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Adilas.biz Developer's Notebook Report - 5/1/2023 to 5/11/2023 - (37)
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Time Id | Color | Title/Caption | Start Date | Notes | |
| Shop 10133 |
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Brandon, Kelly and Cory discuss sub reporting | 5/11/2023 |
Zoom meeting with Cory, Steve, and Kelly. We were talking about sub inventory. Subs are great but do require more work and effort. Getting info in, out, reporting, and bulk updates and bulk tools. When we started, we didn't even know what was needed. As things unroll and unfold, we are beginning to see a bigger picture. That is awesome! We have mountains and mountains of data. Now what? As the meeting progresses, we spent some time talking about the challenges to sub inventory. Here are some of my notes: - Sub inventory attributes and being category specific - Settings all over the place - configuration - What about changes, updates, and flipping categories (after the fact)? - Possible mapping of categories, sub attributes, etc. Talking about mapping by id numbers and not names or column numbers. - We need a sub inventory history section. Tables are already built, but they have not been tied in. - Some of our clients want so much control - Sub attributes, parent attributes, flex attributes, flex grid tie-ins, and other different levels or layers - Master list of sub attributes and then repurpose those per category. This could be tied in with the mapping options listed up higher. Either start from the top (master list) and go down (what sub attributes are needed per category) or list out each attribute per category (current model) and then tie and/or map them back to a master type list. We may have to go in both directions. Just some thoughts. - Kelly likes how parent attributes can be bridged over categories. Having said that, we need to be able to search by sub attributes, parent attributes, and flex attributes. - Certain clients want to pull data without the category specific reliance. Basically, once we catch the data, we have to be able to let it be searched, pulled, filtered, shown, and exported. It's all part of the puzzle. Being able to get at and use the data. That's a huge key. Just being silly - ADILAS - all data is live and searchable - Maybe upping the permission level to add/edit sub inventory or sub inventory templates or sub attributes. Once again, we need some histories of who is doing what in the system. - Steve was talking about - 1. Capturing the data. 2. Then being able to get it back out (in any form - CSV, Excel, PDF, printable, web). and 3. Being able to play in bulk and deal with automation options. Those are some of the goals (small summary). - We have people who are wanting to add certain sub attributes on the fly, as part of a sub process or sub phase. This gets into sub locations, sub phases, and sub processes and/or steps. Currently, we only show the subs at certain steps and make them go back to certain places to add/edit or update that data. There is a lot of manual work involved. How cool would it be if we could help them and let them setup their own processes, phases, and sub processes. Mini concepts of the data assembly line. - There is a need for bulk update tools, easy flow processes, and being able to setup their own data flow based off of the subs or steps within a process. - The use of templates to help control other actions, defaults, rules, and assignments. Having that example and/or template really helps answer a number of questions. - We went back to the main need of being able to pull data out of the system (quickly and easily) - all data is live and searchable - We really need this and keep going with what we already have. - Kelly and Steve working on advanced reporting and moving beyond a band-aid. What about going back and correcting the plumbing from the get go. Planning for the future. - Need for more controls, handrails, and ability to scale. - Build and break, build and break. Well, it's time to fix it again! it's breaking! - What if we re-imagined it??? What would it look like? What things do we need to consider if we were to rebuild this out? - Kelly was recommending that we get into a real life system to see the challenges. We made some plans to meet with Kelly again see the tools that she uses, how she uses them, and what is still lacking and/or needed. /////////////////// This is more for me, but what are the next steps in the planning process for new phases, data assembly line stuff, and where do we want this to go? Help lead and guide it! Keep pushing for more bulk tools, bulk options, and bulk tools to add, edit, update, change, pull data in, pull data out, etc. We can do a bunch of things on a one-by-one basis, let's keep pushing that to the next level. Yee haw! |
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| Shop 10082 |
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Adilas Time | 5/11/2023 |
Sean and I talking about a big demo that he and the team did yesterday. The other company is doing a huge mashup, with all kinds of different system all mixed together. That is super common, these days. Inventory tracking in one system, ecommerce in another, loyalty points in another, financials in another, etc., etc., you get the idea. We are trying to do all of that from one system. We like that. We switched over and added in a sandbox merchant processing option to one of the demo sites for Sean. He had requested that. Steve joined and they, he and Sean, were talking about finding the sweet spot and how to help companies (that want to be helped). He and Sean were talking about SG&A costs and where that is headed. After that, the topic switched again. This time it went over to social media, training, pod casts, videos, and piece work. We talked about training manuals, SOP's (standard operating procedures), and the progression of things. At some point, we would love to help show people the game of business and then let them play it (the game of business). More talk about pod casts, social media posts, and steps to success. Spending time to help and support our clients. That is big for us. We talked about finding companies that want more and more of their wants and needs. They are willing to put some money and funding into the system. We love that! There was talk about getting referrals from our current clients. As a side note, we are seeing a number of clients and/or potential clients doing their own stuff on spreadsheets. That is a great tool but at some point, will breakdown. It is one of the tools that we use, but not the end all. We also talked about how eventually, everybody needs some custom stuff. We just need to figure out how to get in front of the right people. Once the other guys left, just John and I were left on the meeting. We spent some time going over code and new page views. |
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| Shop 10144 |
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Research | 5/10/2023 |
Light research on a possible disconnect between transactional dates (effectual dates or when it shows up for roll call) and historical dates (when it really happened). Sent an email to Eric with some questions. Listed the issue on the known issues page. This is a running list of things that we know that we need to watch out for. At some point, we'll have to fix all of those things, but at least we are recording what we know and are learning. That's part of the game. |
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| Shop 10134 |
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check code | 5/10/2023 |
Working with Bryan on new time settings and a sub view of the horizontal time view (for subs of time). Merged in some code for him dealing with a show/hide button/link on an interface page. |
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| Shop 10143 |
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Research | 5/10/2023 |
Checking on auto dates for loyalty points and gift cards. Didn't fix it but thought that I found something. I'll have to circle back around. The problem was dealing with an adjusted date/time or the actual transaction date (especially if back dating an invoice). We need those two dates for different things and processes. It looked like some of the code was using the adjusted date/time for both the effectual (when should it show up) and the historical date (when did it happen). They are different. |
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| Shop 10123 |
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Brandon troubleshooting | 5/10/2023 |
Cory and I going over projects and assignments. Sub inventory reporting and getting into system wide aggregates. We also spent some time talking about supporting our team members. |
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| Shop 10096 |
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Adilas Time | 5/10/2023 |
Fixing small issues with SG&A costs with Sean. They had setup a system and started running things. They were a little bit too deep and we had to back some things out (going from child inventory to parent inventory - going upstream a bit). Sean and I were working on some back dating of invoices. He was trying to get a balance sheet in order and up to date for a demo. We found a small error, if doing some back dating and got it fixed. Lots of backend database work to get things cleaned up. We found an issue with both loyalty points and gift cards. If the invoice date was the same as today's date, no problem. If the invoice was back dated, it went through the cart ok but the dates that got stamped were the adjusted date/time stamps based on the user's time zone offset. What we really need is the transaction date to be applied to those invoice payments and any auto clean-up processes behind the scenes. We'll get it all figured out. The way was found it was on purpose doing tons of back dating and then immediately checking the financials and backend accounting reports and records. Good stuff. |
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| Shop 10125 |
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Recording Notes | 5/9/2023 |
Paying credit card bills for domain name renewal, bit bucket code repository fees, new merchant processing integration packets, and web hosting stuff. Recording notes from the past few days and some from last week. Recording notes from 5/3/23 to 5/9/23. |
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| Shop 10105 |
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Server Meeting | 5/9/2023 |
On the server meeting with Wayne, John, Cory, and myself. Sean and Eric popped in for a bit as well. We were talking about email servers, merging in code, and making plans for pushing up new pages. Eric joined and Wayne merged in his code for the global item catalog - enterprise stuff. Once that happened, I pulled the branch down on my local box and was clicking around to see if there were any errors. Looked good. Small code merge for Dustin. Then working with Wayne on his ColdBox framework stuff. We talked about users, payees, vendors, multiple corps, and memory and session management stuff. Small Q&A with Wayne and John about the framework, plans, and how we will handle certain pieces of the puzzle. Light plans for the future (wish list stuff). After that, John and I spent a little bit of time talking about internal education and training for our developers. Phone call with Shari O. touching base on budgets, tech support questions, and a new project for a client. The client has reached out to both Shari O. and Cory - trying to double dip and push their project through. |
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| Shop 10094 |
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Adilas Time | 5/9/2023 |
I had a dentist appointment, so I jumped on late. Cory and Sean were touching base when I joined. Cory had me look at a report that was needing a little bit of loving. We spent the whole time looking over code and seeing what was going on. We found a couple of things that were questionable. Most likely, we'll have the developer who built that report look back at it. |
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| Shop 10124 |
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Progress Meeting | 5/8/2023 |
Meeting with Hamid (adilas intern) to go over his progress. He is almost done with the billboard site for the "Business Zipper" site. A billboard is basically a site that points people to another place (like to adilas.biz from the business zipper site). Anyways, he had a lot more content this time and it's looking good. This is just a fun starter project. We chatted and made some plans to get the full version up and live. I'll wait until he hands me off the files and then we go from there to review it, push it up, and have it go live. Making progress. |
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| Shop 10127 |
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General | 5/8/2023 |
Phone call with a guy who is an investor about options to buy a percentage of adilas. Briefly talked numbers and such. Fixing a small black box code page (custom code) for a client. Emails, text messages, and a quick phone call with John to talk about a server. |
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| Shop 10126 |
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Tech support | 5/8/2023 |
Helping to look-up some custom code for a client. They wanted a new feature, but we had built them a black box page (custom code) back in the day. We ended up having to remove the custom code so that it would flow back into the normal page and code path. |
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| Shop 10076 |
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Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates | 5/8/2023 |
Cory joined the meeting. She, Steve, and Sean were going over a few different projects. They were talking about combined PDF's (previous uploaded docs per item, per sub, or per PO) to generate delivery manifests and what not. They were talking about all kinds of stuff for an upcoming demo in the next couple of days. After those other guys left, Cory and I went over projects and did some project management stuff. We went over some cross corp mappings for a client. We removed a few mapped items (just the mapping) so that they could redo a small portion. We got onto the server and looked around by pulling queries on the database. We modified three small records and that should be enough to let them redo the section that they want to do. Next, we started talking about a new project to allow customers to have vehicles added and assigned to them on a one-to-many basis. We have a machanic shop that really needs this and we can see some other applications down the road. We went over what it would take to set this up, build it, script it, add pages, add logic, and general data flow. We also need this info to be available in the shopping cart and show up on invoices and quotes, as needed. We talked about settings and other pieces that would be required. I thought that it was a fun session. We will treat this new assign vehicles to a customer similar to how we allow for additional customers to be assigned to other customers, invoices, and quotes. We may use that existing functionality as a handrail or guide for where and how this new assign vehicle relationship will show up and function. I can't tell you how important some of these existing handrails are to our developers. Once they latch onto what the older stuff does, they can virtually back track and/or trace the routes and make the modifications to do the next pieces. Good stuff. We did some other quotes and estimates. After that we jumped over to ecommerce and were looking at the show subs and sell subs settings. Lots of AJAX (asynchronous javascript and xml) and cascading and looking up choices (manipulating the page on the fly based on a prior selection without a page refresh - one-pager stuff). Lastly, we talked about some other projects that just aren't ready yet (to even get started on). Some of them have to almost simmer for bit before we really know which way to jump and what to do. If you force it (jump before the picture or vision is clear), you may not get what you really want. It can be painful (to wait or put things off), but some of our best stuff has developed slowly over time (simmering) and we've taken small steps along the way that allow for the next step or phase to happen. Nobody can jump from A-Z, however, if we keep taking the next logical steps, it gets easier and closer to making that jump. |
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| Shop 10081 |
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Adilas Time | 5/8/2023 |
Steve and I going over SG&A costs and maybe using expenses vs PO's. Going over some of the ideas that Sean had the other day (see element of time # 10085). Sean ended up joining the meeting and then he and Steve were talking about ideas. We keep taking the next logical step and getting closer and closer to the goal. That's about the only way that you can do it, keep taking the next logical step and advancing the ball. As the guys were talking, it was clear that operations need to lead the accounting - almost every time, if not every time. Otherwise, it gets all messed up. Steve was talking to Sean about accounting principles and how we then to simulate or emulate those pieces or procedures. We use different means, but the principles are still the same. It really is a form of inventing, prototyping, and experimenting. I kinda like it. While the guys were talking and going over things, I was looking over emails in the background. This is for me, but yesterday I was reviewing my notes from a gospel related conference session. These little words stuck out to me - "Begin again...". I can think of all kinds of ways to apply that. If something isn't just right, keep tweaking it. Refine it, make it better, constant improvement. If it totally fails, just begin again. What did you learn, what could you do differently, etc.? Instead of feeling stuck with whatever you've got, you could just begin again. I realize that doesn't apply to everyone and everything, but those words gave me courage to get in there and see what I could do to alter things (whatever things that I need to - personally, business wise, physically, or even spiritually). We are free to choose how we will act and respond. Good stuff! |
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| Shop 10132 |
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Recording Notes | 5/5/2023 |
Recording notes both in the shop and inside of adilas. Spent lots of time doing notes for 5/2/23. Lots of good meetings. Slowing making progress. |
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| Shop 10116 |
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check code | 5/4/2023 |
Meeting with Bryan to go over progress on the time settings. We did some work on setting up the new time template and what settings to set. Spent some time playing with the setting defaults and figuring out how to auto add or sub control the templates. Basically, we deny the users the ability to update these special time templates. However, we need some of their input in order to make it flexible enough to solve their needs but not full control (that would be too hard to code to for this specific usage scenario). How we are doing this is denying them usage of the main add/edit tools that we use to add or update normal time templates (too flexible). We then put some values or show them a smaller (paired down form) in the settings page. They interact there (with a super limited number of fields) and we pull the rest of the data over and stamp it where needed. In that way, they feel like they have some control over the output but really it is a super limited view of all of the options. It ends up being an internal one-off to control key pieces and not let the user have full reign and freedom over which things to choose. That could screw up our code or make it harder to do a certain task. |
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| Shop 10131 |
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Research | 5/4/2023 |
Research on companies that invest and/or acquire software companies. We have a SaaS (software as a service) type model and just looking at options. We don't really want to sell but we do want to raise some capital to help push this thing to the next level. Checking out some of our options. |
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| Shop 10085 |
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Adilas Time | 5/4/2023 |
Great morning meeting. Eric and Sean started out and were touching base and coordinating on a big demo and a big feature release. They were planning release times, testing times, and fall back plans if needed. I thought that it was really good. They were also talking about different servers and plans per server, based on the demo and the extra functionality. For the demo, they may script it and use an outline (direct links) and/or screenshots of the two different pieces, in case we don't get everything all merged together before the demo. Sean and I switched gears and were talking about SG&A costs and using expense/receipts (E/R's) vs PO's and capitalized inventory. Sean kept waking up last night and wrote down a number of ideas on a Word document (see attached). We went over the Word doc and drew pictures, made notes, and talked about options. It was just Sean and I, but we beat it up pretty good. See attached for some of the notes. Here are a few of the notes, beyond what Sean had pitched (once again, see attached). - E/R's is where it all starts. Maybe just keep it there vs going clear out to PO and capitalized inventory levels. - E/R's already have a normal date and a due date. The difference between the two is already a built in date range - how long to track the life cycle of each E/R. - In Sean's notes, he was talking about to the exact minute, second, etc. We will be sticking with a daily value to keep it more simple. Most likely, it will be scheduled at a certain time so that we get consistent results, it can handle weekends, holidays, and becomes a built-in procedure. - I liked his idea of flagging each SG&A vendor with a special flag. That will help us treat expenses from that vendor in a different way. - If we run it through the E/R side of things, it will be very minimal effort and input from the user. Most of it will be done and distributed behind the scenes. - Inventory still in place, keeps get hanger costs. Once it sales, that hanger cost stops and it gets recorded. Otherwise, it is sort of in a state of flux. - If we get to the tightest level that we are thinking, it will add value for owners and managers to see what it costs over time to keep bigger on hand inventories. Being able to see past what is on the shelf and what that costs. Pros and cons to different inventory stocking models. - If we hang (add hanger costs) to an E/R, we could reference (key word reference) the PO, invoice, item, sub item (sub inventory), etc. It doesn't add any weight to the current flow, it would just be a reference to those other pieces and/or items. ////////// After Sean left, John and I were talking about some server stuff. I mentioned to John about getting him a higher percentage of adilas (as a co-owner) than what he currently has. He's playing an important role and doing server stuff, backend code, as well as frontend design stuff. I think that he is doing a good job. We will just keep refining things and playing well with others. We ended up talking about servers, moving hardware to a new section within the Hostek environment. We also talked about internal developer training that is coming up, subjects, topics, and ideas. We really want the developers to virtually own or have ownership of and for their projects. |
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| Shop 10129 |
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Recording Notes | 5/3/2023 |
Recording notes. The computers (our servers) were down, so I just typed out notes on my local box. I was working on notes for a bunch of days. See the notes for 4/26/23 to 5/2/23. |
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| Shop 10115 |
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Meeting with Mike | 5/3/2023 |
I was a little bit late, but jumped on a Zoom meeting. It was a demo prep meeting with Mike Roundtree and his crew. Their plan is to do a quick demo, get in and get out. Almost a brochure level demo. It sounds great. Mike was marshalling the troops and getting a plan in place. They are working on a small demo outline. After the meeting, Sean and I got on the GoToMeeting account and did a small little follow-up meeting. I helped Sean setup the SG&A parent items for the demo site. We also looked at some small errors on the enterprise system side of the fence that he was getting for enterprise vendors and copying vendors down from enterprise to transactional corps. |
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| Shop 10130 |
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Piece Work | 5/3/2023 |
Got a call from Harry, my dad's friend. He was watching videos on how to make Facebook work for you. We have so much content, no one knows about it. Harry was pitching an idea of doing piece work for dollars (based on content, posts, videos, images, etc.). The whole thing was reusing what we already have. If we could get the right person, and pay them a piece work fee or rate, we could push out soooo much good content. It just needs the right person to virtually recycle that content and push it out in the correct channels and spots. Great idea from Harry! |
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| Shop 10114 |
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planning | 5/3/2023 |
Meeting with Bryan. Talking about rentals and what the next steps are? What options are available? We also spent some time talking about the horizontal sub time view page. We have a page that shows the parents or main elements of time in a horizontal time view. We were talking about options for showing subs of time in the same type of a view. There is functionality already built in but we want to beef it up and make it even easier. Spent some time talking about other options for making rentals more visible and easier to use. Maybe even some custom buttons, pages, views, and/or pre-build bulk forms. Lots of good ideas. |
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| Shop 10128 |
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Phone call with Cory | 5/3/2023 |
Phone call with Cory to go over plans and logistics. Emails, checking on the Herbo server, texts and emails, and working on a database update for Eric - pulling out a dependency in the code. |
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| Shop 10084 |
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Adilas Time | 5/3/2023 |
John and I touching base on a big code launch and the responsibilities of each developer to see it through. We've had a few of the guys basically dump it on us and say, get it up and running and feel free to debug it if necessary. We don't like that. No one would like that. Anyways, we spent 45 minutes talking about best practices and how to help our guys follow those best practices. Sometimes we have a limited launch window as some of our clients are 24/7 system users. That makes it tough. Our best window seems to be between 12 am and 4 am. We talked about the need for documentation to help others on the path. There is also a need for a slightly more rigid corporate structure. We are pretty loosie-goosy. Another thing that we would like is to automate some of the database updates. We also need to beef up some of the communication channels and figure out and address any of the communication breakdowns. As we were talking, we decided that partial is sometimes better than nothing. We'll keep working at it. |
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| Shop 10122 |
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Meeting with Aspen | 5/2/2023 |
Meeting with Aspen and going over her world building presentation and progress. She is working on scripting a presentation and then matching her slides up with her script. Also got her a check for the work that she has been doing. |
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| Shop 10109 |
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Kelly, Brandon and Cory talk about high level report settings | 5/2/2023 |
Zoom meeting with Cory and Kelly. The whole thing was dealing with inventory reporting and an advanced report builder concepts. Kelly wants to throw-out a wider net and see what we can catch. Instead of going super deep to financials, she wants us just to focus on the invoices and PO's. Basically, an inventory and CRM (customer relationship management) mix. Leave the accounting alone right now (for these reports). Just help our clients get their data in and out quickly. Basically, it's operations stuff. One of the goals is to show, teach, and allow our clients to use a mix of vendors, customers, invoices, PO's, inventory items, sub inventory, parent attributes, and location information as needed. All of these things interact on both the sales and customer relationship (CRM) levels. Here are some my notes from the meeting: - Talking about building a report building engine. This deals with groupings, filters, show/hide columns, sort orders, etc. - Kelly was talking about getting to the meta data of the database data (going deeper). What is related, how does it work, what can I get out of it - including mixing things that a company and/or individual is looking for? Even things that we can't think of and/or thing about. Extracting those data analytics and details out of the system. Lots of value there. - Be able to export to CSV, PDF, and web formats (normal HTML or data tables). - Ideas about display options - Nested groupings, even pulling and storing data in temp tables, data dumps, and then querying that data. ETL - extract, transform, and load - manipulate the data however we need to. Leave the raw data alone, just tweak out other pieces or tables. - Show all of the tables and their fields. Preset a few things so that the defaults are showing (not everything is checked by default). - Use the data tables, be able to save the reports, see new reports from the saved favorites, all kinds of advanced report building options. - Put this new advanced report builder engine under its own new permission. - Thinking about vertical tabs (for a layout view). The tables or basic system players would be the left most side (left vertical tabs), the right side would show other settings per table. For example: Say the tabs down the left were things like vendors, customers, invoices, PO's, parts/items, etc. Then when you click on the different tabs, it would show which fields belong to what table (on the top of the page) and then the filters and grouping options would be below that. When you are done, you click to view the report. You could also save a new report name, set the sorting or sort order, and who can see it (assigned to who or just a assigned to all option). - Help educate the users on the database structure. This could be a great side agenda item for this advanced report builder engine. - Kelly was asking - Is this new advanced report builder a value add-on? How do we monetize it? We decided that for now, we'll just roll it in and try to sell it as a feature of the whole or bigger picture. - We talked about sub inventory attribute mappings and creating groups (things or attributes that can cross over categories). This is a form of layering for the sub attributes. Basically, each item category can have any number of sub attributes. We then go in and allow a user to setup groups or which sub attributes are buddies or tied to other sub attributes in different item categories. Making small or mini family groups for the sub attributes. Just an idea to help with reporting and consistency. - We won't build this in yet, but we have to think about things on an enterprise level. If we build this advanced report builder engine on the corporation or basic world level (where we need to start), it won't be long and some of our bigger multiple world level clients will want an enterprise level solution for the advanced report builder engine. We know that is coming! - Along with the enterprise level, we know that some of our clients really want the business intelligence (BI) level of reporting and aggregation. It's a known need. That's a whole other plan and topic. - There may be versions and phases of this report builder engine. - I was asking about big reports and possible timeout issues. We may need to show sample data and then build out the bigger (in needed) reports and then let our clients know that they are done or finished. Some of these reports could potentially be millions and millions of records. As a note, I know that Wayne was working on something similar to this a few months back. I'll check with him on ideas for timing, flow, and notifications. - We may want to build in options for details (default level) and/or aggregates groups, sums, counts, etc. - If you are wanting to get more money from people, it really helps if the people that you are dealing with want the same things (that you want). It creates a common want and need. - In a nutshell, this project would be mixing and blending all (maybe not all) of our existing advanced search features into one bigger master report builder. Because this project could get so big, we may end up playing around and building a mini version and/or a prototype of sorts. - We talked about timelines and even ways of distracting our clients to buy some time. All of this takes time and resources to plan, build, and deploy. - As an addition - it would be really cool if we had some presets (pre-maid selections and choices) to help people get started. That would make the building process simpler. We could show some defaults and then let them modify that vs building from scratch every time. This idea came from Aspen (my daughter) who was listening to the meeting while working on other stuff. |
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| Shop 10121 |
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General | 5/2/2023 |
Looking into running a database update for Eric to help prep for a new feature roll out. Looked into it, couldn't do it because there were too many dependencies. We would have to rework it a bit. Emails back and forth. |
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| Shop 10113 |
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Meeting with Mike | 5/2/2023 |
Meeting with Mike Roundtree on SG&A costs. He's pushing hard to prep for an upcoming demo. He wants it all done and ready to roll out. Took a few notes. He is really wanting to pitch and sell some of these things. After the meeting with Mike, I jumped on a phone call with Steve touching base on a number of different pieces and projects. Talking about funding, options, and plans. This thing is constantly moving. It's kinda like running a race everyday. It's hard to keep up with it. Here are some of my notes from meeting with Mike: - He really wants to tie in the time portion of that formula. Things gain COGS over time. It's the carrying cost that matters. - On the P&L – Mike doesn't really want to see the SG&A on the P&L. He wants it included on the actual cost so that it appears all together. He doesn't want it separately stated. It has to be included. - How can I increase the cost without effecting the quantity of the units themselves? - Mike would like to roll out the buckets per day - Assembly (grouping over time). Aging and costing. - Mike is trying to get a big demo up and ready. Lots of different pieces that he is wanting to show. Payroll, forms, unitization, SG&A, loyalty points, P&L, ecommerce, message marketing, SMS & texting (not all the way done yet), delivery, manifests and paperwork, full Metrc integration stuff, etc. o He wants a 10,000 foot view o Just a sandbox o Showing a few transactions - Sean is prepping stuff for the demo. o Sean – I would recommend that we use some of the pre-built Colorado stuff. We can add the California stuff later – but the CO stuff works right now. - We can do all kinds of paperwork stuff - Menu boards – we have some simple solutions – they are going to want a more glorified version - Numerous backdoors to the ecommerce ordering system – queues, fulfillment, and the rest of the process. |
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| Shop 10104 |
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Server Meeting | 5/2/2023 |
Server meeting with Wayne, John, and Cory. We started out by talking about code that just sits on the shelf. We've got to get things finished up and pushed forward. We have to make some global changes and then make sure everybody knows about it. One of our goals is standardizing things across the board. We were also planning which branches are going live and who is on call for changes that are needed. We have a big product upgrade coming out over the next couple of days. The big push is getting the enterprise level item catalog live on all servers. Making plans and assignments. Wayne, John, and Shari O. had a meeting with Hostek. Good progress there. They were reporting about all kinds of stuff. We talked about disaster recovery stuff, plans, schedules, and contacts. It sounds like Hostek is going to try to work directly with our server admin team. We talked about new email servers, flip flopping branches around on the testing server, and figuring out plans for all of those pieces. We then spent some time talking about changes to the look and feel. Getting approvals and other people to test and sign-off on things. Trying to coordinate efforts. Eric joined the meeting to help us plan some stuff. As a side note, it is really hard to plan for every possible scenario. At some point, we need to move away from the classic theme (old look and feel). It is starting to cause issues because we still support it, but no new development is being done on that code set. It is also intermixing with other pages that are just on the new more modern snow owl theme (newer look and feel). It's causing more maintenance and larger pages due to keeping up with multiple sets of code (virtual supported versions). At some point, we would like to automate some of the database updates to get rid of any dependencies when deploying new code and new functionality. John had some questions and we chatted for a bit after the main meeting. |
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| Shop 10087 |
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Adilas Time | 5/2/2023 |
This got skipped today. Instead, most of us were on a meeting with Wayne going over some ideas and prototypes. |
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| Shop 10111 |
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Meeting with Wayne | 5/2/2023 |
Meeting with Wayne, Cory, Steve, and Shari O. over a Zoom meeting. Talking about Wayne wanting to retire by the end of the year. He was reporting on his research and plans with the ColdBox framework from Ortus Solutions. I took a bunch of notes... - Our development process – it's too difficult and hard to test - Be able to make a plan, set some goals, requirements, and then be able to hand that off to a developer - Unit testing - Our product is super complicated - Spaghetti code - Included files – they are all over the place - Knowing where to put things – tops, headers, body files, footers, etc. - Spend a bunch of time developing and then spend more time trying to get the code actually launched. - Our development process takes a long time and causes frustration to our team and our clients - Back to included files - Different processes – ways of using the page - Element is undefined in xyz scope – session, variables, FORM, URL, application, arguments - Things get lost - Paths – all kinds - ../, ../../, other paths – that creates problems in different pages that are included in different pages - Wayne talking about global variables and global listings - Setting up a standard framework and setting up standard practices - Even though our code is older, it has really gone a long way - Because of the way that it is coded, it makes it harder for progression and ways to hand it off - Steve wants to sell the cool-aid (our current product) - Triage – what needs our attention first? Life threating things first. - Steve was talking about some of the developers being lazy – kinda getting frustrated - Wayne is trying to solve some of those problems and/or issues – he wants to show us some concrete evidence and ways to solve things. - Some of our developers are up against the wall and doing the best that they can. - Wayne would like to make our code as simple as possible – guide or a recipe type level - Cory – to rewrite the entire adilas application – that would take years and years and thousands and thousands of dollars (millions – plural). - Cory – What about clients who want changes to their current system? - Steve – How does object-oriented programming play into this? MVC – model, view, controllers – classes, sub classes, view models, controllers - Wayne really thinks that he could crank out some major changes in a hard month - at least a good indicator or model - Tons of little maintenance stuff is already baked into the framework - In our current code, we have so much validation, permissions, and sub logic work – 75% of the whole thing is error handling and validation. - Cory – If Wayne leaves, what is the reliance on him and the framework? Wayne thinks that it will be even easier and work better – even for the long haul. - Wayne – Open-source projects and making the framework better – he has contributed already to the main code branch and has had some of his code accepted. - Steve – Can we do this little by little? Wayne – Sort of – It would be better to get it all done so that we are operating in a different environment. - Steve – What about docker? Wayne – We would use docker for the main ColdFusion stuff for the servers – Not tied to the current ColdBox framework. - Steve asking about the datasource project (bus to individual motorcycle). – Wayne was saying how we could do some work to eliminate the reliance on the primary key – Turn everything into combo keys vs the single primary key id. All of the tables could be intermixed with combo keys. - Steve – We may need to abandon some of the old ways of doing things - Wayne – Even our database structure needs to be updated and changed. It is built in the older style. Technology changes over time, speed, computing power, etc. - Steve – We need to be careful where we go, because changes do happen – all the time. Skate to where the puck should be. - More than one way to skin the cat – If it doesn't work, we could go a different direction. - Wayne wanted to get a fully working prototype done and finished up before he showed us what was available. - Wayne is starting on the payee level login as his first few pieces and pages. He wants to get it all ready and documented before we just jump. Wayne is still learning as well. - Cory is glad that we are talking about this – She would love to see our developers be more efficient and get stuff done. - Wayne – He feels this is something that has to happen. We need this as part of our solution. Looking forward, we almost don't have a choice. - Steve – Wayne, you are part of the ownership of this company – Let's make it good for everyone. He was encouraging Wayne to keep going and even setting up the next meeting to show us more. - Cory asked how Wayne found this framework stuff. Wayne explained how he found things. - Wayne did a small little dog and pony show on some of his code. Showing rules, routines, variables, and lists. - Steve and Cory – They both think that Wayne should keep going and bill as he does his work. We also want to make sure that John is up to speed. - This is a personal investment on Wayne's part – building the future of adilas. - Wayne has been using Toggl time tracking to keep track of his hours. - Just for fun – Wayne wants to get it done well enough that we want to write him a check… :) - Documentation on how you do things – Ortus books and live samples - Hoping to save money, keep our clients happy, and have a stable product. - Cory – you have to change to grow. Things that don't grow die. |
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| Shop 10120 |
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General | 5/1/2023 |
Emails and light tech support. Reviewing a small video showing SG&A costs that we did with Steve earlier today. Recording notes from 4/25/23. |
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| Shop 10112 |
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Planning with Bryan | 5/1/2023 |
Met back up with Bryan for a planning meeting. Going over horizontal time views (see EOT # 8004 and # 6967 for more info). Coming up with ideas for the any scheduler. Looking at ways to reuse concepts, functionality, and code from existing pages. Especially the horizontal time view page and the calendar view pages. |
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| Shop 10110 |
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planning | 5/1/2023 |
Bryan and I were merging and pushing up some new code. Small changes to some of the existing projects. Talking and planning the next steps for online scheduling, rentals, appointments, and showing things on the horizontal time view page. Briefly talked about other time settings (see EOT # 8004). |
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| Shop 9993 |
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Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates | 5/1/2023 |
Cory, Shari O., and I were talking about budgets, hours, and recording times, and notes. Small meeting about emails and our needs in that area. We have some email compacities but want to improve and refine those processes. We need a strong communication channel, auto emails sent out daily for collecting monies on accounts receivables, sending invoices, sending quotes, sending statements, etc. We also use emails tons out in ecommerce land to notify both customers and merchants about new sales. Making plans and moving forward on our email services. Sadly, our current solutions have been a small thorn in our side. We need to provide an enterprise level communication channel. Some of our bigger clients keep wanting more and more high-level enterprise functions and support. Along those same lines, we talked about new development and being able to copy users and permissions between corporations. Other demands keep coming and piling up. It's hard to keep up and make sure that everything is tight and fully functional. Sometimes we feel like ants trying to serve virtual data giants. |
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| Shop 10095 |
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Adilas Time | 5/1/2023 |
When I joined the meeting, John and Steve were talking about hours, work, documentation, and projects. After that, Steve and I jumped in and talked about SG&A costs. I showed him some of what I launched and how it works. We recorded two different sessions. Only the first one saved correctly. See attached. Shari O. and John were chatting about a meeting with Hostek that they had with the main admin server team. Sounded like some good stuff was discussed. |
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