Adilas Key Contributors:

Steve Berkenkotter - Main owner and business partner - original ideas, concepts, and training - sales, relationships, dreamer, visionary, custom code, coordinator, builder of the first industry specific skin, and the list goes on. Huge player in the adilas story and timeline. One of the original owners in Moring Star Automotive - where the system came from. There are three known Steve's in the system notes. Most of them are this Steve (99 out of 100 times). He won't admit it, but adilas was his brainchild.

David Berkenkotter - Steve's brother and business partner in Morning Star Automotive. David was a system user and helped us create the adilas quick search. He liked using that feature, the quick search, but it only existed on one page originally. He wanted us to put it on every page. That ended up being in the header. He was also one of the original partners in adilas. Power user in the system. Sadly, he passed away due to cancer.

Shari Olin - Commonly known as "Shari O.". She worked in the accounting department back in the Morning Star days. She has been somewhat of a mother hen to help all of us crazy chickens keep going. She helps with customer support, training, payroll, bill collection, and tons of backend office functions. Major power user. Just being silly, but she can have the mouth of a sailor but the heart of an angel. Part of the adilas admin team and a great friend.

Craig Leitner - Also part of the original Morning Star team. Craig was the automotive floorplan and bank guy. He is a power user in the system and does a lot of bank reconciliation and other tasks. He currently works with Steve and asks as the adilas controller (money flow guy).

Cory Warden - Originally an adilas rep and consultant. Cory become part of the team after being a rep for quite some time. She helps with customer care, client support, project management, and keeping the team on track. She also does all of the news and updates and other training material. Cory does tons of oversight type services for our clients. Power user and part of the admin team.

Sean Carlton - Sean was a manager at a Cannabis dispensary in Colorado that used adilas for years and years until they sold. Steve recruited Sean to help with sales, deployment, and training. Sean brings lots of usage experience. Often, he is one of the helpers if we need to send someone onsite to help with a deployment or training session. Power user.

Brandon Moore - I'm one of the guys that writes most of the developer's notebook entries. Originally, I was hired by Morning Star, the automotive dealership, to help with data entry, accounting, and website stuff. I ended up being one of the main adilas developers and architects. I build content, write code, help other developers and team members, and help with training. Helped start the project back in 2001 under the Morning Star name.

Chris Dunsey - One of the first adilas interns (developers). Helped with a number of projects. Ended up being somewhat of a consultant later on.

Shawn Curtis - Kinda a funny story. He was taking a developer's class at Bridgerland. He knew my brother Russell. He asked to join our developer class and became one of the first interns along with Chris Dunsey. Shawn ended up helping with payroll and other projects. Some of the photo galleries in the system came from Shawn's help. He also worked on the media/content (file upload) pieces. Later on, he did more payroll work and acted as a buddy to Brandon and did some consulting work. We worked together for years and years.

Russell Moore - Russell is my younger brother. Originally, he was added to the group because of his graphic skills. He ended up being a great backend developer and project manager. He has also acted as a trainer and mentor for Brandon along the way. Much of the current system came from projects and efforts that Russell was involved with. He has also been Brandon's AI tutor in recent years. Great help to the system. Huge contribution.

Chris Johnnie - He is an entrepreneur who teamed up with Russell to help create a company called "Adilas For Business" or "AFB". Eventually, both Russell and Chris sold their pieces back to adilas. They were honestly the first ones to really try to run as a white label of adilas. This was back in 2015 and 2016. Chris really helped to push the product to the next level along with Russell's help.

Danny Shuford - Longtime friend of Steve's. Danny helped with some website design, sales, and videos for adilas. He even got into creating custom PDF labels for clients. Light development work.

Marisa Shaw - She is Danny's daughter. Danny brought her to an adilas training event in Denver, CO. Marisa was the star student. She ended up helping with some graphics, flyers, marketing material, teaching, instruction, and planning. Power user. Very helpful.

Shannon Scoffield - Shannon is Brandon and Russell's sister. Her maiden name is Shannon Moore. Huge help and virtual assistant to Brandon. She has helped with training, project management, and content creation. Most of the major content sessions were or have been with Brandon and Shannon working together. When they, Brandon and Shannon, were traveling, Shannon was one of the primary adilas instructors. If she was teaching Brandon was taking notes. If Brandon was teaching, Shannon was taking notes. Power user.

Cheryl Moore - Cheryl is my mom. What an asset. She owns a small business and has owed a few different ones. When we were doing training sessions, she came to every one of them. She asked wonderful questions and was a great supporter. Sometime, I would use her as a test subject - can my mom do this? If yes, we are good. If not, we may need to keep tweaking it. Thanks mom!

Wayne Moore - Wayne is my dad. He was my hiking buddy and more than willing to talk about ideas and concepts on our walks and hikes. He helped out with video stuff and was a great coordinator for making other connections. He worked at Bridgerland (technical college) and helped us get setup with classrooms, computer labs, and other great connections. Huge cheerleader! There is another Wayne, Wayne Andersen, he is a backend developer, systems guy, and database guy.

Wayne Andersen - This Wayne lives in Portugal and helps with all of the backend security, server, and code testing. Major skills, writes code, helps push all of us to new technologies, partially retired but loves to play with tech stuff. If you search for Wayne and it deals with concepts and coordination stuff, that's my dad, Wayne Moore. If you search for Wayne and it sounds like a master backend guy, that's Wayne Andersen.

Alan Williams - One of the lead developer's at adilas.biz. Alan joined us in 2015 and quickly came up through the ranks. Trainer, CTO, team lead, master developer, prototyper, and system architect. Alan has helped with many projects and features over the years. He also helped Brandon with some of the prep work for the adilas lite (fracture) plans and project. Sometimes called "Dr. Alan" by the other developers. Example: This might be a project for Dr. Alan.

Bryan Dayton - Bryan has been one of the most versatile guys on our team. Originally, he joined a development class out of curiosity. He and Brandon live in the same town and know each other from church. Bryan has done more custom code or small system projects than almost any other developer. He also joined the team in 2015. He helps with sales, custom projects, pushing on projects that he thinks will yield a return. Lots of work on the adilas lite and fracture project. Very hard working and versatile.

Dustin Siegel - Developer who helped with numerous cannabis and cultivation type projects. He worked directly under Steve to help with that business vertical. Many of the original pages that Steve built were taken over and remade by Dustin.

Eric Tauer - Developer and custom code guy. Originally, Eric knew Steve and lived in Salida, CO. As a note, adilas is Salida spelled backwards. Eric has a background in database work and data warehousing. Eric has done tons of custom systems for clients. Often, Eric would pioneer certain features or logic, as custom code, and then we would bring those features into the main adilas application.

Garrett Kirschbaum - Adilas intern and then full developer back in 2015. Stressful time of building and expansion. He and others helped run the adilas shop with Brandon's help. Garrett was a great developer and helped us standardize a number of tools and features. He was the first developer to work on sub inventory, back in the day. He also did other projects and helped with some developer management stuff.

Charles or "Chuck" Swann - Charles was an instructor at Bridgerland for web development. He builds custom websites, does amazing mock-ups, prototypes, and is a CSS master (styling a website using code). Chuck worked with Russell to help with redesign work, projects, and vision. Chuck worked fulltime for a number of years and now works and coordinates work done by a small hand-picked design and development team. Anything that needs some design loving gets passed over the Chuck and his small team.

Steve McNew - Friend of Steve Berkenkotter's. This Steve helped prep some whitepaper documents to help with getting adilas standardized and some internal audit type stuff. Mostly white papers and putting things down on paper. He ended up getting hired by the local school district and wasn't able to finish the process, but he got it started. He asked some great questions, and we had some good conversations.

Abby Elkins - Abby is Brandon's daughter. Her maiden name was Abby Moore. Abby, when she was little (10-12 years old) helped with some of the original concept artwork for adilas. Later on, she helped with content for the presentation gallery and then the adilas lite plans (fracture). Currently, she is working graphic artwork for different adilas pages. She's now in her mid 20's and has some awesome art and content skills.

Aspen Moore - Aspen is Abby's younger sister and Brandon's daughter. Aspen helped Brandon with some planning and counseling (mental help). Aspen also did some general business consulting with her dad Brandon.

John Maestas - Developer, backend server guys, and designer. John came to us through Dustin. John was uses as a jack of all trades on the backend and frontend. He did numerous projects, documentation, payroll, and page redesign projects. John was also very help to Brandon in working on the notes and comments on the SWOT analysis document. Many other projects as well. Good vision of the future.

Kiva Berkenkotter - Steve's wife. She helped Steve with various projects and planning sessions. At one point, she was in charge of paying commissions and collecting monthly reoccurring payments. Huge supporter to Steve!

Heather Moore - Heather is Brandon's wife. What a trooper. Cheerleader, support, ideas, and consulting. Huge asset to Brandon (me). Thanks Heather!

Jonathan Wells - Designer and mock-up guy. He helped to map out the system and created a number of deep mock-ups for adilas lite (fracture) projects. Great job catching the vision and putting those pieces into a visual representation. We still refer to his work when talking about fracture (future project for adilas).

Jonathan Johnson - Business consultant from Epic Enterprises. Met with Brandon and Steve in end of 2019 into 2020. Really helped us see some needs and opportunities. Later, helped Brandon with some other consulting when trying to define the fracture plan.

Calvin Chipman - Windows software developer. Calvin also did a bunch of web-based work, database stuff, label printing, and API socket stuff. Calvin was the first developer to use the adilas API's to create a native mobile app for a client. He also built a number of special developer tools used by some of our team to speed things up. He's the tool guy!

Cody Apedaile - Bryan Dayton's cousin, Cody helped with a bunch of JavaScript code and changes. He also spent some time working on the UML diagram for the adilas database. We didn't get things finished, but he was working on a new build your own interface (custom to you) for adilas. We ran out of funding. We want to get back to that project at some point.

Dave Forbis - Dave was the official "high tech gofer". He did a bunch of things. Graphics, project management, brainstorming, planning, sales, and helped with managing developers for the adilas shop. He was another great student. He came to a number of training courses and brought so much to the courses. He was also a big support to Brandon during some rough times.

Josh - There are three Josh's. Josh Wheeler, Brandon's friend and developer. Josh Sagert, developer and adilas user (worked tons on the discount engine), and Josh White, Steve's friend from California. Josh White has brought us a number of bigger leads and bigger players, like franchises, and other higher-end clients. Anything recent is Josh White, from California. He helps with networking, sales, and dreaming of new things.

Suzi Distelberg - Sales, training, and deployment. She also worked with some custom projects and doing step-by-step user guides. She has helped with all kinds of projects and even gone onsite for setups and training. Great asset!

Kelly Whyman - Kelly is Dustin's wife. Kelly was single handedly the best independent sales rep that adilas had. She did training, consulting, and sponsored a number of custom projects. Kelly helped Steve and Brandon with reports, functionality, and other things. She got so good at things, state contracts snagged her up to work at state and multi-state level stuff.

Molly Hennessy - Molly was another independent sales rep and consultant. She had numerous clients and got into doing SOP's (standard operating procedures) and other high-end documentation and training. Molly was an entrepreneur and even started creating some of her own product and services. If you search adilas on google, some of the other results are from Molly. Super creative and a great consultant.

Hamid Karbasi - Developer - He has worked with Brandon doing small websites, training, and small tasks. He currently is a manager at a retail store and brings some managerial type skills to the table. Willing to talk about concepts and how they apply to retail and other environments. He is also lightly helping with some planning for fracture.

Gene Spaulding - Friend, entrepreneur, and businessman. Gene is an old college friend. We had a number of friends in common. He has been a small mentor to me over the years. Way back, before adilas, he helped me get my first business loan for a project that I was working on.

Sharik Peck - Friend, entrepreneur, public speaker, physical therapist, and businessman. Good influence and mentor in ways. Sharik and I used to exercise together back in the day. Many of fun walk, run, and weightlifting session. Learning some conference and training skills from him and his wife. They have done really well pushing their product lines and doing some marketing. Trying to get some ideas.

Bridgerland Technical College - Use to be Bridgerland Applied Technology College. Not a person, but a huge help. This is a local technical college in the Logan, UT, area. Brandon's dad, Wayne, worked there. Tons of assets. They provided classrooms, training options, computers, and even an small incubation spot (starter office space) for the adilas shop during the startup phase. Huge asset!

McCorvey's Pro Shop - Also known as Bowling World. Client that had multiple locations. The started out with around 30 and grew up to the 90+ location level, all using adilas. Long time client.

Emerald Fields - They were the first client that wanted their own fully dedicated box and server. They had multiple locations and requested some custom code, reports, and features.

Beaver Mountain Ski School - Client that we helped them track their ski school (snow sport) lessons. Students, instructors, classes, and schedules. Custom interface dealing with elements of time and flex grid.

Bear 100 - This was the first event or annual event client that we did. They used the system for about a week each year. They had 350+ runners and their families that would be on the site for multiple days straight. It was a 100 mile running race with 13 aid stations and a small social portal for the family and friends to watch their runners. This one was special as it had custom input options to upload CSV files to populate the database vs normal HTML form field entries. Records were sent in batches from remote places to adilas for storage and race progress.

High Valley Bike Shuttle - Online ecommerce and scheduling client. They also have a cafe and small retail store. Fun online scheduling and bulk flex grid projects.

Herbo - Mike Roundtree, owner of Herbo, was the first company to do a small white label of adilas. Mike has been a great asset to Steve and the two of them have worked on projects, plans, and dreams. Herbo also has a custom payment solution that they are trying to market and get rolling. Mike has been a great supporter for years. He is also a certified CPA and that credential helps us and him. We would like to get other CPA's on board as well. Thanks Mike!

Nxtlinq AI - AI assistant. These guys really pushed us to get an AI agent inside of adilas. Tons of development took place and lots of prep stuff. We wanted to do a 3-part plan for integrating AI. 1. Teach it how to navigate using the AI quick search (check - done), 2. Teach it all things adilas. and 3. Teach it how to be clear up at the consultant type level. We only got the first phase done. Lots of other plans and such, but we ran out of funding.

Grok AI - Steve loves using Grok. He has built a number of image generation options inside of adilas. He is also working with Grok to feed it data to help with analytics and AI insight. This is not finished yet, but we may end up using Grok as an AI assistant inside of adilas. We have simple and emerging connections available right now but need to really polish things up before going live with the AI assistant options.

ChatGPT AI - We have started using ChatGPT to help with code, explanations, explore resources, planning, and help with training and flow for people and other AI bots. Currently, Brandon, Steve, Bryan, Alan, Josh, Russell, Chuck, and Wayne are using AI in either ChatGPT chat sessions or some other form of AI. We have some using Copilot, Gemini, Claude, etc. AI is actually helping in many ways. ChatGPT is a big one for use. Anyways, they are earning their place in the adilas key contributors list.

There are so many more that I can't list. Developers, users, power users, reps, consultants, trainers, clients, accountants, friends, family, and even critics. They have all helped out the idea farming process and progression. Good stuff! We couldn't have done this alone. It takes a community to do what we are doing.

Meeting with Bryan. Working on some demo flow options. Tons of stuff for the golf club demo site. We went over new carts, ways to track tables (say like in a restaurant), custom buttons, and other topics. Here are a couple of topics that need their own line.

- We would like to set it up to be able to setup and/or pass through flex grid items from the shopping cart to either customers, invoices, quotes, or elements of time. That would be so cool. Currently, you have to get out of the shopping cart before you can deal with flex grid tie ins (custom fields or custom one-to-many relationships). We talked about ways to do this and make it happen. Brainstorming.

- Putting multiple people on a single element of time. We already do this for places like Beaver Mountain (ski school lessons) and High Valley Bike (bike shuttle services). We just need ways to make it easier to do for other companies. You can already set it up, but you kinda have to know what to do and how to do it to make it really work. Also, some of those other businesses, we've helped them out by creating a custom set of buttons to jump into their specific flows. That really makes it easy for them. Basically, ways to speed things up and make it not so custom but a generic, yet configurable, toolset. Behind the scenes, we use a thing called limited flex grid to make the forms look super simple and easy to use.

- Bryan and I went over lots of options for splitting tickets or bills. Here's the scenario. Say a guy wants to set up a tee time (golfing) for he and three other friends. We need to schedule the tee time (calendar event or element of time). We also need to bill each person or put it on their tab. We can do that right now but we would have to do one of the following. 1. Create four invoices, one for each person and put it on account (they will pay later or their tab). Or 2. We make one invoice for the full amount and then let them, each person, make a payment towards the full ticket. You can do that right now but it doesn't put it on account for each one. It would just be an invoice with multiple payments. Anyways, we talked about some bulk tools for the shopping cart or ways of saying... duplicate this invoice for these people (bulk tools). Then it, the system, goes out and does it.

Just some ideas and discussion topics. Good stuff! Bryan is doing a great job asking questions and what not. Lots of fun ideas and getting him some training on the system.

Phone call with Eric going over what it would take to import customer loyalty points from an outside system or source. We went over some details and ideas. Eric is pretty busy, so I will have to build this out. He is going to send me over a file, and we'll go from there. Most likely, we will need to run this import over and over again for the same client. Reason - they are still using their existing system but as they switch, we need to keep the data up to date. We also anticipate that other clients will need the same capabilities.

Back working on some ecommerce changes and helping out High Valley Bike Shuttles with their page request and navigation options. Custom code for where they want to point people on their ecommerce site. They use a lot of our online schedling pieces, out in ecommerce land. 

Helping Steve with his VPN connections for accessing the servers. Lots of Bear 100 stuff. That race goes off tomorrow morning. here is link to the news and updates about the race. The actual public runner portal page is located here: https://data0.adilas.biz/bear100

Did some work for High Valley Bike Shuttles and adding some special code to browse right to a specific page with a sub tab (sub section) opened up. Normally, the sub sections have been harder to control. We added in some options to virtually control the pages and the sub tabs within the main pages. That was kinda fun.

Emails and tech support for High Valley Bike Shuttle for Drew, dealing with online scheduling. Light research on some of his settings and what not. Sent out an email to everybody about an update meeting for adilas lite or fracture.

This is mostly for me... but last night I couldn't sleep very well. I kept having the idea that I needed to include others and other business owners in the fracture project. This could be helping them build out their own systems and/or helping them get started on the white label journey. Anyways, meeting with them, helping them get things lined out, making plans, and getting their feedback, ideas, and suggestions. Group or community effort of sorts.

This is by no means official, but I was thinking about a six-month planning period, six months prototyping and getting funding, and then rolling things into a two-year build out. Once again, just putting things on paper. In reality, we'll need to check scope, project requirements, and who we have that can help. Lots of other variables. That's just what I was thinking.

I know some of the local business owners at the technical college, local ski resort, a bike shuttle company, a special race event, a high-tech manufacturing facility, and my dad (great resource to a number of other business owners). Anyways, just recording this as an idea for fracture.

This may not go here, but I was also thinking, if they commit to working on the white label projects (multiple versions) I could even cut them in on a small percentage of the main adilas system. Basically, a way to get them to help us push things forward. Once again, just thoughts and ideas.

Met with Aspen to look over her world building presentation. We ended up getting into this little Q and A session and small virtual interview. It was kind of fun. Aspen took a bunch of notes on a Google doc. I won't share all of the info that we covered but I may pull out a few key pieces.

- Settings and speaking the client's language is a huge part of it - where it starts or where they (the client) gets some buy-in. Once you speak their language, they feel more comfortable.

- System configuration - I like this, I don't like that, can I hide this, can I make this show up here or there, etc.

- Using world building concepts in trainings and demos. Once the clients figure it out and catch the vision, they use world building terminology in describing what they are wanting or what they are hoping to achieve. Basically, if you can get the client to start thinking about the bigger picture, it really gets the juices flowing and the ideas rolling in. Virtually get the wheels spinning.

- Keep building what we know and then deal with other ideas and requests as they come. Custom code vs settings and toggle on/off features. A growing blossoming idea farm.

- We have outgrown a number of different models. For example: We started out with 5 different roles for permissions. Things like sales, mangers, accounting, admin, and backend/web. Now we have over 170 individual permissions that may be applied in any configuration vs the five simple roles that we started with. Also, our first round of corp-wide settings was to build out six corp-wide settings. We had to flip the model when we got up to the 400 ish level. We ran out of room. We ended up building vertically (variable/value pairs) and using custom setting objects (JSON objects and linking similar settings). Tons of ways that things have exploded, changed, and evolved over time. It's been a process. The other big challenge is adding in or taking away new stuff without affecting those who are already in there working (existing clients). You almost have to make the system a chameleon that can change its shape and color on the fly.

- Aspen and I talked about the potential of doing a white label approach. Kind of like the Intel chip inside of a computer. It could be branded however, but the chip is what the whole thing rides on. For example: You could have an HP, Dell, or some other brand of laptop but all of them use the Intel chip as the underlying microchip processor. We would like to do something similar. Whatever brand, powered by adilas.biz on the inside. We don't have to be the main company like HP or Dell or whatever. We could easily just help power those brands using our tech and underlying engine.

- Along the lines of a white label - It would take a potential competitor years and years and millions and millions of dollars to do what we can do right now. If they saw the value of a white label option, they would be smart to go in that direction (saving time and money). Just reskin it and start selling it vs building it from the ground up. There is already a market for what we do (based on our current clients and 20 years in the business and millions and millions in revenue - even though we aren't done yet).

- Aspen asked me about a couple of features that we are using right now and how they relate to world building. I mentioned elements of time and the flex grid tie-ins. Both are hugely customizable and fill gaps and needs, out the door. We talked about selling in bulk but tracking individual items, tracking processes of change (dealing with sub locations, sub phases, or steps of a process). One-to-many relationships, custom fields, preset settings, configuration, and being able to limit what is shown (even though behind the scenes it could be very complex). Tons of samples, examples, prototypes, and working models. We have nuts and bolts companies, bike shuttles, ski schools, and tons of other companies that use these pieces. This is just two pieces of the much bigger puzzle.

- Most of our progress is somewhat limited by outside funding, not ideas or needs. We have huge dreams; it just depends on where the funding for that comes from. This whole thing has been build on a garage type budget. We have ideas and projects that sometimes sit for weeks, months, and years before we can get to them. Our list for an MVP (minimal viable product) keeps revolving and growing. If there is funding, it moves to the top of the list. If not, we chip away at it little by little.

- Lots of analogies between our system (the adilas.biz system) and the body. Often, we start out talking about things like arms, legs, feet, etc. As we get deeper, we get into layers, joints, muscles, system, and clear down to the cellular or molecular levels. People keep wanting to be able to control and/or see the next layer, the next layer, etc. We haven't found the end or bottom yet.

- Aspen was asking what is the difference between world building and fracture? I tried to explain that the fracture project is more of list of lessons learned, ways to speed things up, ways of standardizing things, allowing for customized things, show/hide things, toggle on/off certain settings, full control over flow and display, and controlling things at a smaller detailed level. World building is what we are trying to do and/or accomplish (think bigger picture). We use fracture (aka the next generation of the system or application platform) to get to the bigger world building pieces. We talked about Legos and building blocks of different size, shape, and functionality. Sometimes you need to play in bulk (bigger or preset pieces), medium pieces, and super small pieces.

- We got into talking about the iceberg analogy (or ice berg analogy - different spelling) and how if we could have the whole mountain but only show the iceberg, it would sell better than something seeing the whole big mountain. It makes it look too intimidating (showing the whole mountain). The iceberg looks so much more approachable (be able to configure just what you want to see and use). That's where fracture and some of those ideas come in. You could still have the whole mountain (under the surface) but only have to show what is needed or wanted. Put the rest of the engine under the covers (under water) like the Intel chip inside of a computer. It's all perception and expectations.

- Ideas that don't get exposed (out to the public) can sometimes die in a hole. We talked about if a bigger company was pushing some of the world building concepts or data assembly line concepts, they would sell like hotcakes.

- Towards the end of the meeting, we were getting into costs, growth, and projections - numbers, costs, financials, etc. Fun stuff!

Anyways, a great meeting. Aspen has more notes in her Google doc where she was recording things from the small interview. I enjoyed the chat and the learning session. Sometimes you don't know what you have until you start trying to verbalize it. Good stuff!

Bryan and I met up again after lunch. Going over progress on his date range date-picker page. He is trying to build out an MVP product for booking a cabin rental. He is mixing it with some of the existing stuff that we did for the bike shuttle and the ski resort for reoccurring and unique events. I see where he is going. We are just trying to make sure we build on what we have but don't get too locked in. The events are a one-to-many where more than one person is participating on an existing event that is already in the calendar. The cabin reservations have to make their own reservation and make a brand new entry or one-to-one relationship with the calendar (new element of time). Anyways, making progress.

We went over the progress, talked about the next steps, cause and effects, and how to get all of the pieces collected together to really make it happen. Hopefully, I wasn't bursting his bubble. They (the scheduling subjects) are close and somewhat related but different animals (a preset trip or event vs claiming a new event on a blank calendar). Trying to drive that point home. Good meeting and making progress.

Working with Bryan on planning for scheduling stuff. I showed him a small pitch on what I showed the guys earlier in our sales meeting. We then flipped over and did a good session on the time settings and scheduling stuff. We were looking at reservations and what else we have already built. So far, we have a fully functional one-to-many assignments that can be attached to reoccurring events (similar to the bike shuttle company). We can do a one-to-many assignment for unique events (similar to what we built out for ski area and their special events). The next major round will be dealing with single events and flow.

We talked a lot about settings, and even reverse settings (what don't you want to schedule may be less than what you want to schedule). We were talking about booking nights, booking days, timeslots, and individual appointments. We got into talks and discussions about showing calendars with availability, restrictions, and taken dates and time. We talked about web availability layers and other calendar layers and ideas.

Bryan is going to build out a small scratch file using the existing date-picker and see if we could use that widget to show availability without having to build the whole thing on our own. We will feed it (the date-picker calendar) with real data, but if it can help us show available and unavailable dates, that would be huge. We will build out a quick scratch file to test things out with hardcoded data and dates before we fully build it into the ecommerce page flow.

One of the last topics was talking about getting data both in and out of the database. This is where the forethought and layering of the calendar comes in. Thinking in database language, what would the SQL (queries) look like to figure out what is taken vs what is available vs what is potentially available (maybe in flux or being modified)? Being able to go backwards and forwards from a known date range or timeslot and figure things out. Maybe even on a multiple or over multiple layers, locations, persons, places, or things. It could get a little interesting.

Working on three different projects. First, quick tweak to help with High Valley Bike Shuttle and setting up reports and shuttles for the next season. Second, sending files over to Beaver Mountain. These included some instructions, template files, and blank registration forms. I also sent an email to the client with information. Third, I worked on some new tool tips for the Beaver Mountain on their horizontal time view. The folks at the ski school have requested a few things. Playing around with ideas and options. Light research.

Going back to the idea of setting up custom verbiage and SOP's (standard operating procedures) for clients, we have a ton of great options in the top header and footer for the snow owl theme. Each person has 8 of their own custom navigation links and buttons. There are also over 40+ custom navigation links and buttons that may be setup per corporation. If used correctly, it would make access to simple SOP's and other custom training, education, or tips available to all users, right from the site, using the custom headers and footer links. That is pretty cool. We need to remember this when we are building out fracture and our next theme and framework. These custom links and buttons are huge. What do you need? Where do you want to go? What is important to you and your company? Let us help you out... Good stuff!

Spent some time working on some custom black box code that we did for the bike shuttle company and trying to make it more global (for everybody inside of adilas) vs just custom for a couple of companies. Finished up the black box removal process and launched some new code with the standard pages looking at a series of settings and then exposing the bulk flex grid tools based off of settings vs custom page includes (custom code just for a single company). Pushed up the new pages and physically went in and removed the older custom black box pages. It feels good to get rid of some of those older custom code files and make the features generally available to all adilas users. Good stuff.

Fixing the bulk add and bulk edit flex grid tools. Trying to make them more standard and available for anyone who uses flex grid, not just certain clients. I changed the page names from the bike shuttle company pages to more generic page names, so that we could use those pages for our other clients. Small tweaks and code adjustments to make the new pages work. I also did some work and added in the new bulk flex grid tools for Beaver Mountain and pushed up new code. Sent an email to let them know that they now have access to those bulk tools. That should really help them out.

Steve, Sean, and I were talking about showing stats, system-wide aggregated data and totals across all servers. We used to have these statics that showed how many invoices, PO's, expense/receipts, and deposits we had done. All kinds of stuff. It may be cool to get something like that going again. We were talking sales and what not.

After that, we flowed over into some talks about online scheduling and I gave them (Steve and Sean) a small demo of the new settings that Bryan finished up. We talked about the next level and what round 2 of those scheduling settings would look like. We spent some time and I showed them around in the bike shuttle site as well as what custom code we had done for Beaver Mountain Ski School. Good stuff!

The next topic was digital journaling or journals for whatever. Adilas is setup perfectly to allow any user or business to harness main players, log notes, unlimited flex grid tie-ins, custom fields, media/content, and photo/scans to almost anything. It could be clients or customers, items or products, appointments, events, invoice, etc. Tons of options. That's pretty cool. All of that is done, right now.

Sean was asking some questions about more graphical homepage and getting into some eye candy, graphs, stats, charts, and other aggregate values. I chimed in and mentioned that we have wanted to do graphical homepage since 2013 and earlier. Here is a link to some older entries that talk about or mention the need for digital or graphical homepages. That seems to be what people want.

Lastly, Steve and Sean were talking about demos and getting demos and leads from live events and shows. They are trying to work a number of different angles. It's fun to see them work and try different things.

Emails, phone calls, and tech support. Talking with Drew from the bike shuttle company and helping him setup and save some custom reports to watch and monitor his online sales and online client facing scheduling and bookings. We setup three reports for dollars made from online bookings (invoice payments), riders and assignments (flex grid stuff), and invoice line item details with quantities, descriptions, and booking info. Also sent out a number of text messages to some of the adilas guys. Touching base and light follow-ups.

Phone call with Drew and walking him through some of the client facing scheduling stuff. It went live on his site today. Exciting times. Sent a few emails out to folks with links to the High Valley Bike Shuttle online scheduling pages.

Prep on the High Valley Bike Shuttle site. Working and doing some clean-up to help them get ready for ecommerce and online client facing scheduling.

Prep work for Drew at the High Valley Bike Shuttle. Talking with Eric about gift cards and logic. Looking into what it would take to get to the bulk edit parent item's core values. I ended up having to ask Sean. Fixing settings and prepping for ecommerce stuff for the bike shuttle.

Prep work on the client facing scheduling project with Bryan. We also did a full one-hour demo with the guys and gals from High Valley Bike Shuttle. We had a number of adilas folks on the demo as well. I think that we had 12 people on the demo. I did a portion and Bryan did some training as well. Good stuff! After the meeting, Cory, Bryan, and I did some additional talking and wrapping things up.

Cory and I going over the quote for the upgrades to the adilas label builder. Cory had the quote open, we talked about each line item, and she asked some questions from a meeting with Kelly.

Small demo on the automated budget settings for the bike shuttle company. We also talked about testing and tech support demands.

Meeting with Bryan and going over the flex grid tie-in portion of chaining elements of time and flex grid assignments together. This is how we are virtually claiming seats or availability on the bike shuttle project. After the meeting, I finished up some code to help do a bulk update of the budget numbers that were tied to the flex grid record counts. Currently, this file is not part of the master branch but Brandon has it on his computer, if ever needed again.

Steve and Sean were going over gram controllers and all kinds of ratios and scenarios. It sounded like a deeper need for real mini conversions dealing with ratios, sizes, weights, packaging, units of measure, and such. They were kinda going in circles and ended up making some decisions to just fake it a bit. Basically, they (an outside party) was not providing them the correct information, so our guys (Steve and Sean) were just going to make it work and make some assumptions. The communication back and forth has been non-existent between the state compliance service and our company. That makes it really tough. So, we are just going for it.

I was working on coding in some updates for the bike shuttle and auto updating budget counts based on flex grid tie-ins to certain events and elements of time. When Steve and Sean got finished, I ended up giving them a demo on where the online scheduling is going and headed. They enjoyed the demo and saw some good potential.

Steve had to take off and Sean and I looked at a small marketing video that Danny was working on. They are trying to make a number of small adilas tip videos to help with some of the marketing and sales efforts. Anyways, we will give a few of those a try to see what kind of response we get. After that I spent some time paying some bills.

Wayne was unable to attend today. Just Cory, John, Sean, and I were on the call. We started out and I reported on some of the projects that I had been working on. Two of note were the first round of the bulk update flex grid tie-ins for the bike shuttle company. This is dealing with persons being attached to a calendar event or element of time. I also reported on the update on the time sub date/time notes and expanding the field to allow HTML and more characters.

Cory had some questions about servers and memory management stuff. We talked about projects, costs, budgets, and skill levels of the developer who were assigned to certain projects. One of the side notes here was the high cost of code maintenance. It's part of our game. We just need to charge enough that we can continue to keep things up. Often we get tricked into just charging what the project costs (at the time of development) and totally forget that later on we will have to do maintenance on that code as it becomes part of a bigger whole.

Switched branches and started to get back into the bulk flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. Didn't get much done but at least got flipped over to that project again. Hopefully more progress tomorrow.

Poor Bryan - he was having major internet issues. He and I got to chat at the beginning and at the end. Steve came on and we got to hear from Steve for a while (I'll share some notes below). Part way through, Bryan's internet connection was going in and out and the poor guy kept trying to connect and then got booted, time and time again. I was on the whole time, Steve most of the time (while he was on the meeting), and poor Bryan in and out the whole way through. Finally, Bryan sent me a text message and said that he would hook up with me later on. He was making a great effort but some of that was out of his direct control.

Anyways, here are some of my notes:

- Bryan and I spent some time looking over Chuck's first round mock-ups. I was drawing and showing Bryan what we were thinking about. We got kinda techy and talking about flow, processes, settings, and ideas from the mock-ups. Good session.

- Steve popped in and he and Bryan were talking about videos and marketing. Lots of good back and forth. Bryan's brother is the one pushing the videos. Steve would be very interested if he (Bryan's brother) wanted to work on a commission basis - he does the videos and then gets a kickback from sales.

- We have tried a bunch of different things. Trying to figure out where we get the best bang for our buck - ROI (return on investment).

- Small section talking about our sales and marketing teams and how they have to deal with a level of client rejection. If they get too much, it tips them over the edge, and they start doubting their skills and confidence. Pretty natural but very much a real thing.

 - The costs (huge costs) of training someone to be high-level power user in adilas. You almost have to take an adilas power-user and then go from there vs trying to get a non adilas user and get them trained up. The costs are too high, and the skillsets need some in the trenches experience. Interesting!

- Steve was talking about allowing people to invest in marketing and then try to get some ROI on those efforts. It's really hard for us to do it internally, based on funds and available personnel who could really do what needs to be done.

- YouTube and YouTube influencers - that seems to be a very modern trend that is getting some results. That also takes someone fulltime who is pushing on things, knows what they are doing (adilas power user), has a following (other people like them and what they do), and they keep creating new content (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). You need a mix of all of those pieces.

- Adilas has been a frontrunner and forward-thinking company since the get go. We just haven't been able to capture the full market. We were doing software as a service before SaaS became a buzzword. We were doing cloud, web-based software, paperless office type functions way before they were cool. Tons of other frontrunner type approaches. We have been pioneers and out on those front lines. We've been doing this for the past 20+ years. We started wtih modem speed internet connections and Microsoft Access Databases. We've come a long way. So, how do we market that? That seems to be the question of the day.

- Bryan was trying to reconnect to the meeting and Steve and I were just talking. I mentioned that Heather (my wife) said that we are too broad and trying to help too many people or do too many things. In the very next breath, I mentioned to Steve that I had a phone call with one of our clients (Drew at the bike shuttle and coffee shop) and they wanted all of these other things. Some of which were standard and some of which were custom. Steve was saying that we are caught somewhere in between those two realms. Some want it to be simplified and others want even more with choices, settings, permissions, and pick and choose functionality. It gets crazy deep.

- Seems like people want everything under one roof and they want it for free. That's a tough ticket (super powerful, low cost or free, looks great, and is easy to use). Sounds great! Sign me up! How do we get there?

- Just thinking about possible funding options - What if we were free (the whole adilas transactional core) and just charged a small cover fee? Credit card do it... everybody wants to use a credit card processor because it helps them make sales and run their business. We would also do something along the lines of the value add-on core model where we provide the main adilas core (full adilas account that takes care of all of the transactional data - what it is right now). We then could charge for any of the additional layers. We could even charge for the core and then add-on fees or charges for the higher levels. All kinds of options. Just as a quick review - Levels are: 1. Transactional core, 2. Industry specific skin/functions, 3. Custom code, 4. Business Intelligence (BI) (sums, counts, aggregates, stats), and level 5. Enterprise level (multiple corps in array and interconnected with roll-ups, roll-downs, controls, and full control over the flow of data.

- We can also sell other professional services, training, consulting, analytics, custom code development, design, marketing, hardware/software integration, etc. We are not limited as to possible avenues where we could monetize our efforts. Currently, our monthly application fees are our bread and butter (SaaS type levels of a monthly subscription or usage license). We could sell digital real estate (web hosting, database serves, mirrors, shared hosting servers, semi-dedicated servers, fully dedicated servers, and other special server configurations). We can sell storage (active and archived or cold storage - for data). We could flip our model so that is fully based off of usage, throughput, bandwidth, storage, counts, amounts, and transactions. Tons of options.

- We sure are gaining a lot of feedback and insights on what we can do with fracture (future adilas project). This is where we are headed. We just aren't sure how to fund that. We have an awesome testbed; we've done tons of little prototypes (they are working and in production), have tons of feedback from our users and other outside critics, we've been making plans, we have learned tons of lessons dealing with settings, permissions, interfaces, transactional data vs aggregate data, speed, servers, configuration options, look and feel, solving pain points, and bringing all of these pieces together. So.... what is our plan and what can we do to bring these pieces more fully to market? Where do we go from here?

- Switched gears and started talking about using some other video conferencing software packages. We've been using GoToMeeting but have been having some issues. Steve and I briefly talked about Google Meet, Discord, Zoom, or whatever. Just looking at options.

- Steve left and Bryan was able to rejoin for a few minutes. I told Bryan that Steve was very thankful and grateful that he, Bryan, is adding his timecards and time clocks to the adilas system. That is very helpful.

Phone calls with Eric about the USAePay and EMV/chip readers. He is going to check in with the bike shuttle guys to make sure all is well. On the phone with Shari O. going over a plan. We talked about the new USAePay account, EMV/chip reader stuff, and options for handling tips on invoices. After that, I spent the rest of the time working on the Trinity Payment stuff and getting setup on the new USAePay account. I ended up doing a lot of emails back and forth and on a tech support call to try to get things ironed out.

Phone call with Drew and the bike shuttle/coffee shop stuff. He was asking some questions and we went over a bunch of different items and topics. Here are some of my notes:

- eCommerce and client facing scheduling. He is really wanting to know a timeline on when that is going to be done and finished. He is spending tons of time right now on the phone and doing everything manually.

- Tips - He wanted to know how to do tips. We talked about techy talk and credit card stuff (normal sales vs pre-auths). We talked about unlimited line items, over payments, after the fact values or relationships, etc. Lots of ideas. Not sure where to go with it. I'll check with Steve and Shari O.

- EMV/Chip reader - they have some hardware and want to get someone over there to help them out.

- They would really like some sort of mobile checkout and mobile payment option. They are out of the shop and people just want to pay them right there vs going back inside and what not. Sort of a quick sales (all mobile).

- They would really like the bulk edit on flex grid tie-ins. The page is prepped but not fully online yet. Currently, they have to edit individual lines at a time.

- They also want to get some custom stuff done with monitoring availability on shuttle rides (virtual seats that are available - we are using budget settings inside of elements of time - expected and actuals).

Chuck and I met to go over progress on the client facing scheduling. We talked about the date-picker project and how big it is getting. After that, Chuck and I talked about new settings for ecommerce time templates. Chuck had some basic visual mock-ups and we talked about pros and cons of what we are thinking and seeing. Lots of talk about doing an MVP (minimal viable product) and also a bigger granddaddy (full blown product or dreaming the dream) - with more look and feel options, functions, settings, and options.

We talked about doing some other prototypes and scenarios. He is going to build out the bike shuttle stuff and then do some rentals or a booking for something - date/times, just a single date (no time), and a date range (multiple dates). Making progress. See attached for a couple small screenshots.

Working on bulk flex grid tie-in tools for doing bulk edits for the bike shuttle company. This is custom code but may end up being part of the whole. Working through some of the dynamics. Small work session.

Emails and other small to do list items. Flipped over and started working on the bulk edit flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. Working on building out the dynamic sub flex options and drop-down menus for the flex fields. It's pretty deep. Trying to map things out before jumping. Mostly prep work and small changes.

Paying bills and going through tons of emails, after being out of the office for a week. Got a request from Shari O. to add in a custom email address for the High Valley Bike Shuttle. Went in and added that email address and hardcoded it as an option in the backend code. Pushed up new files.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finished up the first round of the bulk edit flex grid tools for the bike shuttle. Pushed up the files. It still needs some more loving, but I wanted to push up the progress, based on the page. Good stopping point. It doesn't work yet, but you get the idea of what it is trying to do.

I got an email from our tech support girls, and they were saying that we were getting some batches blocked on a syncing process that had the word "AppleTurnover" in it. The real cause was the keyword "Applet" which is an older way that things used to be hacked (XSS or cross site scripting). We went through and removed all of the restrictions on the word applet (a mini program or baby app). Pushed up the new code.

Recording notes from yesterday. Working on the edit bulk flex grid tools for the bike shuttle company. Making good progress. Other email stuff.

On the morning meeting with Steve. We touched base on the discount engine that John is working on. I was with John yesterday for over an hour and half looking at the code. There is a lot going on there. Good stuff and making progress.

Steve wanted a demo of where I was at with the bike shuttle company and some of the custom scheduling and booking tools. I showed him the progress, including the bulk add limited flex grid tools. I showed him where I was at on the bulk edit flex grid tie-ins tool and how cool that will be. We also jumped out in ecommerce and talked about the client facing scheduling options that we want to add in. I've got a few more internal tools to work on and finish and then I'll roll outside in ecommerce and work on the client facing scheduling options. Marisa joined us and expressed that when we get to the planning and design portion of that project that she and Chuck would really like to be involved. As a fun side note, this will end up being a precursor to the WanderWays project (campground, cabins, and other scheduling options).

Part of my role is to help share the vision of where we are heading and how to get there. I've got some of the other guys and gals building it out, I just need to keep helping them see where we are heading. As a fun bonus, they catch the vision and then add more to it. That makes it really fun.

Steve and Marisa were going over some Metrc syncing and Metrc training. There are tons of options built-in to the adilas platform. Pretty cool. After that, they got into a training session on how to deal with samples and how to bring them in, sell them, and account for them. Steve was showing Marisa how to treat them similar to normal inventory items. Next, they got into a small internal training session on using update PO's to help with inventory updates and adjustments. That lead to a conversation about how important dates and date sensitivity is when dealing with inventory tracking. There is value in being in a real time inventory management environment.

The last major topic of the morning was dealing with the value and need for education. We have all kinds of tools and some that are light years ahead of the competition. However, if we don't teach our users how to use them and if they don't know about them, then they can use them. There is a real need to train our internal staff as well as getting our clients trained up and using the correct tools. That is a challenge but also an opportunity. There is real value in a power user, someone who knows adilas backwards and forwards. They are needed and in demand. There is real value there.

Pretty quiet this morning. Got a text from Steve, Sean was traveling, and John briefly checked in. I was doing emails and then back on the bulk flex grid tools for the bike shuttle.

Finished up the first round of the bulk add limited flex grid tie-ins page. Pushed it up to the server and sent a text message to Drew, at the bike shuttle to check it out and see what he thinks. Making progress. Here is the help file for that page - so far.

Jumping onto the morning meeting. It was just Steve and I to start out with. Steve had a couple of code questions. We then started talking about reseller documents and contracts for USAePay, NMI, and Trinity Payments - all merchant processing stuff. We are considering being a reseller of online merchant accounts. We have had merchant processing built into our system since 2009, we are just now getting to the point that we may want to enter that market space and become a reseller of those services.

Steve asked about the bulk flex grid tools and customer facing scheduling stuff that I was doing the bike shuttle company. He volunteered to help build out some settings when I'm ready for that. He would love to go after some clients in that neighborhood. We also talked about using ecommerce, message marketing, and other client portal type tools to really connect with an end-user or client. Good stuff. Steve has lots of ideas.

Shari O. joined and we talked about banks, deposits, and bank transfers. After that, Steve and Shari O. were going over servers and where to setup and put new clients. They also went over some quotes and prices. The last thing that went on in the morning meeting was Steve and Sean going over sales and options to help out our reps in the field. They are bringing in contacts and leads, just trying to make sure that we take care of those leads as they come in.

Everybody left and I was waiting for my next meeting. Nobody came, so I did some emails and what not. Going through small to do list stuff to get my week started.

Working on the bulk flex grid tools for High Valley Bike Shuttle. Part way through, I jumped on a meeting with Bryan to look over a small bug with the CFC's that he is working on. Those are dealing with a project that both Wayne and Bryan have been working on for helping to swap out some of the corp-wide settings. After Bryan and I finished, I spent the rest of the time back working on the action page for the add bulk flex grid tie-ins. Making progress.

On a GoToMeeting session with Dustin. We were looking over code and pulling information out of JSON object for AJAX calls. We briefly talked about adding in even more asynchronous loading and data lookups, throughout the site. Dustin is getting into deeper JavaScript functions and dynamically reusing things. That is awesome and will save time and energy down the road.

Emails, research, and odds and ends. Met up with Drew from High Valley Bike Shuttle to setup his USAePay gateway and API keys. We got it all setup and did a practice transaction. After that, we did some light training and looking around his site. I'm excited to help them out and get them going.

On a training meeting with Drew and Lanette from High Valley Bike Shuttle. We also had Sean and Marisa, from the adilas side on the meeting with us. We were going to be doing some merchant processing stuff and setting up API sockets and API keys, but they didn't have the correct login access. That became a small issue and stopped the progress there. I told Drew that I would check with the vendor/representative from Newtek to make sure that they got the correct login access.

We flipped over to showing them other custom code that had been added since our last meeting. We have made a few tweaks to the bulk flex grid tools as well as some small tweaks to the limited flex grid options. We did some light training and even checked a few things that they had done on their own.

The last thing that we covered was getting them, the bike shuttle company, hooked up with Sean and Marisa to do some inventory management training (PO's, parts, items, categories, invoices, and shopping cart stuff). We also briefly talked about ecommerce and other things that will be needed later on. We had them exchange some contact info.

Cory joined and Chuck was already on with me. We talked about going with components and trying to focus on a new single date picker vs a dual spanning or preset date one (all ideas from Chuck). We will just get the first one done first and then move on.

After Chuck left, just Cory and I were on the meeting. We switched gears and talked about API sockets (request from a client). We ended up doing some code stuff and took off some navigation links off of printable invoices and mini invoices. After that, I did a small demo on the High Valley Bike Shuttle stuff and where the bulk flex grid tools are at, in the development cycle. Cory is trying to keep track of where time is being spent, just for our records.

Both Marisa and Sean joined the morning meeting. They were touching base and checking on vendors and active parent items for certain vendors, for a client. We talked about some of our plans for the High Valley Bike Shuttle and where we are headed. John joined us as well. We then talked a little bit about adilas percentages.  We will just keep pushing things forward. Kinda like making an arrowhead out of flint (rock). You just keep doing a little chip here and a little chip there. That seems to be about as fast as we can go. Just keep going!

Sean and Marisa left and just John and I were left on the meeting. We went over some ideas, and I tried to answer some of his questions dealing with the company restructure and what we are planning. Nice little chat.

Small sales meeting this morning. We started out and Maris was showing us a new ad for a magazine that she is working on. Chuck and I talked with here a little bit about print specific stuff. Basically, print and web are treated differently, from color options to dpi or lpi (dots per inch or lines per inch). Print is, and/or can be, much more technical. You have to be careful.

Marisa and Sean were asking about the High Valley Bike Shuttle and progress there. I requested that Marisa help me reach out and get them all trained up and going. The conversation ended up with a marketing twist and what else we need to do and to help push these things along.

Esperanza (Hope) joined and wanted to do more person-to-person events and network marketing. She was pitching ideas and Steve and Sean were fielding questions back and forth. She seems to have a lot of energy and wants to get out and about more. It seems like she wants to be a promoter type person and help with events, meetings, and social type interactions and marketing. She, Steve, and Sean will get together and talk about ideas, budgets, and expectations. The goal is to get more demos.

Emails, paying bills, and back working on the bulk flex grid tie-in tools for the bike shuttle company. Mostly I was doing some prep for submitting the bulk add form for the bulk limited flex grid stuff. Also worked on some new help files.

Working on the bulk add flex grid page for the High Valley Bike Shuttle. Lots of custom work. Merged in all that I have done to keep showing progress. It is looking good. Here are a few things that it does.

- By default it shows two records. There is a form at the top that you can change that number from 2 to whatever you need. Once submitted, it will show that many new records. The limit is 100 per page.

- The top row has special JavaScript that helps cascade the current value to all other records (cascading from top down). If any other record needs to be changed, no problem. It is just the top row of data that has the magic cascade down feature.

- If they are filling out the guest's name field, if they use the key word "Guest" it will add a number to the end of each value. Say I wanted three and I put in the key word "Guest". It would show Guest 1, Guest 2, Guest 3.

- It has a sub invoice field, all 30 possible custom fields (based off of the limited settings), and all of the general fields for flex grid. All of them work and have the top level magic cascade downward functions built-in. See this help file for more info on flex grid tie-in fields.

All new files have been pushed up to the data 0 server.

Demo and training session with High Valley Bike Shuttle. They had Drew, Jim, and Lanette on the call. We had Chuck, Sean, Marisa, and me from adilas. Good call. It went about an hour and 45 minutes. Lots of information to cover. We did record most of it, see attached if you are interested in seeing where things are at currently. Lots of other pieces are planned and in the development stages. Once the meeting ended, I wrote down a couple of ideas and pushed up the video. 

Prep work for the training session with High Valley Bike shuttle later today. Working on customer settings, setting up limited flex grid settings, and light ecommerce prep work. I came up with a number of scenarios, some planning, and light code tweaks to help with flow. I also started into some custom work for them. I'm excited to get them some training.

Small tweak to the photo and scan upload options inside of adilas. We upped the quality and made some code changes to help with display. Pushed up the new files and did some live testing with some ecommerce images for the bike shuttle company.

A number of different activities. Watched some videos online about retirement plans, options, and rules. Just trying to get familiar with options for altering the adilas business structure into more of a multi member LLC with multiple owners. Prep work for the bike shuttle company. Planning and working on pieces, doing images, descriptions, ecommerce stuff, and helping to setup the system. Some small code tweaks to help with flow on some of the pages.

Small demo about the new global features for limited flex grid for both Steve and Sean. This feature used to be exclusive for the Ski School up at Beaver Mountain. We pushed it out to the whole adilas system earlier this week. It should be a great tool for those who are doing combos with flex grid tie-ins. Steve asked about the plan for the bike shuttle company. I told him that we are planning on doing 3 basic steps - prep, train on existing pieces, work on automation.

Hope (Experanza) reported in and wanted to do more marketing with a specific company. She has good connections in her industry. She and Sean are trying to get some advertising into magazines and in front of different parties. As a small side note, it was fun to listen in from the background. You could tell that she was a power user of adilas and those people tend to be our best salespeople or representatives. They have lived it.

Just for fun, Steve would love to go back through and figure out who else we could grab that were adilas power users. There is an untapped resource there - who has the skills and who has done what over time? Another idea was, if we can get the adilas cafe all setup, these power users could offer their own skills and services. That would be totally awesome! Also, if you take a power user and then teach them something else that they don't know (different section of adilas), they tend to pick things up really fast. They are able to build off of a good knowledge and skill base. They eat it up and see the potential.

We talked about other possible marketing stuff, events, swag, banners, the works. Steve and Sean were talking about options and marketing efforts.

Next, we switched gears and Steve and I started working on pulling in custom labels into auto print from the cart. We kinda got lost and couldn't figure it out until we saw that his browser (just a setting) was blocking what we were trying to do. We got it figured out but it had us stumped for a little while. After that, we talked briefly about the MMLLC (multi member LLC) stuff and where we are heading. We also talked about the upcoming scheduling stuff that is coming down the pipeline. As it gets developed, we will need to make sure and get the training and education stuff out there to help our users and trainers.

Research and planning what is next with Drew and the High Valley Bike Shuttle. Called drew and setup some training for Friday at 2 pm. Going over the plan with him and talking about options.

Checking emails and then on a phone call with Drew from the High Valley Bike Shuttle corporation. We chatted and touched base. We also setup some times to do some training and progress reports. Here is our rough plan.

- Get in there and setup categories, items, images, descriptions, flex grid tie-ins, time templates, and general processes.

- Do some training on the general processes and get them using the system with current tools - somewhat of the manual or non-automated processes. We will record the training and make sure that they are good to go. This will get them going.

- We will keep building on the automation and client facing scheduling portions that are needed. Release things as soon as we are able as an MVP deployment (minimal viable product).

Somewhat of a mix of different things. Reviewing and planning an MVP (minimal viable product) for the client facing scheduling app for ecommerce. Doing some research and reading inside of pass elements of time in the developer's notebook. One of the items was some new time template settings on element of time # 8004. The other was some notes on the bike shuttle scheduling for a client on element of time # 8137.

Sending some emails over to the merchant processing folks to get some approvals on terms and policies for a client. This was required for underwriting for their merchant account.

Jumped on a GoToMeeting with Steve to go over some code for bulk printing custom labels. Steve also reported that he spoke more with Alan on the options for multi member LLC and the adilas trust options for a new corporation and entity structure. Good stuff.

I then jumped back into the research and planning for the client facing scheduling stuff for ecommerce and elements of time.

Emails, recording notes, and general to do list stuff. Trying to do smaller blasts to keep caught up better. Email out to Beaver Mountain pitching the idea of a customer facing scheduling app. We already have a bike shuttle company that wants that. We are just pitching our services, as well as custom code work out to clients. Also recording some gift cards that got distributed.

Cory and I going over projects. Talking about some of the upcoming internally funded projects and budgets on those projects. Here is a small list of some of the things that we know are on the horizon.

Future Development & Projects
- Client facing scheduling – bike shuttle
- Global or enterprise item catalog
- Dustin's Cultivation & Harvest Stuff
- Invoice due date & auto collection on A/R's project(s)
- Labels & label printing - Calvin's tool(s)
- Compliance and SOC reports (SOC=service organization controls)
- Switching over to Lucee vs Adobe ColdFusion - potential $2,000/month saving – reoccurring - $24,000/year savings
- Our own project costing

We also talked about meetings and which ones are the most important. We would like to trim that down a bit as well. Trying to get schedules and timing all figured out.

Cory and I going over plans for the bike shuttle (client facing scheduling app) project. We were meeting over her Zoom account so that we wouldn't be distracted and get interrupted. Sometimes, everybody knows that we are on the main GoToMeeting session, and it doesn't allow us to fully get things done - too many distractions and/or other parties on the line. Anyways, we thought that we could use Chuck, Dustin, Bryan, and I on the client facing scheduling app and tying it out into full ecommerce as well. Lots of work with elements of time. All we need is some seed monies to get it going. We have someone who has committed $500 but that is not enough to jump yet. We know that it would sell and bring in an ROI (return on investment) but we have to be careful right now (cash flow stuff).

Cory and Steve were talking about some new changes that are coming for production and manufacturing. Steve is working through a tick list that he and Kelly and Cory have been putting together. Sounds like some good stuff. Cory and Sean were also touching base on some of their joint efforts and working with existing clients. Sounded like some clean-up of an older system and making sure that certain tasks were done for the client.

Cory and I spent the rest of the block working on the High Valley Bike Shuttle project (booking seats and online reservations for a shuttle company). We read back through our original document with notes and made a few more and expanded on a few things. See attached. We also went into more details and came up with some questions, some ideas and options. It isn't fully mapped out yet, but we definitely have more of a game plan. I have been tasked to help push this project through, at least to the level where I could easily and safely hand it off.

This will end up being one of our first customer facing booking and scheduling pieces. We've had elements of time, internally or inside of adilas, since 2011. This will be customer facing and full payment from ecommerce through the customer/client portal. Good stuff.

I've got a project coming up that needs some new settings for elements of time (calendar, scheduling, and events). I woke up this morning and couldn't stop thinking about some ideas for some new settings. I scribbled them down on a 3x5 card (front and back). I was saying a prayer and the ideas kept coming. Kinda fun. Also, the other fun thing was almost being able to see how to do some of these things and the potential that they could unlock. Really fun.

Anyways, here are the ideas. After I got them all scribbled down, I texted Steve to see if he would want to meet for a bit to go over the new settings and ideas. We jumped on a GoToMeeting session and he and I had a good 45 minute chat, with drawings, proposals, pitches, and lots of ideas going back and forth. Good session. Here is an expanded version of some of my little notes and scribbles.

- Dealing with time templates - what if we allowed for a basic mode and an advanced mode? Some people may not want to see all of the pieces. The basic mode would be what currently exits and/or something pared down from that. The new advanced mode would allow for all kinds of other settings, verbage changes, field name aliases, special instructions, sort order (where the fields show up), settings, required options, etc. The time templates page would have a toggle switch to go between the basic mode and the advanced mode. There would also be links directly to the advanced and basic modes from the list of time templates page. Same permission, just a toggle switch between the page modes. As a side note, Chuck recommended that we maybe have a "custom" mode.

- We already do this with customer database field names (allow for field names to be controlled). We want to do the same thing for elements of time. We will use the db_field_settings table to store specific info (field name options) for each time template, if the users wish to. If not, we will use a default set of data stored in the db_field_settings table for basic time_templates. We will use the field called db_table_name to store the value "time_templates" to store the default values assigned to corp 1. Just like the customers stuff. For each time template, we will change the name from "time_templates" to "time_templates_[555]" where the number will be the corp specific time template id number. Tons of sweet options there already. Aliases, defaults, placeholders, build your own drop-downs, required yes/no, max, min, show/hide, sort order, etc. As a side note, we currently let the main time templates handle the show/hide options. Somehow we may need to sync those up and/or figure out which one is the master. For right now, I'm still leaning on the time template being the master and the db_field_settings table holding the naming, aliases, special directions, defaults, etc. I hope that makes sense.

- On the advanced time search page. I would really like to add a master template switch at the top of the page. This would be a drop-down form field that shows all of the time templates. If a time template is selected (or preselected through a URL.template value), at the top, and submitted, then the page would be able to virtually slim down based on the settings, naming, and custom pieces per time template. The current advanced time search has everything plus the kitchen sink. If a template is selected, then the page could only show those pieces that are turned on, the correct naming, the correct filters and search criteria, and hide all unused sub searches as well. The time template settings would also affect the sub time searches and use the correct verbage, info, naming, show/hide, filters, etc. Basically, be able to dynamically convert the advanced time search page into a time template specific search form or page. That would be super cool. Also, if a template is selected, the search results could also translate and show the correct fields, verbage, settings, and make it feel round trip (search, results, and details). Higher in this entry, it is alluded to the fact that we could control the page with a URL value (URL.template) and then we could link to it, store quick buttons, etc. That would be really handy. As a side note, Chuck recommended that we look into a tab or tabs based page for all of the different searches - make it more digestible vs all in-line down the page. We could still have the template switch, but show the different searches in a vertical or horizontal tab display. Great idea.

- On the sub flags and tags, we need some more template settings. You can turn 5 different sections on with this sub (one of the bigger subs). A section within the sub tags and flags, was one that that was added later on (for phase tracking and location moving) it deals with possible sub tie-ins (PO's, invoices, quotes, etc.). Currently, we can't control that piece through settings. It just kinda got added out of necessity vs through the normal development process (planning). All we need to do is go in and add those settings, flip some of the old values (existing data) and make it more straight forward as people set those things up in the future. Along those same lines, the sub flags and tags may need some help on the output and display and the add/edit process. All of those pieces were altered and got the sub tie-in hardcoded to them. We may need to remove or make that more settings based.

- On sub flags and tags, I would like to be able to show the last flag or fag on the main. It holds the data right now, but doesn't show the entry. Light tweak to make it show up on the working with time page and the printable time page. Also, check the searchability of the last known flag or tag on the main, through the advanced search.

- There are two pieces of the main elements of time that we can't control via settings yet... they are the make private and admin only checkboxes. We need to be able to turn those two settings on and off. Currently, every element of time automatically gets those. They are not used that often and need to become settings so that we can show/hide those options. As a side note, those two settings do have some hardcoded text values like "private" or "admin only" that show up on other reports and report types if someone searches for something that is marked as private or admin only. Just a heads up. We may want to limit the verbage on these settings.

- The general amount field on the main elements of time is currently locked to showing dollars. I would love to add some settings to allow that field to be named and formatted. I was thinking of dollars and cents, decimals, plain (no formatting), and integers (remove the decimals). That would make it more useful. For example: I have a time template called mileage and I use the general amount field to hold the number of miles. It holds the correct value but when I pull the report, it always shows the miles in dollars and cents vs just a plain or decimal number. Anyways, I think that could help. Also, along those lines, there are some budget and estimate settings (different settings but still tied to the main element of time)  that could use similar number formatting options. See notes at the bottom for some other mileage ideas.

- What about allowing for the sort order of the fields? This is more complex, but it would be cool. You could put whatever makes sense to you first and move other fields around (up and down or sorted). We may have to circle back around to make sure this is possible.

- Recently we added a thing called flex attributes to the customer section or player group within the system. The flex attributes are virtually real in-line database extensions. We allow for new fields to be configured, added in, able to search, able to show-up, etc. These flex attributes are datatype specific (dates, times, strings, numbers, decimals) vs just plain text fields like the flex grid tie-ins. We eventually want to add these flex attributes to all 12 main system wide player groups (customers - already, invoices, quotes, parts and items, stock/units, elements of time - coming soon, I hope, employee/users, vendors, PO's, expense/receipts, deposits, and balance sheet items). One more thought on this topic of flex attributes. We may need some flex attributes on a global scale (able to cross time templates) and we may need time template specific flex attributes. We may want to do the global ones first, then limit or tighten things down for the time template specific flex attributes after the global flex attributes are added and stable.

- Horizontal grids - show time blocks with main categories or values going down the left and time across the top. We would love to allow for saving settings, allowing for special homepages, and custom buttons, just like my cart favorite buttons. See element of time 6967 for more info on horizontal grids. This is a form of blocking out times and who or what is scheduled, called for, or booked. Ideally, we want to be able to configure these horizontal and vertical time views, so that we could have and use more of them. That would be really cool. Once again, see element of time 6967 to get more details and information on horizontal grids. We used a custom horizontal time view for the Beaver Mountain Ski School. They have been using it for 5-6 years now. We would love to keep building off of that type of a model and make it even more configurable and savable without tons of custom code. Make it a tool for all of our users.

- Visual blocking of time... both horizontal and vertical blocking or showing bars or blocks of time. This is a visual way of showing what is booked and what is not booked or called for. Both directions, horizontal (side to side) and vertical (up and down). We need them both. We currently have the time slot view which is close to vertical blocking, but it still needs to be more bold and handle the blocking in a better way. The logic seems to be there, but it still needs a little visual help to really bock and virtually claim those slots or segments of time. It might be nice to ask for certain visual blocking right from the advanced time search - kinda like a report type. We already have a calendar view, time slot view, grouped view, and detailed view. Maybe add horizontal block view, and vertical block view. That would be cool.

- We would like to add in some dynamic dates. These special dates would allow reports to be saved with the dynamic dates vs a physical date range or custom fixed date rage. The dynamic dates would and could be things like: current day, current week, current month, current quarter, current year,  yesterday (prior day), last week, (prior week), last month (prior month), last quarter (prior quarter), last year (prior year), tomorrow (next day), next week (future week), next month (future month), next quarter (future quarter), next year (future year), etc. These would be really handy, so that saved reports could just pull relative info (based off of the current or today's date value), without having to worry about updating or flipping date ranges. Anyways, I think this will be awesome and we could use it all over the system on other reports and pages. Especially, wherever we are saving reports and pulling up saved data. These dynamic dates may make it super awesome and powerful.

- Be able to use the calendar view and calendar overlay for tons of new reports. Be able to save almost anything in an calendar type view. That would be awesome. Once again, the dynamic dates, mentioned above, would be really cool with this. Maybe even have an advanced search page that could save and filter the data and then show it on a calendar type report view. Great visual for what is happening on what day over time. We could call it the advanced calendar page or report. It would also be super cool if we could point subs of time to some sort of calendar type report or other visual time blocking type report. Currently, most of the subs only show up in detail view (normal tables with rows and columns). Being able to see the subs in other report formats (calendar, time slots, time blocking, horizontal, vertical, groups, etc.) would be sweet.

- On the template settings (techy stuff behind the scenes), currently, when adding and editing a main element of time, you have to pass in the template settings when adding or editing the main element of time. I would like to automate this process. It would make it easier for the developers. This is more of a behind the scenes switch on the methods and method calls. Most of those template settings don't change very often. We should have the methods themselves do the look-ups and make the changes (adds and updates to the fields on the elements of time table). This would really simplify the add and edit main elements of time processes.

- Being able to control the names and settings on the subs is going to be huge. This means what they are called (like sub dates and times, sub comments, sub sign-off's, sub flags and tags, sub payroll, etc.) and what fields they hold. Be able to change that on a per template basis. It also includes the sub fields and what they are called. For example: Say the default sub section is called "Sub Dates & Times". We may want to rename that "Amenities" or "Sub Bookings" or "Project Timecards". We could also control the field names with the sub section. Say the origianl or default field name is "Sub Title or Caption". Say you wanted to change it to "Extra Booking" or "Follow-up Reason" or "Sub Event" or whatever. Being able to change what the main things are called and also what the sub fields, within each sub of time are called and how they act. That will be a game changer. Here is a list of the current subs of time.

- On the working with time page, make the add/edit subs easier. Add in buttons to help with the add new process. The current way is just a simple link. It kind of gets hidden. Make it a little bit more bold and obvious.

- Some of these settings and concepts would be super cool for the fracture project. We really want to hide whatever we can, show what we need to, and allow for the whole thing to be dynamically (through data vs code) controlled and configured. That would be a super cool piece for fracture. See the above entries for some ideas.

- Futuristically, we would love to be able to switch elements of time between time templates. Currently, you get one time template and that is it. We don't allow an element of time to switch templates due to all of the background settings that are being held, monitored, and used.

- We may also need to add in some settings to deal with the general name for elements of time. That is very broad. Each time template can be named individually, but we have had clients that want it called the calendar, scheduling, etc. We may need some bigger corp-wide settings that control the main name and smaller abbreviations. For example: The defaults may be "Elements of Time" and "Time" for short. However, they could be set to Calendar, Lessons, Schedules, Reservations, Rentals, Bookings, Assignments, Tasks, To Do's, etc. The more that people can call it what they want, the less they end up fussing later on. That key piece of speaking their language is huge.

- It's not all code, some of this is just planning and dreaming

- It may be nice to use a spreadsheet to help with some of the planning. We have lots of rows, columns, and complex data that is needed for the planning portion.

- As a side note, it was so tempting to see a need, and then jump and try to fill that need. I on purpose spent some additional time (hours and hours), trying to get ideas and thoughts out of my head and on to paper (virtually) so that all of the pieces became public knowledge. My normal urge was to figure out a portion of it and then just do it vs writing all of these things down for the benefit of others (and myself).

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On 8/10/21 added some ideas for advanced job costing.

- Mini P&L per element of time. If we can tell that an invoice or expense or PO was tied to the element of time, have it automatically show up in a mini P&L (profit and loss) statement. This may be done with flex grid tie-ins right now (currently - but somewhat manual). We would love to automate it and build it into the mix. That would be really cool. Maybe do some searching for "job costing" to get other ideas.

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On 9/2/21 added some ideas from Chuck Swann

- Chuck read through these ideas and gave Brandon some feedback. Some of the ideas have been listed above with Chuck's name (search above). Here are some of the highlights - What about adding in some custom CSS (cascading style sheets) or custom display options? Maybe think about using a tabs based display for the advanced time search. The word or mode of "custom" may be better than "advanced" - technically, the advanced mode could be the custom mode, it just sounds better and more fitting to what we are really doing - dealing with time templates. Lots of the existing pages need an update to work better with the snow owl theme (style and face lift for pages). Make elements of time easier to use, in general.

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On 9/2/21 added ideas and projects from Cory

- Build out the online and customer facing scheduling options - this is a big project, all by itself. There are more details on other pages. We have a bike shuttle company that needs online scheduling (from ecommerce) and there are many others who are looking for this. Any business could use customer facing, online scheduling.

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On 8/21/23 added some ideas from a buddy - Josh Hanks

- On mileage. Maybe add a sub of a sub to do mileage. We may also need a standalone option (list way up higher using the general amount field) or adding it to a sub date and time entry. Not all entries would need mileage, thus a one to many off of the subs (sub off of sub dates and times). Imagine template settings under sub dates and times to say something like: Need mileage? If yes, do you want to enter a simple number (x number of miles) or use start/stop odometer readings (then we automate and do the math when submitted). Anyways, I had a great meeting with Josh Hanks on 8/21/23. He's a water master, ditches and irrigation stuff, he has a need for these things mixed together - projects, hours, notes, and mileage. The other benefits would be reports, exports, and math that is done for you. We may also add in photo galleries, document management stuff (media/content), etc. We have all of the pieces, we would just need to mix it together better and make it a small industry specific skin. Eventually, when we build out fracture or adilas lite, we want to include some industry specific skins as part of that project or platform (part of the value add-on core model). This may be a fun little venture into that world.

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On 1/23/25 added some notes about being able to flip subs from one element of time to another - incase it got added incorrectly

- On subs of time... it would be super cool if you could jump into a super admin edit mode and be able to flip the main EOT tie-in and/or adjust the person who did the record. If we did this... we would need to make sure that we record a good history message add/or tie it to a special permission. For example: Say we have a sub date and time that was added to project # 25 but it really needed to be added to project # 28. It would be cool to be able flip the record from EOT to EOT. It would also be cool to create a new sub... tied to you, as the user. Then jump into the super admin mode and flip it for your buddy. We would need to record the histories, but that would be cool, in a way. My idea is to add a small button to allow the flip flop, then use the same page, just in a super admin mode. We would have to make the action page smart enough to tell if the page was being super admin mode or just normal edit mode. That way we get the correct histories (maybe both sides, if flipping things around). Idea came from Cody (engineer from logan area) on 1/23/25.