Meeting with both Steve and Alan. Originally we were going to be discussing some ideas on company structure and where things are headed. We got a little bit sidetracked and ended up covering a number of other topics. These are some of the notes.

- We spent some time doing a general catch-up. It's been awhile since we have met as a group.

- Steve was talking about some of his friends that are teachers and have been forced to do online school (prison camp for the teachers). They, the teachers are being watched super closely. They, the teachers, almost feel like it's a prison camp type atmosphere (too tight).

- Advances in software

- Age of our kids, they are growing up

- Business, everyday wondering what you will do today and tomorrow

- Kelly has been pushing hard on us

- Master/slave relationship

- The squeeze - by clients, internal owners/users, and in general. We are feeling it!

- Analogy of a bug vs windshield - which one are we?

- How do we find our way forward? Plan and vision

- Super loose structure - our current plan is very loose

- Wild west thing - our current mode of operation - minimal rules, laws, expectations, or structure

- Getting spread thin

- Alan was talking about teams for projects but no one takes ownership

- Still dealing with teams, they didn't want to be left out but didn't want to really participate

- So much to do but the turnaround is so slow (how quick we can get the projects across the finish line)

- Frustrating/mental health

- Building and not finishing things

- MVP (minimal viable product) - Leaving stuff that is still flapping in the wind

- Whirlwind (bouncing all over)

- Discussions on funding and a centralized office

- Drift & culture

- Deadlines and nobody caring about it

- Why don't you care?

- Managers of Steve's stores - back in the Morning Start Automotive, Inc. days - They really kept things rocking and rolling

- Not taking any crap and rolling some heads if needed

- In the replacement business (people) - When you deal with employees, you tend to be in the replacement business (from past expierence)

- Reviewing peoples work and making sure that people are on task

- How big can you get before it implodes on itself? Experimenting...

- Managers and assistant managers

- Employees and workman's comp

- Payments, lawsuits, HR stuff, discrimination - more employee/employer stuff

- Filling in the gaps

- Start with a manager

- Manual of what your duties are - put it in writing

- Defining roles

- Part-time or variable working schedules

- Part-timer's may end up costing you money

- Scheduling and who is working when

- Missing the employee/manager piece

- Independent contractors and putting requirements on them

- We are all part owners but what does that mean?

- Alan had some questions like - Co-owners and having to pay to be paid? How does that work. Basically, we had to pay money to become a co-owner and then we get paid by the company for doing work. Just trying to figure things out.

- How does joint ownership work?

- Defining responsibilities

- Who wants that management position?

- We (humans) know right from wrong

- Too much oversight or pampering

- Learning curve

- Moving on

- You could always get someone better - or not - That's a variable

- We can't hire people that need help all the time

- Avoiding things

- We have all been trying really hard

- Good guy/bad guy and letting people go

- Fitting virtues to the jobs that they can do

- Efficiency

- 1 person can manage 5 or less people

- Are our people remote or local

- Going over some possible structure options

- Getting the managers setup

- Being able to crisscross over departments (some flexibility)

- Each department does their own R&D

- Able to switch things up (bring new life)

- We have so much stuff that our clients could use but we don't do the client retention stuff (letting them know about stuff like gift cards, loyalty points, new carts, etc.)

- Each department could use a programmer

- On purpose, rotate people around

- Bare bones - What do we need, right this minute?

Meeting with Steve. We started out talking about some projects for one of the developers and what is still hanging out there. Will is working on a three-page website, bi-directional messaging out in ecommerce, and a new specific ecommerce shopping cart.

We, Steve and I, went over some things that Shannon and I were talking about yesterday (1/16/24). We had some great back and forth pitching ideas and being pitched to. That was fun. Pros and cons, ideas, internal struggles, laws of business, etc. We know that most of our clients are looking for ways to be more efficient or looking for features that help them with efficiency.

We got into talking about how difficult sales are in real life. You have to jump through a lot of hoops.

This might sound silly, but we talked about how many times we have to have virtual little talks with ourselves - should I, yes, no, shouldn't I do this or that, yes, no, etc. It's not all cut and dry. We have to daily keep pushing the ball down the road.

As part of our conversation, we have decided that one of our biggest goals is to figure out our company structure and really make some plans there. That is huge, for us.

Towards the end of the meeting, Steve had some code questions. We got him figured out and going in the right direction. Good conversation and making progress. I think the fact that we are acknowledging that we need a bit more structure is huge for adilas. I'm excited to see where everything goes.

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

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

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

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

Got invited to a Zoom session with Sean, Marisa, and Steve. We looked into a small issue with the enterprise vendors and setting default chart of accounts. The chart of accounts are corp specific and don't transfer when copying over vendors from corp to corp (enterprise level stuff). I helped them fix it and got them going in the right direction. I sent an email off to Alan explaining what we found and some small suggestions.

Calling Newtek about USAePay options. I was on hold for quite a while and wasn't able to leave a message. Called back again and at least left a message. While I was on hold, I read an article that Steve passed me over dealing with guaranteed payments for partners and some of the gotchas in that realm. Lots of tax laws and moving pieces. We will definitely need some help from a CPA and an attorney, when we are ready.

- Steve and I were talking about options for percentages. Buy backs, selling, buying and selling within the company (percentages), approval processes, and other options.

- Some of our guys want x, we may only be able to provide y. This becomes a partial - on ownership and a partial on guaranteed payments (salary)

- We may need good 1099 options and good owner (percentage) options. We are really leaning toward the owner and percentage option. That would totally cut out 1099ers and employee. We would just have owners.

- If someone is brand new - they could go 1099 (have to check all the boxes) or we could gift them 1/10 of a percent and then set a buy back schedule for the first year. Say $100/month. 1=$100, 2=$200, 3=$300, etc. Up to a year. Once it passes a year, it has matured and will be real or have a real value (market value or valuation value). We give it to you for $0 and we are able to buy it back for $100/month of service up to one year.

- What about allowing people to buy more percentages - yes, no, maybe - values change but that might be an option. It may be a case-by-case basis.

- Adilas will get first right of refusal (buy back option).

- We are trying to focus our efforts going forward. Any water under the bridge is just that, water under the bridge. We are switching over to owners and a multi member LLC.

- Currently, we are not looking for any new places - job openings or new team members. Our only major need, right this minute, is on the sales side of things.

- Our guaranteed payments may need to be looked at and possibly altered on a monthly basis. Based on a budget. Time is money. We may want to write something like this into our by laws. We may need to look into options to figure out how to flex some of our guaranteed payments.

Meeting between Steve, Chuck, and I dealing with options for the multi member LLC or adilas trust. We started out and Steve was still on a call. I popped into my notes from yesterday and also showed Chuck a spreadsheet that I was messing with to calculate salaries and guaranteed payments. We ended up in a great discussion that covered a number of topics. We were drawing, doing scenarios, and throwing questions back and forth. Nice interchange between all of us. Fun stuff. Here are some my notes:

- Time and Money - resources and adequate compensation for effort or time.

- How are taxes going to work? What is the timing? What if one of our guys/gals already has a business, what happens there? Do we need to change things after we get this year's taxes done and/or could it be at any time?

- If owners and percentages, what about company loans or loans being pulled out by the individual members? Meaning, say Chuck or someone was trying to buy a house. They are required to get all profit and loss statements and any liens or outstanding items or other debts from the company. How do percentages play into that? Looking down the road a bit. Chuck just wants to make sure that any company debt (say on adilas' side) won't affect him and vice versa.

- Question from Chuck - Do write offs take place on the adilas entity (business) or on the other outside or sub-contractor level (their personal business)?

- Chuck and Steve were talking about flex time, vacation time, sick time, etc. Possibly treat this like a mini account of sorts (like loyalty points). We would need to track this and get weekly updates from our guys and gals. We could keep really good records as this would eventually be tied to a monitory value.

- Dealing with scheduling... we could potentially have our own little scheduling app that shows who is doing what and who is working and who is off. Coordinating schedules to improve communication and make sure that we have coverage.

- Steve was talking about levels of write offs for each level of person - employees basically don't get much, 1099 and sub-contractors get some, and owners potentially could get even more (based on by laws and requirements, in writing as terms or business procedure docs). As you go up the levels, the write off benefits get better and better.

- Light talks about retirement plans and continuing guaranteed payments even through retirement (semi or full).

- Steve wants to keep the team as small as possible and maximize the profits. He also wants to work on other perks and deductions.

- We are trying to setup a community type business model.

- Back to flex time and vacation time - the ideal would be about 14 days off of paid flex time or vacation time per year.

- What if someone is not performing? Tye could work to make it up, get fired, renegotiate contract hours, change goals, and reset expectations.

- If someone is really struggling and it is out of their control, there may be a level of mercy that needs to be extended.

- We talked about a possible cap on accumulated flex hours. We talked about a range of between 500 and 750. At a 30 hour work week, that is between 4-6 months worth of accumulated flex hours.

- We talked about death, retirement, and how certain scenarios would play out. That still needs some loving but in death, a spouce or other stated person could keep receiving payback until the flex hours were diminished or used. In retirement, the person would keep drawing until the flex hours were used up and then real retirement benefits would kick in. Basically, they could say that they are retiring, but official retirement wouldn't start until all of the flex hours were paid back (get them back down to 0 flex hours).

- Steve would like to look into other retirement options for key persons. In another meeting, we talked about extending certain values for 20 years after the death of a member or whatever. Still up in the air. We could also figure out what the value of the shares (percentages) are worth and then make a payoff or buy back plan that would serve as a form of payment. Basically, a way to sell the shares back to adilas, if they wish.

- Our model is built on a reoccurring revenue model.

- Trying to avoid the master/slave type relationship - they were talking tons about employer/employee type relationships - more of a community or family

- Possible bonuses based on profits

- Birthdays and extra flex time - just having fun

- We can write the rules - what do we want to do and/or have?

- There has to be accountability of each person

- Chuck and Steve were going over options - Say there was a sum of money - where would it go and/or how would it be distributed? Bonuses, perks, savings, nest egg, re-invest, improvements, maintenance, updates, tax liability coverage, etc.

- Ownership and potential are big motivating factors for us to make it work

- The ideal would be a 4-day work week or a smaller or below 40 hour work week.

- On tech support and other services, we may need to coordinate days off and make sure that we have sufficient coverage

- Huge team effort - communications - community effort

- We could automate some of the flex time processes and procedures - we are a software company - :)

- We could also use certain internal time clocks to help capture certain data points

- Concepts of the adilas trust and allowing things to continue onward and keep things going over time.

- Sufficient for our needs

- We have one of the best teams that we have ever had - keep a good core team

- On the application side, keep making things smoother, better, and taking less clicks to get things done.

- As part of the conversation, Chuck was offering some help on the management side of things. He has some untapped skills in management, project coordination, and general business skills.

- Steve was expressing some ideas of offering basic business seminars and helping people learn good skills in their business. We could use adilas as part of our demos and training events. Show what is a best practice and how it all works. This could be really fun. Almost more of a focus on concepts vs products - of course, we could use our product to show the concepts.

- Just a couple of ideas - after the meeting was over - if you get a percentage gifted to you, let say that you can't sell it for at least a year. This could be a holding or maturing type timeframe. Another idea is if you sell a percentage, adilas gets first dibs. If the sale of the percentages is extended to an outside party, adilas would like to have some say over that and also be able to issue a processing fee of $1,000 or more to resubmit percentages to the state and what not. Some sort of compensation for work that needs to be done in order to keep everything up to date and fully legal. If shares are being sold to multiple persons, maybe fees per person to help cover overhead, paperwork, and refiling with the state. Just some ideas.

Cory and Steve touching base on funding and projects. It got into a discussion between Steve and I on our current model and defining things more tightly. Basically, making some of the verbal discussions more official and permanent. This will help all parties involved. Cory and I will work on a plan and get it back to Steve for review. After that, Cory was going over questions and projects that she had on her list.

We really want to get the sales tax aggregate project launched and merged into master. Currently, it is somewhat in a stalemate on a separate branch right now. Cory texted Eric and he joined the meeting for a bit. Small conversations about some plans. The main holdup right now is how to deploy the new code on all servers and also on the developer testing environments? The new code requires some higher database level permissions and access grants. This gets into a conflict between automation and security. We don't want a super enabled database user on the system but we still need to get some things done.

Merged in some new labels for Danny, Cory, and a client. After that, we briefly talked with Steve and Cory about the gift cards and special accounts stuff. We are running into some bottlenecks and how to get around those pieces. Some deals with talent, code, and permissions.

John showed Steve some of the Jira boards and then talking about some of the current sprints and using/allocating the correct resources. As a side note, we are getting pressure from some of our 3rd party solutions to do upgrades and required maintenance. John was also expressing his opinions on some current processes and executive decisions. We talked a lot about extra costs and budgeting.

Wayne and John are really wanting us to move away from Adobe ColdFusion and Hostek (as the hosting company) and move towards Lucee (opensource ColdFusion engine) and AWS for hosting. That is still just talk, but on the radar. Just talking numbers, savings, and possibilities. Eventually it comes down to decisions and then communications to keep all of us on the same page.

Working with Shannon on some verbage and copy for the world building piece inside of the adilas core concepts and origins section. It's not finished yet, but here are some things that we are working on: See attached for the other parts of the story.

So, what is world building? And how does it relate to business software? We would like to answer this in three different ways. First, we would like to answer the question. Next, we would like to explain it a little bit further and give some examples. Lastly, we will try to explain how it has influenced our decisions and direction as a company.

1 - Answering the questions, what is world building and how does it relate to business software?

World building is the process of creating a unique environment for each business entity.

Often software tends to be built for one industry specifically. If you only have one industry, the whole package is built to support that business model, or world, and there is no need to diversify it. But what if the software package allowed you to diversify it to all kinds of business models and verticals. This allows you to customize the environment to meet your needs.

As you setup and create this unique environment you end up answering a number of questions. Some of these questions could be where are you located at? Does your business deal with time, products, services? Who are your customers? What do you call them? Members, clients, patients, students, etc. Basically, you are determining what you want your world to be like and what you want it to do. The Adilas system is flexible and able to handle all kind of choices and decisions. As you mix these together this is what creates the customized landing area for your data. As soon as you can start seeing that every single business is technically a different world - it starts making more sense.

2 - Explaining world building further and giving some analogies.

The author who introduced us to the concept of "World Building" was Brandon Mull, a New York Times bestselling author. He was giving a presentation for young writers and artists at a university and one of the co-founders and his children happened to attend the seminar. In his presentation on world building, he stressed 5 key components. They are characters, relationships, trouble, decisions, and consequences.

To further explain this concept here is a small analogy, or example, he gave as part of his presentation. A good science fiction author may come up with the concept of a flying car. But a really good science fiction author thinks at the level of world building. What are the causes and effects that occur with having a flying car? What is the technology that allows that? What are the traffic laws? What things keep it in check? What happens if there is a traffic jam? A wreck? How are they powered? How are they stored? How are they fixed? What are their speeds, capabilities? Are they armed? Etc., etc., etc.

Think of your favorite movie or book. What different things make up the environment that makes it unique and special? Some of the best books and movies are those that are able to create an environment that is so rich it almost feels like a real place you can be transported to and participate in.

These same concepts apply to the Adilas application. Imagine one of the richest environments you will ever use, ready to run standard out of the box, or customize it to meet your business needs. Think of custom naming conventions, toggle options on and off, settings, permissions, tons of tools and business functions at your disposal. The ability of the Adilas system to adapt to any business world is incredible! That is what Adilas has been created for.

To start your mind thinking along the lines of world building, here is a little exercise. Consider answering some of the following questions whether you are creating a world for storytelling, or creating a world for your business entity:

General World Building Questions

- Where is your world located?

- What special features does your world have?

- What does your world have an abundance of?

- What does it have a lack of?

- Who is on your world? Different civilizations? Friends? Enemies?

- How diversified are the civilizations, areas, or locations?

- What are the reasons they are separated or diversified?

- Who are the characters and the groups?

- How will they interact with each other?

- What kind of things are they trying to overcome or accomplish?

Okay, now let's transition into business world building questions:

- What do you call your business?

- What type of business do you have?

- Where is your business located?

- What is your company size? Mom and pop, small, medium, large, enterprise, custom?

- What do you call the people who work for you and work with you? Salesperson, staff, associate, team member, or whatever you may call them.

- Are you doing things alone or as part of a team, department, etc.?

- How many different locations do you have? What do you call those? Locations, stores, clinics, departments, jobs, facilities, or other?

- Who are the people that buy your services or products? Clients, customers, members, patients, students, etc.

- Do you sell labor, time, services, subscriptions, perishables, non-perishables, little items, big items, bulk items, serialized items, or custom?

- How do you distribute what you are selling? In-person, online, call-in, internal manufacturing, wholesale, delivery, etc.

- What are your pain points or challenges?

- Do you have certain processes or a special flow in your business world?

- Do you already have certain pieces in place and need another software to fill in the gaps? Do you need the whole package? Are you required to use certain software or applications?

- Do you have state, government, or industry requirements?

- Do you have paperwork, documents, forms, scans, contracts, or other files to capture and record?

- Thinking of data and reporting needs. What do you want? What do you need? What key data points are you interested in?

- What are some of your goals? Financial, physical, personal, etc.

Still working on content below this, but having fun... :)

Wayne, John, Cory, and I on a server meeting. We started out with going over some of the new processes for Emerald Fields and their custom roll-up database. Basically, they have showed us certain reports that they use and want to use for some of their analytics. We then build them some custom data extracts to populate new database tables with the correct data (basically a virtual roll-up type model). The roll-up takes daily transactions and pulls some other data (table joins) and logic to store the data in a very usable state. This process is called E.T.L. (extract, transform, and load). Basically, some custom aggregated data just for them. It is setup on a schedule and pulls data from date range and then adds or updates the transformed data as needed. The guys at Emerald Fields are then able to have full access to that custom (non live) database.

Cory had some questions about AWS (amazon web services) and what pieces we are building and using. She, Cory, and the others were also talking about adilas phones and some of the flow and logic there. There is some maintenance that is needed.

The value of maintenance and upkeeping code bases and features. We are striving to be proactive vs just fighting fires that are lit under us. Those things tend to get more of a priority (aka pain or need).

Wayne, John, Alan, and Brandon on a server type meeting. Talking about advanced API options, swagger docs, AWS (amazon web services), and other options. Leaning towards AWS options to allow for high functionality and high demand sites and API's. The talks even got into some costing models and other topics.

Wayne was proposing that we see what the primary functionality is and what is needed and then just do that first. Kinda like a trial run and a virtual prototype.

Steve joined us via phone call. Light discussions about traffic and load balancing. Talking about 10,000 instances and what would that take. Performance and reliability in those high traffic sites. Lots of unknowns and questions.

Alan was talking about separating transactional data and the reporting side of things. Figure out which areas need more flexibility and which areas need high availability (load and traffic). Clustering servers and what would that take?

Bring in more people or do an all hands on deck call for our current developers? Talking about options. We were also talking about documentation, questions, contracts, requirements, stats, matrixes, usage, scalability, etc. Still a lot of unknowns... more information will need to keep coming in for us to make better decisions. Another big question is how big do you want to be?

Question from Alan - What about supporting tons of other developers and their API coding languages? Also, are we talking about duplicating all of adilas or just a few specific API sockets and pushing all of the new traffic over there? It goes back to pain points and priorities.

There was also some talks about co-branding things and even creating different entities as needed. These are some of the other options that we are talking about.

Cory, Steve, and I on meeting to talk about aggregation and next steps. I reported in on a number of projects. We were doing some drawing and talking about sales tax aggregation, inventory counts and aggregation there, also sales data. We want to setup a process to do all of these sub processes. As part of the meeting, we were talking about how Eric has already done some of this kind of stuff for a client that he used to work with. We got him in on the meeting and pitched a small project his way. He will be making a small road map/plan and then presenting it back to us. Great little meeting.

After that, Steve and Eric bailed out and just Cory and I were on the meeting. We jumped into a project and doing some planning and documentation for the multiple location license project for the Texas 130U PDF and form. We finished up the doc and then moved on to some other projects. We are trying to stay ahead of the game and get some of these projects planned out so that our guys can get in there and jump on it without having to guess so much. That's why it is called project management. Yee haw!

Meeting with Craig and Steve to go over finances, bills, ideas, and direction. The meeting started out with just Craig and I. We went over a bunch of things and then Steve joined us later on. Craig brought a fun flavor to the meeting. Steve and I have hashed over some of these things so many times, we kinda get jaded or set in our ways. It was nice to have a fresh view and someone who would pose hard or uncomfortable questions. I really enjoyed the meeting.

All of the meeting notes are on Brandon's computer. Here is a small portion of them.

- We need to find the balance point - not running faster than we are able but still pushing it

- We have been spending some monies on certain projects - we really need to get a return. For example: Research on AWS (amazon), R&D for fracture, WanderWays, SEO

- Funding options -  The main 3 are: sales, borrow, investments

- Steve was saying, we have two main choices - steer towards deployment and fully funded projects - sell stuff or pull back and just do what we can - head back into smaller waters - slim down and tighter budgets. As a side note, we even talked about cause and effect if we were to actually gain from a small dip... lose some weight.

- Failure to launch - this is a problem if you never get off the launch pad.

- Picking our battles

- There is need for what we do

- Dealing with charging for our services - $65-100/hour

- Trying to sell a new car but it keeps having issues - makes it hard to sell - people are willing to pay more for certain products if they are reliable

- Fixing the servers - question: do we need more money or what to help make it better. On the positive side, people really use our products and they hit it hard, we really push the servers that we have. It's not like nobody uses it, the opposite is true - people throw everything that they have at them... we still need more.

- Maybe stop development - we need to sell things - harder done than said... - try to switch gears - cross training - maybe change the word or phase sales into networking... connecting the dots - get some more hunters out in the field - swap people around - focus on the deployment and setup process - focus on funded projects - on the dev side

- Being able to say "STOP"

- Learning when to put our foot down - limits and levels

- Selling the current 2021 model

- Switch who we are targeting - trailer dealers, bowling pro shops, etc. - sell what we have to offer

- It's just a $100/hour - managing expectations - sometime people want a perfect number or a nicely wrapped quote or project cost. It's just $100/hour. Otherwise, we lose our shorts.

- We get pulled off on tons of outside distractions - external distractions, custom projects, and outside 3rd party solutions

- The code is splitting - new school, old school, high tech, low tech, etc. scripts, tags, functions, includes, different styles

- Having a real game plan - we really need this - a full plan and then let everybody know about it

- Fracture is a real word - a life style - part of where we live and breath - keep heading in that direction. As far as we can see, things will keep fracturing. Plan on it and build accordingly.

- Like race car driving - we need a good driver, but maybe not the best driver, especially with an attitude, they may need to go

- You can always fill a spot... (even in management) - like a bucket of water, if you put your hand in, then pull it out, it will fill back in - finding that range that fits

- There are multiple battles - in front of us

- Using a talent scout, like my dad - maybe look around at the college (talent just getting out of school) or for people who have the skills - draft

- Find and gather up the low hanging fruit

Cory, Steve, and I were talking about different projects. We decided to scrap one of them and wait for some other changes to roll into place. I was pitching an MVP (minimal viable product) on some payroll stuff. We chatted about needs there and where it could go. We talked about bulk payroll, special time card aggregates for some of the math, multi-department based timecards, new fields and settings for special programs, and other fields and values that are needed.

As a fun side note, we even talked about mixing payroll functions with special accounts (accrued hours and virtual time based loyalty points for employees and special laws dealing with additional funding and special programs). Special accounts are for things like loyalty point for customers, gift cards, in-store credit, vendor credits, etc. In this situation, we would be using special accounts to accrue or add up additional hours that are earned over time. Then, the employee/users could redeem those extra hours or bonuses, when they wanted. We would have to keep track of values being added to their account, as well as values being paid out or virtually redeemed. This gets into liabilities, and who owes who and the timing that goes along with that. Interesting twist.

2/8/23 created video.

1/24/23 created video.

1/23/23 checked and pushed with Brandon

Through 4/14/: 46.29

Through 3/1: 173.39 hours

12/21 through 1/22: 62.93 for JM

2/3/21: 35hrs
1/4/21: 15.59 hours for JM
12/14/2020: Brandon and John M will start meeting this week to get the ball rolling.

Meeting with Calvin, Steve, and I. Cory was unable to make it. Both Calvin and Steve were talking tons about text message marketing and possibilities to use Calvin's GMext text marking tool and combining it with adilas contacts, options, and using it as an internal 3rd party solution offering. Lot of potential there. Here are some of the notes from the meeting:

- People keep wanting things to be easier and easier. We have the same requests for text messaging and for labels. We want it, we also want it easier and easier.

- There were talks about the onboarding process and being able to do it or set things up by yourself.

- There was some discussion about text messages and the cannabis industry. The two of them went over some history, lessons learned, and some of the legalities.

- Texting deals with phone numbers. There are things called short codes and long codes. This deals with the length of the phone number. A normal number like (555) 555-5555 is considered a long code. A number like 55555 is considered a short code. They talked about pros and cons and levels of regulations for those numbers or values.

- We talked about Twilio and tying those services into adilas for different text messaging services.

- We have a 3rd party solution that is trying to leave the text messaging arena. There were talks about maybe seeing what they have and seeing if we wanted to take over any of that and/or reuse some of those pieces. Just talks and discussions. No plans were made here. Just options.

- Circling aback around to labeling - we would love to get that code on our (adilas) side of the fence.

- There were talks about how that could look and what kind of structure would need to be in place (transfer of code ownership and maintenance responsibility). Along those lines we talked about building projects and tools (one process), supporting those products (a whole other process), and extended updates and service plans (ongoing maintenance for those products - a whole other process as well). All of those things need to be considered. Who plays what role and how do we play together?

- To make super cool web-based tools, we keep seeing more and more need for high level JavaScript developers and coders. Spencer Garner, who does some adilas stuff, was mentioned. There are others and we could even potentially farm it out if needed to other or outside developers.

- The GMext product comes in a light version and a professional version. The big difference is how many texts need to be sent at one time. The GMext light version can only send up to 1,000 texts at a time. The GMext professional version is able to configure multiple long code numbers to run in tandem and thus be able to send more messages at once. Each setup of the professional version needs to be manually setup in order to get the correct number of outbound phone numbers (long codes).

- The discussion turned into topics of automated vs manual process and which scenario works best for what application and client base.

- They got into discussions about predictive marketing and even AI (artificial intelligence) stuff.

- Being able to use classic desktop software, web based version, and mobile responsive versions. Most things are leaning towards the web based and mobile versions of those products.

- Good marketing requires a plan and then being able to execute that plan over and over again. At some point, you need to pass the marketing load and decisions on to the users (until the predictive and/or AI stuff is ready to use and deploy).

- Calvin is using AWS and Lamda functions to do some of the magic for his text messaging stuff.

- We talked about being able to schedule outbound text messages. Calvin showed us a small demo. We recorded, but he asked that we not make it public. See note at the bottom of this page for more info on how to get to the video.

- This is a page with a bunch of GMext light videos from Calvin - anyone who wants to learn more may go here - https://lite.gmext.com/how_to_videos.php

- At the very end... we spent 5 or so minutes talking about the adilas label builder. Calvin and Brandon will meet and make other plans there. Most of the meeting today was dealing with touching base and text messages and GMext marketing tools and options.

We also recorded a small 7 minute video that showed Calvin using GMext light. He setup a couple quick contacts, assigned those contacts to a group, and then prepped and scheduled a text message to that group. It is inside of the adilas shop, but he asked us not to publish it via this element of time. Just go to the media/content advanced search and search for "GMext" and find the video with the date of 9/1/20.

Emails. Phone call with Shari O. about Newtek servers. We also talked a bit about the adilas business model and how things are going and developing there. Here are a few of my notes:

- You have to suit up and show up at the table - over and over again. You can't just show up once and get your way.

- We tend towards a work in progress vs a fully finished and polished piece of art. That seems to be our style. We just keep building and refining.

- We really play well with most of the people who are key players. Shari O. was talking about personalities and mixing those together. She is a good mother hen and watches out for her virtual chicks or peeps. Along those same lines, we have a number of key players who are doing great in filling their roles and doing a great job. We would love to see more of the same and keep refining along the way.

- Similar fabric yet we have our differences.

- We want to worry about the whole client base vs just a smaller selection or portion - think big picture.

- Awesome discussion on checks and balances and how those can prevent misuse and dictator type influences. How can we build in some checks and balances into our business model? Cool concept.

- Finally, we got into servers, payables, and options. We have servers at Newtek, Hostek, and AWS. We are trying to keep it all tight and straight and don't want to pay for services or products that we are not using. This is turning into a fulltime job, just to keep track of all of the pieces, expenses, and services being offered and paid for.

Shannon joined at 11 am and we wrapped up the prior meeting. Eventually, only Wayne and Shannon were on the meeting. These are a couple of notes that I got from Wayne. He is hitting walls and boundaries on the servers. He wants to keep pushing them forward and tuning them, but he needs the following three projects done:

1. We have two really big tables that need to be pared down. He wants to consolidate some of the fields into objects of settings. Currently, we have hundreds of settings, all in their own database fields and columns. That is ok, but it makes the tables so big that we can't change the database table engine from MyISAM tables to InnoDB tables. This is all related to different table structures on the MySQL database model. MyISAM tables are an older model and if a lock happens, it locks the entire table. The InnoDB tables are more modern and if a lock happens, it is on a line by line level vs a full table lock. There are also some performance options as well as security pieces that differ between the database table engines. Long story made short, Wayne wants us to prep things in order to convert everything to InnoDB tables.

2. Some of our databases are getting huge... Gigs and Gigs worth of data. That is awesome and means that things are getting used, but because of the structure, we can't split and load balance things very easily. We have to physically pull systems off of one system and put them on their own system to do the load balancing right now. This is a very manual process. We have a project called the datasource project or splitting up the database (bus to motorcycles - world building) project. There have been multiple efforts in this direction, but we keep getting pulled off of things. This would be huge and would allow us to change the size and configuration of the databases. Small companies would only be dealing with their data vs being on a somewhat shared environment and dealing with all of the other bigger businesses traffic. You can't access the other companies data (virtual walls and sandbox type environments), but there is basically other traffic from neighbors who are on the same server. In order to grow, like we would like to, we need to fix this.

3. The way we store files, images, and media/content limits our growth model. We allow systems to store and record information directly back to our boxes. That works great for single servers. However, if you plan on clustering and/or stacking servers, to get more power, that placement of those files and assets needs to be addressed. There are tons of other entries in the developer's notebook about media/content, servers, paths, and storage locations. It works great right now, but it also is somewhat limited in the scalability of those pieces. A single company won't see the limits, but the more companies that you get on there and playing with some of the same resources, that's where you see some of the scalability issues starting to show up. Some of those same limiting factors also prevent the clustering, stacking, and auto load balancing pieces. We need to figure out a way to store the files, images, and media/content assets in a place that is configurable vs hardcoded or built in to the app or software package.

As a side note on the file storage stuff, Wayne has some code that he was working on when we were kicking around the AWS (amazon web services) stuff. We may be able to harness some of that work and effort to make this happen.

Wayne wanted to know what are plans are for these 3 projects. I told him that I would email Steve and Cory and see what they say. Without putting anybody under the bus... we've known about some of these projects for years. We push on them here and there, but we haven't really finished up any of them yet. That's where it gets hard. We can't control all of the other variables (time, money, other projects, other demands, etc.). It's a challenge.

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

Switching other to what Shannon and I were going over...

Lots of moving pieces and we are getting internal pressure to stabilize and standardize certain pieces. We have had quite a few of our key players state that we've had meetings and meetings and keep rehashing the same pieces with no changes. That gets really frustrating.

Currently, Steve and I's approach has been to keep chipping away at things and wearing multiple hats, all at once. Another analogy is spinning plates on a stick... We spin what we can and hopefully the other plates keep spinning. Sadly, we are dropping some of the plates here and there. There is a disconnect between what is needed (on a management level) and who is playing and what time is available. We are doing the best we can, but we really need some help.

Shannon and I met and talked about maximizing vs optimizing. We tend toward the maximizing side of things. That is pretty natural. We also talked about setting up a MVP (minimal viable plan) dealing with our management structure and business model. Shannon and I are going to be working on a business plan, but that could take weeks and weeks (months) to tighten up and finalize. We may need an MVP type approach for the time being.

As part of that, we are thinking of proposing the adilas jelly fish model as the current plan. Our goal would be to keep firming it up and moving into a more structured environment. We would like to specify lead dependables and cofounders in certain areas. Those would be the adilas team leads for the different areas and/or virtual departments. I think we could establish this type of an MVP plan for our business model pretty quickly.

Shannon and I also talked about a couple of the current hang-ups that we are seeing and facing. There is pain in transitions some times. Nobody wants to take on the full load, if they really know what is going on, due to it's size. Shannon and I chatted about pairing people up and almost doing a buddy type system to help with managing the different areas. We may need to mix and blend to create our teams. Some of those teams already exist, but they are very loose level teams. The goal is to firm that or those pieces up a bit. I think that would help.

Sometime "titles" have become a barrier. For example: nobody wants to be the main boss, the top executive, the full owner, etc. We may need to stick with words and phrases like: founders, cofounders, advisors, mentors, trustees, dependables, etc. Along with this... Shannon said, you guys love to create new terminology, why not do the same thing for what position you hold.

Good ideas coming in from all of the people around us. We need to keep coming up with our own company structure. Along with that, we need to decide and try things. It's ok to change it up later on. Nothing is set in stone. Think phases, pick and choose, and try storming type mentalities.

Shannon and I reviewed this previous element of time (#5295) and the drawings attached (scans and handwritten notes) to get some notes and it helped us go through a great discussion.

There were 4 to 5 of us on the morning meeting. Wayne and Steve were talking about storage solutions and options there for client-specific storage (potentially even in different places per client). Apparently, they had been on a meeting since 8 am. As a fun side note, we need to make sure that each system could be configured to both store and retrieve stored content from different places. Currently, we push all images and scans to the local box on a per server basis. We also push all bigger files, graphics, PDF's, and other document out to the content server. What if we could configure both of those pieces per client? That would be super cool.

Along those lines, we could specify a location say on AWS where there images and content could be stored. We would then directly charge those clients for the storage of those files and assets. Currently, it is all part of the monthly fee but no one has been watching or monitoring how much storage space that really is. We have one client that has well over 200+ gigs of outside files that we are storing for them. To put this in perspective, google drive allows for 15 gig for free and then you have to pay. They are at 200+ gig. They add to it daily as well. We have other clients that have thousands and thousands of scans and images. Once again, unmonitored. We need to be able to configure the systems to handle those changes as well as pass those file storage and hosting fees on to the client. It's their data, they need to pay to store it (within reason). Also, some of the storage is stored over years and years.

There was also some talk about having active and inactive content and files (levels within the storage solution). For example, new files, images, scans, and media could stay active for a month (or whatever time range). Then they (the files) could be moved a little bit deeper but still exist. Think more of cold storage vs active or hot storage. This is all just a dream right now, but it may play into some of the configuration needs for fracture (upcoming adilas project).

Danny and Steve were talking with Wayne about labels and what not. We need to get Calvin's label tool fully online and working over the web. Currently, the adilas label builder is a custom Window's app. Things keep changing (for labels) on a constant basis. Danny wanted to make sure that Wayne knew about some of the label changes so that we didn't overwhelm him with tons of files and merge requests.

The guys were talking about adding in a fee for those clients who use Metrc - a state level 3rd party solution for sales and compliance. That would be great as it literally costs us around $20K per month to keep up with Metrc and their changes alone. Pretty crazy.

Sean is going to be reaching out to some of our current clients. Steve and Sean talked about some current and future plans to reach out to different clients to see what they need and how we can help them. Steve was talking about small custom homepages, or small dashboard type interfaces to help them get around and move around in the system efficiently.

There was also some great talks and ideas about doing live or on-sight training by our clients for new clients in the same or similar industries. Basically, instead of having an adilas rep train someone, have an active client in that same industry or line of work train the persons. That allows our clients to get the training, from the source, and our clients could make some money by charging to show and train the clients using their existing systems. Some cool ideas there. Use the client's facility and train other people in your same industry by charging them to train them.

The last main topic of the morning was dealing with servers, IT help, and server resets. Wayne and Steve are going to be looking into options of using the existing IT staff of our commercial web hosting companies to help with extended server and support issues. They already have full access to the servers and know the infrastructure at the hosting company. It would be so cool if we could sub some of that maintenance and hot fixes out to them. Both Steve and Wayne will be making calls and setting up meetings to advance that ball forward.

Wayne and Steve were on talking about Git and code repository stuff. We also had some of the other developers join us to help get some direction. Wayne was helping people with bit bucket stuff and reporting on servers and charges (fees) out in the AWS land. One of the issues was the use of font-awesome in all of the new snow owl headers. It was reporting billions of security issues due to the fact that font-awesome was not included in our whitelisted includes.

Great meeting with both Eric and Steve. All three of us spent two hours going over a number of key points. Lots of drawings, running scenarios through financial flow calculators, and talking about options and needs.

- Math and logic for loyalty points
- Talks about costs of goods and when does this happen? Dealing with loyalty points?
- Some accountants are doing a bulk entry at the end of the year against cost of goods sold - we'd like to make ours more real-time
- Deferred revenue - lots of talks here - all kinds of deferred topics, deferred revenue, deferred COGS, deferred expenses, deferred liabilities, etc.
- New tax law changes
- Estimated redemption rates
- Things keep changing – laws, standards, needs
- We still offer user-maintained balance sheet item options
- Changing point redemption rates
- The value of a point? 
- We stamp points as is... (estimated value) – the value is determined when you want to redeem them
- Simple vs complex scenarios
- Booked value is at the current value level, if changed... what would that require? History and a physical entry that shows the value change
- If a change is made, we may need to create a dynamic entry to the transactions to show the change
- You don't want your values and actual cash values moving around
- We had some talks about not allowing manual changes
- If manual changes happen, what else do we need to clean-up?
- Cash vs accrual accounting – most companies really should be on the accrual accounting side
- So many companies track things on the side and then try to bring in and marry those things in the background. Super independent and separated systems and then trying to bring them back together.
- To overcome some of these separated systems and processes, many companies do lots of spreadsheets, sub accounts, and even paper and pencil.
- On balance sheet items, we would like a forth show amount option that ties out to the special accounts and the sub transactions.
- Lots of talks about ALE (assets, liabilities, and equity) and even allowing for information only or showing some phantom accounts - items play in but may not really show in the math or numbers - kinda like an information only account or a phantom account.
- There were some talks about adding in options to set a BSI to active (show), inactive (hide), or even phantom (show/info only).
- ACV – actual cash value
- Standalone declarations - these are things that happen that need to be recorded. The reason for the term standalone declaration deals with no background numbers or data. You are just stating a change or adjustment needs to be declared. There is more information in the developer's notebook on standalone declarations.
- Showing some greyed out fields and values -  smoke and mirrors
- Lots of talks about outside watchers, feeders, and triggers. Good stuff.

One of the other major topics was the law of deferring to something else that has more details. That could be a sub account, a one-to-many relationship with details, payments, line items, sub accounts, transactions, or other things that have sub dates, types, groupings, values, calculations, etc. Often, we defer to the item that has the best information and/or the best vantage point. That is part of what we are doing.

Steve, Danny, and I were on a GoToMeeting session. We were watching and monitoring servers, on tech support calls, and trying to get things up and running. As part of the conversation we talked a lot about some of the outside parties and being able to access the pieces that we need to. This could be outside 3rd party code, independent apps, specific code, WordPress sites, and other pieces. We really need our own access to these pieces.

Hosted solutions are big animals. We have to build it, service it, and keep it going.

We have a great team of people who all have a number of key talents and pieces. How can we keep organizing things so that we get and keep those key players.

Looking at options and seeing where we can fill in the blanks.

We talked about text message marketing and some of the crazy challenges with that. Currently, there are two main players out there. One is Twilio and the other is AWS. Both of them have some built-in text messaging options. Here is a link to Twilio - https://www.twilio.com/

Wayne popped in and we looked at data 0 and data 2. Currently, those servers are some high traffic volume players. We were talking about ways of splitting up the servers into smaller clusters and putting the databases on their own dedicated servers. We also talked about some world building project stuff and splitting up databases. As a fun side note, Wayne jumped in and showed us some of the resource monitor stuff for that server.

Sometimes we use custom code as a virtual buy-in or investment to our platform. We love it when others succeed.

Steve and I spent a bunch of time talking about our current plan and how things are developing. We will keep on keeping on. Lots of good stuff ahead.

Steve had some questions on his API socket that he is working on. Eventually, he will need to add in a number of loops and loops within loops. We are seeing about six levels deep on the loops. This is for his aggregated daily sales totals and passing data back and forth between servers. The loop levels are going to be: loop by corp, by store/location, by vendor, by category, by form (a sub group within a category), and by size (another sub group within the form group). Six levels deep. He is planning on biting off one piece at a time. Lots of loops, arrays, and structures within the arrays.

Danny popped on and had some questions. Eric came on and had a few questions as well.

Before the training meeting, Wayne joined the meeting and we talked some server stuff. We have decided to pause the AWS stuff for right now. We need to work on some internal code changes so that we can get to a clustered environment. One of the first major hang-ups is how we store images per corporation. These are logos, watermarks, and all of the images and scans per main player groups (all 12 player groups - invoices, customers, items, expense/receipts, stock/units, elements of time, deposits, etc.).

We are planning on doing a group project where we go in and fix the image storage stuff as a group. That will be fun. We also briefly talked about Docker images and how those will and/or may play in to the mix. We talked about how nice a Docker image would be for new developers coming on and being able to setup their local environment in a nice and easy way. Big time savings.

- One of Wayne's focuses has been performance on the servers.

- He was wanting to change up the structure without changing tons of the infrastructure. Well, we are getting to the point where we really need to make some major changes to the underlying code.

- Stability wise - processing massive amounts of data at the ColdFusion level - the Tomcat server and getting and pulling data from the databases

- We were talking about clustering both the ColdFusion servers and clustering the database servers.

- One of the known problems is the images, logos, watermarks, and other media/content (outside files). We need a standardized spot to hold and store those assets.

- We need to change the code to help us manage those fixed or user controlled resources.

- On the services, for example: we need a method or API call that does - getCorpLogo - then it returns us the path to the logo, wherever that is and/or exists. The same would be true with things like getPhotoGallery, getMediaContent, getSingleImage, getCorpWatermark, etc.

- As a side note, we are somewhat waiting on Newtek (our server farm) to spin up and release some new virtual machines.

- We have this same stumbling block, meaning user controlled assets, on either clustering things at Newtek or out on AWS land.

- Wayne is seeing a need for more than just himself working on this project. Why not use this as a real life project and incorporate some live project and hands on training? Great idea. Build it out like we want it and do some training along the way. They were talking about training, planning, programming, iterations, unit testing, etc. Basically, using this project as a lead them by the hand project and still get a good product out the other side.

- The goal will be object oriented model, having the developers build it, use it, extend it, build and break, etc. We want to build this app and/or functions together as a team.

- It may be hard to get everybody together at the same time. However, we could record it, make assignments, have them work in teams, etc.

- Wayne really wants them to bring in the unit testing options to make sure we get that part of the puzzle. Leave the project somewhat open and give little projects and pieces and then have them report.

- If we are building as a team, we could go deeper into code review and really turn it into a good teaching opportunity.

- Talking about training... here are the tools - which ones would you use and why? Using technology to video small snippets and resources. Helping to sharpen our developers toolsets and options.

- There are some differences between ColdFusion 11 and ColdFusion 2018. We are trying to move forward, but we do have a few stumbling blocks.

- Talking about versioning and being more standard across the board. Here is a link that Wayne provided: https://semver.org/

- Wayne was also talking about git commit messages and how to use those to help with versioning and sub versioning. Here is the new link: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#summary

- They were talking about small incremental commits and even squashing some of the smaller commits and then providing a good final commit message. This is somewhat of a style and/or process type question. Where to we want to be?

- Wayne really wants some of the style to be a certain way. He really also wants to enable the other developers to use their own style but still be playing well as a team. He wants to encourage team unity across the board. He wants some standards but still open to input and negotiation. Basically, no dominance on all of the ideas. Keep it open. Once again, where do we want to be? Who do we want to be?

- Learning from experience, yet still looking forward to the future. Opinions are good. There are many ways to skin the cat...

- We have different levels of developers. There are builders, explorers, copy/paste masters, googlers, and those who don't know what they don't know. We at least need to understand what is going on and then go from there. Wayne and Alan were talking about "google foo" (ninja level) and being able to find what you really need on the web.

Just for fun, see attached for some concept drawings of tools, inputs, outputs, and how we mix and blend the tools to get what we need. Fun funnel type approach to problem solving. Small blast from the past.

Right before the main meeting started, we had two developers jump on the meeting. We briefly met up with both Josh and Wayne. They reported on their projects and we talked about the next steps. Wayne is running into similar problems on Newtek and clustering serves as we were out on AWS. Lots of that has to do with storing images and uploaded user content. We talked about using the adilas content server as a good resource for those files and outside storage. We need a fixed location to both store and map back to for those pieces. Wayne, Alan, and Brandon will be meeting tomorrow to talk about where things are headed.

Brandon, Cory, and Steve met up to catch up on progress of current projects and any updates that need to be done. Some of the meeting was dealing with existing projects. We didn't really have time to get into new things. As part of the meeting, I did a small demo on how to edit auto generated loyalty points.

Steve, Wayne, and I were talking about serves and direction. We were talking about getting things going with Newtek with the new VPS and clustering options. We are somewhat putting AWS stuff on hold. We have been over there for six plus months and still having some issues and running into small little barriers of sorts. We have had great success with Newtek and want to keep that ball moving forward.

One of the main topics of the day was the data 0 box. It is currently our oldest box and plays a pivotal role. It is somewhat of the gateway for the rest of the system. We are going to be trying to change that and get all of the normal companies that need production level capacity to other servers. Basically, we are going to be splitting up the corporations (worlds or business entities) on that server into a couple of new spots. It should help things go faster and lessen the load on the actual gateway that data 0 plays (as far as a redirect or doorway type application).

Here are some of our other notes. Lots of good chats and talks.

- Lewis and Clark expeditions and mapping things out and figuring out what to do and where to go next. This is part of our explorations that are needed in the digital realm.

- Splitting up databases in to different datasources (where are things pointed) and also the structure of the data. We talked about certain tables that are independent, certain tables that need to stay as shared or master data, and other tables that are for sure corp-specific or based on a per world level. Interesting conversation. Going back to the older world building ideas - cluster database vs solar system databases.

- Wayne was mentioning that he would like to work with Alan on splitting things up between the database and different datasources. That could be really cool. Wayne was also mentioning about using the DAO's (data access objects) and having that be part of splitting up the databases. As a side note, if we create new databases and datasources for each company, we would potentially be duplicating a lot of data. It may be faster, but we need to look at what that extra duplication would cost as far as connections, storage, and even eventual clean-up. In short, moving to the DAO model vs duplicating existing databases.

- We are really trying to move more towards the adilas community funded projects... similar to how the open source software and community operate and flow. If someone really wants something big, they need to make some resources available (time, money, ideas, people, etc.).

- We talked about selling the data storage and processing services. In a way, we could say, our system or software is free, you just pay for the services that you need to support that. Those could be setup, hosting, storage, processing, custom code, marketing, training, consulting, design, etc.

- We briefly talked about owning our own hardware cluster there at Newtek. It was on Steve's list to talk about. Wayne chimed in and recommended that we not go in that direction. He explained that if we stay on Newtek's hardware clusters, they have a reason to keep upgrading and maintaining those clusters. If we ride on top of what they are doing (their products and services) we gain from all of their advancements. If we are on our own, we have to provide all of those upgrades and maintenance pieces. Great point and something to think about. Ideally, if we gain enough, we would be better off riding on top of these other products and services.

- We spent some time talking about the refresh rate and the replacement rage of hardware and who manages that.

- Stress testing on the servers - Finding server level breakpoints and stress and load testing on servers. We pointed Wayne to a number of bigger reports and processes. He will simulate those loads on some test data to see if we can find any stress points, breakpoints, and other info we can gain by load testing things. Wayne would like to work with some of the reps and consultants to find the pain points and going the daily grid and what works and what needs some more loving.

As we were getting into the meeting, we were just talking about management styles and what not. I pushed over a link to a small article from the Harvard Business Review from back in May 2010. The article is called "Bringing Out the Best in Your People". Here is the link: https://hbr.org/2010/05/managing-yourself-bringing-out-the-best-in-your-people

With AWS, Wayne is having the biggest struggle accessing images and copying session variables into local variables. Tons of different includes, paths, crazy look and feel values, etc. Any time we link to the images differently, it becomes a problem. We are still having problems with logos, alternate logos, watermarks, etc. Wayne is looking at creating a corporation object and then trying to map to that vs all of the normal session stuff.

Small talk about the progression of the system from early 2000's to 2013, 2015 (big influx of new developers), 2016-2017 snow owl theme settings, and so on. We also talked about our custom code options and how the black boxes played into the mix.

Wayne is leaning towards a single corp object. Alan is thinking along those same lines. They were talking about removing the page logic and making it exist much higher on the page. In a way, we have a ton of code that exists and then it gets used differently on the pages. We are needing a way to standardizing that flow and process. As these guys are searching and replacing certain variables... it isn't uncommon to get 1,600 different pages that need to be changed and what not.

Question from Steve - If we stay with Newtek, do we need these same changes or are these new changes just for moving things out to AWS? Lots of talk about localizing the variables and helping to standardize things. Being consistent and making sure that those pieces exists, no mater what.

One of the problems is switching between reports that are based on the secure login and other reports that don't need to be secured, but we still want the whole look and feel to play across. That gets challenging.

Talking about built-in clustering for ColdFusion and what offerings can we still do and achieve at Newtek? Steve had some questions there. We have three different environments... we have older physical dedicated boxes, we have new VPS (virtual private servers), and AWS clustering. We are thinking that we need focus more on the new possibilities with the VPS servers and possible clustering at Newtek. We put some rough percentages out there... this just a starting place. We are thinking 75% of our server efforts on the new VPS and ColdFusion Enterprise clustering. We are then thinking about a 20% effort out in the AWS land (that has been pretty challenging), and then maybe doing 5% efforts on the older physical dedicated servers.

Steve is seeing a new need for dedicated aggregated servers and aggregated systems. That will change our model and may alter some of our focus. Wayne was talking about some load balancing and even doing load testing. Using a scripting program and software to add some load and pound on our servers a little bit more. He provided a link to the Locust software package.

https://locust.io/ - program to automate some server beat-up drills (simulate loads)

Wayne wanted to know, what is our kryptonite (what makes us go slow) - We said, looking up items, tons and tons of invoices, pulling big reports like the P&L, balance sheet, sub inventory, history reports, and tons and tons of transactional data reporting. Steve was saying that we could copy over some data from some of our bigger clients and then use that background data to virtually beat-up the system using real data. Steve is going to check with a couple of clients to get permission to use their data to do the server beat-ups. The real data won't ever be exposed, just used to simulate server loads.

Alan and Wayne were talking about using the load testing options and then looking at other factors such as splitting up the databases, moving the actual databases to their own servers, keeping them on the same servers on different drives, etc. Lots of testing and putting equal automated loads to see what the best configuration might be. Good discussion.

DAY TWO OF COLDFUSION SUMMIT CONFERENCE IN LAS VEGAS NEVADA 10/2/19

Andrew Tarvin -morning keynote

-Humor that works -The missing skill for success and happiness at work

-Teaching fellow workers about humor

-Other humans are a resource that we work with - that is awesome, yet tough sometimes

-Wouldn't it be funny if a human had error messages

-Keep learning

-It is hard to change what you do . . . It may how you do it

-Breaking down work

-We learn the skills to do the job but happiness at work isn't about doing what you love, it's about loving what you do

-You don't need permission to be happy

-Humor is a necessity

-Humor is different than comedy

-You don't have to create it, you could just share it

M=medium=how

A=adience=who

P=purpose=why

-What gets fun, gets done

-How can you make your work a little bit more fun?

-Building on what is already there

-How you see a problem determines how you solve that problem

-Come back into it with some humor

-Where there is laughter, there is listening

-Having friends in the workplace

-Build human connections

-When we laugh together, we stand together

-Virtually no limit to laughter - usually, physically, you can still laugh

-Rember, at the end of the day, we are all human

-Knock Knock leadership -add some humor

-To humor is to human

-Take action and start

-gethumor.org/adobe

-One smile per hour - that's a good pace (play off of 1mph)

-You are responsible for your own happiness

-Humor is a choice

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

SESSION ONE

Getting Started With CF's Docker Images

By Charlie Arehart

charlie@carehart.org

-Both CF and Lucee

-carehart.org/presentations

-bintray.com/eaps/coldfusion

-Docker

-Command box

-PMT=perfomance monitoring toolset

-Docker-compose - put mote ingo to help with the installs

-CF instances

-Docker Toolbox, different tools for different OS, Docker, Docker Desktop

-Container for the image

-Play -with-docker.com

-Docker as a service

-Exposing ports

-Running programs across different platforms

-Instead of installing . . . just pull/run

-Most Docker images use Linux in the background

-A common Linux kernel and then connecting to those images

-Redis storage vs normal CF session in memory variables

-CF Enterprise: can use with 8 Docker instances, per license

-Environment variables and setting things up

-Docker images are different than instances

-Use --help to get help

-Being able to both start and stop the containers

-Poke a hole and get at other files

-Orchestration

-Coldfusionmeetup.com

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

SESSION TWO

Document Workflow and Management Made Easy With ColdFusion by Kailash Bihani

-cf document,  cf presentation, cf spreadsheet, cf pdf, cf image

-cf schedule

-cf document item, cf document section

-cf htmt to pdf, cf HTML to pdf item

-cf chart

-cf pdf form, cf pdf subform, cf pdf form Panam

-cf file

-You can read a pdf and see what the fields are called if needed sanitizing

-Sanitize documents - removes metadata, comments, stamps, attachments, ect.

-Merge and Merging of PDF's 

-Add attachments - no exe, vbs, or zip files to PDF files

-Add stamps - such as approved, denied, final, sold, draft, expired

-Redact/redacted - pull out certain parts of a PDF doc - almost a small snippet - or just cover-up certain pieces

-Document signing

-Archive the document - standards - set the standard to 1b, 2b, or 3b, coming soon is 4b

-cf spreadsheet - can read in and convert data to spreadsheet objects, CSV, HTML tables, and query data

-cf presentation, cf presentation slide, cf presenter

-You can also go from presentation to PDF

-html to PDF---Word to PDF----Query to Excel

https://bitbucket.org/kbihani/cfsummit2019/src/master

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

SESSION THREE 

Angular for ColdFusion by Josh Kutz-Flamenbaum

-Material, stack blitz, Angular University, NPM, typescript

-Sponsored by Google

-TypeScript 3

-Bindings

-Auto creating background files

-Service layers, view layers

-RxJS - Reactive Interactions with JavaScript

-Observables - save this a cache

-Operators - tons of them

-Marble diagrams

-Observable data cache with update trigger

-WebSockets

-ServiceWorker

-NativeScrtipt

-Is this too much for me or for my organization? (Question to ask yourself)

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

SESSION FOUR

Integrating modern day JS frameworks with CF by Jday Ogra

-Angular.js----Vue.js-----React.js

-Why such frameworks 

1.SPA(Single Page Applications)

2.No Manual DOM Manipulations ------- data bindings

-Frontend, rest API, backend

-In Angular use double curly brackets ((some var))

-He was using the Chrome dubugging tools

-Vue.js

-This uses a data struck and a methods struck

-REST - (Represental

uogra@adobe.com

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

SESSION FIVE

Sealing Enterprise Applications with ColdFusion by Piyush Nayak

-Matching scaling, features, and usage on an adaptable level

-High Availability, performace, maintainability

-Use API, use app as a sercive, use resource pool, Async not sync, use caching

-Scaling--language--database--network--file system/storage

-Max request workers=server limit * threads per child

-Connection pool size

-Connection timeout

-Max threads

-Max connections

-Connectors and getting and setting the backend Apache Tomcat server

-Maximum number of cached templates

-ColdFusion enterprise Instance and Cluster Manager

-Sticky sessions and session duplication

-Scaling both vertical and horizonal

-Caching objects - cache put and cache get---cf cache

-Using     RAM://somefile.extension

-Async programing and chaining 

-cf log

-cf save content

-Tweaking the underlying Java ot JVM

-Application Performance

-Sroring caches as an external or distributed cache model

-External Cache Options--Redis--Mem cached--JCS--Apache

-Using Redis as an external session storage engine

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

MEETING WITH STEVE AFTERWARDS THE SUMMIT CONFERENCE

-Get a list of the top 10 pages and then put a face lift or re-write on those pages - then recycle through the next 10 pages

-Steve . . . using CPA's white label and industry specific--they do the training and sales for their industry

-CPA's are getting more and more hungry--switch between book keeping vs. real accounting--using CPA's as a virtual oversight type program

-Airports - possible solution

-Keep building the business solution (backend and the software application)

-CPA - when they get involved . . . it adds more accountability

-Alan - have him do more pages like the new invoice homepage

-Add graphical homepages as a community funded project

-Connect, people and teams, and then have them report - maybe schedule Tuesdays and Thursdays for report days

-Hit the pause button and make sure we know what they are working on and when they want to report

-Using the buddy system

-Going faster better

-All of us together - collective

-Steve's vision is dealing with CPA's--they become part of the oversight

-CPA's almost go over owners - they look up to them and need them

-Our users are looking for more than a system - they want to help

-Tools and cause and effect

-CPA's - they need a capture of what really happened - then those pieces start falling into place

-Taking about server setup options--Newtek--AWS--Adobe CF Enterprise--Load balancers--Clusters and outside or external caching and session management

Las Vegas - Adobe cold Fusion Conference - session 1

-Maybe a hybrid sprint on certain projects . . . do a 2-3 hour blast every day. Have a mini stand-up meeting and all hands on deck for that small time period.

-With the above idea . . . that could create an employer/employee relationship for the art of the day and release it.

-Study nature and copy it

-Learn how to adapt

-Keep heading toward world-building

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

(Key Note) -Tesi square - fun presentation behind the first keynote speaker - easy simple and key matrix - not to much fluff. (tesisquare.com)

-Turnkey project, service, provider, business modeling, innovation

-"Build your collaborative ecosystem" integrated platform - world building

-Evolution path of systems and platforms

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

-New presentation - Transcend

-Online employee interactions

-Communication, recognition, development, performance

-Employee timeline

-Lots of cards and drag and drop widgets on their dashboard

-HR stuff and trying to keep up employee morale

-They use Hostek for hosting

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

-Source A-Max

-A France company that uses ColdFusion 

Trying into the Java back end

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

-Where is the world headed?

-A road toward simplicity

-Physical machines, virtual machines, cloud services, containers microservices, serverless

-disruptive developments

-Expensive                                 Cost-Effective

-complicated                             -simplified

from physical machines to cloud services

-If you don't make it . . . we don't make it

-Lamda functions on AWS 

-Flexibility . . . think of joints in your body . . . joints in the right spot help you to be more flexible 

-ER script 2.0

-Scriptable configuration for servers

-Mirco services

-Multi-cloud - how many different cloud services are you using and developing on - AWS, MS Azure, Google, others

-Common API interfaces - Adobe may build a common API interface to share data between multi-cloud servers

-CF is working on; their vision and focus areas, installation, develops, containers, services, security, monitoring, configuration, and going serverless

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

Practical Function Programming in CFML by Abram Adams 

-Trycf.com

-FP functional programming

-CFML is a multi-paradigm language

-Side effects - when a procedure changes a variable from outside its scope

-Passing by reference vs. duplication of data

-Immutable - unchanging over time or unable to be changed

-Immutable practices

-Mutating values and variables v.s. keeping things clean

-Map, reduce, filter - array commands

-The pure function always returns a known value and don't have external dependencies

-Referential transparency

-Always return a value from a function don't output data in your functions

-Higher-order functions - functions that return a function or call other functions

-Nested call back - multi-functions and nested functions

-Lamda functions, not the same as AWS, but same name

-Reduce and reducer functions

-Chaining higher-order functions

-Functional programming tends to be somewhat lazy . . . hold the value of an expression until needed

-Memoization = "memo" - pre-computed results (local cache)

-Hops - external jumps to web services, API calls, and even database calls

-Curring

-Specialized or Composed

http://slides.com

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

SESSION TWO

Centralsans.org

Customer Spotlight for Central San by Carl Von Stetten

-Managing infrastructure of assets

-What do I want? Planning

-What is the cost and where will I get it? (Acquisitions)

-What about operations and maintenance?

-Monitoring of other data

-Renewal/Rehab

-Disposal - sell, trade, gift, ect.

-The life cycle of ownership of assets

-Assets have value . . . we want to track that . . . the whole cycle

-They interact with two different databases

-Document management

-Visual nav to a specific job and/or asset, then drill-down to documents attached and assigned

-Assets have jobs linked in and documents assigned to those jobs

-They have drawings, permits, environmental compliance

-Maintenance history

-Scheduling and logistics

-Repeating work orders and cascading your own schedules

-Tracking changes in locations over time

-Changing the view mode . . . filter by id, filter by location, filter by other criteria

-Targetted searching by process - overview matrix of stats

-Preventative maintenance and predictive maintenance

-They also want to see what assets are connected to other assets and/or substructures

-They were tracking spare parts . . . basically a recipe of what is needed - internal builds

-Even using inventory mapping to help show items that don't get much usage or activity

-VSCode editor

-get CFML extension by Kanasamak

-CFLint

-Data fusion

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

SESSION THREE

Web Sockets by Giancarlo Gomez

-Channels, authication, subscribe, subchannels

-Sending messages and creating data channels and web sockets

-Persistant Connections

-Being able to push and broadcast messages

-Chat demos and sending messages back and forth

-The use of Application, cfc is getting bigger and more important

-Threads and callbacks

-Push technology and dashoards and alerts

-Allowing users to subscribe to multiple channells 

-Keep your channells samll and concise

-Sockets can help with real-time data pushes

https://github.com/Giancarlo/Gomez/

https://ginacarlogomez.com

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

SESSION FOUR

Spreadsheet Magic with Cold Fusion

www.kinetic-interactive.com

Kevin D. Wright

-Basic read/write, formatting, formulas/calculations, advanced techniques

-POI - a java engine and java library

-cf spreadsheet is pretty cool

-Mixing tools to harness both CF and MS Excel

-Instead of building a whole new app, maybe look at using a spreadsheet with some cool dynamics. Does it get the job done

-You can create it from scratch and/or use an existing template and then tweak that

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

SESSION FIVE

Forms and PDF's by Mike Collins

-XML and JavaScript

-AEM Forms Designer - LiveCycle. ----- allowa for XML data - more dynamics

-cfdocument, cfdocumentitem

-Links to an image need to use File://

-flatten="yes"        write

-standard="3b"     archive

-Merging

-Arching

-PDFA

-3b - soon will be 4b standard

-CFPrint

-Not everything needs to be printed

-Adobe Sign

mike@supportobjective.com

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

Steve was talking about getting a designer to help us with the Bear 100. He would like to take it out to Google maps, GPS, mobile friendly, and even allow for people to use our site to do sign-ups and other pieces. We could have the site tied out to ecommerce and allow for tons of other options. That could be fun.

Eric came into the meeting and had a couple of questions about customizing the invoice and quote process. We talked about parent inventory, sub inventory, parent attributes, flex grid tie-ins, and even black box custom tables. We also talked about adding in some blank or generic flex fields in the quote line items and the invoice line items. They want some custom fields per line item. Steve was saying, don't tell me what you want... show me. That way we know what tool to use and where to put it into play. Steve was also talking about maybe going up steam and setting those moving variables up higher on the customer level. In a way, the over arching question was I want to extend the existing options and functions per invoice and quote line item. We then have to help, how do we figure that out and what solution could we use to solve that problem? Good stuff.

This doesn't play in quite yet, but at some point we would love to get into real in-line database extensions. That is somewhat of the bigger brother to the flex grid tie-ins. Being able to add and subtract data points and data fields per section. As a side note, we have tons of companies that virtually commandeer (take over - like a pirate ship) any field that they can to get the job and/or task at hand done or finished. Kinda interesting.

Steve wants to get more information, from the source. He would like to get a real world scenario and then make a plan from there. Not just a quick band-aid, he wants to help develop the solution. What are the processes, what are the needs, what already exists, and what else is still needed? It keeps getting deeper and deeper (4 and 5 levels deep).

There was an analogy of a "part changer" - think of mechanic that just swaps out part after part in order to fix something. We really need the mechanic that gets in there and looks at the problem and then makes a decision. From Steve - It's not how fast you go, it's how well you go fast - older Porche commercial.

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

Switching gears, we started talking with Wayne about servers.

We were talking about virtual machines, physical servers, load balancing, and the difference between hardware problems and software problems. We were talking about clusters and getting redundancy and depth of options. If we stay with Newtek, we need to build in some of our own pieces. If we go more with AWS, we get to just use some the existing pieces. There is a trade off - AWS has more options but it also a deeper pool. Newtek is not as deep, but in some ways easier. We were also talking about rollover, fail safe modes, mirrors, etc.

We spent quite a bit of time talking about the Adobe ColdFusion engine and how we could potentially configure cluster type environment. When you get out of a single machine environment, what do you do with the database. On a single machine (server or dedicated box), it is simple. On a cluster, you have to keep things moved and/or separated. We would love to break some of the system down into their own databases. The idea here is making each database corporation specific vs server (whole box) specific. We have talked about this for years (since 2012 ish) and have called it world building and other project names. We really want to do this, but we also know that we have tons of code changes that are needed. We could separate out the shared tables in the existing database schema but we would have to do it table by table. As a side note, we have already done this very process for invoices, invoice payments, po/invoice line items, customer queues, sub inventory, etc.

One solution would be to create a corporation specific datasource (pointer to a specific database) and then help that get migrated and pushed around. We also talked about loading in objects per user that has all of their corporation specific settings and values. Eventually, we will still need to break out the payee/users so that we have a master list and then allow them to be merged and virtually bridged to any corporation and even any system. We still have all kinds of exceptions, such as be in corp x but pretend like you are in corp y (look and feel and settings). It gets kinda crazy.

The subject started to switch to more and more object oriented programming, storing values in session objects, and other objects that are server based. We also talked about database server clustering and moving all databases (per corporation) to a dedicated database cluster that only served up data and content. Lots of possible configurations and options. Both Alan and Wayne were talking about cross-schema queries and all kinds of advanced things. As another side to this equation, we are seeing more and more of a need for aggregated totals, auto processing, daily task management, etc. All of these things play into the mix. We are seeing certain tables that are great as shared tables and other tables that really need to be independent and corporation specific.

As we move forward, even towards a fracture type model, we will need to separate databases, logic, move more towards object oriented programming, API socket calls, etc. Just for fun, Wayne and Alan were talking about different levels and using bigger teams - backend guys, database guys, middleware guys, frontend and UI (user interface) guys, etc. We aren't that big.

Steve's idea... Alan, Steve, Dustin, and Brandon are all going to be at a convention. Let's use that time to do some planning and take it to the next level. That's a great idea.

Just Dustin and I on the morning meeting to start with. I spent most of the session recording notes and doing research on system mapping and direction for the future.

Part way through, Wayne joined the meeting and gave me a small report. Here are a few notes from that discussion.

Wayne - looking into generating an auto renewal of SSL certificates. Data 6 has this tech installed - small test run.

We talked about the old dedicated servers, new VPS servers (virtual servers), and AWS (full virtual stacks).

Wayne was stating that he was kinda frustrated with the service level at Newtek on this last go around. We were in a waiting pattern for over a week without anything or any communication. This was our first round of VPS serves with Newtek. It ended up being days and days that we normally don't have to deal with. Wayne is wondering if something is changing and/or slipping there at Newtek. Lots of frustrations and delays.

We want to make sure that we have multiple options, going forward. We currently have a lot of servers out there and we are kinda feeling like we have all of our eggs in one basket. We would like to expand that presence.

There were some other talks about config files and how some of the config files are seaming to revert back to defaults vs staying at a higher tweaked out level. This is mostly dealing with the database config files. Wayne is setting up a file level monitor to help track that down.

After Wayne left, I kept working on my projects. Towards the end of the session, I got a call from Calvin. We switched over to a Zoom session and he showed me what he was working on with his adilas label builder and pulling in sub inventory and sub inventory attributes. It gets pretty deep. I liked what I saw and gave Calvin some feedback. He is quite busy right now and we talked about some options and priorities.

Meeting between Russell Moore, Steve, and Brandon.

- From Steve - "Russell, we have missed you".

- Russell - Drawn back to the dream

- Like a beehive, everybody gets to play and the combined effort makes a difference

- All core adilas projects are going through our new gateway. Cory Warden is the gatekeeper for those projects.

- We have some snow owl CSS questions for Russell. We need the master back in the mix.

- Timeline views and other modern look and feel (flavor of the sites). These are things that we want to get back to.

- We want to focus on the Snow Owl Theme and get it all stabilized.

- Russell and Steve have had multiple conversations on the widget, app, pallet type interface - mix and blend different widgets and mini apps to help the users get their "space" setup. This is somewhat of a custom mini dashboard concept with lots of options and configurability.

Russell - wanted to pitch some ideas and things towards the adilas fracture project (future adilas project and plan). Making it a true core with an expandable platform type interface.

We started out in Postman (PHP based - API socket tool) and using Russell's auto generated API documentation - Tools with custom extensions for functionality, API sockets, classes, and view models. Core pieces all get add, edit, and view options for the data. Frameworks and then building on top of those. Russell was talking about core, custom core, themes, custom code, etc. These are ways that he could build on and virtually extend the core tool without hurting the main core logic.

Some of the concepts were dealing with the pallet type view (multi mini windows or widgets). They were talking about how to use tons of mini widgets, apps, views, and even third party tools - all mixed together in one app. We started talking beyond screen, and screen size, and going more to a canvas type view. A canvas is a layout design that may be bigger than a screen. They would like to be able to navigate to different sections, zoom in/out, call something into focus, and the background pieces would connect with both internal and external API sockets. Once the data structure is known, the building out of things becomes very quick. The goal is to create a robust back end engine that could be built out and modified on the frontend very quickly. Getting back to cores (internal core) and plug-ins or add-on's.

Both frontend and backend developer widgets and backend components - Russell was proposing a table component (just like the data tables, but more robust and configurable). Components are able to worry about their size vs screen size. Basically, you could make the components smart (know its own parameters). As you start mixing different components, make each one smart enough to mix and interface with other widgets without being overwritten and/or altered. Tons of self-contained mini apps all working together.

I was asking Russell about some of things that he is working on. One of them was what he was calling "Headless CMS (content management systems)" - All API socket connections but no real structure. Virtually a brain without a face. The face becomes the view model. We talked about how adilas uses a similar concept called "play at the wall" type concepts - All API socket connections without having a required view of that data. Russell was getting back to classes and specific tools and object oriented programming. If we use a tool too much (say elements of time), it can make the water muddy. That is both good and bad. In some ways, it makes it very flexible. In other ways, it may actually get abused because it may be used in so many different ways.

Lots of separation between database, views, logic, uses, tools, and data. Some of the new pieces (on the view model) could be scrolled, slid, collapsed, expanded, shrinks, etc. Kinda like the old Adobe Flash Rich Interface Environments but without the Flash wrapper. Beautiful interfaces with just in time data, fun navigation, built-in validation, etc.

At some point, we would love to allow our uses to use what pieces and features that they want and then working on charging based on what they are really using. Maybe thinking of being out on the AWS stuff for this. Still just ideas and concepts.

We also talked about running with two ships vs just one (different applications) - see screenshots (build on both apps and eventually have two separate products). Ideally, the new ship (say adilas fracture) would end up being a more powerful tool and a full remake of the original adilas model. Little by little, chipping away at the new system and new structure.

Dustin, Steve, and I were on the morning meeting to start with this morning. Steve and I started talking about servers, models, and how to help configure the adilas model. I gave Steve an update from my working with Wayne yesterday and getting into and exploring the new virtual servers at Newtek. Lots of potential there and we could possibly take things to the next level without jumping from physical servers clear out to AWS. Basically, we are seeing a good middle ground where we gain from both side of the coin using Newtek's virtual serves, stacks, and clusters. We did some light drawing and talked about options. We may want Wayne to help us focus on the Newtek side of things vs going back into the deep, deep waters of AWS land. Good stuff.

Eric popped in and had some questions on session management and when, where, and how to use session values and variables. Mostly best practice stuff. Great questions and you can tell that he is trying to follow those best practices.

Steve and Dustin had to bail off the call around 10 am. They have a multiple hour call/meeting with a CPA in Colorado. Lots of talk about unitization, SGNA costs, cultivation, and production, and tracking everything through the system.

I spent the last hour working through some new settings on the new virtual servers from Newtek.

Glossary Terms:

A

• Actions/Action page - Often when you are on the web you have a form and it always submits its data to an action page, where it performs an action. 
• Accounts Payable - All bills, invoices, PO's and reimbursements that are due to be paid. Money that is owed to others from your company. 
• Accounts Receivable - All invoices that are not paid. Money that is owed to your company. 
• Active - Status that designates data as being in use. This status relates to customers, vendors, and items. When active, data will show up in search and list by default.
• Add - This is a general term which usually means create, multiply, or add on to. Common things could be add a customer, add an invoice - basically this means create a new one or apply an additional one. 
• Add to Queue - Link that assigns current customer to a list or "queue" which is a step before the shopping cart.
• Admin Time Clock - Allows user to see all active time cards/hours based on requested parameters. Also gives ability to edit the time cards. 
• Adobe/PDF - See PDF. This is a product made by Adobe which requires a reader. PDF stands for Portable Document Format which  is a format that can be read across browsers. 
• Advanced Add to Cart - Make changes to the item already added to the cart- price, cost, quantity, and tax category. Add discounts. *Special feature: put in unknown quantity, but known price to have the system determine how much you can sell based on dollars a customer has to spend.
• Advanced Searches - Access data based on specific parameters in all areas of database: customer, vendor, parts, elements of time, invoices, expense receipts, po's,
• API - application programming interface- a set of functions and procedures allowing the creation of applications that access the features or data of an operating system, application, or other service. Allows our software to connect to other software through a "door" that we can elect to open or keep closed.
• A/P's - See Accounts Payable. A/P's is an acronym for Accounts Payable which is an accounting term for who do I owe. 
• A/R's - See Accounts Receivable. A/R's is an acronym for Accounts Receivable which is an accounting term for who owes me money and how can I collect it.
• Assets - Any resources owned by the business. Tracked on the balance sheet through user-maintained balance sheet items (not automated by system).
• Assign to Cart - Action taken to add a customer to a shopping cart. Link is seen to the right of the customer information from the customer homepage.
• Ctrl A - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for selecting all the content in a certain area.

B

• Balance Sheet Item - A user-maintained account that stores data on the balance sheet. 
• Bank Reconciliation - Matching deposits and expenses in database to monthly bank statement. Must verify all transactions by date for these transactions to appear on the reconciliation page. 
• Banks - Virtual representations of banks or credit cards. May also be used to represent a location for tracking cash sales.
• Barcode - Made up of 15 spaces that may contain letters, numbers or symbols. Used to track inventory and speed up the sales process.
• Basic Live PO - Used to create inventory or inventory items in database. Name is dynamic and may be changed in the corp-wide settings (see section C).
• Bit Map Image - This is similar to a JPEG or a GIF image. Technically a bitmap means little tiny blocks of color that are organized in an image format to show a picture of some kind. The other kind of image is what is called a vector which has smooth mathematical lines that creates its visual appearance. 
• Black Box - Custom coded takeover of a page in the database. Gives customer specific functionality requested. Also makes page static to other system-wide updates so can create limitations in the long run.
• Browser - This is the tool for viewing web based content. There are multiple different browsers and some of them are based on your operating system or preference. Browsers are how all things are shown over the web. 
• BSI - Acronym short for Balance Sheet Items it may also be shown as B.S.I. These balance sheet items are what are called user-maintained items and is a miniature account for various things. Some of these things could be where you account for things such as loans, individual or company investments, large assets like buildings, vehicles, or machinery. 
• Build & Sell - This is a term used with a function called Recipe/Build. The build and sell is a quick, just in time, preformatted group or kit. So if there are multiple things that are sold together you can create this kit or grouping that you can use just in time on an invoice when you are selling these items.  
• Build & Hold - This term is used with Recipe/Builds as well but this term is used on the raw goods side. So a build and hold uses raw goods, meaning taking them from inventory, called ingredients. And produces outcomes or other products to be used farther down the manufacturing line or to be sold independently. 
• Bulk (in general - edit, verify, etc.) - The word bulk means more than one. In the system it is often used such as bulk edit meaning I am going to edit multiple lines at one. Or bulk verify meaning I am going to verify multiple things at one time. There is also bulk labels, bulk printing, etc. We are dealing with multiples of things. 
• Bulk Verify - Used to verify multiple deposits or expense receipts at one time. 
• Bump Value Up - The term bump just means move in a direction. Some systems would say debit or credit. We just say bump meaning which direction of flow is it going. Bump up means you are somehow increasing a value or total.  
• Bump Value Down - The term bump just means move in a direction. Some systems would say debit or credit. We just say bump meaning which direction of flow is it going. Bump down means you are decreasing a value or total. 

C

• Cart - Where items are placed in order to make a purchase (see also Shopping Cart).
• Check - One of many methods of payment, usually flowing out of a bank.
• Check Requests - A check request is a form of an expense receipt which is almost a question. Can I spend this money? It is similar to how a quote and an invoice are related, a quote is a potential precursor to an invoice. This is the same for check requests and expenses. A check request is a potential precursor to an expense. It does not count toward financials at this point. It requires an approval and once it is approved then it can become an actual expense and be booked on the financials. 
• Child - Refers to items in the database that can be sold. Connected to a parent item (parent inventory) which carries the name and some information. The child item is unique and can carry much more unique information (see also Sub Inventory).
• Chooser - Home page interfaces. 40+ choices plus custom options available. Called chooser because the user "chooses" which one is most suitable to their needs.
• Classic - Interface that shows all potential functions in the system. Not geared toward any particular tasks or industry.
• Clear Cart - Wipes out all actions related to the active shopping cart. Must perform this action in order to log out of the system, or to start a new cart.
• Clock in/out - Tracks users hourly work. Requires user to be assigned to a department.
• Closed - Potential status of a sub or child item. Once a sub/child item is at quantity 0, it can be closed. 
• Corp ID - Identifying number associated with every corp. Assigned upon activation.
• Corp Key or Alias - A corp key is a combination of three letters of the corporation name, a dash, and then a numeric corp id number. For example pla-0053. Pretend that this company's name was Playground and the Corp Id was 53, this could be it's corp key. The alias is like a username for the corp instead of the technical three digit plus numeric. An example for this one could be something like testing or playground. 
• Corp-wide Settings - Admin level settings that affect the database on a corp wide level. Options for setting system wide naming conventions, tax settings, discounts, etc.
• Corporation - This is a virtual world inside of a system. Corporation is also synonymous with entity, business, company, etc. Usually a corporation can have locations and different things within it but it is usually a tax entity. Often in the system you will see us use the word corp as a shortened form of corporation or business entity. 
• Counter Sale - Shopping cart that is not assigned to a customer. Used in sales situations where the customer is unknown and does not need to be.
• Create - This is another word for adding or making something new. For example create a new my cart favorite button or create new invoice link. 
• Cross Corp Invoice to PO - Special function that must be added by a system administrator (fees associated with this function) that allows one corp on the same server as another corp, to send inventory via an invoice. Both corps must agree to connect, then one makes an invoice, and the other turns that invoice automatically into a PO.
• CSS - This is an acronym for a web look and feel tool called a Cascading Style Sheet. The css of a site dictates colors, roll overs, margins, spacing, font, and other look and feel pieces. Inside of the system/platform we allow you to change a lot of these.  
• CSV - Comma Separated Values is a simple file format used to store tabular data, such as a spreadsheet or database. Files in the csv format can be imported to and exported from programs that store data in tables.
• Ctrl A - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for selecting all the content in a certain area.
• Ctrl C - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for copying a certain selection and putting it on the clipboard for future use. Ctrl V is used to paste.
• Ctrl N - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for creating a new tab in your browser window. Often you can do the same thing by right clicking a tab and clicking new or duplicate, etc. 
• Ctrl P - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for printing a certain page.
• Ctrl V - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for pasting a certain selection held in memory. Either Ctrl C or Ctrl X are the ways of copying something to memory. 
• Ctrl X - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for cutting a certain selection and putting it on the clipboard for future use. Ctrl V is used to paste.
• Ctrl Y - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for redoing something that has been undone. It's brother command is Ctrl Z or undo.
• Ctrl Z - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for undoing a previous action. It's brother command is Ctrl Y or redo.  
• Ctrl + - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for zooming in on the webpage or browser. This is control plus sign (+). 
• Ctrl - - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for zooming out on a webpage or browser. This is control minus sign (-).
• Custom - This is a broad term and can be used in many different ways. Often we use custom to refer to custom code, custom look and feel, custom flow, or custom processes. Also we use it generally to say we could add that in but it would be custom, meaning it would be specific to your needs and wants and go through a process of design and development to meet your needs. 
• Custom Logic - This is part of custom code but the term custom logic usually resides more toward the top of the page. It is like the brain for the page. This is how we control what is happening or could happen on a single page. You may often hear us say, "We could black box that." Meaning we could add code and logic at an insertion point to make the page perform custom actions, logic, flow, or other code related options. 
• Customer Queue - Customers waiting to make purchases can be placed in line or a queue so that they are seen in a first come first served order. Multiple queues can be used to designate customers as VIP, Pickup, etc.
• Customers - The people or companies you sell items or services to.

D

• Database - This is a background storage engine that holds all of the data tables, rows, and columns. The database engine that we use is called a MySQL server. This database server is very robust and can handle millions and millions of records, queries, and actions at a single time. Technically the database is that storage engine but sometimes we generally refer to it when discussing data or the storage area. For example, when a cart is fully submitted it transfers from session memory into the database.
• Default Homepages - Every user gets to set their default homepage. This is where you land, or are taken to, when you click your logo or home link. Think of this as your virtual starting spot or home base. The reason it says homepages is there are hundreds of choices that you could set as your default. As a side note you can also switch at any point to facilitate the task at hand. The original goal of this was like a person with a shed in their back yard. If they are paining they want painting stuff from the shed, if they are doing yard work you want yard work from the shed. Depending on the task at hand you may want easier access to options and/or tools. If you want you can even have a custom dashboard or default homepage made. 
• Default Settings - The system has a base of permissions and settings. This is how things interact and are used. A default setting means where it was set originally without any interaction or where that setting has currently been set to. Often these default setting will be changed based on needs, wants, or dictations from administration or higher authority. Settings come on a corporation level, a player group level, a page level, and even on a user level. 
• Delayed Inventory Counter - Used to count parent inventory by scanning barcode and entering quantity.
• Departments - Used to organize employees. Allows employees to utilize the clock in/out function (see above).
• Deposits - A total amount of money that flows into a bank.
• Deposit Types - Chart of accounts for deposits. System comes with several options and the user creates the rest.
• Dewy Decimal System - This was a funny name used as a code name/alias for a project to take functionality from 2 decimal points to 5 decimal points. Sorry librarians, no pun intended. ;) This was just taking numeric quantities, costs, and prices to multiple decimals of accuracy. 
• Disabled - One of the three statuses that refers to items and their ability to be sold or not sold. In this case, when an item is disabled, it is part of inventory but is unable to be sold (on lock down until enabled).
• Discount Calculator - Feature in the shopping cart that allows salesperson to discount items by dollar amount or percentage. Discounts can be by line item or added to the shopping cart as a whole.
• Discount Engine - Used to create reoccurring discounts. Settings determine if discounts are by category or item, and if by day, date, or time.
• DPI (Dots Per Inch) - This deals with image resolution both on screen and for printing. If you are printing something you want your DPI higher. If you are just viewing it on screen usually 72 DPI is enough for your eye to catch on the screen versus images for print are usually printed at at least 300-600 DPI. 
• Drill-Downs - This is a term for navigating through layers. An example might be you doing a customer search and it returned a number of customers. Then you would drill-down on the associated link to see their details, or drill-down to see their history, or drill-down to see other information, etc. 
• Duplicate Invoice to New Cart - Allows user to take an existing invoice and create a new shopping cart that is exactly the same as the original. Great for repeat sales in certain industries.

E

• E-Commerce - This is any sort of online web presence where you sell your goods and services over the internet. The software has both free and paid versions of ECommerce that are fully integrated and built in for our clients. Some of the cool features that you can harness are mobile ready, bill pay - where customers can come in and pay some of their bills, photo gallery, expanded descriptions, technical specs, automated emailing, and tons of custom display options.
• Edit - Function associated with all aspects of database- customers, vendors, items, banks, e/rs, deposits, invoices, etc. 
• Edit Line Items - Makes changes to the line items (second section) that have been added to a PO, deposit, invoice or E/R. 
• Edit Main - Makes changes to the main section (first section) of a PO, deposit, invoice, or E/R.
• Edit Payments - Makes changes to the payment section (third section) of an E/R or invoice.
• Elements of Time - May be defined by your business. Giant toolset that can be customized to meet your needs. Customer time clock, an appointment book, a scheduler of sorts, a dispatching solution, a payroll timesheet for employees, a mini blog, a general reminder system, etc. You name it, you set it up, and then you get to use it over and over again. You can search it, display it, add to it, create new templates, invoice time, quote time, and generally work with almost anything that has a time element associated with it.
• Employees - An employee is technically someone who works for a company. Inside of the system employee is a term that is used for persons who use the system and have permissions inside the system. Employees may have time cards, payroll, permissions, settings; they can also be used on expense/receipts and PO's and in these instances can be used virtually like a vendor. They also populate the salesperson list. 
• Equity - Equity is a section on the balance sheet which means some sort of long-term value. You can have different things like owner equity, paid in equity, investments, worth and distribution of wealth.
• EOT's - See Elements of Time. EOT is an acronym for Elements of Time. Another term is Time. When you search for time you are searching for an Element of Time. Technically you can have unlimited number of templates which are like cookie cutters. And then you can make an unlimited amount of cookies from those cookie cutters. It can go very deep.  
• ER's - Expense Receipt- these words used together mean any total amount of money that flows out of a bank.
• Expense Types - Chart of accounts for expenses. System comes with several options and the user creates the rest.

F

• Favorites - There are two primary ways that we use the word favorites in the system. One is a list of saved reports called your favorites. Another one is actually where favorites is a shortened term for My Favorite Buttons which are graphical point of sale buttons. 
• Flash - Flash is a shortened term for an Adobe Flash player. Flash has been used on the internet since early times. It could as simple as animations, special buttons, rich interfaces, etc. The software application uses Flash for navigation screens, check writing, barcode generating, and my cart favorite buttons (customer point of sale buttons). 
• Flash Bubble Interfaces -  There are three Flash interfaces that were designed my Russell Moore that may be used as default navigation homepages. They have special features such as rollovers, sliding menus, and drop downs. 
• Flash Buttons - Once again these are a shortened term for the my cart favorite buttons. Custom point of sale buttons setup by companies. These can be named, organized, colored, nest them, group them, preset settings, setup special pricing parameters, etc. These are often used as a standalone sale buttons or in the split cart view. Split cart has one screen of buttons and the other screen shows the cart so that you can see what has been added to the cart. 
• Flex Grid - Allows a user to custom code up to 30 fields per each main section. In short, flex grid allows the user to add additional tie ins, database fields and notes.
• Footers - A footer is anything that happens on the bottom of the page that is consistently there. Usually such things as navigation, branding, logos, copyrights, or other consistent notifications. 
• Form/Submit Form -  Anytime that a user can interact with a website is usually in a form. The software application has tons of web forms. Without getting super detailed you can have text fields, number fields, drop downs, text areas, radial groups, list boxes, check boxes, toggle switches, buttons, and other form features. The submit part of a form is when it actually gets sent back to the server and some sort of action takes place such as a search, an add, an update, a commit, a continue, etc. 
• Functions - This is a general term that could be used for what is your business function meaning process or flow. It could mean a logic decision behind the scenes - pass this variable to the function and you will get this result. It could also just generally mean how do things function meaning how do things work, how does it interact. Another term that we use sometimes is if you are dealing with API sockets (Application Programming Interface), we will often talk about the socket as if you are calling a certain function. 

G

• Gallery - A gallery is usually a collection of things most often photos, media/content, files, some sort of digital content. All of the 12 main players have their own galleries. Most galleries are tied to individual items within the groups. 
• General Tie-in - This could be one of two things. It could be talking about a thing called a flex grid tie-in which would be additional data related to the main item. Another reason we use general tie-in is if we don't know where the connection is going to go it can be tied to all sorts of things. Basically the tie-in means a relationship and general means you will need to categorize it.  
• GIF Image - A GIF image is a graphic and is considered to be in the Bitmap family. They have somewhat of a limitation on colors but they can still go up into the hundreds (like 256 colors). Some other really good benefits is they can have a transparent background and they can contain small animations.
• Global - This is a general term. We use it in a couple different ways. One would be a global variable meaning it is available for all. We have global settings which are generic across the whole system or a starting point. Then dealing with a world-building concept - global means within a world what is the style, attributes, presets, etc. for that world. All of these uses indicate broader or more general terms. 
• GPS - Global Positioning System. Basically inside of the software application, GPS can mean a physical location like an actual GPS or sometimes it is used as a term for a virtual locator of where I am in this world or in the system. Indicating a location, such as I am in invoices or deposits, etc. A cousin to GPS is something called an RFID tag. Both of them use some sort of X, Y, and Z coordinates but the main difference is that GPS is over a broader spectrum and RFID is in the confines of some smaller geo-fence but you can still tell where things are moving and can track things in spatial ways. 
• Gram Counter - Control added to the shopping cart for the cannabis industry that helps salesperson stay compliant in how much cannabis they sell to a customer. Multiple varieties exist based on requirements of the state of operation.

H

• Hardware - Technically this is computer peripheral type term. It usually means something that physically exists or something you physically connect to a computer. There is a physical aspect to it. You can see it, touch it, connect to it, it can contain it's own programs and software, etc. Some common pieces are laptops, desktops, monitor, disc drive, scanners, printers, and so on. Almost anything that has a physical component and an electronic piece that can be associated with a computer is called hardware.  
• Hash - The word hash has a number of different meanings. Usually inside of a computer system a hash means a small encrypted value that may be de-crypted or decoded by the computer. A way to make something non-human readable but still decipherable to a computer with the correct codes to unwind it. A general term for hash is a mix of things that gives you a new item or output at the end. 
• Headers - These are usually at the top of the page and have a reoccurring look, feel, theme, navigation, search options, menus, etc. It is basically a way of standardizing multiple pages to look similar - you can use or create a header. 
• History - History inside of the software application takes on numerous different flavors. History could be just what happens over time. It could also be user interactions, cause and effect cycles, check points, etc. The history is also a shortened word for the audit trail, the log files, and the decision trees within the system. Most histories inside of the system are unalterable - they are caught and monitored behind the scenes as actions take place. History inside of the software application can take on a couple different forms - effectual, historical, financial. These are all aspects of history but they all have a little bit of their own flavor. 
• Homepages - This is a web term for a starting spot or a spot that has like pieces. What we do is allow everyone to start with their own homepage or starting area. This allows them to navigate the system or have quicker access for the features they use. The other use of the term homepage in the system is for each of the 12 main players. All of these 12 main players have their own homepage or main hub for the features associated with that player. Such as invoice homepage, PO homepage, expense/receipt homepage, etc. Sometimes these are called sub homepages. 
• Hover - Action used to view links in the database. At the top of every page user can 'hover' over the main links to access myriad other pages in the database.
• HTML Buttons - There are two different terms for HTML buttons. Any form inside of the system technically has an HTML button to help it submit or do any other process. The other use of the term HTML buttons deals with my cart favorites and this is a comparison between Flash buttons or HTML buttons - meaning how the buttons are generated. 

I

• Ice Down - This is a term for basically permission based locking. This goes back to an analogy we use with liquid water turning more solidly into ice. As data in the system becomes more firm or set it virtually gets iced down. 
• Inactive - Status that designates data as being out of use. This status relates to customers, vendors, and items. When inactive, data will not show up in search and list by default. User must specifically request to view inactive data.
• Interactive Map - This is a graphic that shows a lot of the key elements inside of the system. A number of different departments, homepages, areas that have their own tools, etc. It is one of the standard navigation homepages. It is also used often for training when we are trying to show flow between the different areas or departments. The help file for that page goes into major details as to why things are organized on the map the way they are. 
• Internal Build PO - This type of PO is used internally to take raw goods and combine them to create something new (kitting, packages, groups, mini manufacturing, etc.). For example, say you wanted to make a cake, the raw goods might be flour, sugar, eggs, butter, etc. The internal build PO would subtract the raw goods from inventory (negative quantities) and create a new product called cake or cookies (positive quantities). This PO type has it's own permission and is very powerful.This same PO type is used by the system when using the internal recipe/build process. The recipes are basically a pre-set group of ingredients, parts, items, and/or outputs. These recipes are called "build and hold" recipes. The internal build PO may also be used when taking a certain part, painting it, heating it, cutting it, chopping it, combining it, or somehow changing it into some other part (any type of mini manufacturing). This PO type, internal build, is how you physically control your inventory counts. Similar to the update PO, this PO is not vendor specific and does require a special permission to use this PO type.
• Internal Repair - This deals with a stock/unit. Basically it makes an internal serialized item become a customer and you can use anything from your shop or store and attribute it or apply it to that specific stock/unit. 
• Invoice - Use to record a sale of any item or service to a customer.

J

• JPEG Image - A format for compressing image files. Every form in the database has a storage space for jpegs that can be accessed from the photo/scan button.
• Jump - This could be a couple different things. Often we will use the word jump to indicate some sort of motion or movement. This could be let's jump into this or jump to this place on the page or somewhere else in the application. Sometimes we use the same phrase when we talk about using the quick search inside of the system to navigate somewhere. So while this is an action term indicating movement and navigation it can also refer to times when you skip multiple steps by clicking or jumping somewhere. 
• Junk - This could refer to email, junk email. It could also refer to doing something which you are going to get rid of. Or it could be if you are putting garbage into the system, you are going to get garbage back out. This refers to putting bad data in the system - junk, garbage. 
• Just in Time - An acronym for this is JIT. This was originally developed in manufacturing and operational warehouses. Now it has been modified and is used in all kinds of things such as just in time inventory management, just in time bill pay, just in time project management, just in time communications, and so on. Instead of planning and preparing everything out to the nines sometimes you can do it just in time which saves both time and money and is an efficiency factor.  

K

• Keep - This is usually some sort of an action where you are maintaining or keeping something for later use. It could also involve something that you do continuously - for instance keep clicking on this, keep drilling down, keep refreshing, keep checking back, etc. Saying either save that or continue on that path. 
• Kill - This is a general term usually meaning to delete, destroy, make inactive, hide, etc. It is a general term that means to get rid of something. Other times you might talk about if it is going to kill the system meaning too heavy of a load, too intense, too many sub details, etc. 
• Knock knock - Who's there? It could be a joke but actually we use it in computer speaking when we are trying to gain access to API sockets. You play knock knock with the server. The server responds who are you? What do you want? Then you have to respond that those questions/requests. It is kind of a back and forth protocol. 

L

• Labels - Can be printed via browser settings from multiple locations in the database. Item labels can be used to add items to the shopping cart, item labels can be printed from within the shopping cart for certain industries, labels can be printed for plants from the cultivation homepage.
• Liabilities - Financial obligations of a company. Tracked on the balance sheet.
• Line Items - "Meat and potatoes of a form." Can be inventory items on a PO, expenses on an expense receipt, and invoice sales on a deposit.
• Link - A link could be an actual web link where you go from page to page. These are often used in navigation or drill-downs. A link could also be things that get connected or tied in. Such as an invoice might be linked with a customer or an item is linked with a PO. Another definition for link is an item within a chain of a process. What are the links that it needs to go through?
• Locations - Way to sort inventory, allocate sales tax rates, organize operations in the database. Completely dynamic.
• Lock - A lock usually means that something becomes more secure. It could be locking people out, locking things down, it could be advancing something so that people with lower permissions cannot access or see it. Another example could be a system being put or going on lock down - like the system or a database table. A lock is used to inhibit access. 
• Logout - Function that allows a user to leave the database. Once logged out, another user can log in from that computer. Note.. logging out does not clock out the user.
• Logs - Associated with customers/clients. Area where notes may be kept for historical reference.
• Look and Feel - Basically this deals with what you see. Your interface colors, your color choices, your navigation buttons, your interface layout design, your defaults, your style, etc. The software system allows for all kinds of dynamic colors, fonts, watermarks, graphics, logos, and styling to help with your look and feel. 
• Look Back Date - Usually this means that we are going back in time to look at data or content. Very common for inventory levels, sales, and balance sheet items.
• LPI (Lines Per Inch) - This is a printing term that deals with resolution. Another common one for this is DPI which is dots per inch. Often computer screens and printers deal with DPI where LPI is for professional print shops. 

M

• Main - The software application uses the term main in multiple different ways. It could be main homepage, main navigation, main or core logic. The word main might also refer to sub homepages such as main customer homepage, main invoice homepage, main deposit homepage. Going deeper the word main could also mean the starting of the object. Anything that can hold subs is a main. For instance the main invoice details or main element of time. We end up adding sub details, such as line items and payments, to a main bucket, item, or container. It is very common within the application to see the words edit main. This deals with going directly to edit the details required to start or initiate a new object within the system. 
• Make/Model - This is tied to serialized or stock/unit inventory. The make is usually similar to a brand name. Then the model is usually some sort of a sub division within that, that has some known attributes or pieces. In the system we allow you to define the makes/models and the underlying presets that go along with those. These are set up into one to many relationships where one make can have an unlimited number of models.  
• Manager's Time Clock - This is a permission/section that allows a user to oversee time clock records for departments that have been assigned to that manager. Time clocks have three different levels. You have the user level which is easy to add but you cannot edit anything. Then manager's time clock which allows you to add and edit but only at a certain level. Then admin time clock that allows for corporation wide adds, edits, and reports. 
• Mark-up - This usually deals with a pricing model where you take a value and you multiple it by a cost to arrive at a new price. Depending on if you are doing widget (small, bulk) type inventory or serialized (stock/unit) inventory there may be multiple levels of mark-up. Another way that mark-up is used is sometimes on coding language. A mark-up language is where certain things have tags, attributes, and parameters. 
• Media Content - Technically media/content is any kind of file, which could be spreadsheets, text documents, PDFs, graphics, photos, scans, audio files, video files, etc. that may be added to the system. Inside of the application we allow media/content to be added to any of the 12 main items, any of the 12 main player groups, or just generically to the system as a whole. Basically this is your paperless office function. 
• Merchant Processing - This is a general term used to talk about credit card transactions, authorizations, and processing. The system acts as the client side or software piece. It sends transactions over to a gateway which authorizes, confirms, and holds secure data. The merchant part of it deals with converting that data into real monies that will get pushed into the company's bank account.
• Mini Conversions - A conversion is where something gets converted into something else. Usually it deals with units of measure. For example gallons of water, liters of water, cups of water, drops of water, etc. The reason we use the word mini conversions is that we are trying to track a semblance of what is happening instead of a full conversion that might be unalterable. These mini conversions are simulating the breakdown or conversion into smaller or bigger groupings. 
• Mobile - This could mean mobile as in on a mobile device where the sizing or layout changes based on screen size. It could also mean the ability to carry, transport, or move around. It may also mean the ability to transfer pieces between things - the data can become mobile. The ability of the data to transfer between places such as to different corps, other software, different places in the application, etc. Often you might here the words mobile app or mobile ready - that usually means a software system that runs natively on android or iOS devices. 
• Money Types - Options for making and receiving payments.
• Money Type Settings - List that shows all existing options for making and receiving payments. Boxes may be selected or deselected to customize payment options based on form (Invoice, Shopping Cart, Deposit, Expense)
• More Options - Button provides access to links that are associated with the page in use. At the top of most pages.
• My Cart Favorites - Custom preset buttons that determine how items assigned to those buttons are sold.
• My Settings - This deals with access to user level settings within the software application. This could be anything from password and profile information to default cart types, expense types, Flash buttons, etc.

N

• Ctrl N - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for creating a new tab in your browser window. Often you can do the same thing by right clicking a tab and clicking new or duplicate, etc. 
• News & Updates - Updates and how to's are posted here to alert users of new functionality within the system.
• Normal Parts/Items - The word "parts" is used to mean any item that is tracked as a group (including labor and services). It is also important to note that the words "parts" and "part number" are editable on a per corporation basis from the corp-wide settings. Specific items are called units or stock numbers (serialized units) and are handled through a different section (usually bigger ticket items). Sometimes the word normal parts applies itself to how things are tracked meaning tracking things in and out. 

O

• One to Many - This is a database concept and usually deals with some main element that may have subs, children, add-ons, additions, or some unlimited number of connections. Some examples could be one customer has multiple invoices or each invoice has multiple line items. We use the concept of one to many to talk way beyond just database things but that is where it came from. 
• One to One - This is also a database concept and usually what it means is a direct relationship. It's the opposite of a one to many. Often a one to one indicates a switch, a toggle, an additional value that may be conditional, an option of being turned on or invoked. 
• Online Bill Pay - This is where a customer would actually get a button, a link, or an email where they could go pay for a statement online using a credit card. 
• Open/Opened - This is a common term that we use to talk about being engaged, active, selected, etc. An example might be open this package, meaning make it active or current. Or open the invoice homepage, meaning go to that page and open it. Or you may hear someone say tell me what tabs you have opened, meaning what do you have showing. 

P

• Ctrl P - This is a keyboard shortcut on windows for printing a certain page.
• Packages - This is used in a number of different ways. Often it deals with batches for sub inventory. Sometimes they are called packages or child packages where you get into parent or child relationship. Packages could get into shipping. Packages could also be used for a certain set of features. For example if you were in a certain industry and wanted to buy the extended package that would be a set of extended features. Sometimes it is also used in the recipe/build area if you are creating certain recipes to create a package, or a kit, or some sort of group. 
• Page Settings - These deal with what happens on a single page. As a note there are corporation or world-level settings. There are group level settings such as invoices or PO settings. There are individual settings, there are also these page settings which deal with just how certain pages act, interact, show/hide, react, etc. 
• Parent - This usually refers to inventory and kind of a parent-child relationship. The parent is usually the main element or place holder. We then refer to the parent as the main item and the subsequent children are those related to that parent.  
• Parent Attributes - These are optional but these are classifications and categories that can be associated with different inventory items. These are ways to group and flag your inventories. This can help with sales and filtering of items/products. These are unlimited and often help in categorizing or searching or sub-filtering pieces together. As an example, say you bought outdoor equipment from a wholesaler but you really wanted to make sure that things were known for their brand. Not necessarily the vendor you purchased them from but the brand. This could be one example of a parent attribute but there are unlimited possibilities. 
• Parent Inventory - Inventory items. May be sold as is (status active) or may be set up not to be sold (allow subs only) but to act as name holders for sub inventory (see sub inventory). May also be set to inactive if no longer needed for sales.
• Parts - Items or services that are sold. The name 'part' can be changed to reflect the 'widget' inventory and or services. 
• Part Category/Categories - Organizes items into a subset. Technically a part category helps in searches, in your reports, and on your financials. It also helps if you are going to be setting up any sub inventory attributes. Most of your sales reports are done by category at the top level and then by item. 
• Parts Homepage - Main inventory homepage. May search for inventory by vendor, category, or item. Printable views also accessed from this homepage, as well as a multitude of advanced searches.
• Patient - System default is customer- patient is an example of a choice for renaming 
• Payee - Refers to individual or business being paid, either vendor or employee.
• Payments Not Yet Deposited - As invoices are created, payments are applied. This verbiage stands for the state of these payments. They are 'waiting' to be included on a deposit.
• PDF-Portable Document Format - a file format that is used to share data. Many pages in the system may be exported to PDF through the click of a button.
• Permissions - Over 100 rules that allow or block access to functions within the database. 
• PNG Image - Portable Network Graphic- type of image file that is accepted for upload under the Media/Content link located on most forms in the database.
• PO's - This abbreviation stands for both Purchase Order, used to receive inventory and Production Order, used to record and track light manufactured items.
• Post - A post has a couple different things that it could be. One, any time a form is submitted it is called a post in technical terms. A post in accounting usually means let's lock it down and make it tight, also meaning lock it down from lower permission users. A post could also mean when you take smaller details and combine them into a summed entry, this entry can also be called a post. If you are talking about fences, it's the big tall thing. :)
• Printable - View of data that is condensed in order to print more succinctly. Editing is unavailable in the printable view.

Q

• Quick Search - This function appears on each page and allows one to quickly search for any element.
• Quote - The step prior to creating an invoice. Can be skipped if desired or created and turned into an invoice.
• QR Code - A two dimensional barcode that holds more data than a one dimensional barcode. 
  
  

R

• Raster Image - This is also sometimes called a bitmap image. Usually what this means is that there are little blocks of color to make the image. If it is blown up to big it can become pixelated. For example, people who work in PhotoShop deal with raster images all the time. The opposite of a raster image is what is called a vector image, which deals with smooth mathematical lines, arcs, and curves. Vector images scale very well because they are mathematically based. 
• Recipe/Builds - Method of selling items grouped together into a 'kit' or 'recipe'. Pulls inventory onto the invoice in set quantities.
• Refresh Queue - A queue is basically a digital line. This could be used for projects, people waiting, people who need to be served, etc. Refreshing the queue typically just means what is the current status or order of these people or things waiting. Some of the pages actually have settings so that the queue will refresh itself at an interval the company has selected. 
• REI's - This is short for a reimbursement. A reimbursement is money that was paid out of a person's pocket that needs to be paid back directly to that person. These are very common in the expense/receipt side of the application. Fro example, say I was out and bought a new broom and wanted to have the company reimburse me for buying the broom. On a technical side reimbursements in the system must be paid back in full. There is something called a split in the system that you can chip away at an expense and make payments to it but a reimbursement must be paid in full. There are tools in the systems to combine or pay reimbursements in bulk. 
• Reoccurring Elements of Time - Often you will have things that you want to reoccur over and over again such as company meetings, a set/reoccurring due date, even a person's schedule - things that happen over and over again. Inside the system you have to create one primary element of time that exists by itself, then you can tell it to reoccur or choose how to reoccurs. The master needs to be created first and then you can duplicate that master to create the further elements for reoccurring. 
• Reoccurring Expense Receipts - This is some sort of a bill or expense that happens over and over again. This is very common for rent, insurance, draws, auto-transfers from banks, etc. You set up the master and then you can tell it when to duplicate itself and advance it's dates for creating the additional expense/receipts. 
• Reoccurring Invoices - This is charging a customer over and over again in some kind of a reoccurring subscription, or repetitive purchases, etc. Once a single invoice is setup it could be set to reoccurring if there is some sort of constant, regular billing. If the invoice amount changes you may not want to go this route. This is best used for the same items/services and amount reoccurring on a regular interval. Once again you have to have a master invoice and then it knows what to copy. This section inside of the system can do it both automatically and as a manual reminder in case things need to change. 
• Request PO - This PO type is used for ordering, requesting, or getting quotes from vendors. This PO type records all of the main PO info without taking it to the next step (receiving). The PO request may easily be turned into a "Basic Live" PO by switching the PO type. When this happens, the request will hold all of it's original info and becomes received (actual or live). At this point, it will function just as a basic live PO would (inventory counts and payables). This PO type is vendor specific. See corp-wide settings for custom naming.
• Responsive - This has a couple of general meanings. One of the most modern ones is called a responsive webpage, meaning it sizes well for different devices. The layout will change depending on the size of the screen, that is called responsive. Another use of the word responsive is talking about clients getting back with you, vendors, or even the server - such as the server is not responsive meaning that it is not responding to requests presently which could mean it may be asleep or dead for a bit.
• Restore to Cart - This means you are taking something, usually a quote, and putting it back into the flexible shopping cart mode where you can add, edit, change, and use the bulk tools in the shopping cart. As a note, restore to cart is from quotes but there is also an option to duplicate to cart which is taking a completed invoice and restoring it to the cart. 
• Results - This is also a general term. It could mean a goal - what are you desired results. It could mean results of a query - what came back from a search. It could also deal with testing results for something such as new code. Results are also trying to find what you are looking for. What do you get out of this thing that you are looking for. 
• RFID - Radio frequency i.d.- Used in the cannabis industry to track all inventory and plants. Unique number associated with inventory items.
• Rounding - Rounding deals with the level of accuracy, usually with number. This could be decimals to decimals or decimals to integers. It is also important to know that the deeper you split something apart there might be virtual saw dust or shavings which is referred to as rounding error - trying to get it split apart or broken down as close as you can. Rounding is often used in taxes, discounts, and eventually needs to be equated into money if you are dealing with dollars and cents. Sometimes inside of the system we allow things to be flexible up to 5 decimal points - the term we use for this in the application is the dewy decimal system - this is not related to libraries.   

S

• Sales Tax Settings - All settings are dynamic and can be entered on the location homepage. 
• Server (what server are you on?) - All corps are assigned a server that houses all their data. Server number is visible in URL ie. https://data4.adilas.biz
• Settings - Settings are usually some sort of user preferences or default values to help a page or a function configure itself. Inside of the system there are four main types of settings. We have corporation or world level settings. We have group or system player settings - for example invoices, parts, customers, etc. We also have what are called page settings which deal with a specific page function, flow, or process. The lastly we also have a thing called individual or user settings - this is where an individual or user gets to set some preferences such as default types, navigation, other presets and defaults. 
• Shopping Cart - Where sales happen in the database (see also Cart).  The shopping cart is how you sell your stuff. It is the interface between your customers and the entire rest of the system. The shopping cart eventually helps you to create your invoices and quotes. It is literally tied to almost everything in the system. If you took out this piece of the puzzle, not much would be happening. This is the "interface" piece.
• Show/Hide Search Criteria - This is usually a button or a link that helps you collapse or expand search forms. Often pages or reports needs user inputs or filters but showing that right off the bat takes up valuable real estate on the page. So the show/hide search criteria allows you to expand or collapse that when you need to interact with the input, filter, and searching section.  
• Smart Group - Basically, a smart group button is a my cart favorite button that contains all of the functionality of the normal cart favorite buttons plus it allows for pre-set pricing structures (quantities, weights, and prices) to be assigned or connected to one or more inventory items. Smart group buttons allow for both assignments (who gets to play) and rules (how things interact or play) to be set up.
• Snow Owl - This is a look and feel theme or motif. Snow Owl is a series of header, footers, options, settings, and styling for the pages. Originally developed by Russell Moore in 2017. Additional changes have been made. This theme currently has the most modern features, access to tools, functions, settings, and more. Sometimes we talk about Snow Owl in a general sense but this encompasses hundreds of settings, features, and options that are part of running Snow Owl. 
• Software - This is a term meaning any kind of code or program that is installed on a machine. Often software deals with licenses, updates, versioning, etc. Some of it's family members are hardware, firmware, freeware, shareware, and even sometimes vaporware. Even though the system is a web application it is sometimes generically called software. 
• Special Line Items - These deal with the hardcoded part numbers or "special line items" that are used within the application. Many of them have special uses and special code that is built in to the main application. These are things such as labor, fee, discount, verbage, other, shipping, trade-ins, and more. Basically these are special parts or items that can be attached to an invoice or PO and some of them even have special treatment on how they are tracked financially on the P&L and Balance Sheet.  
• Special Live PO - PO used to bring in inventory from multiple vendors. This PO type allows the main vendor to be set as the payable (who will get paid), and the line items may contain bulk, generic, or non-vendor specific items. These PO types are used by companies that buy the same item from multiple vendors and don't want certain items to be tracked on a per vendor basis. The items become a bulk or general usage item and are usually maintained under a special internal vendor. 
• Special Parts - This can be two different things, it can refer to unlimited items that don't track quantity such as labor or services, or it can refer to the special built-in application items.
• Special Request - This is the request side of the special live PO's. Very similar to a basic request except it allows multi and mixed vendors. See description of special live PO's above for more info. Once received, all special request PO's will need to be flipped over to the special live PO status in order to show up and become real or live. 
• Specific - Specific basically limits the scope. We use it as a general term and it could mean specific in reference to talking about a specific item or a specific relationship. We also use it when referring to things like corp specific, vendor specific, location specific, user specific etc. Once again it takes that general topic and narrows it down to that scope. 
• Split Cart - Feature that allows user to view shopping cart and my cart favorite buttons on the same screen simultaneously (see M for My cart favorite).
• Split/Splits - This has a number of different features associated with the word splits. This could be split payments - which is typically dealing with multiple locations where you may have to split or divide payments. A general term called splits in the system is a term used for payments that are on account. This is used when you need to pay a vendor and you may owe a larger sum than you can pay right then. You can attribute whatever monies you would like to that vendor's account and it will pay off or satisfy those expenses. Sometimes split can refer to split screen functionality that diverges or splits. If you are dividing revenue sharing you might create some sort of a split. 
• Start New Cart - Function that allows user to begin a sale.
• Statements - a time stamped report or "snapshot" of who owes you what.
• Stock/Unit Cust - A restricted view of serialized inventory. The view is 'customer' friendly, hence the name 'Cust.'
• Stock/Unit Full - A full view of serialized inventory. Includes cost and other info that should be hidden from customers.
• Students - Technically a student is a person who learns. There is a corp wide setting that you can use for your customers and if you happen to be engaged with people who are called students you may change your customer name to student. This can also deal with people who are learning from your media files or procedures. 
• Sub Attributes - Unique information associated with a sub inventory item. This information is driven by sub inventory templates that are created based on the tracking needs of the business (see sub attribute templates).
• Sub Attribute Templates - Templates that carry the unique data assigned to sub inventory items. These are assigned by the business based on tracking needs.
• Sub Inventory - Items in the database that can be sold. Connected to a parent item (parent inventory) which carries the name and some information. Sub inventory is unique and can carry much more unique information (see also Child).
• Switch Corp - If a business has more than one corp they can switch between them without logging out.
• System Assets - Contains all company assets. Deposits, Accounts Receivable, Invoices etc.
• System Basics - Basic permissions and links to preform calculations.
• System Liabilities - Contains all company liabilities. In general all payables that your company owes.
• System-Maintained BSI - Item on the balance sheet that are automatically generated and updated by the database.
• System Maintenance - Section that contains homepages that allow the user to maintain different functions.
• System Management - High security level that allows the user to maintain corpwide settings and user permissions.
• System Reports - General reports to help you know and understand the company finances, inventory levels and historical data.
• System Time & Requests - Inter company calendar. Used to schedule any 'element of time.'

T

• T terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

U

• U terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

V

• V terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

W

• W terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

X

• X terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

Y

• Y terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

Z

• Z terms connected in the sub notes below - click to view whole document

Touching base with Wayne about AWS and possible cloning and clustering options at Newtek. I showed him the brainstorming doc that Steve and I made yesterday. We also talked briefly about the task code and how we may be able to harness some of that code to help with other automated tasks in the system. Currently, Wayne is looking into some of the image stuff that he had working on AWS. They made some changes (Amazon) and it broke our code. He is working through that and making new changes.

Touching base with Alan and Dustin on their weekends, trips, and plans. Great guys and good stuff. It is fun to see all of the guys figuring things out and having fun in the midst of the crazy stuff. I made a few phone calls out to other developers and just trying to circle the wagons a bit. Emails and other to do list stuff. Wayne popped in for a bit as well. We setup an appointment for tomorrow morning.

Around 10:15 am ish, Steve and I were the only ones left on the meeting. Steve had a number of things that need to be taken care of. I was taking notes (good old post-it notes) and we got into a great discussion about servers and what we have and where we are going. We were talking about our current setup with Newtek (physical dedicated boxes and dedicated servers) vs AWS (cloned images and private and shared stacks and clusters). We also talked some about how we could possibly take an interim step and maybe increase the output and throughput over at Newtek. We started drawing and talking about current observations, options, and known bottlenecks. Great stuff and I think that it will help us out when we talk with Newtek about some options. Along with that same discussion, we talked about possible ways of getting people (other companies or corporations) off the bus or giant shared database environment and into their own databases.

After that discussion, we got into reporting, financials, and switching between transactional data and aggregated data reports. That spun us off into a discussion about how to show and display the P&L and balance sheet values directly from the same page or report over time. We have dreamed about this for years now. If you want, look up "movie" in the developer's notebook. Not all entries apply, but some of them totally deal with running the business financials over time in a virtual movie type format. Showing the growth and flex patterns of a company using the aggregated sums, averages, and totals. Pretty cool idea.

As a direct quote from Steve today - "I would love to teach people about accounting from the balance sheet backwards (meaning where the data came from)."

We also talked about switching to more robust servers, software on the servers, and switching between community and enterprise editions on database models and scripting environments. Lots of possible options. We just keep taking the next logical step (lots of little changes).

Jim Dougal (tax atterney in California and works with differnet CPA's) jumped on and had a few questions for Steve. We also had Pat Dolan join us. Pat has been helping out Adilas with sales and customer relationships. We also had Timothy Lyons (lead IT and tech for Herbo) join in the meeting. The subject of the meeting was dealing with pricing, technology, and how to move forward.

1. Price piece - discussion between Jim and Steve

2. 3rd party solution - Herbo ecommerce solution - We want to allow all of the customers access to this option. Having said that, we need a 3rd party solution switch that would allow for an actual switch (on/off).

3. Integrating with Square (payment processing) - They are in the process of finishing up the contract between Herbo and Square. Steve has already talked with Bryan Dayton (adilas developer) for the Square integration.

4. Other - On the server side, we briefly talked about dedicated servers and how we can proceed. We could commission physical dedicated boxes or virtual cloud clusters. Along with that, we talked about custom URL's and/or domain names. There were some questions about when does a company need a dedicated box vs a shared stack or semi-dedicated server model. What are the thresholds and capacity levels? How many transactions are we looking at per company, per server, per group?

Looking forward on AWS (amazon web services)… we get away from a physical dedicated server but it gets into a dedicated stack and/or dedicated cluster. The AWS environment allows for virtual load balancing and then automatically adding and subtracting dynamic power to help with the processing.

There were some conversations about splitting up the bus and getting each company on its own corp-specific database vs a shared database. As we get bigger and bigger, we will need to split things apart to make them faster and more efficient. Having said that, that also increases the need for back-to-back API sockets and data exchange between clients and clients and corporations and corporations. As things grow, we end up seeing lots of cross-corp type connections and functionality.

Tim had a couple questions:

1. Where are we going to host things? We would like to setup a meeting with our current hosting provider. Tim would really like to be in on this conversation. We, from the adilas side, need to get both Wayne and Alan involved in our decisions. As a side note, we have a physical dedicated environment that works and can work in the future. All of the AWS and/or dynamic cloud interfaces are in the process... but we don't have a physical fully working environment.

Steve was talking about once we get things settled, we can still jump up to bigger servers, clusters, and even migrating data and systems to the more robust virtual environment. Lots of options. There may even be some pricing options such as economy level, mid level, and deluxe type levels. Some of that may come back to where are things hosted and what are the environments that get setup.

Tim was talking about umbrellas and having dedicated and shared servers underneath the main umbrellas. Basically, a way to stack the systems. In a way, we simulate a hosting company by sub dividing our IT assets as needed.

- What are the timelines for AWS or Newtek?

- There are some discount options for pre-buying and/or pre-paying for servers.

- There were some talks about charging for hosting as a pass-through type charge. Currently, if our clients are on a shared type environment, we only charge a monthly fee, similar to a ski lift (pay for a seat and the chair is just spinning). However, if we have a dedicated client, we charge a server fee and then the monthly within the dedicated server. Kinda like a private chair lift per server. Adding in some options to help do normal charges and then also help the clients pay for what they are using (being able to track the stats and real usage per client). They were also talking about watching and monitoring each box and getting the best ROI (return on investment) per server. Basically, the standard fee structure that we currently use may need to change to help deal with pass-through and new and upcoming costs.

2. What about code branching? They, Herbo, would like to offer a specific version (branch of code) and then be able to mix and blend and cross merge code as needed. If they develop things, we could merge them in, if we develop things, they could merge them in. They would be separate branches. We would like to have another meeting between Wayne, Alan, Tim, Steve, and others.

- We briefly talked about themes (separate internal sub folders) or are we at an API socket level (external data sharing) where we are just exchanging raw data back and forth. The difference is, it built internally or built externally and just played at the API socket level (play at the wall). If they play that way, external API sockets, they could use AJAX and just push and pull data through the API sockets. If they work on the API socket level, they could code it any way they want with any look and feel and any backend coding languages.

- Steve kept bringing it back to use what exists and what works and we'll go from there.

We are getting more outside vendors (3rd party solutions) trying to sell us block chain (blockchain) type technology. This is both on the inventory tracking side as well as the accounting side. Currently, it sounds good and cool but there are hidden costs and problems.

As a side note, we are also getting more pressure on servers and who has access to control what pieces. We are still bringing things up at AWS and Newtek. Both systems have a different structure. That is a challenge as well.

Another topic is dealing with API sockets and dealing in bulk sending and receiving data back and forth. The other circling topic is the need for customer rewards, loyalty points, and other special account stuff. The deeper we get, the more buried we seem to be. It almost seems perpetual and an ongoing mode of being buried. Thus is life.

On the adilas permissions (we have tons of them), we would really like to help that page with the look and feel as well as a copy user permissions and/or templates. We were also talking about a possible grouping of permissions and even a drill-down type interface for permissions, settings, and how each thing could be layered and/or navigated. The easy answer may be a simple copy a specific user's permissions. That could be the fastest option for helping out with permissions and setting up permissions for other users.

We had a discussion on the transferring of sub inventory and parent inventory. We have some clients that want to mix the locations on PO's, invoices, and quotes. It gets really crazy. They want to virtually skip the transfer step. Steve would like to maybe help them out by creating a new process that allows for bulk transfers. As an alternate option, Steve would like to potentially be a project manager for this project and work with Bryan on a new solution.

Spent some time reading over public records on blockchain. There are some advantages and a number of disadvantages. As of right now, we will continue with what we have going on and working on a digital assembly line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain

Alan, Steve, and I were talking about options for servers. We were talking about the progression of client needs. Virtual machines vs standalone dedicated servers. Working with clouds, virtual environments, clusters, dedicated stacks. Pretty techy server stuff. Load management, load balancing, and turn around times for different processes (flexing both up and down).

The other topics of the day were cross corp stuff, world building (breaking apart the databases), and integrating with other or outside solutions. At some point, it may be fun if some of these outside parties try to integrate with us vs us having to integrate with them. Custom interfaces and how deep (clear into details and sub levels) things really need to go. It gets pretty crazy. You really need a platform and a highly flexible system to help handle those things.

At one point, we had Wayne join us on the meeting. Some of his questions were dealing with images and icons out in the ecommerce land area. We chatted about that and then also touched base on server options, both existing pieces (physical dedicated servers) and virtual cloud and/or AWS type environments.

Later on, we had a discussion about expanding the adilas team and who would take care of what pieces. We talked about allowing white label options to take care of specific industries and then we could focus on the general engine and upkeep of the system. We also talked about the future need of project managers, graphic designers, frontend developers, backend developers, and server/hardware guys. It is going to take a team as we keep moving forward. We are already started down some of those paths. We just need to keep minding our p's and q's. Good stuff.

Steve and I spent the rest of the meeting talking about other options with developers and what plans we wanted to activate and what things we want to sit on right now. Great conversations and we feel like we have a good plan. Here we go. Yee haw!

Working on migrating around 7,000 customers from one corporation to three other corporations out on data 7 for a company in Florida. Shari O. popped into the meeting and had a question about changing stock/units models and their sub inventory types. After that, Wayne Andersen joined the meeting and had some questions about some of the settings out inside of the shop folder. He is working on the AWS stuff. We went over a few things and talked about progress in the transition between spinning hard metal (normal dedicated servers with actual hard drives) vs the AWS cloud (virtual servers, stacks, and dynamic server assets). Interesting.

On the morning meeting with Steve and Dustin. We worked on some small image tweaks for Steve and his custom sales icon reports and then talked about AWS and progress out there in that area. Towards the end of the meeting, Steve and Dustin were starting to work on how to look up sub id's from data that exists.

Eric and I touched based on some questions. Most of questions had to deal with adilas 3rd party solutions. Either new requests, small tweaks, and ideas on how to handle certain custom requests. We were looking at API sockets, documentation, possible expansion on certain areas, and basic flow (web interface) for other projects. Eric has three or four projects right now and all of them touch the adilas 3rd party solutions page in one way or another. Interesting.

On a different note, Steve joined and reported that he has been talking with Calvin Chipman about running C# and C++ code out on AWS (amazon web services) through Lambda functions. Wayne, had been doing tons of that kind of stuff. Steve wants Wayne and Calvin to touch base and see what we can figure out. That was some good news.

Busy Monday morning. We started out with Josh joining us and giving us a small report. He is working on some custom reports and making a few changes to the discount engine and the inventory engine projects. We setup a time to do some code review and sign-off for this coming Wednesday.

Alan gave us an update on automation of USAePay (merchant processing) and reoccurring billing stuff. He has a client wanting similar reoccurring billing options built out for another gateway called Converge and Converge Connect. Alan also gave us an update on the invoice due date project, using internal universe API sockets, refactoring sub inventory, taking corp-wide settings out to a server scope memory cache vs direct database pull every time. That should be a good time saver and be more efficient. He was also talking about some new getters and setters (ways of pushing and pulling the data in smaller direct pieces). Cool stuff and he seems to be making progress.

Dustin and Steve were talking about AJAX (asynchronous connections) and how some of the new changes have really sped things up with one-pager interfaces and loading graphics, and faster more direct database look-ups. Dustin was volunteering to add some of these asynchronous calls to other pages and reports. By way of definition, a normal synchronous (or in-line) call means that you go ask for some data and you wait until you get everything back. Think of one giant clump of data being returned. You then report back to the browser or user and show the page. An asynchronous call (or on-demand as needed) allows you to return basic information and structure very quickly (the user will see something on the page). It then uses asynchronous calls and connections and fills in data as it can and/or as it gets returned. This is great for data that may be a subset of the main data and/or you want a user to click or interact to see additional results. It is a way of breaking up the data and speeding up the loading and display time. Great stuff and Dustin is doing great on some of his sub projects.

After that, it was just Steve and I on the meeting. We talked about a number of different topics. We have been doing more testing out in the AWS (amazon web services) land and getting things ironed out there in AWS land. Wayne is doing great and making awesome progress. Steve and I setup some time for tomorrow to work on balance sheet related project. We are going to be diving in deep and looking at how certain values are being tracked. That small conversation brought up some other topics such as caching, efficiency, moving more towards aggerated (summed up data) type transactions, etc. We are seeing more needs for watchers, feeders, triggers, etc. We even talked briefly about the underlying goal of getting all of the data organized into a 3D calendar of sorts. Fun to bounce back to past ideas and concepts. Good stuff.

Eric called in and was out on the road. He had a couple of questions and gave us some updates on some custom 3rd party solutions and custom reports that he is working on. As an interesting side note, some of the comments between Eric and Steve had an interesting undertone. Nothing negative, but definitely complex and cross-corp oriented. They, both Steve and Eric, are working on custom consolidation reports, cross-corp reports, and even multi-corp syncing. The deeper we get, certain clients are wanting to standardize data across platforms, across systems, and even across servers. It is getting more complex and we are seeing needs where we may have a master corporation and then being able to cascade certain data from a master corporation setup to an unlimited number of sub or slave type corporations. We are seeing both data and reporting needs that need to be synced between multiple corporations. This syncing type need is in an effort to help with collaboration and standardizing data across systems. Almost getting into a data warehousing type need or data warehousing type environment. Kinda interesting.

After Eric, Bryan joined us and had a few questions for both Steve and I. He is working on custom gram tracking (subs of the shopping cart) and taking certain gram tracking settings and helping them cascade all the way over to custom label building. It is interesting to see the levels of customization and the needs that some of these clients are expressing. The scary side to that is... how far are we willing to go and what will that take? Custom is potentially a huge swinging door. Awesome, powerful, but potentially bigger than we would like.

In between these different little meetings. I finished up the documentation to go with the getWebGeneralInventory API socket method call. I was working on that project last week a little bit. I added a small working document (to do list and brainstorming doc) for the small changes and to help with the project scope. Nothing major, just wanted to record it. Busy morning. It must be Monday.

Gathering up some documentation for one of the original 3rd party solutions (back in 2014 ish). They are circling back around and getting some things going again. Small blast from the past.

Logged into the testing corporation on Wayne's AWS (amazon web services) cluster to do some testing. Recorded a number of errors and bugs on element of time # 1430 in the adilas corporation. This is where we are gathering all of the notes for Wayne.

Another fun day on the adilas farm... We had Steve, Dustin, Eric, Wayne, and I on the morning meeting. Dustin was reporting about some of his new AJAX stuff on his cultivation pages. He is trying to break that page and flow process into smaller bite size pieces. Steve had a few questions on some of his bulk page clean-up tools (bulk close sub inventory packages that had a 0 quantity and were set to show - disabled). We looked at some queries and made a few minor tweaks. He is doing great. Eric had a couple of questions. Steve had some 3rd party API socket settings stuff for Eric and I. There is also a Lots of moving pieces out there. Steve also let us know about a possible project that would be funded by an outside party that deals with an API socket connection between Woo commerce, WordPress, and adilas. Wayne was checking on our AWS transition testing and making some tweaks. Lots of good stuff.

As a side note, there were some small discussions about security and liability of our clients using the adilas API sockets. We also talked about other outside parties using the same API sockets. We have to maintain who authorized what access and who virtually opened the data window/door. I told Steve that I would like to keep the API sockets open and increase the options to use them. He was worried about both security and liablility levels and wanted to know how some of that stuff works and/or is setup. We covered the basics and even went over a few scenarios. We had a brief, but good talk on the subject. As a follow up, we will be doing a mix between a full 3rd party solution and a custom black box for a single client and their mini 3rd party provider (kind of a hybrid of sorts - just for a single corporation). The important thing is, we will be tracking all of their data requests via a custom and special id number (this will help with the audit trail).

Light testing on the AWS stuff. Ran into problems with the main login.

Did some research and worked on a small tutorial dealing with CSS, JavaScript, and a photo slide show. That was kinda fun.

There were quite a few people on the morning meeting this morning. We had Steve, Dustin, Wayne, Shari O., and myself. We started out and Wayne wanted to get a standard spot to report and handle issues and bugs for the transition to the AWS stuff. We setup an element of time and will be using the sub comments and notes to record any issues and/or bugs.

After that, Steve and Dustin wanted to go over the cannabis cultivation homepage and figure out where we could speed things up. See attached for some notes. The main take away from the meeting was user designed, single pagers, let users control the flow of data based on clicks and events, and use AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) type interfaces. The conversation turned lightly to aggerated data (pre-summed up data) vs transactional data (individual details). We would really love to keep heading more and more in this direction.

Shari O. was talking about some communication issues between our clients and the reps that support them. We had an issue last night when we had to turn a client's system off. We had contacted the client and they were over 3 months behind on monthly payments. We shut them off (the companies system) and then crap hit the fan. The client was open 24 hours a day. Anyways, we had a rep that got on the phone and was ripping our tech support people a new one. We had some talks about how we need to use the system to be the bad guy. We have a project planned that will show prompts in the page headers and will let them know that they will be shut off if they get past a certain date. We need to get back to that. If we could get this project done, it would save a lot of headaches.

Shari O. was talking about some team work and playing as a team. We have some great people who help and participate and some that don't do much. We have a spectrum of different people all around.

This is both funny and sad, but sometimes we really feel like the little red hen - who wants bread? Me, pick me. Ok, who wants to help me plant it? Not me, not me. Ok, who wants to help me harvest this stuff? Not me, not me. Ok, who wants to help me with (fill in the blank)? Not me, not me. Ok, I guess that I'll just do it my self. Suddenly, we get the bread done, and everybody wants it. There is some truth to that.

Steve was expressing some concerns that he is getting behind on his email stuff. We had some light talks about what needs to happen there and how best to structure our team. At a certain point, you almost give up and/or can't keep up. The mountain keeps growing and doesn't seem to stop.

Back on team building stuff... we are trying to help and train our guys and gals to work as independently as possible. There are constant needs that just keep coming. It gets pretty crazy. Back on the email stuff, maybe we need to use more of a standard like "support@adilas.biz" or "info@adilas.biz" and then let it get filtered out before it hits all of us. Steve really wants us to use technology to play this game. More automation and more ideas and options. Lots of tag team stuff. We are also learning along the way. Lots of new lessons being learned and hopefully applied.

Steve was talking about dependables and who is playing with what and who is doing what. We have a very independent model. That is awesome but does have some challenges as well. Steve would like his sales focus to be more on the white label type arena.

Alan joined the meeting and gave us an update with USAePay and there EMV chip reading and chip processing. We may end up having to integrate with FirstData as a merchant processing account (more gateways). We currently offer some chip reading options, but it still kinda random and small ball of strings. There is a growing need on the merchant processing and gateway stuff (credit card processing and chip reading technology stuff). This is way out there... but maybe at some point adilas will be their own merchant processing gateway (some sort of internal solution). Alan volunteered for this project (just kidding).

Towards the end of the session, Eric jumped on and needed some help with some queries of queries, complex data, and getting some data tables setup for his custom reports. We also scheduled some other time next week to work on sub inventory and API socket documentation stuff.

After Dustin and I got done debugging some comparisons between settings and sub inventory attributes, Wayne and Eric popped into the meeting. Wayne was just checking in and letting Steve know that more progress was being made in the AWS land stuff. Eric then had some questions about a 3rd party API socket project that he was working on for a company called Spring Big.

Basically, if a company turned on this 3rd party solution, it would share and pass both customer data and invoice data over to Spring Big. I'm not sure of all of the details, but it seems that they did some marketing and offered some coupons and/or campaign type offerings (don't quote me on that - just going by impression). Anyways, Eric and I were looking into new custom code and debugging some of the API calls and internal methods. He has a pretty deep wrapper function that have a number of other sub routines and sub API socket calls. We spent over an hour looking and testing things. We found our bug and fixed the issue. Towards the end of our session, he was checking API socket calls, pushing data, updating data, and finalizing transactions. Great progress.

At the end of the work session, Eric left and Steve and I started working on some of his projects. We spent about an hour looking into his (Steve's) and Dustin's cultivation code and the phases tab (changing plant phases section or sub section of the main cultivation homepage). We did some debugging, added some page and query filters, and commented out some older code. We tested both locally and push things up live. We have a client that is pushing the limits of what we can get the system to do without timing out. We also spent some time talking about ways of changing the existing page structure, carving the code and output into smaller pieces, and using more AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) type technologies for breaking pages into smaller chunks of data. Lots of potential there.

Steve, Dustin, Wayne, and I were on the morning meeting. Wayne was working with the guys on some of the changes out in the AWS land stuff. Once I came on this morning, Steve and Dustin jumped off to work on a separate project. Wayne and I talked about some logo and image changes and then some update queries. After that, I did a local database back-up and got ready to uninstall and reinstall some database servers.

Bryan, Molly, and Eric joined the meeting. They were talking a lot about 3rd party solutions and who pays for what. We also talked about some needs for sub inventory. We need API sockets, documentation, more integration models, etc. We even started talking about 3rd party solutions and diverse plug-ins and how to best help that model out. Not all solutions are worthy of spending the time to fully integrate. We want to enjoy working with these other companies.

Molly is looking to expand the searchability and export options for sub inventory. They have done some foot work and worked on a custom export for sub inventory. They would love to bring some of that more into the core process. Currently, a lot of the filtering is done from the parent level down to the subs. We are seeing a need for being able to filter from the subs up to the parents (reverse filtering). We briefly talked about adilas and that we will be doing a new adilas funded round on sub inventory. Currently, we have done 3 full rounds on the sub inventory section. We will be bringing in Alan Williams to help with this project. Before we jump, we are looking for a proposal and/or a plan for going forward.

The conversation started going towards... what is coming up next both with adilas and in general. The landscape keeps changing. What are the priority on the different projects that are coming down the pipeline? Molly was expressing some of her priorities and where the needs are.

Pagination vs grouping - Going back to sub inventory... We need exports and searches on parts, items, sub inventory, parent attributes, sub attributes, etc. To sum it up, we need better reporting on sub inventory and everything that it touches.

Towards the end of the meeting, Steve and Dustin were working on some custom reports and I was working on new install stuff for my local environment.

On the morning meeting with Steve. We did some light talks about a concept of "flow state" or "flow status". This concept came from an audio book that a buddy and I were listening to on a road trip over the weekend. I haven't looked up the author, but I believe that the book was titled "The Rise of Superman" dealing with how action sport athletes use this "flow" or "flow state" to do amazing things that some people consider impossible. The book was covering how it works, what they know about it, pros and cons to flow, and what kind of triggers that that these athletes use to enter that flow state. Anyways, it, the audio book, had some interesting concepts and I would love to use some of those things in the adilas world and adilas environment.

Josh joined the meeting and gave us a small report. We should be hearing more from him in the next couple of days. Eric joined and was looking for an update. He was also volunteering if anything needed to be done on different fronts. He just got back from a trip, so he is swamped, but willing to help. Wayne joined and gave us all a small report on the AWS transition stuff. He and I were talking about some of the changes that he is making and where things are going. He showed me some of his custom tags dealing with look and feel and corporation logos and settings. Making progress.

As a fun side note, we can't do all of this stuff on our own. We need a team of highly trained professionals, each in his/her own way. That is awesome.

While the rest of the meeting was going on, I was working on my local environment and getting new programs installed and configured.

Wayne and Dustin were on this morning. Wayne had some questions about logos, images, and look and feel stuff. We got over to the AWS stuff and did some testing. Only certain users were working on the new stuff. We re-flipped things back to the data 0 box and he will do some more debugging and testing. We lightly postponed our active testing until another day.

We are seeing a need to add an adilas URL (web address) on a per corp level vs on a per server level. Currently, most of our redirect options are all based on a per server basis. Also, we may need to go back in and change some of the existing links and hardcoded web links.

- We need some options for manual load balancing.

- Wayne was showing us his custom functions and how he is combining code into custom tags.

- We also talked about some of the aliases and how certain field names show up. As a side note, we will have to update our API socket documentation to note some of those changes.

- Wayne has been doing some mappings to certain relative and fully expanded paths.

- Lots of simplifying code and things. There is still tons to do, but we are starting to make progress.

- Having a centralized spot to help Wayne know about errors and/or issues with the transition to AWS.

- We need a community based process that allows us to publish wiki type information, definitions, best practices, etc. We may even want some of this wiki info to be automatically generated. We need to keep things up to date to make it relative and productive. As a side note, Wayne has setup and contributed to wiki type things and has some know how there. He will be a great resource on that stuff.

- Ways of harnessing the skills and knowledge to help others. Letting people be part of a cause and participating to the overall adilas community.

- Steve would really like the adilas users to have options to play, work, participate in the adilas community, learn, train, sales, place for their stuff, participate in the marketplace, sell their skills, contribute, etc. This could be part of the adilas marketplace, adilas world, the adilas café, etc. Lots of options.

- Being able to share our knowledge with others. Helping to speed up the process.

- Steve popped in and was saying that maybe we could use our WordPress and/or our news and updates section. We also have help files, web/API socket documentation, developer's notebook, user guides, elements of time, etc. We have also made and created a number of self contained PDF files with specific topics. We would like to make sections for developers (super techy), users (definitions, help files, tutorials, etc.), reps/consultants, community, and other sub sets.

- Currently, there is a deficit on the training and education side of things. We may end up going in and checking stats on some of the older inactive adilas users and see who did what. We also need to open up the adilas market and adilas café to all of the users who have some great and awesome skills and skill sets. That is a great way to even out our tri-facto model of clients/users, system, and education stuff.

- Steve was seeing and talking about co-founders of adilas. It doesn't come from just one person. It comes from a community effort.

Towards the end of the meeting, Brandon went back to doing some prep work on the adilas user guide. As part of that process, he spent some time reading an old history bio from the adilas team. See attached for a copy of the bio. It has a publish date of 2011. Lots of fun info.

On the morning meeting with Steve. We did some quick catch-up and then onto our different projects. Dustin popped in and out. Wayne had a couple of questions. We need to make the main login more session based, in order for the code to transfer better out to AWS (amazon web services) land. After that, Josh jumped on a had some code repository questions. I then took some time and built in a session corporation key as part of the main login process. I'm hoping that will help out Wayne with his AWS transition stuff. We also set up some additional time for tomorrow.

Basic to do list stuff and emails.

Wayne and Eric jumped into the morning meeting. We went over a few things with Wayne and got a better idea of some timelines and what to expect with the transition over to AWS. Still lots of unknowns, but making progress. We also talked about some contingency plans and how fast we could switch gears if needed. See attached for a few new notes (bottom page with a date of 5/21/19).

After Wayne left, Eric had some questions about some of his current projects. Eric is very good at doing custom work and also trying to help circle the wagons and help people get onboard the main platform vs always doing the custom one-off jobs. Good stuff.

Steve and I chatted about using technology to help us promote our products and then also using technology to help promote the services and byproducts that get produced from the main adilas system and/or platform. The byproducts are amazing and we have some folks generating $10,000 to $20,000 a month, by themselves, just off of the byproducts and services. We want to keep pushing things more and more out to the open marketplace. We briefly talked about the adilas marketplace, the adilas café, and adilas world. Lots of options to get those power users more jobs and options to sell their skills and services.

At the end of the meeting, Josh popped in and had some git repository questions. Small session helping him get his stuff in order.

Email, paying bills, and writing an email to Wayne about AWS and transition planning between existing servers and new AWS cluster servers.

Getting started for a new week. Dustin, Wayne, Alan, Steve and I were on the meeting. We got some quick reports from the guys and then they all jumped off and started working on their own projects. Wayne is working on splitting up the corporations table. It has almost 400 fields or columns. That's a big table with tons of settings. Alan was talking about some of the automation with merchant processing and USAePay. We also talked about maybe holding the corp-wide settings in the session scope and maybe even storing some of the sessions in a JSON type object.

Steve and I had a good conversation about the transition over to AWS and all of the changes that are happening. There are lots of exciting things but there are also some unknowns. We were talking about back-up plans, what would it take it we had to make a turn this way or that way, etc. Lots of what if's and trying to look objectively at what is coming down the pipeline. I did a lot of drawing and tried to explain what changes I know about and how I interpret those changes. I think that helped, but we are still going to contact Wayne and try to get some more information and/or make a good plan.

Eric popped in and we worked on some API socket connections. He has a new project that he is working on that is a 3rd party solution that wants to integrate with adilas and get certain sales data passed back to them, based on who signs up for their services. We did some prep work, found some good examples and handrails (code and logic samples), and started building an outside scratch file to do some testing. In the scratch file, we were only pulling in the minimal requirements and pieces. A great start.

I joined the morning meeting a little bit late today. I had to get my vehicle into the shop. When I got on, there were 5 guys on the call.

Eric had some questions about sub inventory API sockets and 3rd party integrations. We looked into the need for more web/API documentation. After that, Alan reported on his current USAePay stuff. He is working on more automated features, syncing data between adilas and USAePay. We also talked about some chip reading options and where we want to head in that arena. See attached for some of his research.

Wayne joined in and gave us a small update on the image storage process out in the AWS land. He is making more progress and getting things transferred over and fixed.

Josh had some questions about adding in icons and/or color coding for line items that are getting low (re-order help).

Steve and I were talking about our business model and our business plan. We had a great brainstorming meeting a couple of weeks ago and really came up with a good plan that works for us. Good stuff. Here is a link to that brainstorming meeting. https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4574

One of the things we are doing right now is trying to create loose bonds (like an organism) between different parties that can help and perform certain functions. Certain parties really want us to have a hard/fixed plan and an employee/employer type model. We are trending towards the independent and dependable type model. Much more loose, but it fits our style and objectives. It just takes longer to get where we are headed. Anyways, just some notes and ideas.

I got a call from Eric and we talked about some date specific sub inventory reports and where to find existing reports that are date specific for parent inventory and what we may be able to adapt. It just keeps going.

Wayne jumped in and gave us a small demo of where he is at with the images. That seems like it has been a little bit crazy, trying to switch things over to AWS. The old way used ColdFusion and physically uploaded an image. Once the image was uploaded, it resized, renamed, and moved the images around where needed. The new process has to take the image, upload it to a single spot, then tweak it and save it out to an S3 bucket that is somewhat floating in the cloud. Not as stable (physical) as the old way, but eventually will be more powerful.

Dustin and I were working on some JQuery stuff for his pages. We ended up going back to a super simple test page type scenario to work on the pieces. It is amazing how if you take a super complicated piece and break it down to bare bones, you can play with it and learn vs getting completely overwhelmed. That is the value of a small test page.

Eric came on to the meeting and wanted to add a small form filter to one of the reports. No big deal, right? Well, he wanted the sales reports to be able to filter by customer type id (this is not a direct table value - we had to join other tables and then run custom filters). We also had to deal with form values, URL values, validation, flip/flopping between page scopes, drill-down links, button code, and other pages and tweaks. He had no clue that it would go that deep. We spent the next 1.5 hours following all of the cause/effect relationships for just adding a single form field.

Talking with Wayne about triggering specific Lambda functions out in AWS to help with clean-up, logging, image manipulation, and backend processes. We may need to add some code to help keep things in line and fully up to date.

Eric jumped on and we talked about some math on showing discount math for some reports. We want to make the discount section more visible and searchable. We are starting to get more client requests to be able to run certain reports at certain points in time. As a matter of fact, they even want to get down to the hour, minute, etc. for these reports. It reminded me of a 3D calendar type idea. We even went out and looked at some old mock-up images.

Light talks about regex and regular expressions and interpreting those values. That always gets a little bit deep and sometimes funky.

Wayne, Steve, Dustin, and I were on the morning meeting. Steve and Dustin were working on some JQuery and JavaScript stuff. Wayne had some questions about images and why each one was named a certain way. We talked about it and I prepared a document for him to show all of the different naming patterns for all 12 main application types. Out in the AWS world, things will be treated differently, so our existing structure and processes may need to change. The file that got worked on is stored in Wayne's folder on my local hard drive. It would be unwise to post it on this element of time at this point in time (our current processes are still in use).

After that, Steve and Dustin went back to working on some projects. Once they were done, we both helped Dustin with a small bug that he had and then we broke out into our own projects. I recorded some bills and started going through some emails. I added Pat Dolan to the approved adilas email names and options. Pat is helping us out with sales and what not.

Steve had some questions and updates. Working in AJAX and JQuery and having Dustin do some cross training and helping Steve with some of the new technologies. He is also working on some new production stuff and even possibly looking into tying in full recipe/build type stuff. Some of that is getting pretty deep.

Dustin is going to be adding more subs of elements of time to help with his harvest pieces. He is going to be using sub flags and tags and adding some new harvest types. They are already doing sub phases, sub groups, and now sub types. That will be really cool.

Eric popped in and had a number of questions about sub inventory through adilas API sockets. We ended up talking about the need for better and better documentation and someone to help with API socket stuff and keeping up with documentation. We also have a number of projects that are done and need to be pushed through the code sign-off process. There are a number of projects that have been put in my court, but I just haven't gotten to them yet.

Wayne popped in and gave us an update on some of his AWS transition stuff. We talked about which companies were going to be pulled over for some live testing. Wayne gave us an update on the document and image processing stuff. We also talked about some new functions and how Amazon is starting to build up a giant community of alternate functions and globally accepted options. We also had a fun futuristic talk about AI (artificial intelligence) and using computers doing translations (languages), OCR (optical character recognition), etc. Lots of good stuff going and coming down the pipeline.

Wayne and Eric are going to be working together on a few things. That is awesome. We are going to be changing from an application .cfm (auto include file) to an application .cfc (auot include component). Getting things ready for a single corp structure (splitting corps out to separate database - world building concepts). We also need ways to build in the payee/user integration stuff. There are potentially a number of duplicated records out there.

Steve was telling me some stuff about sales and where things are going. We then talked about some of the other developers who are out there, both established developers, and also the ones that are hanging around and may be very valuable, based on their skills. We specifically talked about Shawn, Spencer, and Josh. Those are some developers who have already played the game and could go even further.

Steve and Josh were talking about an "inventory engine" (max, mins, reorder process, etc.). The inventory engine would help manage the re-ordering of inventory and reporting on inventory levels. Currently, this is just going to be some settings based on a per category level of what is needed (eaches or grams). Think of algorithms of how fast certain projects are being used, consumed, and/or turnover rates. Helping to automate the re-ordering process and even showing some forecasting on inventory items and levels. Helping the system tell you more about selling habits, turnover rates, and the virtual batting average of some of these items.

On sales (and in life), Steve loves to look at things in halves, thirds, quarters, etc. If you can break things down a bit, it becomes more manageable.

Getting started and getting all caught up. Steve had some files that needed to be merged in. Wayne popped in and helped to answer some more questions on the transition to AWS. See attached for the latest notes. We are calling that transition document done, at least for now.

Working on merging in code for Steve. Also got a call from Calvin Chipman and we chatted about some things. Lots of moving pieces. Steve and I got back to the code merging and while we were working, we were chatting about some of the great people that we have and get to work with. That is awesome. We would love to do another training event, here soon. Even if it ends up just training our own team, it is worth it.

Dave Forbis called in and I chatted with him for bit. He is on the outside edge, but he could be a great asset when the time comes. He has a number of customer relationship and project management skills that could really play into the mix, if the conditions were right. Great potential.

- Steve and I were talking about data normalization - reporting systems (data pushed to them) - display systems (data pulled to them) - push and pull type technologies - what is the outside company's purpose? Are they a reporting agency or a menu and display type agency?

- Steve had some questions that were dealing with the application type id flag and setting that on vendors. Basically, he is introducing a new variable to help flag certain vendor records as inventory only vendors vs normal expense/receipt or vendors for paying bills.

- Wayne jumped in and had some questions about out API sockets, rest API's, and helping to standardize things. We talked about the Swagger Editor and some of the different standards that should/should not be used. Internal and external API sockets. Wayne was also talking about using Amazon Lambda functions and doing some API socket stuff from there.

- Steve and I were talking about our goals and where we want to go. Good conversation.

- We also talked about white label options and how that could play out. Even options on internal and external white labels.

- Around 11 am, Alan, Eric, Wayne, Steve, and I had a meeting to talk more about the transition over to the AWS stuff. We were using a small Word Document as the outline for topics and questions to go over. I was scribing and the guys were giving their input and ideas. See attached for the latest working document. Lots of good notes. There is still a lot of work ahead of us, but the future looks bright.

- After the meeting, Alan and I spent about 1/2 hour looking over his current project. He is working on automating merchant settings and reoccurring invoicing. He showed me some of his code and we did a brief overview and looked at some of the new reports and functionality. It is getting pretty close. We also talked about custom black box code and where we want to go from here. It is super awesome to be able to do custom work, but there is a few hidden costs to it.

Talking with Josh and Steve. Josh has been focusing on the discount engine inside of adilas and the adilas shopping cart area. He has also been doing great on a high level tech support type role. He is actively helping and doing a developer level consulting for some of our clients. Very interesting twist. Sometimes our clients really need to speak with someone on a super techy level and Josh has been doing great there. I'm glad that he cares and is willing to help where needed.

Alan, Steve, Wayne, and I were talking about the transition to AWS. We took a bunch of new notes and added them to the attached document. Our goal for these meeting is just to flesh out and flake out some of the topics that need a little bit more information dealing with this transition from Newtek to AWS. For the record, there is nothing wrong with Newtek, they have been great. We are just trying to move to a bigger underlying platform and infrastructure. Good stuff and progress is being made. We set up another meeting for mid Monday morning of next week. Trying to get through our list of bullet points.

4.3 - API Sockets & Communications (application programming interface - send & receive data remotely)

-This allows computers to talk to computer - adilas accounts talking to other adilas accounts, or adilas accounts talking to other outside parties, or vice versa

-API is almost like computer to computer telepathy, you can’t see anything of the data per say - just the communications

-We use standard formats like JSON or XML to pass the data, standard way of communicating

-You can have data in a database, crunch it down, send it across the wire, and it can be reinflated on the other side - stuff that is automated on demand or request or create your own custom application that feeds or draws from the main application - you can create secondary apps that can play that way

Dustin and I met up on the morning meeting. We touched base and setup a meeting for Thursday afternoon to work on his cultivation stuff. He is doing great and has been a good team player.

I started working on some code review. Didn't get very far. Both Alan and Wayne popped in.

We went through a whole new section where Wayne was explaining and showing us what was going on out in the AWS land. Wayne was the presenter and was showing lots of things. Alan was asking questions and I was taking notes. See attached for the latest notes.

Steve and Eric popped in later on to listen and chime in. Wayne was showing some of the Docker image stuff. He was also helping Steve look at a server and find out what was going on. Good stuff.

Need - drop shipping and special tax tables for that drop shipping

We also had a client express that they wanted to be integrated with a number of other outside ecommerce type systems. Steve was using the analogy of having multiple fishing poles in the water (this ecomm package, this other ecomm package, and this other one - get more clients from different sources and areas).

At the end of the session, Eric and I went over the progress on the code sign-off project for special accounts and special account tracking (customer loyalty points, gift cards, etc.). Still working on things, but making progress.

Alan came on to the morning meeting and gave Steve and I a small demo of the new merchant customer homepage. This is for reoccurring credit card payments and tracking some customer information that are scheduled as a reoccurring and/or subscription type payments or reoccurring invoices.

Steve and Dustin were working on some Metrc changes and fixes. I was working on a list of topics and questions for Wayne and Eric dealing with the transition between Newtek and AWS (amazon web services) stuff. See attached for a starting list for our conversation.

Wayne actually joined the meeting and we went for over an hour and half going over some of the topics dealing with the transition between Newtek and AWS. See the other attachment for a current working document with tons more details.

It must be Monday... We started out on the morning meeting and only Steve and I were on at first. We chatted about the transition over to the AWS (amazon) stuff. We have a number of questions and aren't really sure which way to turn. Steve needs to provide some of our clients with an answer, can we service them or not, and we need to know how long it will take to get the AWS stuff fully up and running. Lots of unknowns, but some great potential. Part of us wants to return to what we know (older stable ground) and the other part of us wants to keep pushing forward (new and uncharted but promising ground). It creates an emotional battle of sorts.

We switched gears and Steve had some questions about a project where he is tying in balance sheet numbers to vendors. As part of his project, he was trying to come up with a switch that we could flip to help us know if a vendor was an inventory (parts or items) vendor or just a normal vendor. As we talked about it, we decided to take it out to an app type level (the 12 main system players). We talked about that and Steve liked that idea. I got him some code to help him get started. It is amazing how much, as we keep going, that the system keeps organizing itself into main player groups and what kind of relationships are needed per system or main player group. Very interesting. Almost like it likes to be organized into groups and related functions. We sure have learned a lot along the way.

Alan joined the meeting and we were talking about some of his projects. He is still working on automating some of the reoccurring invoice stuff. We also talked about having Bryan work on the dynamic field names and settings per main player group. That is pretty deep and we may keep it tabled for now. Also, as we were talking about it, we were talking about how an object oriented programming approach may be a better solution for some of these new settings and defaults. Currently, we build and break, build and break (speaking about pulling and accessing settings). It may be nice to keep and hold some of the persistent or permanent settings and features. An object oriented model may be better equipped for that type of transaction. Currently, we look things up just in time. In the future, we may need to catch and hold those settings and maintain them in the user's session (stored in memory) options.

Eric popped in and we did some check in and follow-up with his code review on the sub special account tracking project. This project is a sub of the balance sheet and deals with special accounts (mini bank account type objects) like customer loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, etc. That project is promised by next Monday. I will be trying to focus on the code sign-off this week.

After that, Eric and Steve and I started talking about some of the new look and feel, CSS, and user interface stuff that Eric is wanting to help with. Both Steve and Eric were talking about a virtual "Adilas Cafe" or a global landing spot for the adilas users. This all goes back to separating the users from the main application code. There will still be a tie-in, but we are seeing a bigger need to keep users on the outside as a single entity and then allow them to go in and work or be a part of a corporation. We have many users that  have and/or will need access to multiple corporations, and even be able to bridge across physical servers. Currently, our model is based on users per server and then tied to corporations based on active permissions to those corporations. We are seeing a need to break that down even further and have a master or global user id (virtual pool of users) and then allow them to be bridged to different corporations on a more global scale vs just per server (physical box) vs the possibilities of dynamic cloud networks.

As we got deeper into the conversation about the potential of the Adilas café type model, we were talking about doing mock-ups, flow charts, etc. Eric had some questions about authentication servers and how that would all roll into the mix. We told him that he would need to get with Wayne to get more details. As we talked, we decided that Eric and Wayne should work together in a mini team type environment. As we explored the options, some of Steve and I's concerns (listed at the top of this entry) started to go away. We ended up somewhat asking Eric to be a project manager type role for this transition project between Newtek and AWS. That little tweak in the plan and how the developers were paired up, made a ton of difference and some of the anxiety started to go away.

We need to crate a list of specs for Wayne and what we want the application to do. Plan and play as if for years. We also talked about in-house coordination and communication. That is a huge key and helps all parties involved. Steve was talking about skating to where the puck (pretend we are playing hockey) is going to be. He and Eric were talking about the existing login pages and the corporation chooser page as being the beginning of the adilas café (landing spot or centralized common ground area). Good discussion.

We would really like to keep pushing the ball forward and making each system its own entity. This means having a centralized database controlling users and access to different corporations and/or entities and then having the individual entities having their own database or system for just their stuff. Currently, there are a number of tables that are shared between parties. For speed and efficiency, we really need to split things up more. This may also affect how we are able to bill for storage and processing vs a set monthly system fee. Anyways, as the conversation progresses, Steve and Eric were talking about using the choose corporation page as the starting common spot or commons area. Steve was also saying that he would like the users to be able to go to work (assigned or authorized corporations) as well as go play (demo sites, play grounds, or play sites). Basically, anybody could have an adilas account, and then they could either go into a real site (aka work) or a play site (aka play and testing). Fun ideas.

One of Eric's and Wayne's first item of business will be to do a virtual inventory check of where things are at on the project and what will still be needed and/or stands in the way. That will be awesome. It really was an mini answer to prayers that we decided to team up Eric and Wayne. It helped us let go and be willing to embrace some of the unknowns. As part of that, we are hoping that having the guys work together in mini teams helps us prioritize what really needs to be done and when. Sometimes, by yourself, it is hard to know what needs attention first, especially if it feels like everything is vying or trying to get the input, attention, and/or priority. Crazy stuff, I'm been there before and will be back again.

Steve and I talked about cycling through hardware and how that is just part of the line of work we are in. Later this year, we will need to buy some new laptops and upgrade some of our development environments.

One of the breakthroughs for today was the mini team concept. We have Steve and I, Steve and Dustin and Josh, Brandon and Alan, Wayne and Eric, Shari O. and Pat and Drea, etc. There are starting to be all kinds of little teams. That is awesome.

Shawn popped in and reported on some payroll updates and changes. We scheduled a time to meet again tomorrow. He is also willing to help me out with some of my projects and such. After that, I spent the rest of the session recording notes and trying to get caught up (as good as I could).

Helping Dustin with a code merge and light clean-up. We had to do some manual cross checking, but got the files merged in and uploaded to the servers. Spent the rest of the time doing clean-up, recording notes, and writing an email to Wayne requesting that we get a plan in place for the transition over to the AWS (amazon) stuff.

Meeting notes. Steve, Brandon, Wayne, and Dustin were on the meeting. Wayne was showing Steve and I about some cool image manipulation options. The site and tools are called Thumbor - image manipulation. It was capable of pushing up an image and then running all kinds of cool tweaks to the image, on the fly. Things like cropping, scaling, specific file sizes, grayscale, colorizing filters, etc. Pretty cool. Our goal there was to talk about ways of using existing tools to eliminate how much processing we make our ColdFusion servers do. Currently, we do all of our own image manipulation and storage on a per server basis. Just some ideas and concepts at this time in the game.

After Wayne and Dustin left, Steve and I had a good discussion about where are things at and where are we headed. Both positive and potential dangerous and/or scary. Open conversation, no specific takeaways. Here are some of our notes:

- Defining strengths and weaknesses and then working on both

- Talking about the new AWS stuff - pros and cons

- The skill level difference between an adilas user who is a developer and a normal or non adilas user computer developer - there is a difference. A lot of our stuff has a culture and all kinds of cause and effect relationships attached to single decisions, setting changes, and/or wants and needs. Interesting.

- Your eductaion and expierence help you on your approach and/or your angle of attack

- Revenue is not what you get to spend

- We have a bunch of things that are partially done - finishers wanted

- We talked about the scary pieces... These are mostly the unknowns... this could be on complexity of the AWS side of things and/or the unknowns on normal operational costs (speaking of AWS stuff).

- Steve and I spent quite a bit of time on - Let's make a plan - this is huge. We really need to see what and where we are doing and going. We know that the plan changes from time to time, but we need something to help us direct this thing as we move forward.

- Scratch built vs pre-fab or mash-up options. We have been pretty spoiled and have built our own scratch built pieces for years... we can't keep up with demands if we keep that same mentality. We are being somewhat forced to start using pre-fabricated pieces, outside code libraries, and outside products to create a mash-up of sorts. As a side note, even through we like scratch built features and options, one of the adilas goals is to become an API socket option (aka a mash-up option) for other companies. We want to build out the tools and then let others (individuals, companies, and even outside 3rd parties) consume the adilas API sockets as needed.

- One of our concerns is, we spend hours and hours of our time on meetings and talking about possibilities. Technically, this is just R&D (research and development/design) stuff but it takes us away from other tasks (opportunity costs). We love it and we still need it. It comes down to a balance and a plan.

- Talking about business and the different balances needed to keep things going and in check. Steve and I talked about an emerging 3-way balance between clients, systems, and education. Each of those main topics branch into sub topics. For example: Clients may branch into sales, funding, shear numbers (how many clients), and market demands. The system side of things seems to branch into user interface, functionality, features, settings, permissions, development, and tech. The education side seems to open into documentation, ease of use, instructions, guard rails (don't let people fall off), just in time learning, and the need for good reps and consultants and other trained individuals. Very interesting. Shannon and I had a similar conversation the other day. See this link for more information: https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4506

Wayne pretty much ran the morning meeting today. As soon as I joined, Wayne, Steve, and Dustin were already on. Once we got started, the entire session was dealing with updates and upcoming changes that are available to us out in AWS (amazon web services) land. Kinda interesting.

We started the morning talking about photos, scans, and images and how those are stored currently. We moved to media/content (outside files) and then talked about ways of doing that kind of storage in the new environment.

Wayne was showing us how quickly he was able to copy whole servers (existing dedicated boxes at Newtek) over to the AWS environment. He was also showing us how some of the resource management (CPU's, memory, and load balancing) were working as he spun up other instances. Very quick and very powerful. We are going to be able to speed up our time to market by leaps and bounds. Lots of talk about current model, options, and needs vs upcoming/future model, options, and new needs.

There was quite a bit of time spent talking about existing flow, hot fixes, FTP (file transfer protocol), and code repositories and deployment options. Lots of talk about the advantages of building a testing library and running tests and unit tests to increase the level of comfort, efficiency, and confidence for the developers and the clients (system users).

Wayne was using the term "tooling" and using the new tools and/or tooling environment to help standardize environments, processes, and expectations.

We went over some possible problems with incomplete data and who is going to help mange and/or watch what pieces of the system. It really will be, and currently is, a giant team effort. We need all of the players to keep pulling their weight and doing what they do and how they do it. More and more talks about teams and cross training those teams.

Steve was out all week, last week. He gave us all a report on some of his outings and adventures. Good stuff and Steve is excited to be back in the saddle. Alan reported on his reoccurring payment stuff. We talked about more charts, eye candy, and other reports. Alan and I also talked about working on some code sign-off and trying to get back to some of those other projects.

I helped Steve with some code merging and pushed up some new files. I then got on a call with Eric and we touched base on his sub special account tracking project (loyalty points and gift cards). I told him that I was going to be pushing more on that this week. We also talked about an upcoming project to look at the adilas look and feel (over arching look and feel). This doesn't exist yet, but I was just talking with Eric about looking for ideas and making a plan. Anyways, he is interested in helping us out there.

I setup a time with Shawn to work with him. I recorded some bills, did some email stuff, and recorded some notes. Trying to push the ball forward.

Steve was on with Cory (an adilas rep) and they were going over some production and cultivation processes. Cory is going to be helping with some news and updates. After that, Wayne joined the meeting and we briefly went over the transition progress between Newtek servers (existing dedicated models) and upcoming AWS (amazon web services) stuff.

It was just Dustin and I to start out with today. We pushed up some files for him to test live. I was trying to track down a small bug that Wayne had passed over to me to look at. It was something to do with code out in the adilas market (adilas world). Wayne popped into the meeting and gave us a small report as to where things are at with AWS transition. After that, Eric and I went over where we are at on the special accounts project. I'm trying to push on that project and finish up the code review.

These are just general notes, but it was mentioned earlier today that one of the problems with our model is actually allowing the clients to control how much effort is put into custom code. They don't actually code things, but they do fund things. Sometimes they opt for the cheap route vs the best route for all parties. Sometimes this has an adverse affect on poorly written code or bad code.

Another small topic from today was dealing with the size of the shared database structures. Some of them are getting very big. That makes it hard for certain queries to run efficiently or as optimized as possible. In the very near future, we will be pairing the database schema (tables and field names and values) into a smaller per corporation type model. That should really help with some speed and performance.

Towards the end of the session I was working on a new application form for the state of Texas. This is used by trailer dealers and applying for special farm license plates and registration stuff. We already had this form in place, they just have a newer version that we had to code.

Shannon and I met and talked about progress. I shared with her that we have 4-5 big projects that are coming into play in the next little while that all have a balance sheet flavor of sorts. We went over those pieces and how they play in. Some of the projects are: expand the transitional invoices and adding in inventory in transit (shown as an asset), new transitional PO project that Will is working on (in code sign-off but stills needs a little work), sales tax expansion project (on phase 5 of 5 and just need to finish some things up), Eric's sub special account tracking project (sub of the balance sheet for things like loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, etc.), and sub inventory with mini conversions (deeper inventory tracking and how that affects the balance sheet).

I also spent some time drawing out some changes that are coming with our transition out to AWS (amazon web services - new web hosting model) and things that Wayne is working on. I drew our current model and also what I know of the newer AWS model. We talked about pros and cons and I tried hard to help Shannon know where things are going. Some exciting stuff coming down the pipeline.

We talked about the concept of filtering and boiling things down and using a funnel type analogy to get towards the goal. Sometimes it takes years and years, but we are still making progress and learning along the way. We ended our meeting by using a quote from an author (different Shannon - Shannon Hale) - "There will still be time..." Sometimes that really helps me out, if I'm stressed or something. There will still be time...

Back doing code review for Eric's sub special account tracking project. This is a sub of the balance sheet and will end up allowing for things like reward points, loyalty points, gift cards, gift certificates, punch cards, in-store credit, lunch cards, vendor credits, employee payroll draws, affiliate programs, tiered marketing options, and tons of other special accounts. Basically, we will track all of the special accounts and then connect them to a single balance sheet item. The main balance sheet item will show up on the actual balance sheet. Behind the scenes, we will keep track of all of the tiny twists and turns and individual transactions. The summed up results will then be available for the balance sheet as part of the assets, liabilities, equity accounts, or even phantom accounts (kinda there and kinda not there). Pretty interesting.

I came in late, but Alan and Steve were looking into some Metrc API sockets and matching up things between systems. After that, Alan and Dustin got into some of the Inspinia datatables and how to interact with some of those new things. Alan was able to help Dustin out and point him in a good direction. Steve and I then looked into a balance sheet item called inventory in transit (asset). This is part of the math and code for the balance sheet. Eric popped in and had a few questions to help with his sub special account project (loyalty points, gift cards, etc.).

Wayne was talking about some other options that are available through AWS. Top level firewall rules, XSS (cross site scripting) validation, queues, topics, reminders (SMS), etc. Wayne predicts that our ColdFusion pages will become smaller and more efficient as we offload some of the other code functionality to other tools and/or other applications. So many options. We also talked about new possible options for using and doing custom black box pages as well as custom themes (global or industry specific). We were talking about all custom code and file storage (photos, scans, images, files, media, content) per corp and being able to charge for that. That really takes it down to the corp level and charging for storage and usage.

Emails, paying bills, and light tech support.

Steve, Alan, and Dustin were on the morning meeting with us. Steve had some questions about a custom gram control that he was working on. Alan was reviewing with us his work with USAePay and helping to automate the invoice payments and reoccurring invoice stuff. The conversation trended towards the use of the external alternate id number and how those fields get used. We are already seeing a need for a one-to-many relationship between normal id's and the use of the external alternate id number (id numbers from outside parties and/or outside systems). Very interesting.

We ended up talking about custom needs, settings, and how to help direct people in other areas. We spent a little bit of time talking about building generic tools and generic database tables vs industry specific and vendor specific tools and database tables. There are pros and cons between both. Generic helps cover the basis but sometimes takes a little bit longer to implement and design and develop. Specific code could be very fast, but you then need to somewhat duplicate pieces as things grow and expand (different parties wanting the same things).

We also got into some talks about frontend development and backend development. Look and feel, user interfaces, flow, animations, and design vs functions, code, logic, database stuff, and backend tools. So many people judge our entire application based on their first impressions (what they see). There has to be a good balance between good tools and good looks.

Working with Dustin on some JavaScript and advanced options. We spent over an hour looking around and trying to figure out how to cross tie some application pieces together. It got pretty deep with some of inspinia and bootstrap code (special CSS templates, JavaScript, JQuery, and HTML output pieces).

Wayne popped in and gave us an update on where he is at on the AWS stuff. Lots of new moving pieces. Our goal there is to get the existing code working out in AWS land before adding all kinds of new code to the mix. After Wayne left, Steve and I were talking about some of the changes in the wind (virtual direction and force of the upcoming changes). Pretty interesting. We may need to get some other players involved and then figure out where they are going to fit in and who wants to do what. Lots of options.

Joined up with Steve on the Monday morning meeting. He was showing me some new pages that he was working on and using some prebuilt CSS templates that we purchased. Russell Moore got us started with those CSS templates a few years back. Steve has been in there playing around and is grabbing code and pages and plugging in real code and database values. It is starting to look pretty good. As a side note, a couple times today, we have circled back around to prebuilt templates and what they offer.

Steve and Dustin were talking about some of their combined efforts and different demos that Dustin has been giving and doing. He has done a great job and is very easy to work with. That is a huge plus.

Calvin joined in and had a few questions. He also helped both Steve and I get the latest versions of his adilas label builder wizard. We worked with the label editors and then also gave Calvin a few change order to do list stuff. We would love to get some data formatting functions to help make the data look good. The other major topic was talking about 3rd party solutions and how we secure those pieces. I told Calvin that I would work with him on what is needed and how best to get the desired outcome. We are planning on adding a section for Calvin and MyEasySoftware in the adilas 3rd party solutions section.

One little nugget from todays talks and discussions was: We may be better off getting one or two key persons trained up on certain features and implementations and then allowing those parties to charge or get paid to help setup the others who need those pieces. It helps get specialists and also really cuts down on the tech support required to do harder or more complicated tasks and processes. The summary is: Get people to pay for value added services, especially somewhat technical or complicated setup or in-depth processes vs trying to teach everybody how to do it on their own. The other option to that, which would be nice if possible, is to make the setup and/or processes more simple and intuitive. Somehow we need to monetize some of these deeper tools. Either charge for setup and training or increase the monthly reoccurring.

Wayne joined the meeting and had a few questions. He and Calvin chatted about AWS, windows services, and how they may be able to use AWS Lambda functions to do similar things that we are doing under the current Windows server model. It got pretty techy. We setup a new permission for Wayne to use in his open id user pools and how to grant or deny access between open id users and different worlds or corporations.

Steve and I did some more work on templates and getting a good starting place to work from. Steve was talking about how awesome it is to use prebuilt CSS templates due to the fact that you start from a working picture (static or fake data) and then build in functionality from there. We did a code merge for Steve and I had to help out with some page view icons for some of the new pages.

Towards the very end of the call/session, Wayne popped back in and had some questions about changing the MySQL data engine from MyISAM to INNODB type tables. Techy database stuff. He also had a question about the scan and add to cart process and how complicated it seemed to be. We talked briefly about some performance tuning and options. Basically ways to help go in and split things apart and/or speed up certain queries. Afterwards Steve and I chatted and talked about some of the cool things that are coming down the pipeline. Keep moving forward.

Did some prep work for Wayne. He is working on creating a new open user login using AWS vs internal adilas login stuff. He needed a couple of pages built to help approve and accept open users being bridged between corporations. The pages allow for accepting a request or denying an access request. I built him three small pages that had an outline of the code that will end up being real. This was more of a prep work project than actual code. Sent the files to Wayne.

Steve and Alan were talking about frontend automation on the credit card side of things. We are looking into API sockets for USAePay (our credit card gateway that we are using) and being able to pull reports that show customer credit cards that have expired, will expire, or expire during a set date range. It would be super cool to get this information in order to help our billing department.

- Steve is really excited to see what the AWS (all of the stats and such) side of things will bring to the table. We really want switch our billing based on storage, throughput, bandwidth, requests, etc. That would be awesome.

- Two parts, the gateway side and the adilas side of things... we need the header and app side of the communication process (extension of the invoice due date project). The goal there is to use adilas and be able to communicate back to the users (different companies) and let them know if their invoices are getting to a certain age. Based on settings, the goal is to warn and help get a payment and if needed, to shut off and prompt for payment before usage resumes. There are more details, but that is the general idea.

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Got on a Zoom session with Calvin. He was having a problem with an existing API socket. As he was looking deeper, we recently made a number of changes to that page back in January. It is dealing with sub inventory, searches, and calculating sub inventory quantities. I scheduled an hour, later today, to look into his question.

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About 11 am, Steve, Bryan, and I got on a meeting to look at Bryan's adilas community projects page. This is an area where adilas users and consultants can submit and vote for what projects they want us to work on. Basically a way to get outside input on priorities and what is needed and wanted. Steve sees some of this as each user having their own little individual user account (almost outside of adilas). They then could do whatever they need to outside of any specific corporation, just as a user. When they want to go in and do some work, they would need to enter a corporation and/or world. Basically creating a separation between users and worlds (adilas accounts).

Some of our conversations turned to possible misuse, abuse, rants, and managing potential problems. In a way, it is almost like opening up a virtual forum and public facing entry point. We also talked about design and styling out the page to make things look more modern. It is crazy how deep, sometimes just a single decision goes to crazy deep levels, and it is hard to see what is going to happen. Lots of cause and effect decisions. Steve was talking about how the look and feel almost helps guide the process. How well does it show? Do people want to spend time doing something that looks old? If it looks modern and smooth, would they use it more? What do people accept? What do people want?

After the discussion about look and feel, Steve ended up back on the master user accounts topic and being able to use a single sign-in type interface. This deals with users being able to independently use certain functionality outside of an assigned corporation. We also talked about being able to submit projects and notes and having some sort of sign-off and/or approval type process.

We also talked about timelines and being able to show other projects, ideas, completion rates, what project are on target and/or in progress, and other ways of communicating as to what is going on. Long story made short, we love the ideas and concepts, but it still needs some loving and direction. Eventually, we want to open this adilas community forum and community projects to all users and consultants.

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Talking with Wayne about the new open/general login process. He was talking about an open id (somewhat of a master user id - a hashed username string). We were talking about questions about what happens if a user gets setup but hasn't been associated to a specific world and/or a corporation? How do we allow those assignments to be made, requested, and eventually approved. Wayne was talking about an authorization queue and a way to approve and allow access to certain users.

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Worked with Dustin on adding new entries in the sub GPS/RFID tag table. This is a sub of elements of time. He is tying things into his cultivation and production pages.

Alan and I touched base on some of the work that he is doing with reoccurring invoices and automating that process. He is working with USAePay (merchant gateway) and automating both the reoccurring invoices (when and how do they happen) and automating the reoccurring payment part of that puzzle. Currently, the there are two side, the USAePay side and the adilas side. The current project is automating things so that both side know what the other is doing and the reoccurring credit card payments get attributed to the correct reoccurring invoice on the adilas side. Currently, a human has to make some of those connections and finish some of those transactions.

After Alan and I were done with that, Wayne joined us and we had a good discussion about the new Lucee/AWS stuff (new build out). We spent quite a bit of time talking about OAuth stuff (special multi-level authorization processes), single sign-on, and other user level security things. Wayne had a couple of questions and both Alan and I were helping with ideas and direction. That project is deep, but Wayne seems to be fully going in the right direction.

Pushed up some code that allows the advanced parts/items search page use URL (web address) variables. We have a client that has requested URL access to a couple report pages, so far. As a side note, if you expose the variables to the URL scope, you can virtually manipulate the search form without actually pointing and clicking on certain search criteria. They are basically creating their own links (virtual favorites) and then running their own pages to control inside adilas pages. That is pretty advanced, but as long as you have an active login, you could do it, no problem. Kinda interesting.

Talking with Steve and Dustin about options on black box...

- They were talking about using settings saying use custom, use core, use x, y, or z... we may have to wrap pure black box code with dynamic populating options (which option to use).

- We could really use a way to help show if the corps have black box options. Maybe even a flag (under the covers or in the hidden HTML) that says whether or not it using black box and/or core functionality.

- It may also be helpful if we could allow users to pick and choose if they want the black box option (full custom), the core adilas option (non custom defaults), or an industry specific option (build these options specific per industry).

Wayne popped in and was reporting on some AWS stuff.

- As we start moving over to AWS, a lot of the switching between test and live (URL stuff), is kinda going away and things are becoming more dynamic. Mostly dealing with URL, web addresses, domains, and path stuff.

- We talked about files and media/content storage and what to make publically available and what not to. We also talked about settings and adding in public and/or private boxes per corps (places to store things). We also talked about allowing users to put timelines (expiration dates) on sharing files and such. Say something like, I'll share this file with you for two days or I'll share this file for a couple of hours, etc. Once the expiration date of the URL or file happened, they would be denied unless they opened it back up. Kinda like opening and closing windows and doors for specific time periods.

- Wayne was talking about non language specific functions that we could run at any time. He was calling them Lambda functions. Very similar to an API socket connection or API call. Basically allowing the code and the response to be run using different code languages (mixing and blending coding languages).

- Wayne was also talking about off loading certain API socket calls and groups of calls to certain sub processes. Splitting up the flow and traffic based on needs and like functionality. Basically specializing code to be more effective and grouped.

- File versioning and auto file versioning - comes automatic with certain boxes out on AWS.

- Designing a life cycle process of sorts (putting things deeper and deeper into storage). Maybe use the access time (when was it last asked for or used) as the key indicator. This could be done if we need to mange active vs passive storage. We talked briefly about the analogy of water turning into snow and then going clear to ice. This may also come in to play with compliance, storage, active/inactive accounts, and long term cold storage.

- We spent quite a bit of time going over how the transition between our existing model and where things are headed and how to help with that transition. It got us into some discussions about master corporation lists, master user lists, and what permissions where set per section. Steve joined in and gave us some good ideas while we were talking about breaking out user/payee/employees off into their own entity.

- We ended with some conversations about world building, universe level, cluster and galaxy levels, world levels, etc. Fun conversation and lots of upcoming options.

Wayne has been heading this project, along with Eric.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=AWS

Wayne and Steve were having some good discussions on the new AWS (amazon web services) stuff. Lots of talk about bringing new corporations on and getting them all setup out in the AWS landscape. They were even talking about rewriting our API to match the AWS environment in a better manner.

Calvin was giving us a demo of his Adilas Label Builder app. He showed us a full build from the ground up. We built a PO label and then did a number of live tests. We had Wayne, Steve, and myself on the demo. Calvin is doing a great job. I will be meeting with him later on today to finish up some pieces.

Briefly working with Eric on some local JavaScript validation and questions. He is getting further along on his sub special account tracking project (loyalty points, gift cards, etc.).

Working with Wayne on media/content stuff. He is going through and testing all kinds of stuff on the new AWS environment. Currently, we have provided him a list of some known bugs and he is working through them. That is awesome.

Spent some more time working on the adilas tick list (giant to do list). Still just trying to get all of the smaller projects listed out and on one spreadsheet. That's a pretty big project in and of itself.

Hopped on the morning meeting with Dustin. Just the two of us were on there for the first part. Dustin had some questions about some of the reports coming off of the cultivation homepage that he and Steve were working on. We ended up talking about having a plan and really knowing where the different pieces either are and/or should be. Knowing is half the battle (old G.I. Joe quote). If you know what should happen, then you could go back and actually check that. If you don't fully know, how are you supposed to check and/or verify what is happening. You've got to know and/or have a map of sorts.

Wayne came on and gave a small report. He is making good progress on the AWS stuff and reported on some custom tags and ideas on doing unit testing using a special framework and program. Most of our testing will be in ColdFusion but some of it may end up being in Java or some bigger or more robust language.

Wayne jumped on and showed Steve and I his first instance of adilas running on an AWS (amazon web services) setup. We had a few small glitches, but great progress. Wayne showed us around and how he could virtually set timers, watchers, and virtually dial in needs based on usage and/or preset timers or requirements. Huge paradigm shift in our thinking.

Both Steve and I spent some time bouncing through pages and doing light testing. I made a small document with a few of the light tweaks that may be needed.

Eric joined the meeting and had some questions for all of us. He got a new database from Wayne, had some 3rd party solution questions for Steve, and Eric and I talked about our plans for the next couple of days.

After the main meeting, Steve and I chatted briefly about new options and where things seem to be headed. Lots of new options are starting to pop up. Exciting, but it will take some management to really make them fly. Good stuff.

I got into the meeting a little bit late. Steve and Dustin were working on some things. Once they were done, Wayne began reporting on some of the new AWS (amazon web services) things. We were talking about moving some of our existing pieces (server stuff) over and across to AWS and then tweaking things from there. Lots of options to help optimize things. There are so many things on the virtual to do list... we'll just get started and then go from there.

We are also excited to start seeing real costs and real usage patterns. This is both internal and external.

Wayne and I spent a couple of hours going over tons of things... data servers, content servers, images, corp-specific folders and storage, session stuff, security hashes, Windows specific code, and tons of other things. Super good meeting.

Steve, Josh, and I ended up having a discussion about the new discount engine (new code that is being released) and wanting our clients to move from Classic to the Snow Owl theme. We have so much more functionality on the newer Snow Owl theme. Some people are too busy to switch, some are just unsure, some think there are issues, etc. We would really like to use the discount engine to help us transition those users over to the newer look and better settings.

It takes a village to do some of these tasks and things. Delegate, empower and get out the way. We keep building and tearing things down. That is part of the process. We have some great people all around us. Let's keep feeding those fires. Yee haw!

Talking with Calvin over a Zoom meeting about the adilas label builder application. He has been off on other projects and this was just a meeting to get back into the project. We briefly talked about goals, priorities, and options. We also talked about putting some of his Windows based tools out on AWS for Mac users. Somewhat of a small workaround between Windows and Mac stuff.

Meeting with Steve and Dustin to start off the morning. Dustin had a couple of questions on ways to track some of his internal code changes. We talked strategy for a bit. Steve then had a question on a client's custom label. It was duplicating one of the fields. We dug in and found that it was a sub inventory attribute that was virtually sharing an id number with another sub inventory attribute. It was appearing to duplicate the data due to the numbering of the attributes. Random error. We went in the backend and fixed it. We haven't had any other complaints about that, so we are assuming that somehow both attributes got assigned the same reporting number.

As Steve and I were fixing the sub inventory issue, we were talking about sales, customer support, and how we are hoping that these new server configurations are going to help us out. We also talked about getting someone to help Shari O. - she is getting buried and needs someone to help. We also talked about some other ideas to think about while we are breaking up the bus (analogy of getting people off the bus and onto their own motorcycles or cars - aka world building). Here are some of the quick notes:

- What about mini options for AWS servers... Currently we have multiple dedicated servers (with fixed number of processors, RAM memory, and fixed hard drives for storage). What if we took those bigger boxes and virtually broke out a new virtual instance for each of our clients. If it could work, it would be almost like a mini virtual dedicated box per client. Just an idea.

- Steve would really like to split out users from corporations (allows users to exist as their own entity and also as part of a master list). Then, we could bridge people over and across and allow users to jump between corporations as they get assigned. We currently can do this, within a single box or cluster. It would be awesome if we could do this on a universe or global scale. Any user (has a single account) and could be interconnected and/or have access to any other corporation (world) based on permissions and being bridged over. Think of home planets and bridging people from worlds to worlds. (digital passports and what not)

- Currently, we (adilas admin) are the only ones who can bridge users between corporations. If it went out further... we could allow individual parties to allow/invite other users to come in and help with any projects and also set connection durations (how long they could virtually stay). If we empower the users to create those relationships, that takes the load and the liability off of the admin adilas team. Good stuff.

- Steve really wants to help out workers and/or dependables

- We would really like add some visual upgrades - CSS and settings. As a side note, settings are going to be huge going forward. We are seeing at least four levels of settings - corp (world), group (system players), pages, and user settings.

- Steve and I were looking at some stats that Wayne had gathered for us... crazy to see those stats and this is just one month from the data 0 box. We would love to see all of the servers and all of the stats, side-by-side, and compare. That would be crazy.

- The deeper we get, the more settings and being able to toggle things on/off (custom setup options) are going to play in. We were even talking about new settings for ecommerce and companies that allow for new customer/client accounts to be setup. What fields do they want to show/hide, what ones are required, what special instructions, what names or aliases, what sort order, etc. Everybody wants crazy deep levels of control on how they set things up.

- Steve and I talked about the pros and cons of the black box options... on the one hand, we can configure any page to do whatever we want. On the other hand, if we go black box vs building a new setting, we have to do the same thing over and over again. Sometimes the speed of the black box option actually creates more work later on. The longer route is building a setting, but it then becomes easier to manage that later on, plus less duplicating code.

Working with Wayne over a GoToMeeting session to setup some new accounts at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

On the morning meeting with Steve, Alan, Wayne, and Dustin. Checking up and getting caught up with what happened over the weekend.

Notes from Wayne about server stability and processes

Infrastructure - We have greatly increased this portion. We would like to fix how we deploy code to the servers. Currently we are just using FTP and are able to push code as needed to different servers.

Code - The last couple server issues have been code related (bugs, poorly written code and queries, or loose code). These code problems are currently affecting our servers as much or more than the infrastructure process.

See attached for a small proposal from Wayne about how to configure our environment. Wayne would like to look into Lucee vs ColdFusion. I put tons of notes on that physical PDF upload.

We talked about some costs and also options going forward. We talked about DNS (domain name servers - where are things pointed), SSL's (secure socket layers - https stuff), emails and texts, etc. We can virtually push some of the logging into the AWS CloudWatch services. Amazon also has some other servers that we could harness and/or use. Some of the other services are AWS Cost Explorer, AWS Budgets, AWS Cost and Usage Report, and Amazon Route 53.

Steve was asking questions about how we could make an adilas user group (power users - adilas community) that could be linked and/or joined to different companies or different adilas clients. Almost an extension of the adilas reps and consultants - who wants my skills, I have a power user account, and that could be tied in to anyone's account (based on permission and access). All secure, but also very mobile. Basically a way to separate users and clients.

We also talked about splitting up the databases (world building) into corp-specific databases (smaller single databases) and then working on the mixed or cross-corp queries. In the background it could be tons of different services and even computers, but in the frontend, the presentation seems singular and very streamlined and smooth. This also opens up more revenue options for our developers to help code cross corp or consolidated reports and such.

Some talks about future white labeling options and how we could setup adilas as a platform and then allow them to pay the AWS bills and they pay us for usage of the code.

The rest of the talks circled back around to the code and how we create and deploy our code. Lots of talks about automated testing and getting all of that stuff super stable. Being able to up-scale to handle bigger and bigger loads. Alan popped in and also brought in the possible option of down scaling as well. No one likes to talk about this, but we need to think about both side of the coin. If we are on a dynamic environment, we could virtually scale up and/or down. Once again, it comes back to a two-part puzzle... you have both code and infrastructure.

Alan was talking about how to encourage our developers to run more of a test driven code structure. This will be a cultural switch. If we make it so that the system becomes the bad guy, we could help to change that culture. We've done this before, when we first introduced permissions and such. We talked about training, tooling, and guidelines to help some of these developers. Most of the talks today have dealt with changes to infrastructure - we also know that there is possibly a bigger conversation about the code development side of things.

Where are we going and/or heading? Eventually, some of the adilas functions and features will become components and virtual standalone pieces (modules of sorts). We need the flexibility of a Legos type scenario... multi interlocking blocks that could be mixed and blended as needed.

From Steve - I'm seeing lots of our wish list boxes being checked with these new proposed changes.

From Alan - This seems great for scaling. Hardware is one of the hardest ways to scale. If we could turn it into a service, it becomes easier to manage. Alan was also talking about scaling up and scaling down. Make sure you can go in both directions. How much weight are forced to carry... being able to absorb or extend as needed.

We can make the whole presentation more seamless. Currently, we send clients to data 10, data 11, etc. If we go more in this direction, it just runs more seamless and we scale things in the background as needed. In the background, we almost need a platform babysitter that helps us know what is going on and/or what is available.

Our clients tend to like - our pricing, our possible functionality options, and how easily we can customize things.

Dealing with timelines... We are seeing this transition between 6 months to a year. Maybe even more. We will start on it immediately, but it still may take some time to roll these things out. Also, we can only see so deep, there may be some unknowns that hit us as we get into things. Alan was saying some of the fun development sayings such as the last 10% takes 90% of the time and other things like that. It always gets crazy. Slow and steady wins the race. Lots of good things on the horizon.

Wayne and Steve were talking shop about ways to configure clusters and groups of servers. Lots of talks about AWS (amazon web services) and how they monitor and provide tons of sales stats. Talks about monitoring API socket calls, queries, requests, emails being sent and received, storage, bandwidth, etc. They were talking about using the stats as the base level and then we would just do a mark-up on top of that value. There may be some thresholds and bench mark values, but we could really change our pricing model. Steve would love to almost give the software away for free and then we just charge for processing and storage.

They were also talking about letting the billing cycles run automatically based off of the stats plus mark-up. They then switched to a small demo of the Docker containers and Docker servers (ways of managing a number of like instances and virtual machines). Lots of ways of deploying and configuring mass numbers of servers and also keeping things synced up and ready to go. Lots of talk about breaking every corp into their own database instance and spinning things up on multiple different servers (clusters of servers). Tons of fun world building stuff.

We may end up needing to store and make accessible certain data and values between different servers and still allow bouncing between different corps and even different servers. Fun new levels of what is possible. Once we start breaking things up, it may allow us break up other thing (pieces and functions) within the adilas environment. We honestly don't even know what is possible and what may end up shaking out of this restructure. Pretty crazy.

Eric and I spent some time working more on the sub special accounts and special account tracking stuff. We setup some time for next week to get in there and really start polishing things up and doing some finish work. There are quite a few pages and backend methods (functions) that have been built. The next stage is going over things with a fine tooth comb and helping the mock-ups and alpha releases become more stable. Good stuff.

When I wasn't on the meeting, I was building the customer purchase history page to help show the last known prices per item per customer. This will really help out those who do either contract pricing and/or have a variable pricing model.

Spent some time working with Steve to try to roll some of his JavaScript calculations back and forth. We could get them to go one direction (populate and calculate) pretty easy, but we were struggling with rewinding things and making it recalculate. Just normal stuff. Later on, Eric popped back in and had some questions about flip flopping between FORM and URL scope variables. I showed him a number of examples, where we do the same thing on other pages. He caught on really quickly.

Steve and Dustin were talking about new processes and using some new and fancy display options. After that, I helped Steve with some JavaScript calculations and some small page changes.

Wayne popped in and he gave a report about some of the server issues that happened yesterday. It sounds like a company was trying to pull multiple queries that had 2 million records per query. Basically, a log jam in the database. As we were talking about things, we were talking about moving from a purely transactional database, to a more aggregate type environment (aggregate meaning sums and totals vs individual transactions). Tons of data is awesome, but we need to limit the transactions and how many we are trying to chew up per bite. Some of the reports need to be re-written to be more efficient. Nobody wants to read and look at 2 million lines... all they really want is the totals, the counts, and the sums from that data. We may need to filter the data and better display it in a drill-down type basis.

Wayne was talking about DAO's (database access objects) and getting the queries in a more standard location and where to access those assets.

We are making progress and making things more stable. Sometimes when our users see an error, they instantly go back to what things were (older past errors) and then they fear the worst. That is just human nature. These are some of the growing pains. As a funny side note... Wayne was saying, other companies that seem light and fancy, they will have the same issues as they grow, their day will come when they are up against the wall and have to move from transactional data to a more aggregate type model.

Wayne was also talking about dynamic services vs just static boxes (dedicated servers). Basically a way to throttle resources vs setting up a static environment with specific resources. We were also talking about roll over protection and other mirror type values. We lightly were talking about how we may be out growing our current hosting company. We may start looking into AWS (amazon web services), Google, and/or other bigger players. Currently we are using Newtek and they have been awesome for years and years.

There was also some talks and discussion about a new pricing model based on usage, storage, bandwidth, requests, etc. We would love to get there but it still seems to be out there a bit. We were also talking about stats and then also projecting those stats out to our users. Some of this may require us to setup things per instance or per client. Random side note, I wonder if we were to go back to the drawing board and start with the end goal in mind. Would that change things? How, why, and how deep? Do we want that?

Maybe help our clients run based on sizes and needs. We grew from a small shared environment into a semi dedicated model and then into a fully dedicated model. We now have multiple dedicated servers. Wayne was saying something about Docker (spelling) containers and how to group things and somewhat create a virtual playground or virtual cluster per corporation or per company. Once we get them into the container of sorts, we could then expand that contain as needed. SaaS (software as a service) and how to expand and grow things.

Funny quote from Steve - "We need to get Wayne on a faster horse." Meaning, we may need to help Wayne get on an environment where he is not so limited (existing dedicated servers, structure, and physical boxes). Maybe we need to move more to the virtual playground.

Steve had some ideas about using more of the invoice homepage type mentality. Basically, we had an older report that pulled in the last 30 days worth of transactions. We totally changed that page to pull quick counts, graphs, charts, and sums. We then only show the last 15 records (really easy on the system). They users can flip/flop between daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly reports at the click of a button. All of the values are queried and pulled using a technology called AJAX (go get just the data and return without refreshing the whole page). Then, if they want more details (actual transactions), we have a number of other reports where they can filter the data to smaller and smaller levels. Steve would like us to do more and more of that to help eliminate the full detailed transaction searches. Great idea.

Towards the end of the session, I spent some time and built in a pre-check query for the advanced invoice line items search. If it has more than 100,000 records trying to return, it shows an error and requires the user to filter the details down a little bit. Apparently, this was the query that brought down data 8 yesterday for a bit. The company that was running the query tool was searching for over 2 million records in a single report. They were running back to back queries of the same size. That big of a bite created a data log jam in the database (table locking for joins then processing and doing calculations on 2 million plus records per query). That eventually caused us to reset the whole server. As a side note, that same query tool joins about 5 tables in order to get the results. If you do that for a couple thousand records, no problem... if you do it for millions and millions, at a time, it is a problem.

Steve and I met this morning and had a good meeting. It was just the two of us. So, we ended up talking shop and strategy. We talked about some of our internal pain points and how we could get someone to help us out with those things. One of the pain points was with merchant processing solutions. We have coded to a number of Internet gateways, and that is working fine.

We have two major needs on the merchant processing level...

1. Is on the chip reader side. We have two gateways that we have coded to, but it takes a person to get people setup and going on that (light babysitting). Those solutions require both web API socket stuff and software installed on a computer. If the company updates their software, we have to recertify and no one wants to pay for that. So far, those solutions have been somewhat of a headache.

2. We need a simple Internet solution where a new merchant could be approved very easily and then they are off to the races. Currently, the Authorize.net's and USAePay (our top two gateways) have pretty deep prerequisites that the merchants have to go through in order to be setup and qualify. As they grow and mature, they may need to go to a bigger processor, but we need a really simple solution to get people started fairly quickly. We are thinking that Stripe might be the best option and/or looking deeper into PayPal or something like that. I personally am leaning more towards Stripe.

We also talked about some other internal needs and who we could put on what projects. Some of the other needs are things like:

- User guides

- How to's

- News and updates (this is biggie for us)

- Billboard sites (world building, roll call accounting, data assembly line, and others)

- Tons of other mini projects that come up

- Build out the full Adilas API sockets and the underlying documentation to make that happen. That is a huge piece of the puzzle.

We would really like to have some focused project management on both internal projects and client projects.

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11:00 to 12:00 pm - Meeting with Global Design and Assembly - orders and backorders

- Not duplicating orders when something gets back ordered. They would love to enter things once and have it flow through.

- They would like a definitive answer of prices and timelines to make that happen.

- They import products and the resell those items. Lots of shipping and fulfilling of orders.

- They would like to go more paperless in the backend office (what is needed, what is ready, what has been shipped, etc.) - Currently, they are doing a lot of paper back and forth. They would like to eliminate the paper model.

- Steve, talking about a transitional PO (similar to a transitional invoice - between a quote and an invoice). This would be used for the on order/not quite inventory yet but maybe we are already making payments, etc. Steve was saying that Will Hudson (adilas developer) was going to be working on the transitional PO project. Basically, a work in progress type PO... it isn't fully valid inventory yet, but it is becoming more and more solid values.

- Jason, I think you guys would have a lot of clients who would like for a more automated backorder process.

- Steve, was talking about the existing manual process of duplicating the original PO and only pushing the backordered items forward. You don't have to build it from scratch, but you duplicate and keep pushing the ball forward. The other side to this, is you only pay for what you really get and have.

- Jason, would really like that process to happen (like magic) so that the whole story is still there but it flows through the whole system.

- Example: Say we ordered 500, you only got 300. What comes next? Do you have a small box that says, move 200 to backorder (aka a new PO) or what other options might be there.

- Small talks about ice-down dates

- On a technical side... how you do you keep cost of goods, inventory, accounts payable, and what is received and what is not received? Some of the questions go clear out to the balance sheet and how to track things.

- Just in time ordering and smaller draws... Say they need 500 total, but only want 100 now and another 100 by next week and then rest when possible. Just in time issues and some tracking nightmares.

- Technically, we may need another couple fields where we could put desired amount, shipped amounts, and backordered amounts.

- There is more of a need for time based ordering - just as, I need this on this date, and that on this other date... Basically, tying things into more of a time or schedule based environment.

- On the just in time... If someone wants 500 and you only have 200, how do you put it on the order? Do you put the whole 500 on there (this would drop your inventory by -200) or do you just do the 200, out the door, and then put the other 300 on another PO/invoice. Basically items still needed to be bought, purchased, and/or shipped.

- Warehousing and stocking shelves - excess inventory and back stock

- ecommerce type scenarios where orders are processed and managed as part of a supply chain scenario.

- Steve, was talking about companies that are proactively pulling sales from the other companies and then keeping a supply chain up and ready based on max/min re-ordering options. Once they (the other company) gets to certain level, a new order is always processed.

- here is a link for some of the older back order or backorder brainstorming from the developer's notebook.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=back%20order%2Bbackorder

- Steve, was talking about the new plant move and harvesting options that they are building out. It used to be one manual process at a time. Now, they can click a button and move, kill, phase, or group hundreds and hundreds of plants at a time. The whole things was custom built and automated through elements of time, PO's, and parent/child inventory. Totally a new automated process.

- Jason, we only want what really happens to be recorded, but we don't want to lose the other details of the story.

- Brandi, we already have some custom code that helps us see what we have on hand, what has been placed on new orders, and what is still needed (don't have that yet)

- Brandi, we currently have to make a sales order, fulfill it to the level that is true, and then duplicate it and redo what is still needed. This is the current manual process. She would really love to automate that manual process and take out the possible human error (either multiple clicks and/or info that was forgotten).

- Backorders play on both sides of the fence... inbound items and outbound items... Both sides need a standard and automated flow process.

- Steve, was recommending that we see their existing processes and then make a plan.

- Brandon, we somewhat proposed a system that uses a request quantity (what is wanted), actual quantity (real values), and still needed values (backorders and/or wish list). We talked about having and showing all the fields and allowing JavaScript to help do the math, show/hide checkboxes to help automate the duplication process and pushing the virtual backorder and/or wish list forward. We would then keep chaining and flex gridding those pieces together. Basically, the same things that they are doing manually right now, but we speed it up and help to automate it.

- Steve, he loves clients who ask - Can we move this tree? I keep having to walk around it. While other clients just quietly walk around the tree every day. Sometimes those clients who ask the questions really help us move the ball forward.

- Steve, software and application are constantly changing.

- Jason, really likes to look at "scale". Can I do this? Can I do this for x number? Can I double or triple that and still be ok? Can I multiple by n (unknown number)? It all comes to scale.

- Jason, they have really used tons and tons of flex grid... It is now getting to the level where it is getting to be somewhat of a nightmare, due to the number of custom fields and where it is stored.

- Jason, process sequencing - what data (total) do we need to catch and then push to where it goes. First catch the data. Then we can display it, however we want to.

- Jason, he likes farming (talking about idea farming). But, he really like to harvest (seeing it through).

- Jason, will send up some docs on what they want done. We (adilas) will then help plan it out and get them some quotes and what not.

- Dream it up, and we'll help you wire it up.

The first part of the meeting was spent chasing some big queries. Then we rolled into a discussion about cross corp barcodes and buying and selling sub inventory and being able to use a set barcode for that item. Basically, one systems sub inventory would then be allowed to be sold from another corporation based off of a barcode that was set by the original corporation.

I was thinking that it will end up being tied into this new adilas community funded project. See the link below.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=22&id=1348

After the meeting, I kept working on some code for the Bear 100. I spent some time working on emails and light tech support. I also reviewed a label demo video that Calvin Chipman did for Kelly Whyman and Steve Mitchell. This was the first demo that I had seen with Calvin's new wizard style label builder for the upcoming adilas label builder. Compared with the old prototype, this looks awesome. I put up a small screen shot of the video. The real video is awesome, but I don't have permission to push that up yet.

The video had and brought up some great questions dealing with the adilas label builder... things like: permissions on labels, history on labels, simple mapping interface, right clicks vs buttons, checkboxes vs scrolling drop-downs, visual indicators, auto save, prompts when closing, AWS (amazon web services) and putting the Windows software on a Windows box and then allow the user to login and use the program from there. Tons of good stuff.

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.

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).

On the morning meeting. Wayne popped in and wanted to get permission to setup a server to help monitor the other servers. We talked about it and decided to let him setup a server on AWS (amazon web services) to monitor our other servers. He will build things out and then report back to us on the progress. Basically, that allows us to experiment without jumping in hook, line, and sinker.

We spent a good portion of the meeting going over code, options, and answering questions. Back and forth between myself and Steve. We also talked quite a bit about optimizing database and queries. Light tech support to help Steve, Dustin, and Bryan. Around 11 am, Bryan popped in and we worked on a server primary domain mapping issue so that new and/or white label custom domain names could work with the adilas.biz application. Made some tweaks and pushed up new code.

Emails and other tech support stuff.

Russell and Steve were talking about the process for 3rd party solutions and how to white label things. What are the thresholds, the paths, and the requirements? We also talked about getting our people into the adilas market (adilas world) and into the 3rd party solutions page. It might depend on who they are, as far as cost to be part of that 3rd party solution. Steve will be controlling that gateway for now.

- All 3rd party solutions must go through Steve to get approval. Other developer will work on the projects, but Steve will be the approver and gatekeeper.

- Talking about the value and perceived value of using adilas as a white label.

- You have to be on the 3rd party solution page and in the adilas market. Between $1,500 and $3,500 (depending on size)

- A white label gets a 30% discount on the system. They then have to take care of the support for those accounts.

- A consultant doesn't get a discount, they get a commission back to them as the consultant.

- We briefly talked about laws against price fixing.

- Expectations and requirements for people who want to play to the white label level. Russell was also asking questions about price increases and how that flows through. Steve was saying that they still get the 30% discount based off of the current price (our prices may go up and down but the discount remains based off the current price).

- We are really excited to get into pricing based off of data storage and bandwidth and usage. We need to show our users how much data we are storing and processing.

- Comment from Russell - If we go into normal black box code and/or bulk black box code (white label), the code is as is. If they want updates, they need to pay for them. Or we could add an update fee or a  yearly maintenance fee.

- Delegation - it is hard to delegate sometimes because you feel like you don't have time. There is also a comfort level and even a separation anxiety that happens as you start to delegate. Ask your self, do I really need to do this or can someone else do it? Think of a snake shedding his skin... it just needs to happen.

- We have to refine what we do just like adilas has to refine what it does. Life requires refinement.

- We are way stronger together.

- We, Steve and I, are in the business of delegation and oversight. Sell the vision.

- We are looking for people that are looking for certain opportunities and/or are hungry for certain pieces.

- Get Bryan to help pave the way for the upcoming and future white label options.

- We are looking at ways of avoiding the burning platform (proactive approaches). We are trying to push monies in key places where we see things happening. Basically, skate to where the puck will be.

- A note about "change". Sometime the word change scares people, including me. Maybe we could use the word "refinement" or "tweaking" with less fear of the actual change.

Alan popped in and both of us started working on the in-line discounts stuff. I was going through files and merging in changes from other branches and master files into our current tax branch. Alan was coding other pages and prepping files. Steve was doing phone calls and other meetings.

Currently you can do some bulk uploads on media content. Not yet on photo section. Might change as we roll over to AWS. Photo gallery section has been revamped by Wayne. Could have some advances soon.