goal is build as if for years.

We were talking about sub inventory and taking that whole new level and pushing it out into an object oriented model. We also talked about implementing Wayne's testing framework along the way with the new changes. The goal is trying to limit the number of times we are re-writing the same thing. We want to reuse code as much as possible. We talked about strengthening our foundation so that it could handle more weight and also allow for flexibility and fracturing, which will still occur, no mater what we do.

Light talks about black box code and who pays to keep it updated. There seems to be two different levels. There are critical updates and non critical (optional) updates. We need to figure out a standard procedure to deal with custom code and black box code. Sometimes, if we have a problem and we are forced to think about it, we can usually come up with a pretty good solution. If we wait too long, we are forced into emergency surgery and sometimes that is not the best approach. We want to be pro-active on our approach and on our development.

Steve and I were talking about some hanging projects... One is the invoice due dates and watching for outstanding receivables (David and Shari O. really need this). This was a Russell project that only got half baked. We need to finish it up. The goal there is for us internally, to be able to see what companies owe what and what the dating is. Then once it gets to a certain level, we could prompt for payment and/or be able to shut things off.

We also talked about how it takes a whole village to raise the upcoming generation. We are really trying to build the adilas community and adilas family. We have many talented persons who are playing the game along with us.

Eric and I jumped on a GoToMeeting session and worked on the special tracking accounts. Most of the day was used doing layout and planning pages and flow. I was creating pages and adding notes for what the different pages will do and have. Once the main pages are outlined and pushed up, Eric will be coding the pages to the specs provided.

Meeting with Shannon and Steve about a new possible role for Shannon working with the main adilas team. We started out and Shannon gave us a small report on little Hyrum and being a new mommy. Good stuff.

- Maybe help hide Shannon from the general public.

- We would love to have Shannon still help with some tech support stuff, but on a higher level. Kinda a upper level or overseer of sorts.

- We would like to have Drea keep doing customer support and news and updates. Drea has been very helpful with Metrc type questions.

- Light talks about tech support and even allowing a blog and/or forum to help users get answers to their problems.

- We have some people in place to help us out with some of the news and updates. We could use Benjamin, Drea, Dustin, and Janna.

- We could expand the news and updates into more of a tech support type level. Just an idea. This is a WordPress site and we could tie-in to that as a prebuild piece.

- Even with the WordPress blog, we still get a lot of spam that needs to be filtered out.

- We need some help categorizing, prioritized, and then delegating things out.

- Currently, both Brandon and Steve and not very proactive (due to our load). We could really use someone to help us become more proactive and looking where we want to go.

- Once we get a bank of questions and answers, we could then use that more as a response vs re-writing solutions after solutions.

- We would love to keep branching out to other business verticals. We are hoping to get a good team that could handle certain industry-specific needs and then allow us to keep expanding into different verticals and different industries. That would be really cool. As a side note, we do need people on staff that can play well in the different industries.

On a meeting with Bryan. We went over some server stuff and made some plans. We then spent some time looking at a custom code request for the income statement and/or the P&L (profit and loss statement). We first were looking at how to make a custom method call for the client. That would make us use a black box on the display and a virtual black box on the actual method (function to get the data). Both of those options dealt with a major file and report (the P&L). We talked about diverging from the master code set and black boxing such a critical report. If we went the full black box route, that report may end up being left in the dust if we change the master file.

Bryan called the rep who was working with the client and she was saying that they might want an option to either include certain vendors and/or exclude certain vendors. Because they wanted the option to be able flip/flop, we reworked our plan and decided to make the new functionality global and then just black box the search page. All other pages and pieces would be standard but we could make it look simple. The secret was making the new functionality global for all users and then just presenting it in a simple way.

Basically, the client could do exactly what we were doing, but they would have had to use the advanced report settings and physically entered some values. The new way allows for a simple button to virtually do the same thing but from a clean interface. Smoke and mirrors. Yee haw.

Got on the meeting early to work with Steve and Alan. They were looking into some server issues with the data 5 box. Alan was on the box and Steve was browsing through the web. They were running checks and looking at things. Most of the corporations were doing fine, the problem was with one of the bigger ones. It seemed to be at the database level. If a super huge query was being ran, it was clogging up the queue to run other database queries. Alan ended up looking into temp table sizes, heap sizes, and max levels of memory that were available. He made some small modifications and we fully rebooted the server. When it came back up, it seemed to be running much faster. Alan then went to all other servers and adjusted database max levels to match the new settings. In a small way, this is just part of the performance tuning that needs to happen. Basically, you run into a wall, figure it out, and try to expand the corridor.

Shari O. popped in and we had to look into a small issue on the data 1 box. Alan was on the box and we had a table that had locked itself. We did some repairs and were able to get the table back up and running.

Wayne popped in and had a few questions. Dustin then worked with Alan to get some JavaScript rounding errors taken care of. Alan and I then started to look into the sales tax updates for other tax 6 through other tax 10 (new custom tax fields). This is one of the final steps in the sales tax changes that we were making earlier this year.

Eric and I got on and worked on the special tracking accounts (sub of the balance sheet items for things like rewards, loyalty points, gift cards, etc.). Most of the session was spent getting systems updated and new code branches ready to go. There was some small tweaks that we needed to make between Windows machines and his Mac. By the end, we were good to go. He has been released to start coding and making notes on what else if needed. Basically, I setup a super generic file structure, and he will be going in and coding some the pieces and wiring it together. It is somewhat of an experiment. It should be fun.

Bryan jumped on the meeting and had a couple of questions. We got him going and he was able to run with the rest of the tasks that he had. Steve and Bryan touched base on a few things as well. Short but good meeting.

I was working on going through new sales tax changes and making sure that new dynamic taxes 6-10 were playing into the different reports. After that, Steve and I met for a bit and talked about the Denver training schedule. We scratched some names into the correct spots for who was going to be presenting what. We also talked about some other topics such as sales, goals, and general direction. We are super excited to have some great people who have skills and are helping out. That is awesome.

On the morning meeting with Steve and Dustin. We merged in both of their code branches and pushed a few new files up to all servers. Calvin popped in and reported on his local hard drive and getting it recovered... good reminder for all of us to keep doing local back-ups. Alan came on and helped with questions and then he and I went over the Denver training schedule. Alan is doing some performance tuning on some of the servers and some of the most used queries. We talked about getting access to bigger data sets to run the queries against for testing and to see the real costs (against the database) with the bigger data sets. Small plans and talking about indexing certain tables, columns, and combo columns in the database.

Called and touched base with Shari O. about the Denver training event. She will be doing a couple of sections and also talking about who is covering food and snacks. She is awesome and wonderful helper.

Studying up on some core concepts and basics on world building. I have to present at the upcoming Denver training event.

Going over graphics on the teaching and training tools as a refresher. See https://data0.adilas.biz/adilas_for_business/photo_gallery_full.cfm

Bryan jumped on and had a couple of questions. One of his clients wants him to create a new merchant processing options for a custom ecommerce site. Basically, this will be a new gateway of sorts. We also talked about some custom jobs and then the upcoming Denver training event. Bryan will be going with us out to Colorado. It should be fun.

Tech support, emails, and more core concepts reviewing for the training event. I also have to present on the historical stepping stones and what we've learned over the years. That will be a fun subject. Good stuff.

9009 E Arapahoe Road, Greenwood Village, CO 80112
Phone: (303) 799-4555

See attached for notes, scans, files, and GoToMeeting recordings (videos)

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Day 1

We did some intros and then got started. Danny Shuford did a demo and did a great job. See attached for some notes. Here are a couple of the highlights from what I took away from it.

- Solution for solution minded people

- It can be molded to fit your industry

- Changes keep happening

- Big open view of the whole system - it wasn't made for just one industry

- Brief overview of the framework

- Based on user permissions and valid logins

- All web-based and cloud-based

- Features and benefits - focusing on the benefits

- CRM - log notes, additional contacts, photos, and other media

- We all deal with money, but in the end... we are all dealing with people

- Note to me... Danny went into the customer table and doing the custom page settings on the customer fields. This is for things like the name, aliases, sort value, show/hide, etc. We really need to keep pushing that idea and concept forward. People really want that level of control. It just takes a ton of work to cascade that through the full system.

- He talked about news and updates

- "Our Interface" - what do you want? We don't have a single set interface, we let you choose

- Customer queue

- Lots of moving parts

- Drea - "Adilas is play dough"

- Inventory tracking

- Reporting and building your own reports

- Labels and changes to the requirements

- ecommerce

- Payroll

- Accounts payable and accounts receivable

- Print checks

- emails

- Customize and working with the developers

- Security and back-ups

- Steve - Showing some hidden gems

- Small demo on flex grid

Next, I gave a small section on the adilas model - core concepts - and intro to world building. I will upload my outline. I'm also hoping to upload the video as well. I don't have any notes because I was the presenter, but here is my rough outline:

- We will be bouncing around

- Start with a guy holding tons of stuff

- Talk about the needs and how to organize things

- Go over different tools... head and mind, paper and pencil, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, software packages, web or hosted solutions

- Go over systems and how things start to inter-relate

- Cover the 12 main players

- Cover the 12 business functions

- Cover the 12 main world building concepts

- Mix and blend to get the desired results

After lunch, Alan Williams did a presentation on highlighting and exploring new features. He started out with a fun group activity and a game of sorts. Minimal communication and we had to figure out a path through a virtual mine (bomb) field. It ended up having forward steps, side steps, back steps, etc. We eventually, as a group, got through the mine field. Really fun exercise and it opened up some conversations. Here are some notes from Alan's presentation:

- Little active - mine field - group activity - finding their way

- How does this relate to the adilas process?

- He then showed some of the steps that we have taken to build the application

- Side steps, back steps, and forward steps

- Going into advanced add to cart and sub functions

- Request from the group - no standalone discounts - Make that a permission and/or a setting. Standalone discounts can and do cause tax problems.

Next, Steve Berkenkotter lead an open Q & A section. The first question was asking about any updates with the Metrc (state compliance and tracking system for Colorado). That got pretty deep but exposed some of the challenges that exist between connecting and maintaining dual systems (adilas and Metrc). Here are a few notes:

- Questions on Metrc

- Some new tables and new limits from Metrc

- Auto processors - running nightly stuff to help sync data between systems

- API and server to server connections

- Challenges that exist

- Mixing old and new functionality

- Transfers

- Sales

- Using elements of time to track states, status, phases, and groupings

- Getting back at the data - reporting

- High level vision

- Question from Pat - 280E - new tax and accounting rules - what can we write off as cost of goods? What about unitizing expenses?

- Steve - How the IRS is looking at things and expecting things

- Steve - loves numbers and how he brings his skills to the table

- Work in progress - attributing a value as part of the accounting

- The progression of building and breaking

- The system is able to store the data (huge piece of the puzzle)

- The system may be customized to get the data back out and/or to get the data in (another huge piece of the puzzle)

- Template building

- A consultant spending time and configuring a system before it is released to the end users

- Small questions on CSS and changing certain page colors

The last section of the day was a presentation on historical stepping stones - what have we learned and why do we do what we do? I did this presentation so I will add my outline. Once again, we are hoping to get some videos uploaded to this element of time incase someone wants to watch the videos. Here was my outline:

- Where did we start? Spreadsheets, static web sites, zip disks and sending inventory around from place to place

- Fixing current business problems

- Where is your pain? Start there

- Letting operations lead - Use the adilas interactive map to help show flow

- At some point, accounting will need to follow

- Checkpoints and flowing data

- Gap between operations and accounting - drawing the gap, horses and carts, and old school T accounts - light history of accounting

- How does time play into the mix

- Comparing operations and accounting in a static environment

- Comparing operations and accounting in a dynamic environment

- Progression - drawings of the data assembly line and how it ended up at a 3D data assembly line

- 3D world building - x=time, y=resources, z=space or depth - draw out the box or cube

- Black boxes & white label options

- The whole deal

We didn't quite make it all the way through the whole outline, but we covered a good portion of it. Towards the end, we went around the room and got some feedback. Those documents and notes will also be uploaded. The final request from the class was to have adilas allow the "adilas version" spreadsheet to be shared with the world. It was originally created in order to get a bank loan, but Steve said to release it to the world. Great meeting and good energy on day 1. Good stuff.

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Day 2

We spent most of the day working on and going over inventory tracking and point of sale (POS) features. See the attached videos. We also had some great demos from Calvin Chipman on building custom labels and one from Dustin Siegel on some new code and features that help with plant phases and cultivation. Here are a couple of notes from some of their presentations. For a more complete version, you may need to watch some of the videos from day 2.

- Calvin and the adilas label wizard - He gave a slide show and then started to interact with the label builder. After he was done, we asked him to show some of the behind the scenes pieces of his label builder. Good stuff.

- Vaporware - the product doesn't fully exist (yet) - part concept, part actual, not yet fully functional

- User designs the label (step 1)

- User selects the label from inside of adilas (step 2)

- The label(s) are created and displayed on the fly, based on stored instructions, mappings, and special code. (step 3)

- Part of the demo was showing sheet labels with a data merge, labels with barcodes and QR codes, static text, dynamic text (user can interact and change things), data mappings, graphics, etc. Pretty cool.

- Small talk about PDF's, Flash, & HTML and CSS - printing options from the web - Our choice is PDF currently

- Interacting with printers, browsers, and other hardware pieces

- PDF - actual size vs shrink to fit size

- Questions about font point size and possible limitations for compliance reasons - We will leave that up to the users, that way we don't have to chase all of the compliance rules and regulations.

- We talked about settings and maybe limits that could be stored and looked up on the fly.

- Possible template options

- Be careful saying a compliant label

- A good disclaimer to keep things legal according to the local and/or state requirements - put the liability back on the companies and/or users.

- Small story of a company and internal programming wars and war stories - Different places that Calvin has worked.

- It may take a hybrid solution of both software and web

- Small demo of the actual builder - Calvin is going to be taking that and putting it more into a wizard-type format. Currently, you have to be pretty techy to use it. Round 1 - prototype.

Dustin gave a presentation on some new cultivation processes and some dynamic mapping. We had some technology issues, the demo was going slow (Internet) but the concepts were awesome. Imagine going from a manual one-by-one process, to a bulk streamlined process. Huge time saver, plus tons more data points, capturing the whole story clear down to minutes, seconds, locations, phases, etc. Pretty cool.

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Day 3

Busy day today. We got into sub inventory, why we do sub inventory, customer relationships, elements of time, flex grid, ecommerce, custom emails, group mass texting (GMext Pro), and a presentation by Kelly Whyman (super power user from the Denver area). We are going to be posting the videos and the notes from the day. Good sessions. Here are some of the notes that I took while others were presenting. Once again, see the attached media/content files for videos and other digital notes.

These are some notes from Shari O.'s presentation on CRM functionality

- CRM - The real acronym stands for Customer Relationship Management - Shari O.'s acronym for CRM is - Can't Remember Much - pretty funny

- Good data in = good data out - Fill things out completely and make sure you get good data in

- The client log and how to use it

- Leaving personal footprints in the sand - using the log

- Addin gin a user-maintained history... internal communication

- Cover you own rear-end

- Being business appropriate - have good manners when recording details and data points

- Custom emails

Drea did a demo on how to show/hide transfer packages inside of the adilas/Metrc inventory pages. Here are some notes from that:

- Transfers in and out and how to hide things

- Everything in adilas is flexible

- This new functionality is only a week old

- Talking about manual clean-up and automatic clean-up - doing side-by-side comparisons

- Using the data tables and being able to sort and search data - almost on the fly - re-writing the page based on the data.

- Some of the new CSS cards, tabs, and such - really look super cool and it seems more intuitive - it also makes it look more modern.

- We would love to keep adding new data tables and more options

- As we keep going, we may need more clean-up options

Calvin game a PowerPoint presentation on GMext Pro - This is his group mass texting solution. He did a great job and I think that people really liked it. Here a few notes that I wrote down.

- Pretend like you are a client

- Communicating to a large group or large groups (plural)

- Pitching GMext Pro - great demo and presentation

- Some of the stories of huge companies and how changes have happened and how those big companies weren't able to keep up. WordPerfect and Blockbuster were some of them. Major game changers entered the market and could do things better, faster, and cheaper. People gravitated to those new options.

- Technology happens... embrace it and thrive

- Mass texting and single text notifications - similarities and differences

- Phones and phone numbers - with mass texting, you are basically buying phone numbers so that you can send more texts at a time. Each phone number can only send 1 text per second. So you may need 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 phone numbers to get all of your texts sent out.

- Problems with people giving out the wrong phone numbers (bogus numbers or wrong numbers) - that can break your marketing campaigns - too many wrong numbers and you get reported as a spammer.

- Ways of opting in and out

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Day 4

Final day of training for this go around. We started out day 4 with a group session on tips, tricks, and best practices. We spent quite a bit of time going over settings, permissions, and parent attributes for items. Steve then did a whole session on the three main parts of the balance sheet (assets, liabilities, and equity). The topic was intro to adilas backend office and functions. Steve took the words backend office and tried to flip it to - let's put the owners in the driver seat vs trying to drive from the back of the plane (pretend they are trying to fly the plane from back in the bathroom with the doors closed). Great session.

The afternoon session was talking about BI - Business Intelligence & Big Data. The group talked about databases, data, and how to both get data in and out of the databases. Lots of fun examples. We then has some other Denver power users jump in and do demos on tiered pricing and smart group buttons, and another one on the process of doing a full inventory reconciliation and full inventory count. Great info and good sessions.

The final session was supposed to be on the adilas model - vision, future, and wrap-up. We were all too tired, so we just chatted and went over a bunch of the things that we learned from the training session. We got some great notes and tried to clarify a few items, topics, and concepts. Pretty casual ending. Great people, wonderful ideas, excellent participation, and memories made. A great training session. Here are some of the notes that were taken while others were presenting:

- Molly presented on parent attributes for items - think of tag or ways to categorize things

- On parent attributes - for example: say you have an item but want to show different brand names or characteristics - Say you are selling shoes... You may want Nike, Converse, Adidas, etc. Or running, walking, hiking, trail running, etc. These would be good parent attributes or tags.

- Parent attributes are huge for ecommerce searching and creating tags for different items

- Russell did a great job on so many different features - we would love him to keep building more features

- Easy setup

- Building your own little shortcuts

- Parent attributes are used for labels, sales, ecommerce, searching, filtering, etc.

- Treat parent attributes like a way to build your own database... eight use the flex grid and the custom fields or use parent and sub attributes.

- Both parent and sub attributes are unlimited and they have a proper data type such numeric, dates, text, toggles, and drop-down lists. That really helps when putting data in and also when querying the data to get certain results back.

- As an idea... what if we build out both parent attributes and sub attributes to all 12 main player groups, inside of adilas. You literally could build your own one-to-many database relationships. The main 12 player groups are deposits, invoices, users, vendors, customers, stock/units, expense/receipts, balance sheet items, elements of time, quotes, PO's, and general inventory items. Currently, parent attributes and sub attributes are only available for parts or general inventory items. Think how cool that would be if we pushed it to the next level...

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- Small note from a meeting during one of the breaks... what is the internal adilas funnel to report an error or a bug? Who gets put on that project? We need to figure out our own process and communication funnel.

- Bryan and Molly and others... funding some of the consultant projects - what is the short list and then where are things at. Basically, what do we have to work on and what are the priorities of those pieces?

- Shannon may be part of this funnel that we are trying to build out

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Back to the main training even... The next session was Steve Berkenkotter and Shari Olin - going over financials and adilas backend office functions. Steve pretty much ran with this subject and did an hour long power session on the three main parts of the balance sheet (assets, liabilities, and equity).

- CPA homepage interface

- Inspecting what we expect - you have got to look at what is being delivered as a final product (actual items and/or tasks or services)

- Going back to the beginning - balance sheet homepage

- When you get a new system, we setup a default bank and default location

- Problem with batching... Say trying to remember 30 days back and/or not getting data and information for a long period of time. It kinda leaves you guessing and/or missing some of the details

- Steve - Think of flying a plain... try to be ahead of the plane... where is it going - often pilots try to think 3 tasks ahead of what they are doing

- Views of the balance sheet - a trial balance - working and checking mode

- Assets, liabilities, and equity

- We covered the difference between the income statement (P&L - profit and loss statement) & the balance sheet

- Values and tax laws

- Depreciation and schedules

- Life cycle - length of the life of an object and/or an entity - time and a schedule to lower a value (usage & wear & tear)

- The IRS has setup the tax game... They want you to play and even play up to the lines that have been setup - think of a game - play to the line

- Where you put things in very important

- Small discussion on double entry accounting - history and pros and cons

- Skate to where the puck (hockey) will be

- The formula is the most important part of it

- Passing things like a hot potato... basically moving things along the data assembly line - roll call accounting

- A balance sheet is a snap shot in time

- Talking about the profit margin and where does that come in to play

- Small holes in the ice - things that are either gotcha's or thin ice (not all the way done)

- Some of the guys and gals were saying that we need - big dumb animal pictures - super simple instructions

- Accounts receivables - Think of that as they have your inventory or they have your endeavor (a promise to pay for something) - basically, they owe you money

- You have to know the story - sometimes the numbers tell the story but sometimes the story tells the numbers what they mean

- Liabilities and hidden liabilities - be careful there

- Hidden costs

- Triggers

- Payroll and payroll taxes - this is a huge sink hole

- Sometimes we can't do things due to the technology - as that opens up, we have more options

- Auto processing and calculating needed values in non-peak times that could then be available for other reports

- Fall backs, redundancy, auto-syncs, and re-syncs

- Turtle up, sometimes the servers will shut down and pull in their legs - kinda like a turtle protecting itself

- We need an all encompassing system to help steer the ship - think platform or system

- Owners - who holds the liability

- Steve - analogy of the tail wagging the dog vs the dog wagging the tail - who is in charge & which way do things flow?

- The owner needs someone who is a decision maker and/or gate keeper

- What is the game plan and do you have buy in?

- The POS (point of sales and inventory tracking part) is only a small part of the puzzle. Very small compared to the whole business realm (world).

- Abundant model - you have to imagine a line of people wanting your services and standing in line - next, next, next

- The backend - really, this is the pilot's cockpit and/or the driver's seat

- Absorption (in take) model & attributing sub costs over time

- Dustin - I want "this" (meaning adilas & underlying data) to argue with my boss, not me.

- I need a business tool & now I can run faster & better - thank you

- Equity

- Net Profit - it comes from the P&L - one of the only connections between the income statements (P&L) and the balance sheet.

- Investment - how was this company funded and/or formed?

- Fracture - just having fun - it keeps doing it (fracturing) on its own... maybe let it keep going and play accordingly

- Change "backend office" verbage to the cockpit or balance sheet.

Towards the end of the day on day 4, we had a couple of power users show some demos and such. We had Josh do a presentation on my cart favorites and smart group buttons (tiered pricing). Drea made a suggestion that you make the pricing tiers as dummy proof as possible. They even pushed the ending values clear out to show a visual warning to the person using the buttons. The other major request was for this feature (buttons and tiered pricing) was dealing with allowing these buttons to be time sensitive for sales and promotions.

We also had Drea go through and show an inventory update and how she does a physical count and then an inventory clean-up. She would pull reports, export data, show/hide columns, add columns, print things out, and have her people go work. Then she showed how the system would take those over and short values and push them through an update PO (internal tool for updating inventory counts). Pretty cool. As we go along, we will need more clean-up tools.  Clean-up tools make things look better and help to give users a peace of mind. We also talked about trust issues and how sometimes it is tough to trust and/or trust people. All of that plays into the mix.

My final note about the training sessions is that those who played with us, live and online, really had a good time and we all learned a lot. Good times, great food, and wonderful people. Inspiring sessions. If you want more details, check out the media/content pieces (notes, excel docs, scans, and videos for more info).

Alan and I had a small meeting after hours in our hotel room. The general topic was were are going and how are we going to get there. This is mostly ideas... but some of it is real and may come in to play as we go down the road.

- Alan noticed that there are special headers in the old AFB settings pages. We may need to swap those out. These are the snow owl theme settings page, the ecommerce settings page, and the custom email settings page.

- We might need a new level between black box (custom), bulk black box (them), and the classic. Sometimes we need an option but we don't really want to go to a black box per corp - Kinda like the shopping cart view... we have multiple options to choose from and that is tied to the personal settings.

- Maybe hire a designer to help with CSS and user interface stuff

- What about an adilas fracture account

- Are we in the race, out of the race, or working on something else?

- Where is the puck going to be?

- What are our goals?

- What are our defined roles & how does that play out? Currently, things are pretty loose and multiple people play through the different roles.

- Who is going to do custom?

- Goals and roles - those are big subjects.

- We really want to get back to the custom database fields (show/hide, sort, name, alias, require, custom instructions) like we did for customers.

- We really want to do a similar things with the reports. Imagine a way to select what fields show up, what order, what base or starting filters or criteria, pagination defaults, etc. That would be really cool. We already have some of that in the save your own reports pages, but it would be cool to make that happen on a page setting level. Basically, here is what is available, what would you like to see and how would you like to see it? Great idea.

- Just a thought... what if we stopped custom coding for a while? It sure would be nice to be able to use all hands on deck for certain internal projects. As a side note, custom code has become part of our model.

- Maybe try teams

- There will be growing pains

- The view cart page mixes black box technology and corp-wide settings and personal settings. We may end up with more hybrid type options like that.

- In general... we have really taken on a lot... people want us to keep building both out and up... question for us, is the core strong enough to support that?

- What would it take to stabilize certain parts of adilas? Some of the pieces haven't been touched in years and very stable. Other parts still have virtual wet paint and are still changing. The goal is to get some of those morphing pieces to become more stabilized and steady.

- Education and maintenance may be more important than new features

- Some of the reps are getting sick of training the same things over and over again

- Go through the whole system and black boxing pages and adding icon menus

- What if we went back to the web_page_id. That field was originally designed to be a page specific id number. We could then tie-in in help files, videos, page level settings, etc. Every page in the system would have its own id number.

- Working in strategic teams. Say teams of 3 like Alan, Wayne, and Brandon. Or Bryan, Wayne, and Alan. You get the idea.

- Balances...moving balances - We have seen problems with planning too much and planning too little - there needs to be a balance.

-----------------------

Fast forward to the next morning... Friday, 9/14/18

- Just keep going and don't do anything crazy - let it keep cooking and growing.

- Maybe have a contest to see where we are going and what ideas we have.

As part of the training... We were talking about tips and tricks... We would like to show tips, tricks, settings, help files, videos, and basic corp-info such as corp id and server #. See the attached file for a reference.

Back on the morning meeting. We did a light summary of the training event and talked about what else we could do next time. We are happy with the turnout, energy level, and the topics that we covered in the Denver training event. We are already talking about going to Phoenix, Arizona, in January for the next training session.

Alan, Steve, and I got in to looking into some pagination values and how to quickly show the correct number of records. That took us into some of the Snow Owl data tables and looking around. We also talked a little bit about getting into the graphical homepages and showing totals, reports, graphs, charts, summary data, etc. If you do a search for "graphical home" on the developers notebook, there are a few older entries.

What do people do on the invoice homepage? They want to see counts, totals, and problems (that way they could fix the flagged records). We may want the data just to display the last 7 days vs the last 30 days (current page load). We could still show the totals and counts, but we would only show the actual data that is needed.

Going back to the pagination stuff... We found a small bug in the older pagination vs the newer Snow Owl pagination. Pagination is a term for showing the next page of n (some other number of total pages). The problem seems to be that the system pulls all the data but only displays a certain number of records. The page can only then work with the number of showing records vs the number of records in memory (show vs memory). Anyways, we were looking into some options there. Josh popped in and was saying that most times, people are only looking for the last few entries vs the last 30 days worth of data. We may be showing too much and making the servers work too hard for something that may not even be needed. We need to head to a quick snapshot of the data and totals and then allow them to drill-down and get deeper if needed.

We had Wayne Andersen pop in for a bit. He had some questions about servers, setup, performance, and security. He is working on some of those pieces. We authorized him to look in to setting up some play sites in the AWS (amazon web services) virtual environment. We want to see what that looks like. We also has some light discussions about how awesome it is to have some of the boxes completely separated and setup as a standalone environment so that all of the corporations (worlds) don't catch the same cold (viruses, database problems, traffic problems, etc.). Good talks with both Wayne and Steve on some of the topics.

Towards the end of the session, Steve and Dustin were working on reporting batch numbers out to the state tracking systems. We talked about a way to push and send over hidden details and then how to gather up those pieces and make our own summaries from the data that was submitted. We pushed up the pagination changes from earlier and then did some light testing. Recording notes and wrapping up the morning meeting.

Recording notes and adding files (media/content) and photos to the element of time for the Denver training event. I also jumped on and helped out Bryan with some questions about servers and the new changes we are going to be making for the adilas community funded projects. I then worked with Dustin for a bit and helped Josh get his local environment setup. Those guys are doing great and it is fun to see some new talent in there pushing things forward.

Back to more notes and adding files for the Denver training event.

On the morning meeting talking about GPS tracking and using cell phones to track things, light talks about the graphical homepages with charts, graphs, counts, and quick nav. We also talked briefly about a developer contest for a dynamic design (small competition with specific specs).

Bryan popped in and did some reporting on getting user feedback and setting up an adilas user group. We are going to be tying things into funding (adilas community funded projects), user voting (a weighted voting system), and a user group forum (add/edit sub comments and threads).

- Bryan has already gone in and tweaked some of the code for the adilas community funded projects. It will end up being the money and funding part of the user groups. We will allow for ranking, project id (with a drill-down to the project details), project name, notes, points, weighted votes, status, and ability to rank/vote projects.

- Small talks on security and who has access to what

- We are looking to use adilas elements of time to help track the projects and the project status. That is awesome. We have been working up to this for years.

Notes for ideas, assignments, direction for Shannon helping with Internal Project Management:

Organizing & Brainstorming on Prioritizing & How to Move Forward:

Assignments:

#1 - Common Tech Support Issues (Categories):

Locked out of login:

• New & updates for this issue?
• Current error response?? - More 

Navigation:

• Where things are located?
• Common areas include: tax settings, departments, user changes, update & special POs - inventory adjustments, shortcuts/tips/tools
• Remembering how to access areas that are not frequently trafficked (settings, taxes, users, etc.)

Reports:

• How to get data out of the system?
• Many people struggle with retrieving their data in the way they want
• Where to go to search for the info they want? Not a good understanding of how/where data is stored & located
• How to utilize advanced searches, or even regular search parameters, special reports already formatted

How to accomplish X task in the system:

• Great if you have a good consultant to help navigate these issues
• Not an understanding of all the tool can do or what tools are available to accomplish what tasks

Hardware:

• The nightmare tech support question!  Hardest category by far... so many variables!
• Might be helpful for us to make a more thorough News & Updates & at least show all the places to look - browser settings
• Svend - sending hardware support his way - Very willing, help with tips & tricks, suggested hardware list, Adilas Market - calling card on tips & tricks, proactive - money for him to reach out to clients?
• Come up with a game plan for hardware support - where do we need to go & how can we educate our clients on our model but still support them in getting hardware support?
• Connect with Svend - What do you need from us to get things going?
• Able to bill Adilas for $??? to get going
• #1 - For free on Adilas Marketplace so we can get things pointed his way (Russ - Bryan - Benjamin Hudson
• #2 - Tips & tricks - get them online, link them to him, help write them up - notes
• #3 - To come... Proactive 

Back-end users - Balance Sheet:

• Lots of the higher-end users/owners do not have a good working knowledge of how to use their Balance Sheet
• How to track various BS accounts properly
• I struggle knowing a lot of these things too - Steve & Shari are the masters!!

Levels of Training Needed:

• Laser focused
• Beginning
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Accessible
• Where to put the training, how to set this up, how to make it accessible, 

#2 - Circle the Wagons - Gather what is already there before moving forward on what to do next

Find the User Guide content already completed

• Review 
• Meet w/Brandon, get to web
• 
  

Categories for Internal Project Management Needs:

Maintenance

Bugs

Custom Projects

Assigned Projects & Project Follow-up

Client Communication & Follow-ups

Eric popped in and we touched base fairly quickly on the loyalty points and special tracking accounts. After that, Steve and I were talking about custom code and black boxes. We are seeing more and more needs to template and allow full user interactions. This gets to the custom configuration level.

- Our goal is to get the pages and code out to the object level.

- Currently we have options for black boxes. We may need to go deeper there and allow for custom, theme (bulk black boxes), mini settings, and then the default classic pages.

- The display and sometimes the logic are the things that need to be able to change. The display being one of the biggest thing.

- We were talking about corp-wide settings, users settings, page settings, and even player group settings (12 main players - invoices, customers, items, PO's, etc.)

- Everything keeps fracturing and spreading out. That isn't bad, but it does make it hard to manage and also show back to the users.

- Lots of our users want to limit what is shown. That is removing fields and columns. The opposite for that is real in-line database extensions (expanding the database with specific data types and fields).

- We talked about limiting results back to the users... for most things that works great. On the other hand, other people want everything from forever (all the data).

- We are even seeing a need for page level settings as to what data is pulled back and what data is shown.

- It goes clear out the level of layout and display. Say the shopping cart - I want the clear cart button here. I want the checkout button here. I want the update cart button here. I don't want x and y but I do want z and q. You get the idea.

- We are also seeing a need for logic rules (still at the page level). Basically, how do I play and who do I play with? Rules, assignments, and settings.

- Settings are preset choices so that we could go even faster and faster without asking for input each time.

- Talking about a small game and/or a developer's challenge - a contest of sorts

- If we play with the real data, inside of adilas, we are so interconnected, it gets kind tough. For concepting, we may want to step back and limit the scope.

- Talking about try storming, brainstorming, concepting, and even breaking things into stages.

- Often when we are looking for ideas and solutions, it becomes a mix of multiple ideas. Cinergy and getting multiple people playing the game. Kinda like add on.

- Are we turning right, left, or going up or down... wet clay and things keep changing.

- We are so grateful for all of the people pushing on things. It is always morphing and changing.

- The element of control by a user - easy, powerful, and pretty - if it has those things, you can sell it.

- Working with Shannon and getting back in to the loop...

- Small review of the training event

- Shannon reporting on her progress and her homework assignment. See element of time 4010 in the shop.

- Known tech support areas... login and getting locked out, navigation, reports, step-by-step how to's, hardware, back-end users (balance sheet)

- Reports on items and invoices - getting their information back out

- Using the existing tools to get what you want

- Hardware is always a "hard" piece - no pun intended - We would love to get him on the adilas market and then let him handle it from there.

- Possible hardware packages and suggestions

- Maybe proactively pay a hardware guy to reach out to his/her clients and be on the proactive side of things.

- Maybe some trouble shooting documents for different known hardware issues - tips and tricks

- More needs for using the adilas marketplace - calling cards, tips and tricks by power users, mini advertising

- Hardware is a totally different realm and is the hardest tech support category - at least for us

- Great ideas - but sometimes it goes nowhere -  just due to the number of things calling for attention

- Shannon has also seen lots of high-end questions from back-end users - especially from the balance sheet and high-level financials

- On training... we need different levels - laser focused, beginner, intermediate, and advanced - how do we accomplish this?

- Multiple different forms of helping to educate our users - help files, steps to success, user guide, videos, live training events, etc.

Bryan is working on some ecommerce payment connections and pages. We got on and did some light debugging and looking around. It is fun to see all of the different projects and who is working on what. While he was on, Bryan was also able to reach out to Steve and touch base on some new server setup questions. It is kinda nice for these guys to get multiple questions answered, just by popping into the meetings.

Setting up some custom adilas email addresses for a client. This allows them to email out of adilas and then we place some forwarding options on the account to make all replies hit another outside email account. Kinda some smoke and mirrors.

On the morning meeting with the guys. Steve was asking where some of the projects were at... one of them is the invoice due date and an auto monitor watching for outstanding invoices and prompting for payment from the users (clients and different corporations). This would help speed up the game of chasing receivables (who owes us money). We also talked about the existing Adilas Community Funded Projects page and section and how to go in there and use that tool to help generate funding and show progress.

- We also talked about fully committing to a project. Sometimes it gets really hard if you have to start and stop a project multiple times. You lose some in the duration (how long it takes) and also in the transitions (switching between different projects).

- Add in a link for the adilas community funded projects to the main website and top header navigation.

- We also need to add a drill-down link to the elements of time from the community funded projects. Use the code we just finished for the developer's notebook. It allows for elements of time to be shown outside of the secured environment.

- Talking about dedicated servers and specs. We had Steve, Brandon, Alan, and Bryan all on the call. We went over older specs of the servers and options of going up to more processors, more RAM memory, and moving things to solid state drives. Having said that, we still need to do some server tuning to make them super fast.

- If we make these changes, what do we gain? Could we put more clients on the same box? What is the user (users within a world or corporations) to cost ratio?

- We need to do some research on ColdFusion and MySQL and how they work with different clock speeds, how many core processors do they use, and what versions of those products should we use? The newest versions, as of now, are ColdFusion 2018 and MySQL 8.

- It is amazing how things (technology and such) keep changing and increasing. We have to keep playing the game.

- Short list - dual quad core processors, 32 GB RAM, 2 solid state hard drives (one for files and one for database stuff), newest versions of ColdFusion 2018 and MySQL 8

After our meeting about servers, Eric popped in and Alan helped him get a good clean local environment so that he is ready to start working on his new projects. I went into the developer's notebook and adilas community funded projects, and put in some new navigation and opened up the adilas community funded projects so that they could do a time drill-down to the underlying details. That should help us create a better path to start helping people and outside parties help us.

- As a side note, we may want to add some funding options from the individual drill-downs (elements of time) for the adilas community funded project. Basically, if they are deep enough and actually on the item (the project and/or exact element of time), it might be nice to show an option to help fund that project right from that page.

Completed by Bryan 2018

Heavily requested functionality to add a unique and searchable barcode to the child inventory items. This would be similar to the existing RFID tag per child. It would be unique (auto, manual, or scanned in) and searchable through all cart and inventory searches.

We are estimating $1,500. That would cover planning, new database changes (corp-specific), new code, search and add to cart logic, and sign-off and deployment.

Brandon Cory and Steve have been working on this as of 8/12

Jumped on a session with Eric to work on loyalty points. We pulled in Alan to help Eric get his local environment fully back to normal. There were some code repository issues and we needed master Alan to help with that. Meanwhile, I was adding in new donate links to adilas community funded project pages, adding video links to the main login page for the Denver training event, and pushing up new files with more notes and video links from training.

Bryan and I got on a GoToMeeting session. We were fixing bugs that have been submitted. We also looked in to some of the upcoming options for  the adilas user group and how it will tie into the adilas community funded projects. Pushed the bug fix up to all servers.

On the morning meeting. Steve was talking with all of the guys about all of the different projects. Lots of good stuff going on.

- This is somewhat new, but we may need a transactional PO (on order and maybe even pre-payments on inbound inventory) just like we have a transactional invoice (QTI - quote to transitional to invoice), this would then be mapped directly to the balance sheet. This includes a new PO type, tracking the period while in transition, and then being able to flip it from the transitional period into a real PO that hits normal inventory and normal payables (if not fully paid off). Anyways, we have a working model on the invoice side with the transitional invoices (work in progress and pre-paid stuff). We may need the same things for the PO and ordering side of things.

- Wayne popped in and showed Alan and I his database migration tool. Pretty cool.

- Creating a test suite... what pages and/or sections do we want to visit and check before releasing a new server. This will be really important if we are changing versions of software. We may want all of the developers to chime in on this list and include it in the test suite. Think - if I were going to a newer version, what pages and/or functionality would I test?

- Alan was talking about some of his query optimization and query tuning. As part of that, he had to pull down some bigger test data sets to run the queries against. Our smaller, normal test data sets didn't give him much to work with.

After the guys came in and gave their reports. We all split up and worked on our own projects. I was in testing on the final changes for the sales tax stuff. This is the dynamic naming and introducing custom taxes 6-10 (5 new custom tax fields).

Going through page by page and testing files that are part of the sales tax changes.

Alan and I were continuing to test pages on the tax project. We also had a small chat session and talked about options for speeding up some of the main sub homepages (invoice homepage, PO homepage, expense/receipt homepage, deposit homepage, and quote homepage). We talked about how each sub homepage page currently pulls the last 30 days worth of data. We may change that to the last 7 days or just limit it to the last 25 records (rolling - no mater what the date is). We also talked about showing some quick stats and graphs to help the users see things (pulse and quick snapshot - today, yesterday, week to date, month to date, year to date) without showing tons and tons of transactional data. Anyways, some great ideas.

Another topic that Alan and I talked about was settings. We are seeing a need for more corp-wide settings (world level), user level settings, group level settings (invoices, items, customers, elements of time - any of the 12 main player groups), and page settings. Alan and I were talking about how to stack that model. We drew some pictures and talked about a triangle model where the corp or world level settings are at the top, and then the page and user settings are at the bottom. We also talked about flipping the model (reverse triangle) so that if a user doesn't have a specific setting for the page and/or group, the corp-wide or world level setting would kick in. Another idea we followed was how to stack and allow the users to play at the group level and also at the page level (possible one-to-many relationship) based off the of the user and what settings they put in place. All of these things will help us be more dynamic in showing what the users want and also in speaking their language. Good stuff.

Need to take tri-storming approach. Taking smaller steps toward larger vision. More success with taking smaller steps instead of the A-Z approach.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=fracture this is the future to do list

Currently, the adilas.biz master plan is held in the minds of a few of its founders. It has never been fully funded and written out. We think that would be a great project and could help our existing users, current clients, and even future clients. It would also possibly allow us to get more funding if there was a firm and written plan of what is needed, in the works, and where we are headed.

As of right now, the only written business plan is very general - such as: "We are heading North" (meaning up :))

Emails, tech support, and filling in information on the adilas community funded projects. Trying to add some new verbage and details to help the projects have more weight and value. Along the way, it has been fun to review where we are and where we are going. Good stuff.

Wayne and I got on an after hours migration task that was scheduled. We were running Wayne's cross-server database sync tool. This was the first time that we have run this program live. It has all been test data prior to this run. The program ran without errors and we checked record counts and all seemed to be good to go. We flipped some switched to point the corporation from the data 3 server to the data 8 server and then logged in. All of the data looked great, except for one primary table. Because everything wasn't perfect, we re-pointed the corporation back to where it was originally, and disabled it on the new server. We will check that one bug and then reschedule the migration. We want to be certain that everything transferred correctly. Wayne will be reaching out to the client to let them know that we need to reschedule. No harm done.

By way of a history note... This corporation was supposed to migrated almost a month ago with some other corporations. It was left off of the list of a multi corp migration process. When we do this, a normal migration - in the old way, we have one shot at taking any number of corps from one occupied server to another, unused or new server. Because this corporation got left off, we basically started all of the other corporations using the new server and thus created potential id conflicts (auto id numbers per corp). Within the first 15 minutes after we opened up the new server, they informed us that we didn't migrate one of the corporations (it was completely left off the list to migrate). In that small of a window, already 6 tables were unable to merge without id conflicts, thus blocking us from migrating the data between servers.

In the past month, Wayne has been working on a database sync tool that crosses between servers and non-destructively mirrors and duplicates the data without hitting the id conflicts. It has been a major undertaking with multiple test runs, one-on-one info sessions, lots of emails back and forth, and writing a complete program to fully automate the process. The tool is amazing and will end up saving us thousands and thousands of clicks and hours and hours of developer time. Today was the first live run. I'd say we hit about 95%. With a little bit more tweaking, it should be fully ready. Kudos to Wayne and his cross-server database sync tool. I'm excited to see what it can do when it is fully done.

On the morning meeting with the guys. Steve wanted a report on Wayne's cross-server database sync tool. We reported and talked about some future options and where we want to go. Lots of potential there. After that, Dustin and Josh started talking with Steve about some of the Metrc stuff that they are working on. They are making some great progress. Steve was the leader there. He knows his stuff because he has been in there in the trenches on implementing the Metrc and state compliance stuff.

I was doing emails and light tech support. We have a client who is wanting to charge some special fees based on certain payment types and then not have those new collected fees show up in revenue. That is possible, but kinda tricky due to the mapping of non-revenue based fees and still having the fees show up as an invoice line item. I also was working with the guys on the Bear 100 mile race and getting their runner list for this years race. The Bear 100 mile race uses adilas as their race (leg and aid station) tracking software piece. Lots of different projects.

Eric checked in and we chatted on the phone for a bit. He has a random error coming from one of his custom shopping carts. We will look in to it more later on today. Shawn popped in. Alan popped in and chatted with Steve. It seems like all of the guys are going in a good direction.

Eric and I were on the GoToMeeting. He found a small error that was done by another developer. We got him on the call with us and showed him the error. The problem was with a full custom page take over (black box stuff). The paths on the full take over were still referencing the include files as if the file still existed in the previous location (previous file folders and directory structure). We just had to change the paths a little bit, and the page was then able to find the assets and other include files. Minor tweak.

After that, we got Eric situated with his current project and made some plans to hit it again tomorrow on the loyalty points and special sub tracking things for the core loyalty points and gift cards section. We also briefly talked about putting another developer on the project if we keep getting called away on custom side projects. We basically lose momentum and it takes some time to re-transition and get back into the project. Just looking at options.

Working with Shawn to track down a bug in some new state payroll calculations. Shawn is working on Missouri and Mississippi state payroll withholdings. We had to get in deep and look through numerous lines of code. While Shawn was looking over code, I was emailing and doing random to do list items.

Towards the end of the meeting, Josh had a few small questions about tracking active GPS entries and how to flip his own internal route status values. He is doing great and it sounds like he is being pretty creative on what he is planning and doing. Good stuff.

I joined the meeting a little bit later today due to a dentist appointment. When I got on, Bryan, Alan, Steve, and Josh were on. Steve and Josh were going over some things. After that, everybody just worked on their own projects. I was testing code on the sales tax branch and going through files.

Eric popped in and had some questions on some JavaScript for a custom loyalty points program for a client. The client had a number of special mini widgets at the top of their cart. One of them was a special button and form to use the loyalty points. We had to add some JavaScript to force the quantity to a negative number. Basically, the users play in positive land (I want to use 500 points) and the code side switched things to reverse the math and use it as a negative (-500 points vs +500 points).

Also, towards the end of the session, Josh was reporting on his new GPS tracking stuff (using sub GPS stuff for elements of time). He is making great progress and should have something to show (actual visual display with maps, routes, and drill-downs) here in the next couple of days.

Working with Eric on the special tracking accounts (subs of the balance sheet). We actually started working on code and made a number of new functions and methods. We also started getting into plugging in the new methods into the display pages. We've been trying to do this for weeks. Today, we actually started and I think it will help Eric get some traction. Sometimes there are so many distractions and/or other projects that pull you off course. Good stuff.

Bryan and I jumped on the GoToMeeting session. Bryan had a bunch of files that needed to be merged into the master branch. We merged in the eXPO ecommerce white label code (300+ files). Bryan is still testing some stuff, but he needed to put up some of the code on a live server to show it and test it in a live scenario. No one really knows it is there, and you have to specifically turn it on, but at least he has some live testing things to play with.

We spent a little bit of time going over the adilas user group project. This is where we will let our user group vote on where we spend some of our money and where to focus our efforts based on weighted votes and funding. Good stuff. Anyways, Bryan showed me where he is at on that project and we made a few decisions on look and feel, flow, and direction.

I had a small phone call with Dave Forbis and talked about some project management stuff. We might be circling back around on some things.

After that, I went back in and recorded some notes from the day. As a side note, I'm really grateful for our team. They are all pushing on things and it is helping to get things done, where Steve and I by ourselves, couldn't have accomplished as much. I'm excited about that.

Met with the Bear 100 mile race - data team. We went over their custom interface and went page by page as a refresher course. We covered bulk start options, DNS (did not start), DNF (did not finish), exports to CSV, manual entries, CSV uploads (runner data from the field), reports, stats, finish line stuff, etc. Great meeting and we had 5 data team members and both Alan and I from adilas. During the meeting they made a couple of requests... I have a few small tweaks to make for this year and we're off to the races. The race will be this coming Friday and Saturday (9/28/18 and 9/29/18).

On the morning meeting with the guys. Steve, Josh, and Dustin were tracking down some of the new Metrc API stuff (killing plants and disposing of product). Alan came on and gave us a demo of what he is working on for the new invoice homepage. It will have some graphics, charts, and limited data being returned. Mostly some sums, historical data, and say the last 10 to 25 real transactions (for example, the last 10 invoices, the last 10 PO's, the last 10 expense/receipts, etc.). Great demo.

I was working on a runner upload for the Bear 100 mile runners. They will be using adilas this weekend to track their 100 mile race. Alan went back to working on his charts and graphs and Steve, Dustin, and Josh were working on syncing data between different systems.

We ended up having a really good conversation about dates, times, spans, buffers, logic stacking, data threads, and helping to do clean-ups. A lot of the conversation was dealing with how to sync up multiple servers (even potentially servers owned by different companies and/or systems) and how dates and times are pulled. Very interesting how things come back to time and how you sometimes have to either buffer and/or take spans into account. Time feels very solid and static, the problem becomes just like a line in the sand... if the record is on one side or the other, no problem. The problem comes in when it spans and/or plays through a given area (like a line in the sand). That gets tricky and the computer code or query has to be either flexible or somehow incorporate the span and/or buffer. Interesting how it kinda gets into adding in flexibility into a rigid or super tight system.

It reminds me of how we have seen this over and over again, how the system needs to flex and allow for bubbles and/or areas (virtual pods) where things can flex and then it comes back together at a future point and/or checkpoint. Here is an older entry with tons of good info (10/14/2014).

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=2894

Eric and I were working on special tracking accounts. He was wanting to know how to create a master list and then have all servers play accordingly. I showed him how we currently use the copy tables and update tables function from the data 0 box to all other serves, including local development boxes. That got him thinking and excited about possibilities.

After that, we went back and started building from where we were yesterday. We are way up high on the add/edit special accounts page (master or universe level for things like loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, punch cards, etc.). We finished up the day by having a simple add/edit form, a results page, and an action page. Eric has done tons of custom code inside of adilas. Having said that, most times, he has been tweaking what already exists. This project is a good one for him, because he is building from the ground up. He is chewing it up by leaps and bounds. Really cool.

Spent some time updating the custom pages for the Bear 100 mile race. Changed race dates, added new sorting options, and worked on some JavaScript for the public runner portal section where friends and family post comments, encouragement, and photos. Kind of a mini social media section for the runners. Trying to make the experience more straightforward. Uploaded and tested some of the new pieces.

Making a number of new tweaks to the Bear 100 runner portal (social media piece for the 100 mile race). Added two new fun reports. One is for the runner support comments (family and friends who chime in for their runner) and a new general photo gallery (trying to have the people push up more photos). I also added in a sort order to the internal image/scan report. It can now go newest photos/scans first or oldest first. Here is the link to the Bear 100 runner portal. It is outside of the secured environment and is viewable by the public.

https://data0.adilas.biz/bear100/index.cfm

Good talks about bulk tools vs single tools. We always start with a single tool (doing things one-by-one) and build to a many and/or multi tool. The guys were also talking quite a bit about global settings, corp-wide settings, etc. They also were talking about how cause and effect play into the system and once we create and/or fix something, it almost always opens up the next question and/or idea. That is fun, but it can have teeth.

Lots of talks about basic and/or generic tools or being fully compliant for compliant reasons. We want to stay on the basic and general tool level. The user needs to hold the responsibility for real and full compliance (who holds the real liability). That ended up bringing up a discussion on settings and permissions. We are seeing global settings, corp-wide settings, group settings (12 main player groups), user settings, and lots of new page settings and/or corp-wide settings per page or section. We also talked briefly about where the settings would be (visual and location wise) and how to help distribute and show those options.

I was building out some new code to show that image/scans and other media/content files were being uploaded when submitted. Pushed up a number of files.

Alan showed me a deeper demo of his graphs and charts and being able to flip flop the charts between monthly, yearly, quarterly, daily, etc. Pretty cool. We also talked about moving the existing sub homepages (invoice homepage, PO homepage, deposit homepage, expense/receipt homepage) to new pages and renaming it as basic searches (as apposed to advanced searches). That way we still have access to those pages and their search functionality and display options. Good stuff.

Josh gave Steve and I a quick demo on his GPS stuff and how he is able to track multiple drivers based on elements of time. He is using the time sub GPS/RFID tag tracking fields that already exist. Pretty cool. And, he has developed this fairly quickly based off of existing adilas pieces, Google maps, and some of his own custom JavaScript. I also showed Josh what Calvin had done on his GPS stuff back in September of 2015. Here is a link to the Calvin stuff (done back in 2015).

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=1061

Started working on a news and updates page for the Bear 100 mile race. The race is tomorrow and I wanted some of the adilas users to pop in and see what was going on. Just for fun.

Bryan and I got on a GoToMeeting session. We were looking into the code that Bryan is writing for the adilas user group. It allows for people in the user group to vote and rank projects so that we get a feeling from the group on what is most important. We spent the whole time going over some of the code and making some decisions. We re-wrote some of the logic and made it more efficient. We are using elements of time, flex grid, and counting votes and ranking numbers on the fly. Pretty cool.