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Adilas.biz Developer's Notebook Report - All to All - (60)
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Time Id | Color | Title/Caption | Start Date | Notes | |
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AU 2166 |
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Brainstorming Automating Sales Tax, Collected Fees & Other B.S. Items | 10/6/2010 |
Automating Sales Tax and Collected Fees & Other B.S. Items: Questions and concerns: 1. How do I name the output on the balance sheet? How do people want to see it? - Taxes? i. State, county, city, 5 dynamic, out of area, could be 0, 1, 2+ (or infinity) - Collected items? i. Could be 0, 1, 5+ (five is a random # but it could be infinity) 2. With only one location, the scenario above is workable. What would happen if you had 10, 20, 100+ locations? 3. Because it is so dynamic (0 to 100+ it seems to me that we need a 1-many on a per corp or per location level. Just an idea, we may want to start one by default that is only half setup so that is automatically tracks sales tax. On all of the drill-downs, put notes how to complete the process… 4. At one point we were talking about a hybrid balance sheet item…. How might this play in to the mix? I know that I need some sort of item to link up everything on taxes and collected items. What other pieces of the puzzle need help? 5. What if we made some modifications to all existing user-maintained balance sheet items and allowed for them to be hooked-up just like we need for taxed and collected. Hooked-up might mean… where or what are my incoming values, where or what are my outgoing values, and do I need any extra entries (general pointers, declarations, hybrid pieces, special bridges, pads, gaps, extensions, connections, hand holding, filling, extra entries, etc.)? This hook-up would not be required for the items to function. 6. So, what this could mean is that a user-maintained balance sheet item could be a standalone item (no watchers or no extra helpers) and it could functions “as is” right now. This is fully user-maintained and a manual process. However, if you add 1 or more watchers (and/or helper, feeders, participants, extra players) it could become some sort of hybrid. This might help with a known gap between B.S. expense types and B.S. deposit types. This could be cool because some B.S. items only need to watch one thing (an in or out). However an item could be setup to watch for ins, outs, and extra declarations or standalone entries. 7. As long as I’m brainstorming… what about a thing we wanted to call “special callouts” or “accrual callouts”. These are system-maintained items that need to be able to standalone. Say a special A/P for a certain vendor or a certain A/R for a specific customer that you do a lot of business with. These are basically handled just like the other A/R’s (invoice & payments) and other A/P’s (PO’s & payments or e/r’s & payments) but they are not lumped into the group as a whole. Basically, we set a watcher, as alias name, and a grouping for either a vendor or customer. The system runs all the logic and math but the end result is a standalone callout or hybrid system-maintained B.S. item. 8. This might also be a great time to set up a 1-many from vendor to expense type (defaults per vendor). 9. If we do allow hybrid user-maintained and hybrid system-maintained items, what would we call them or is “hybrid” a good word? Maybe two corp-wide settings? 10. A hybrid system-maintained item would be a special callout and would require a name, grouping, and either a vendor id or customer id. If a vendor was chosen, it might need checkboxes for e/r’s and po’s (or select both at the same time). 11. A hybrid user-maintained item would need a host (main) user-maintained balance sheet item. Which has the name, grouping, and math instructions. It also has options to hold subs. It then could have a B.S. deposit type watcher, a B.S. expense type watcher, multi B.S. deposit or expense type watchers (1-many if needed), standalone declarations, or known system feeds or feeders. 12. Just as an idea… a “standalone declaration” would be a generic non-specific item that could cross boundaries and be pointed to I.S. revenue, I.S. cost of goods sold, I.S. expenses, B.S. assets, B.S. liabilities, and B.S. equity. This could definitely get abused and has no backing. The name standalone declarations. On purpose, I may want to make it standout like a sore thumb so that it doesn’t get out of hand. There are reasons for it but it should be the exception not the rule. This is the item that can make the dreaded word “adjustments”. 13. A “system feed” is a certain section, part #, or known area of the system. The reason it would be called a system feed is because no manual entries are made but they are looked up (hence dynamic) from another known part of the system. A good example is sales tax, we know where it lives and should be recorded as a sum per day instead of individual details. The cool thing is one more drill-down and you could be at the detail level. Another good example is part # “collected”. It is assigned on an invoice line item and may need to be further categorized or filtered by description. 14. Histories on the standalone declarations will be very important. They will have their own homepage that can be accessed directly and from the P&L homepage and the balance sheet homepage. 15. After talking to Steve about this idea of standalone declarations, he thought that it might be a good idea to have a tool to link declarations together. For example: say that you are moving something from one account to another, you may want both actions to be linked together. This is not required but may be handy. 16. Before we go automating everything… what about documenting or mapping all system-maintained items out on paper. It might be good to take a small side step and map all of the know flow and what flags are needed to speed up the process. This could also help identify additional holes. 17. If we create a map, maybe we should go back to the underlying logic (where the add/edit and view takes place) and help the system keep track of known issues, dates, date ranges (windows), etc. It would be so nice to be able to search flags and dates instead of the main items, then the line items, and then the payments (sub loops and sub payments). Some of the flags that would help are: (not a full list) - Start, end, pre-main, pending, post or after main, paid, voided, match, complete, verified, posted, reconciled, transition period, etc. - Think of all the options for each piece. What are the possible states and status, both required (solid line) and optional (dotted line)? B.S. and I.S. flags? Basic and advanced? 18. With the mapping, watchers, and flags. The goal is to provide a quick look-up method for where are things at? What else is needed? And are there any potential problems? This mapping helps with the “known issues” report. It will help us present the findings back in reports and/or visual roll call reports. The goal way down the line would be to know where everything is and who is playing, moving, waiting, and in what area? Think overall vision…. - This becomes the full item roll call and where it has been, is, and where it is going… - Time becomes an issue that need to be shown and tracked. This is a constant and can be measured. Amounts and values are also constants. - These graphics don’t really mean anything it is just a concept - (See scan in photo gallery for graphics) 19. A 2D graphic might be awesome for general reference but a 3D graphic might be really cool to show 1-many relationships, subs, look-ups, etc. Just an idea… Think of a 3D model of the adilas database. Even cooler might be what and how are things playing together. Real time cause and effect. See the data relationships be built before your eyes… (interactive model) Okay, this is way out there… back to reality! 20. This is another random idea… Because we are defining all of the system players and how they interact, it would be cool to give them a face and characters (personality). This could be used to teach and educate users about what they do and how they play as tools, entities and as standalone characters. Some of the players may need more than one character to fully show what and how they interact. 21. If we could get it interactive enough, we could help show the users every step of the way what they are doing and how it fits in to the whole picture. Step-by-step – cause and effect, “visual”. 22. When showing graphics do we want to use static images, image maps with links, i-frames (windows), pop-ups, or interactive flash content? Maybe two different versions, one that is friendly to people and one that is friendly to search engines. 23. How do I keep it engaging yet logically simple? This might be a tight balance. Maybe show it very simple at first and allow the user to get more in-depth or technical as needed. Another strategy is to show it simple and then build layer upon layer until you get the full scope. This building idea takes more effort but might help the users see how things fit together better. 24. Just an idea… I’m worried about filling all the gaps and holes. What if we leave some gaps and holes and just show the users where things are at. The game of golf purposely has traps, water, sand, and rough terrain. What about the game of accounting and business? Is the goal to make it smooth or show where things are at? Once again, it might be a balancing act. 25. If I’m tracking something… How do I show something in the middle that has an uncertain start or unknown starting time and/or value? The reason I ask this is, quite often, we are asked to pick-up right in the middle and show a valid finish (numbers and accounting). It is kind of like a river… tons of water has already gone past (both flood and trickle) but I need to track a certain set of drops from point “E” to point “F”. In order to do that, I need some way to show current players and their status. In a way, I either need the supporting details or I need a starting value that plays forward… How do you do that? Does that affect anything down the road? Is there a limit going back? Does a starting value or false floor cause problems in the future? 26. How deep do we want to go? Surface level, a couple layers deep, or the full meal deal down to the dotting of “i’s” and crossing of “t’s”? How do we help people go to the level that they want and/or are comfortable with? How do you present on this level? How do you take yourself out of the mix so that there are no bottle necks and things run efficiently? 27. When a presentation is made (of any kind) how do you let people know it exists? How do you show it in context? How do you categorize the level of the info and presentation? How do you link backwards and forwards in a logical flow? How do you make it simple so that anybody could follow the path? 28. How do you help people get an education? You can’t force it… Do you want to show prerequisites or building blocks? What about requirements before and after? What about an indicator “you are here”? Lots of variables. 29. What is the timeline for a roll out like this? Or do we just start and slowly build as needed? Basically, don’t put any sort of time line on the project and just start it with the idea it will have future growth… 30. So, instead of worrying about timelines and deadlines… Do all that you can now because it will all be needed later on. Map it out, tell the story, and help people follow the path! 31. Make running a business and accounting fun… make is a puzzle… make it a game… make it as easy as possible without losing the need to pay attention or think… 32. As I was starting to map things out (visual flow chart), I thought that we may need a couple different maps… One might have all possible bridges or connections… another one might only show the current transaction and what pieces it plays with. Maybe we could even show a sample transaction and how it plays in. Maybe show the 10 or 20 most common transactions and what happens. 33. What about the element of time? This is a constant and part of the puzzle. A big part of the puzzle… 34. What about a hybrid graphic to help map actions. 2D – who are the players… plus a 2nd or 3rd 2D graphic as to the timeline and or physical relationships… Put them together to show the interactions. (Sketches in photo gallery, page 6) 35. How can I make the application map itself? Every possible roll call situation would need to be documented, scripted, and mapped. If the application could look at what happened (relative connections) it could display a real time map or visual flow chart. 36. If we are talking about smart object and/or transactions. We could also talk about smart reports, known issues, and full on automation of data flow. Along with automation… we will need to provide ways to back things out or correct known issues. Make the charges, record the history, and show a new flow chart or diagram. 37. Some modern software programs have a dashboard or graphical reports about key features. We could either use that feature or provide some sort of virtual drivers chair or cock-out (control seat) with all system controls and reports. 38. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could build virtual pieces or items (potentially 3D objects with relationships) and then drag and drop or physically put the pieces where they go? Basically, all of the tools we have created already would be used to put and build relationships (behind the scenes). The new piece would be on the user-side and would be a virtual environment where you can do your work and put things where you want them (interactive console or work environment)… This is sci-fi theory…! 39. On a different note, there is a known gap or hole if using special line items on incoming PO’s. Three possible solutions exist (right now)… One, we map the special line items to expenses or cost of goods straight from the PO’s and then pay for the entire PO through a B.S. inventory account. Two, we allow for some smart logic when paying for PO’s and help users split the specials off at that point. There are problems with both options as they exist right now. In scenario one, the full value must be deducted at once and it might seem weird to map backwards to the incoming special line items... (Not sure?) It might be better to use expense types). The second option also has a problem because it requires you to eat the whole cost at once and only shows up for roll call when you pay for it. This could be months between when you get it and when you pay for it. The third option is to satisfy the incoming PO with a series of PO payments assigned to the correct accounts. This gets the items booked right away. The catch is that you don’t pay the expense/receipt and turn the PO payable into a split payable (on account) for the vendor. The problem here is that you need to do double work and then have a split to pay off instead of a PO payable. 40. Once we get all of the mapping done. Why not use the map as a navigations tool (right from the homepage)? Show the history homepage report in a graphical manner. If people are stuck, show them what is needed, next, or possible options. Use the graphics to help lead them down the paths that will show them what is needed, or what we (the system) are waiting for. 41. Idea on making the map(s) dynamic. Allow corps to show/hide certain features like floorplan, stock/units, parts, rei’s, statements, rentals and reservations, etc. Maybe also allow them to move the pieces where they want. This could go even deeper if they have a rental fleet or layout of units. You could potentially stack, sort, categorize whatever it is that you have so that it matches your business. You could map your lot, your building layout, your warehouse, your restaurant, your clinic, your rooms, etc. 42. These are a couple of random ideas that I had in another notebook and have in another notebook and have a spiritual side to them. However, I still think they apply to adilas and where we are going… - Procedures (changeable) vs. Doctrine (unchangeable) - “Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.” –Joseph Smith - Teach people to think. They will take care of the rest… - Help the people catch the vision… This will drive them… - There is no new silver bullet. We need to use the tools and programs that already exist… - Bring it together… Everybody is playing on the same team! - A solid base supports the whole! 43. People want to see simple grouped reports. I (adilas) have a tendency to show details and expansive reports with every possible options and value. They have great data but they may not be what people are looking for. If I could say just a couple of words “simplify”, “cut to the chase”, “simple grouped with drill-downs to the details (if needed). Just show me the groups, categories, and the number totals. 44. Are we building and spending our time where we (Brandon & Steve - adilas) want or where our clients want? What do our clients want? What have they said? What have they not said but hinted or eluded to? What are we missing? - “If we help enough of them get what they want, we will be able to get what we want.” – Rough quote from President Leo Price (2/8/09) 45. Most of the comments on this page and other pages have been leaning towards a global watcher type system. This is not meant to deflate that idea but what if the flags and watchers and spread throughout the entire application with the tables that already exist (go to the source). The reason for this comment is I’m thinking about upkeep and system resources. The beauty of adilas is the depth and direct link to the underlying details. Maybe think about each main item carrying its own details like baggage. If I put the flags and dates in the right place we can easily pull reports and jump to the correct players. 46. Accounting is not so much the numbers… It is who and what are playing over time. We are dealing with independent objects and how they grow, shrink, live, die, play with, help, support, tie, bind, interact, skip, connect, and other actions. Let each object live and track what it does and make it accountable for its actions… wow, that’s deep! Almost spiritual… 47. Remember the whole picture… This is not just about the accounting. We need to remember that time plays into the operations and daily actions as well. One of the constants is time… Inside of adilas there is the effectual or what shows up for roll call. There is also the historical or who touched what. Both deal with the element of time. What about the financial side? 48. What if we beefed up the flex grid tie-ins… we use them as watchers, feeders, etc. We could set-up dynamic drop-down fields (for any of the 10 flex fields). We could beef up the search options and reports. We could also allow for the roll call or reflexive side of the flex grid to be used. 49. There is a known issue if people/users are using adilas as a cash register. On the one hand, we are recording invoice payments coming in; on the other hand, they (meaning the users) might be taking cash out for expenses (like a petty cash draw). If they (the users) are not going to the deposit and bank level it might be okay but there are some cause and effects that didn’t get recorded. How can you simply help people who want to do that kind of transaction? Here are some options: - They need to record a negative invoice that doesn’t count towards revenue (special line item with a black hole assignment). They also need to record the negative out flow or payment. When they do their deposits, they deposit the negative payments right with the positive payments and it works out okay. - What if they were able to tie to “cash” expense/receipt payments from the amount to deposit? Basically, create some sort of secondary line item that back tied itself to an expense receipt. That would be the negative side of the equation. - What if you had some way to tell the story of where they money went? Allow and create tools to tell the story so that we can account for them, not double things up, and keep the loop tight. That is a challenge! 50. On the global watchers – what if you called it locations, layers, and level. A super mini version of this already exists inside of adilas. It is the location ages and floorplan history for stock/units. Basically, we are looking for who, what, when, where, how much, and how long… 51. Good consulting and education may be better and more important than good programming! 52. What if any object or sub object could be pointed into play or told how to show up for roll call. What if that could be flexible on a per item or sub item basis. Basically, set a standard and default to that. If special, have the tools and permissions in place to let things play where ever you want in the final game or layout. 53. To take this “any object to any place” methodology even further… what if this becomes the watcher or watcher(s). This could be 1-many on dates and status. The roll call then knows where to show up and how and when to play in to the mix. Basically, a default roll call is either assigned or presumed. (Keep the footprint small or inline). Then if needed, only on special cases, allow for the 1-many to happen as “any object to any place”. At that level you’re playing with where and how things show up to play. Full control and full flexibility. Maybe only add a “custom mapping or roll call” if needed… otherwise let it flow naturally. 54. The system would need to track exactly what was happening and be able to show effectually and historically what was, is, and will be where and at what timeframe or in what window. Funny how it comes back to time… 55. Maybe time is the stable element and we organize events and objects inside of the time windows. 56. Space??? Time??? Time space??? That could make a pretty good 3D model. You could even push, pull, move, slide, and shuffle objects to create a sense of virtual time travel (past, present, future) with in the application. Only recorded data would be able to play. You can’t pull something out of nothing. Without getting too deep… the element of space is how you organize items and objects into logical pieces. Catch and hold all of the pieces and then be able to show them back again. This becomes the accounting or story of what happens in your space. 57. Old school accounts want to see the entries that were made. What if you show the database entries that were made and show them how to map back to it? This could be a nice presentation with graphics or just a pen and paper and physically showing where things go and how you can look them back up. Draw out tables, containers, etc. Show them on paper where things are at. Simplify some of the look-ups and keep it to a minimum (don’t be so detailed that it makes it hard to follow). Simple. 58. To make the above simple demonstration even more powerful. Once the entire transaction is mapped out on paper… take them in to adilas and show the same transactions using the system. Compare the map with how the system works. Maybe allow them to choose what they want to see. A decision or linked tutorial. 59. For the record, there are some other known holes and issues: (balance sheet related) - Credits (vendor and customer), payroll settings for all states, payroll reports, accrued payroll, year-end reports and forms, sales tax reports and forms, build and hold recipes, build and build recipes, conversion of a stock/unit into parts inventory, hard core manufacturing, process vs. discrete accounting, depreciation and amortization schedules, schedules and rentals, other items discussed in this brainstorming session (see previous notes and questions). - Some of these already have a work around but they could use either some help and/or documentation/training. 60. Jumping back to 58. It would be really cool if a tutorial had subs. The user could either view the entire thing, just a sub step or chapter, or be able to jump to what they want. Maybe have an outline for each tutorial, sequence, or presentation. If the user is in a hurry, allow them to look at the outline and jump to that section. On a technical note. That may require the player to have an active playing piece and a next up piece that is being downloaded. If the user jumps around, the player would need to shuffle the pieces. Just an idea… but maybe that map or outline could be its own clip or movie that could stay loaded until the user is done with that clip or section. It would also be cook if the player could be smart enough to show related topics and additional clips. 61. In the theory clips… show web basics, how 1-many works in a database, client/server relationships, dynamic searches and filters, history and approach, what are the technologies that are playing and what each does, show how relationships are created, how things interconnect, and what things standalone. In a way, pretend that you were teaching someone new how to build a web based relational database application. I know it sounds like you are giving away the farm but I really feel strongly about helping other people learn and understand what is going on. Think about Steve and I and how we communicated, because we can talk at that “full picture” level, we can keep dreaming and taking the next step. Conditional logic, new settings, 1-many relationships, short cuts, links, loops, where things are currently, where we would like to take it histories and how we can get there. 62. I want to make sure that adilasuniversity.biz is free and open to the public. We may be able to charge for other things like system fees, training, setup, migration, optimization, merchant processing, classes, demo accounts, retail store, upgrades to different service levels, marketing and ads (sponsors), white labeling, etc. Train the upcoming generation! Help them to learn adilas so that is what they want to work in… 63. Once we get everything working, it would be awesome to go back through and hide all irrelevant items or choices. For example hide the bank if only one bank, hide the location if only one location, hide stock # stuff if no stock/unit assignments are made. Clean it up and simplify it. The process is the same; the only difference is hiding steps and making it more user friendly and faster. 64. Going back to the timeline idea… wouldn’t it be cool if you could see your revenue, COGS, gross profit, expenses, and net profit values every day. It would also be cool if your application could show a thumbs up or down (or smile or frown) for in balance yes/no. It would also be cool to show known issues and potential problems. This could almost be called a smart balance or something fun… This would be cool to add to a dashboard of sorts… 65. Add a crumb trail to the application. This would also be cool if you could visually show someone on a map where you are at. You want to know where you are at and where you are going… It would be cool if you could jump or switch places really quickly. Easy… yet flexible menus and jump spots. 66. On a jog with my dad and was thinking about using smaller flash movies inside of a bigger player. If you left the flash environment it would be cool if you could jump back right to where you were. Maybe pass a small string value to an outside request so that it would know to get back. It might also be cool to have certain major functions built in to the main player (adilas dewy decimal, permissions, etc.) and then smaller functions within the smaller flash movies that deal with just their functions. 67. How do you get depth? 1-many relationships, time, volume, layers, chaining, combining processes, pulling from a central location, multiplying, magnifying, compressing, breaking things down into smaller pieces, use over and over, only pull what is really needed, efficient layout and design. Group things, anticipate, lead from step to step, preload, copy, duplicate, and use a template system. Allow the system to grow and be dynamic depending on the user, what they are playing with, and how many are playing with the same items or processes. 68. A pencil works in space. A ball point pen does not. Keep it simple. 69. How about a visual permission map. Just another layer or mapping. |
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AU 397 |
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Daily Ideas | 2/9/2011 |
On post-it note in notebook: • Financial history look-up • User history look-up by payee id and location • Full site map of the adilas.biz system. My Quick links • Email sales and support page. • Beef up flex grid searches and dynamic drop-down titles and options. • Payroll feeders on balance sheet items. • Time conditional logic – only date, no time, just a single day (choices). • Might sound weird – no dates – but able to show up for roll call – on specific numeric days (not dates). Like accrued payroll… • Standalone declarations From mini-notebook: • Add a flag to help people know if a transaction is system maintained or user maintained. • Make the system return and report. • “Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.” –Joseph Smith • Help the people catch the vision – this will drive them. • Everybody is playing on the same team - bring things together. • A solid base supports the whole. -Need pagination on sales tax report. -Ease the load on the server. Reports are either too big or take too long to run. I want it to run as smooth as possible. -Maybe add a flag per line item for possible tax problems. This would help the accounting staff find the possible problems quicker. -Once we start in to Flash – I can see navigation, sub modules, shopping carts, schedulers, training, etc. starting to play in the same base player. It might be cool if there were options for classic html and interactive or flash. |
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Adi 16 |
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B.S.I. - Balance sheet rework (round 4) | 6/3/2011 |
We need to circle back around and work on automating sales tax, collected fees, standalone declarations, watchers, feeders, hybrid callouts, etc. This is quite in depth and is what we would be calling round 4 of the balance sheet. As a note, on 7/4/13 we had another request from Kelly Whyman to add some sort of off the record type entry that a CPA makes. This would allow the owner or manager to see things as they really are and/or see things as they become adjusted according to specific entries. Kelly was requesting this show/hide option that could be turned on/off as needed. I (Brandon) replied to the email and mentioned the "standalone declarations" that are planned for adilas. Here is some info from the email. Kelly, Great ideas! We love it! Now if only we could find some time... :) I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this before but have you ever heard of a thing called a "standalone declaration". This is a future adilas project that I think could help you out. A standalone declaration will be a physical entry that is mapped to a specific spot within the financials (income statement and/or balance sheet). It will be called a standalone declaration because it just exists or was created (kinda pulled out of the air if you will). It doesn't really have any backing or supporting documents other than it was an entry that was required or requested by a CPA. We are going to call these entries a standalone declaration to help them stand out or be their own little sub set. In order to help with the show/hide options, we could add a special show/hide flag or we could add an option for "real" or "taxes only". Another thing that we could do is allow the dates to be very general. Most of the dates inside of adilas are a physical date such as 7/4/13. However, if we needed to, we could allow for things like: In 2013 or in July or 2013 without going clear to the exact or physical date value. Anyways, just some ideas and food for thought. Enjoy your day and keep the ideas coming. Even if we can't jump on them yet, we can at least record them. That is at least a start in the right direction. Thanks, Brandon Moore 435.258.5504 (home/office) brandon@adilas.biz :: www.adilas.biz "all data is live and searchable" ----- Original Message ----- From: Kelly Whyman To: Brandon Moore - adilas.biz ; Stephen Berkenkotter Sent: Thursday, July 04, 2013 1:40 PM Subject: HUGE SUGGESTION - The need for an additional day on the Balance Sheet or Option for Adjustments to be seen or hidden Gentlemen - Happy July 4th, with it being independence day, I have a huge request for the Adilas System. Is it possible to add a day or some time of sub section to the system that allows adjustments to the P&L/Balance Sheet to be shown or hidden. So many CPAs adjust clients books and it takes away from the ability to see the business as it was prior to adjustments. Originally Steve had mentioned an extra day of the year. I would like to suggest you allow the adjusting entry mechanism (Invoice, Deposit, Expense, Balance Sheet Detail) to have the ability to be active or inactive when viewing P&L or Balance Sheet. Is this possible? It would be something that no other system is capable of doing. Best, Kelly |
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AU 2211 |
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Brainstorming What is still needed to roll everything out like we want to? | 6/9/2011 |
What is still needed to roll everything out like we want to? - Ecommerce and customer pay portals. Maybe online reservations. (2 weeks) - Help files (3 days) - Grouped reports (2 weeks) - My favorite buttons (2 weeks) - Graphical navigation and page flow (all sub homepages) (2 weeks) - My user history - Flash media player (2 weeks) - Roll call page with associative reports flex grid and other system ties (3 days) - New credit card gateways (Lucy and First Data) show groups then details (2 weeks) - Balance sheet rework – round 4 (1 month) o Feeders o Watchers o Known issues o Standalone declarations o Payables rework o Taxes and collected fees - Training manual and adilas university… Ongoing project (1 month) - User history reports (3days) - Financial history reports (1 week) - Small tweaks to current history reports (1 day) - New photo galleries and moving over to content server (2 weeks) - Payroll rework (1 week) o Gross sales o Elements of time (subs) o Reports - Ideas and sharing… global updates, global idea center, global forum, all elements of time (1 week) - Objects and data over time – adilasuniversity – theory and concepts (2 weeks) - On order and in transit tracking (1 week) - Sub locations and how they tie-in to things (1 week) - Elements of time (1 month) |
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AU 782 |
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Daily Tasks | 4/27/2012 |
• Brainstorming about COGS watchers and feeders and sending emails to Steve. • Updating new deposit pages and their help files. • More work on build and hold recipes. |
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AU 792 |
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Daily Ideas | 4/27/2012 |
-Tied to comment below – what about recipe/builds, internal invoices, or PO’s tied to stock/units. Just some ideas – maybe part of a build and build recipe or reverse build of sorts. -On stock/units we need the ability to have them produce child inventories (new items or new stock/units) of be broken (chop shop) in to smaller sell-able pieces. Start with something and then have it multiply or divide into something else. (Idea from another associate.) What about renting or borrowing from a master stock/unit? Does it totally go away or are we able to use it again? What does the word sell or sale mean? Brainstorming and recording ideas while cleaning out my email inbox: o On the eCommerce side – we need a customer portal where they can pay for past bills, create quotes, statements, buy new things and get access to custom paperwork or forms. Most of these ideas have been recorded before but the paperwork and forms (PDF, Word, Excel) have not been recorded. o On the label generator – it would be cool if we could make assignments to main application types and then build custom mappings for that type. It would be cool to be able to save these settings and be able to name them. Basically a custom 1-many between application types and fields or values. It may also be cool if you could hard code a value or let the system show an option. What about custom stuff like sized, logo, yes/no, font color, font size, positioning. o We need to make the words “make” and “model” dynamic if using specific units. o The calendar interface needs to be a back drop for any date/time related report, invoices per month, customer birthdays, bills and due dates, etc. o We need a mini calendar app to help on some of the date fields – not required but available. o We have a known issue with PO payments and the balance sheet. It has to do with force payments and how does that effect something. No way of searching, editing, fixing or finding what happened. o We need to circle back around and work on automating sales tax, collected fees, standalone declarations, watchers, feeders, callouts, etc. o On inventory items – we have been asked about multiple categories and sub categories. Currently using either the reference field or the RFID tag field as a text copy of the categories. o We were also asked about a part number grid (grid items) to hold values like red, white, blue, large, medium, small, etc. – attributes. o We have had requests for more flexible “Google-type” searches. These are called regular expressions or we can check for spaces and build our own list or array searches. o Add drill-down links from vendors to all incoming items (lines), all sold items, (invoice lines), all payments made (PO parts or e/r parts), all e/r line items, etc. o When starting a new location – it takes quite a while to get the starting inventory in. The system requires it, the parts inventory, to be entered one at a time. It would be cool if we could do something like an update PO but pull from all inventory items. This could be as simple as a switch or a permission to include all parts in the update or just location specific activity. Anyway, once completed, it would do what we want and setup initial inventory levels. (This whole idea could be done with the duplicate PO tool.) o The more we use the flex-grid, the more we will need ways of getting data in and out of it. The flex grid also needs to be a filter (pre-search filter) for other main application types. o We have a growing need to help manage cash drawers, petty cash, pay outs, etc. o On build PO’s – we need a way to add a new product (with a variable vendor) while in the build PO mode. Currently this is not allowed and requires a user to first prep and create the placeholder part and then go back and use it on or as a part of the build. Basically, they need a live PO to create the item and build PO to use it. It would be nice to have it all wrapped up together in a single step. o We had a request to make the customer log types dynamic per corporation. These are recorded as the customer log reason or subject field. Currently they are held in the contact_types table. All we would need to do is add a corp_id number and an add/edit interface and it could be done. o ICC’s (internal cost corrections), cost of goods corrections, cost differences – this is location specific, date sensitive and according to part numbers, what we need is a 1-many relationship from parts to the corrections. We virtually track what came in (PO’s), what was sold (invoices) and calculate the differences of cost differences between the two. This correction could really help with perfect Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). o On the accounting side, the cost differences would need to play into the P&L or income statement as part of COGS. It would also be cool if they, the differences or manual corrections, would show up under the part usage sections. o We talked about a thing called watchers and feeders for the balance sheet. This could be things like taxes, collected fees, etc. Why not cost of goods sold corrections or differences. It automatically sits in the background and runs logic on items sold vs. items sitting in inventory. This would be cool and would take out the manual portion of this task. If it was virtual, it could be very dynamic but may take more processing power. If it was manual, it would take up more storage space but would be quicker to get to. o What about correcting per location – locations play a part of inventory. o Steve wants to use an invoice depending on whether the cost needs to go up or down. Use a -1 of a +1 on the quantity. Each entry would have two lines. You would then adjust the cost accordingly, pretty creative. The price on both lines would be $0.00. Doing it this way only effects COGS and does not affect inventory because a -1 or a +1 =0 on the quantity side. Pretty cool! General ideas: o We need to go through the application and show/hide stock/unity fields, permissions and settings. This could be kind of a big project. However, it may make the interface simpler. o We’ve had request to be able to clean-up old inventory items. This is twofold: 1. COGS and 2. Quantities on hand. Basically, we need a “sweep the floor” function to get everything in order and then really hide the items on the look-back reports. Even if they are inactive, they still show up if there is a problem with COGS and quantities on hand. (ICC’s - internal cost corrections, see next page for another idea – April 30th entry) |
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AU 797 |
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Daily Tasks | 5/4/2012 |
• On the phone with a user going over payroll and employees. He seemed to get it and the “tutorial” for the day went pretty well. • On the phone with another user going over a few needs on the stock/unit side for invoices, shopping carts, etc. • Email answers and basic tech support. • On the phone with Steve going over the game plan. We spent a lot of time talking about upcoming projects, sales reps, teaching and education and general theory. We want to be able to add the order status to PO’s, be able to duplicate PO’s, show the “roll call” page and the reflexive side of the flex grid. We want to be able to add the watchers and feeders to the balance sheet. We want the hybrid balance sheet items, the stand alone declarations, the reoccurring payment, the …. tons of stuff. We also talked about doing it one step at a time and remembering the cause and effect relationship stuff. • Brainstorming ideas and recording them in my notebook. • Worked on a tax re-calc problem and bug in the shopping cart. |
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Adi 460 |
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Parts & P&L & B.S.I. & Reports - Internal Cost Corrections (ICC's) | 7/30/2012 |
We are seeing a need for a thing called an "Internal Cost Correction" or "ICC's". This deals with corrections to cost of goods sold and inventory values. This is a new concept that was found by Kelly Whyman and Steve Berkenkotter as they were helping people get their inventory values and numbers correct. The inventory values are figured on adding up the quantities in/out and then taking the costs in/out to get the value (we call that a stepped actual costing method). If either side is off (quantities and/or costs) the numbers are not exactly correct. This disconnect means "some of the parts get to ride" meaning that their value was either over or under stated as they were pulled out of inventory. Many accounting system use an average cost to accomplish this disconnect. That becomes a never-ending changing variable and doesn't allow us to pull a balance sheet with any level of accuracy (literally a shot in the dark because of the variables that could change at any given time). The goal would be to have tools that help update either side. The logical place to do that is either on a PO (update po for quantities) or on an invoice that only holds cost of good sold. Steve & Kelly want to use an invoice depending on whether the cost needs to go up or down... The invoice would use a -1 (negative one) or a +1 (positive one) on the quantity field. Each entry would have two lines. You would then adjust the cost accordingly (up or down). Pretty creative. The price on both lines would be $0.00 making the price of the invoice be $0.00. Doing it this way only effects COGS and does not effect inventory because a -1 plus a +1 = 0 on the quantity side. Basically it becomes an internal cost correction invoice that only carries the cost of goods sold (no revenue, no taxes, no receivables, no payments). The quantity is unaltered and we are able to virtually push the cost up or down according. Pretty cool! It is kinda like selling the quantity of 0 at a actual cost that shows up. That would be impossible except for the -1 + 1 = 0 logic. Read on for more ideas and notes about the subject. Here are some random notes on the subject. No particular order... some of these notes were written down before we decided that an IIC invoice would be the way to go. - We need a clean-up feature to help with updating cost of goods sold... Basically matching up PO's and costs to invoices and costs. The goal is to catch the pieces that "get to ride" on the cost changes. - This is location specific, date sensitive, and according to individual part numbers. What we need is a one-to-many relationship from parts to the corrections. We virtually track what came in (po's), what was sold (invoices) and calculate the differences or cost differences between the two. This correction could really help with perfect cost of good sold (GOGS). - On the accounting side, the cost differences would need to play into the P&L or income statement as part of the GOGS. It would also be cool if they, the differences or manual corrections, would show up under the part usage sections. - We talked about a thing called watchers and feeders for the balance sheet. This could be things like taxes, collected fees, etc. Why not cost of good sold corrections or differences. It automatically sits in the background and runs logic on items sold vs. items sitting in inventory. This would be cool and would take out the manual portion of this task. If it was virtual, it could be very dynamic but may take more processing power... if it was manual, it would take up more storage space but would be quicker to get to... - What about correcting per location? Locations play a part of inventory values. - We've had requests to be able to clean-up old inventory items. This is two fold... 1. COGS and 2. Quantities on hand. Basically, we need a "sweep the floor" function to get everything in order and then really hide the items on the look-back reports (subs of the balance sheet). Even if they are inactive... they still show up if there is a problem with GOGS and quantities on hand. - On the part number look-back reports (subs of the balance sheet)... maybe add a part number status filter and/or help them clean things up so that is works correctly. - We has a request to have a report and the ability to delete items (part numbers) in bulk. This would need to set COGS to the correct values and get rid of any remaining pieces (whole or parts) and mark the items as inactive. Do all of this all at once... |
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AU 957 |
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Daily Ideas | 10/1/2012 |
-Title line for invoices corp-wide – open field for whatever branding is needed on the top of the invoice. This may be a great spot to put dynamic sub invoice type. No special dates or history, just an option to classify the invoices. Another word might be “Invoice Classifications”. Maybe something like a mix between a corp-wide stetting for what the default is and a dynamic list per corporation; think it out a little more before we just add it in to the mix. -Known issues: unlimited parts with costs, special line items on PO’s, sales tax, collected fees, payroll taxes and withholdings, special fees due to different entities, PO’s with pre-payment or transit options, normal pre-payments on any items (invoices, PO’s, E/R’s, etc.), customer credits, gift cards, watchers and feeders, second half of a balance sheet E/R or balance sheet deposit, dates way in the future and in the distant past, disconnects between main and line items. -On E/R advanced line item search – we need to be able to group expense types. |
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AU 1195 |
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Daily Ideas | 4/20/2013 |
-Thinking about “roll call”… I don’t even know if this is possible, but would happen if you had one table just for roll call? This would be what flag, what date, what checkpoint, what status? This is just an idea but if we had everything in one place, it sure would make reporting easier. Currently we have all of the pieces (mostly) but they are all continued in-line or on tons of different tables. -This idea is somewhat related to some topics back in October and November of 2010. We have tons of brainstorming on watchers, feeders, standalone declarations, etc. A global “roll call” table may end up being part of those options. -In a nut shell – things happen every day (changing, turning, staying, coming, going, becoming, etc.) Our goal is where is it at (the objects and/or data) when the day closes? Almost like a “snapshot” or daily summary. If more details are needed, we could always go back and check on the objects history. -The one (or more) problems with this deal with changes and going back in time. This is especially true if one value is related to another value. You end up getting a cause and effect chain of events. -One way to solve this is to put each corporation on its own mini adilas and then look-up all of details, dates, and flags on the fly. We could speed things up by using numeric dates, smaller tables, and using global watchers that help things stay contained. We have a thing called the “ice down” date. That could help us lock things down and then don’t allow any changes. If a change is needed, we could back up the ice down date and then record changes. That date could be a backward compatible border or boundary of sorts. Basically, a no one goes past here unless the ice down date is backed up. -Another thought keeps playing through my head… what if you still kept – all data is live and searchable – but added a lock or sorts. You still want all of the data but you also don’t want everything to be flexible all the time. Maybe once you lock it down, no one gets to touch, unless the lock down (ice down) date gets pushed back. Everything is still there and plays a part but it prevents tampering and changing once it gets perfectly locked down. -Maybe think about formulas in a spreadsheet… But be able to lock them down… |
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AU 1877 |
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Daily Ideas | 11/7/2013 |
-Notes from the 3D simulation demo using visual components. -Reference an object and then bring it in to your world. -They used in-line parameters to control the objects. These params acted like virtual settings. -One of the fun things with the simulation demo was the point and click interface to show what was happening as you made changes. Adilas could use this on our permissions and corp-wide settings. -Once they were in the 3D world, they could copy and paste both functionality and objects inside the world. -Inside the 3D world, the user could move any item at will. This deals with 3D space or not being locked in to a 2D space. -Inside the software, they, the users, could drag to create the connections. I could see virtual flex grid relationships by created by drag and drop options in the future. -They used feeders to virtually feed product into the simulation. -More notes from the 3D simulation demo (continued) -Once an object was on the stage or screen, the user could virtually “teach” the object what to do. Instead of defining the process step-by-step or stage-by-stage, the user could drag and drop, push and pull, and then the object would mimic or copy the sequence. I could see some cross-over functionality there big time for adilas. -Many of the objects had built-in limits. -Use simulation to help solve problems before you do anything for real. This was also used to produce potential through output analysis. -They used Adobe PDF to hold the 3D animations for sharing with other people. They also used built-in options inside of Adobe Acrobat to switch between outlines vs. real colored graphics. I personally liked the outline view best. Very simple. -One of the analogies that they used was – help the people virtually get their driver’s license before they really hit the real world. -I would love to show tons of adilas scenarios on how things flow in a real-time, cause and effect, 3D, scenario. It would also be cool for what if’s or if I did do this, what would it do? |
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AU 2320 |
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Daily Tasks | 5/28/2014 |
• Installing the new SSL for the media/content server. • Went in to Bridgerland for day two of the May adilas training course. We uploaded a number of marketing images and graphics that a class attendee had made (he is also helping with some adilas marketing ideas). See element of time #2268 in the adilas university site. We talked back and forth about the concepts and how to get things (people and objects) to work together. We did some basic accounting work and talked about relationships. After lunch, we took the interactive map and split it up into different sections. Each person then reported and/or presented on what their part of the map did. It was crazy to see how every section either pulled from or was connected to the other sections. After the map graphic, we then went to the GPS (Global Positioning System) core graphic. We talked about flow and virtual feeders. We also talked about content or files. We decided that media/content and files were kind of like one of the main 12 player groups but may even be bigger than the player groups. We decided that we need a link to the media/content homepage right from the center or hub of the system. After the GPS core graphic, we used the plates and cups graphic (virtual buckets and how we store data and create objects). We went through a number of scenarios and mapped things out in the bucket model. At the end of the day I worked with a developer on getting him into the API socket model for his first custom project. He got half down as a retaining and startup fee. 30 miles. |
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AU 3590 |
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Daily Tasks | 2/5/2015 |
• Recording notes and brainstorming on watchers and feeders. Those topics were the catalyst for elements of time. See other notes. • Went in to Bridgerland to work with interns. Started looking into some JQuery stuff. Worked with 6 of the interns on different projects. All over the place. Everybody is working hard and there is lots of learning going on. The guys are helping each other and they are all getting along. That is awesome! One of the neat things is how the guys are expanding their minds and starting to think outside the box. It is fun to see them embrace new ideas and concepts. 30 miles. |
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AU 3601 |
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Daily Ideas | 2/5/2015 |
Back on 1/20/15 we were brainstorming on a project called round 2 of elements of time. See entries from that date for details. Anyway, when I was driving home, I started thinking about how we needed elements of time to advance the ball for our balance sheet and financial records. When I got home, I scribbled some small ideas on a post-it note and stuck it on my scanner. I’ve been meaning to record those pieces but have been slammed. Here they are: - Use elements of time behind the scenes to record daily records per categories. No other math other than the daily sums is needed. We will then pull reports based on those daily sums. Watchers and feeders. - The different categories will be updated and maintained as they happen in real time. This includes normal actions such as adds, edits, deletes, voids, etc. This is possible as most pieces are manipulated on a one by one basis. - There are tons of entries in the adilas university site on watchers. Search for the key word watchers. Some of the entries go back to 2008, 2009, and 2010. Things started getting hot in 2010. Lots of planning and mapping sessions were being done. That whole process was the prep and foundation for elements of time – round 1. We just ran out of time to get it all done. See specifically the entries for the month of October 2010. Interactive map, watchers, feeders, roll call, mappings, etc. - On the daily records per categories (watchers and feeders), these would be accounting level subs of time. They could be done daily per location as needed. The subs would only be added as something happens. Keep it small and tight. Simple sums would be sufficient. Relate the subs back to pieces of the financials. Use the P&L (profit and loss or income statement) and the balance sheet as the categories to keep track of. For example: part categories, revenue, cost of goods sold, expense types, deposit types, balance sheet pieces, taxes, receivables, payables, etc. - The goal is daily sums per location per category. The word category is kind of broad but record key pieces per day. These feeders could then be used to support and/or feed other reports including the P&L (profit and loss) and balance sheet. - I really need to get these records (my notebook) out to the public. There is a lot of good stuff here that could benefit the whole human race. The ideas, knowledge, and planning are free. Making it happen… that takes resources. See notes back on 1/24/15 about new custom black boxes for custom code. Today while doing a whiteboard session, we may end up adding other options for custom headers and custom footers. These would be more global type pieces but available if needed. The word global means more system wide vs. per page like most of the other custom code. Standard page inside of adilas – black box custom code options: - Top – full takeover or custom logic - CSS – Global or system wide - Top custom header – Global or system wide - Top mini – under the header - Main body black box - Bottom mini – above the footer - Bottom custom footer – global or system wide Be able to switch out any piece of a page as if it was a Lego building system. The page name would remain the same but the display and logic could be customized with no problems. -To take the black box concept even further… What if each page had options to use a point and click interface to show/hide criteria, custom naming conventions, change display order, and even add or subtract links, navigation, buttons, graphics, and even database fields. The extra database fields might need to be tied to the future project called real in-line extensions. See notes from 10/2/14 through 10/9/14. -I wanted to record a miracle… We’ve been working with new interns for over a month now. They are growing and developing some great skills. We are really excited about that. The scary side to that is how much it costs to get them to a level where they can play the game. Anyway, I was telling my dad and he asked me if I could get a loan or something to help bump these guys over the hump into a producing level. I told him that I didn’t think so… He immediately said – “Let me talk to mom and see if we could get you something.” You have to realize that my parents aren’t rich or well to do. They scrape and pinch like most of us. Anyway, I end up heading home, ran some errands, and finally get home. Later I get a call from my dad and he says – “Come by tomorrow and mom will give you some money.” They are planning on loaning me $5,000 to help bump the interns into a producing level. That will really help and is literally a miracle. I feel very blessed. I told my mom and dad… “I want to be just like you when I grew up.” I love how quick they give, serve, help, and jump in. They are and have been a huge blessing in my life. I’m very grateful! |
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Adi 983 |
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Round 4 On The Balance Sheet - Automating Things With Watchers, Feeders, & Standalone Declarations | 3/30/2015 |
Will has been working on General Ledger. Huge project completed on sales tax. (round 4 of 5) Round 5 code is in code review. |
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AU 3873 |
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Daily Tasks | 6/16/2015 |
• Emails, recording bills, and recording notes. • Went in to Logan to work with my guys. After stand-up meeting I gave some of the guys FTP (file transfer protocol) assess to push up new demos and marketing content. • Worked with an intern to line out his new corp-wide setting project. This is part of the auto retrieve RFID tag values when restoring a quote to the cart for final checkout. • Other interns and I did a small session on the packaging project. We built the database table and talked about the sub inventory fields, columns, and associated tables. • I then worked with a developer on what he is going to need in order to get his multi corp sales report done. I showed him some live data to help him get an idea of how this report would be used in real life. • A developer showed me his print multi pdf labels project. • A contact sent us a referral. He does a think called medical tourism. Basically, they offer a trip to Mexico, a nice hotel, an American doctor, and a full remote recovery package. We chatted and talked about options and what adilas could offer and bring to the table. It was a fun visit. • I’ve been using a couple of graphics and printouts to help explain what, how, and why we do things. The graphics really help get the concepts across. • After the sales meeting, I met with the project manager on a couple projects. We figured out assignments and rough timelines. He has been a huge help to keep things going. • I helped a developer and intern with some new high admin permissions. I gave the developer access to setup new adilas accounts and worlds. • My brother came by and I helped him get started on cataloging video clips and YouTube videos. We are going to use the media/content tools to catalog the YouTube videos. • Another brother showed me some of his design work that he has been doing He is doing awesome. I’m excited! 30 miles. • Went over to a family friend’s house to talk with him about projects. We ended up talking about concepts of watchers and feeders. Good stuff. |
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AU 3937 |
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Daily Ideas | 7/28/2015 | -We are seeing more and more need for budgeting and forecasting models and features. I think that could be a great sub of time. This may also tie into watchers and feeders. The budget settings need to be able to hold projections, forecasts, and goals. We then need to go through and track real usage and application of those pieces. People want to be able to see and tell where they are at as compared to the projects, forecasts, and budgets. | |
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Adi 1200 |
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Real-Time Budgeting & Forecasting - Sub of Elements of Time | 7/31/2015 |
People are wanting more and more options to budget and/or forecast per project, per week, per month, per year, etc. We have even had people asking for budgeting options per person, per day, etc. Basically, the older long term budgets are starting to see the advantages of allowing smaller increments and more measureable outcomes. Most traditional budgets have been on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis. What we are seeing is people want smaller, quicker, and more real-time budgeting options. This may require options for watchers, feeders, and just in time calculations. In order to do that, you have to have the data in the system. Our proposal would be a sub of elements of time. This would allow you to show budgeted or estimated values (hours, weeks, dollars, quantities, etc.). Then as things get budgeted, estimated, or expected, we could help by tracking the actual or real time values that match-up with the budgeted values. We could use budget frequencies, budget types, and populate things with real-time data. Anyways, some cool ideas are coming down the pipeline. The key is real-time numbers, values, math, and comparisons. Where am I at and how am I doing? Even on a sub level or smaller goal based level. Good stuff! |
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Shop 4375 |
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Virtual Post-It Note | 11/12/2015 |
-( Planning for code projects) -What server? -what corp id? -other special id numbers? -need to keep track of what files are being altered, added, or deleted? -what are the differences between test and live. -whats your to do list. (END planning for code projects) -with Bryan what branch are you? -How can you renew this? -what's your plan? -technical aspects? -what would make it move dynamic? -what is your budget and how will you spemd that? -What goals? -possible problems/ -expand options? -wish list? (TIME) -(9:45 - 11:15)Logan - worked with Daniel on some project planning. See Element of time number 194 in the adilas shop. Good notes. 30 miles -(11:15 - 12-:00_ working with Bryan on some project planning. More good notes. See element of time number 195 in the adilas shop. -on the adilas GPS core...add some basic stats on the graphical home pages and sub home pages. -(12:00 - 6:15)phone calls, tech support, and helping guys with their projects. worked with Dave, Russell, Bryan,Daniel and Alan. Dave and Russell were talking about elements of time and I got to chime in and share some vision about watchers, feeders, automated financials, and history of elements of time. I had fun rolling things back and talking about the why behind the interactive map, 3D financials, world building, and how elements of time is somewhat of a precursor for other sections. -(9:15 - 10:00 PM) paying bills and recording expenses. |
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Shop 1099 |
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Chris Johnnie - School Demo | 4/7/2016 |
Meet at 9:30 am at Thomas Edison North with 6ish staff members from 2 campuses to demo Adilas. Notes: Met up with Chris Johnnie and Dave Forbis and went over to the school. We were on a Skype session with the other campus. I did the demo and Chris and Dave helped with the questions, ideas, and feedback. Good demo. We covered some student stuff, media/content, photos/scans, inventory, barcoding desks and chairs, expense tracking, and other budgeting requirements. We have everything other than some of the budgeting features (may need watchers and feeders - inside of elements of time). Other than that, we were able to bounce in and show tons of potential. We also talked quite a bit about custom reports, ecommerce pieces (for parents and students), and custom interfaces. We have met with this school three or four times (in the last 6-8 months). I think that they are finally getting it and the timing seems right. The principle is looking to retire in the next year and a half. He wants to get things setup correctly for the new incoming principle. Great meeting. |
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Shop 1226 |
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Working with Shawn on the Hypur Project | 4/15/2016 |
Shawn came over to my house to work on the Hypur project. We worked upstairs in the front room (better natural light). We used a small whiteboard and pen and paper to take notes and do some planning. See photo gallery for some of the notes. Page 1 - We worked on a small flow chart of when and how the Hypur API socket connection would work and how they play into existing flow and processes. Page 2 - We talked a lot about options for locking down full invoices. We thought that it would be cool to add a couple new columns such as is_locked (1 or a 0) and locked_reason (why it is locked - Hypur, 3rd Party, Audit, Admin lock, ice-down date, etc.) - Shawn also had the idea to put an extra where clause on the updates that only allowed updates on non locked items. That would create a great fall back on the root or update level. - The other main topic was flagging and tagging data. The more we look at things, the more we are seeing more needs to be able to flag and tag items within the system. We need easy ways to flag things and then easy ways to search and pull reports based off of the flags. Page 3 - This page of notes dealt more with a task queue of sorts. We need a queue for the Hypur project but we could also use a queue for other internal adilas projects such as watchers, feeders, auto summing, stats, and gathering and collecting other information. We thought that it could be really cool if we had a web interface (load and unload the queue) and then have a full on software backend that could run longer or more processing intense pieces. Kind of a hybrid of sorts. See scan for some database ideas for the queue table. - Quote from Shawn - "Please help us as we are working to help other people have work to do." - a line from Shawn's lunch prayer. I liked it. - Part of the page has some notes about ways to organize and break things into smaller pieces. Think of Legos and building blocks. For example: basic pages (shells), black box access points for custom code, themes, skins, smaller component parts, world building levels, permissions (different levels), settings (different levels), cfc database and logic libraries, special page functions and player functions, watchers and feeders, documentation (help files or videos), histories and logs, real in-line database extensions, flags, tags, and subs. Also different data views and report types (calendar, time slot, horizontal, grouped, details, advanced - build & save your own reports), options for saving and exporting any data from any page. Page 4 - More looking into special flags and tags. Added some notes about special cases such as returns, vendor credits, customer credits, back orders, and general PO ordering processes. - We also talked about the task queue and being able to drill-down and see what is going on and what is queued up. We talked about a one-to-many between the queue and the action logs. We listed out a few of the possible queue action statuses - See scan for more info. Page 5 - Shawn and I took some time to talk about our process and how we want to treat and track our projects. Lots of funnels and sub funnels. There is a lot going on and lots of things to make sure and check. See the attached scan for a small visual of the brainstorming session. |
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Shop 1515 |
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Quote session with Shannon | 6/16/2016 |
On a GoToMeeting session with Shannon. We did a couple of quotes and went over some tech support questions. We also talked about some of the next rounds for the balance sheet and the accounting features inside of adilas. Good stuff. As a note, the balance sheet and other financial sections inside of adilas have had numerous sessions and rounds. There are a number of other rounds that have been in the planning stages clear back from 2010. Search the adilas university site for balance sheet, mapping, watchers, feeders, standalone declarations, or interactive map. Lots of notes on the subject. Things really started to heat up in October of 2010 for the balance sheet and full system mapping. See elements of time # 2166 and 2167 in the adilas university site to get a flavor. Expand the search and research as needed. |
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Shop 1757 |
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Calvin Time | 8/26/2016 |
On a zoom meeting with Calvin, Steve, and Alan. Calvin gave Steve a demo of his auto process (database to database tool and code set). I added in some vision of what this will do in the future and we had a good session. At the end of the session, Calvin and I merged our files together to keep our projects on the same page. We are both working on sub inventory. Things are looking good. As a side note, when Steve was on the call, we talked about using Calvin's auto process tools for getting people off the bus (shared database environment and world building projects). We also talked about backend clean-up options such as ice-down dates and daily totals per location for custom balance sheet and financial reports. Watchers, feeders, and 3D calendars and time models. Cool options and fun stuff. |
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Shop 4403 |
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Virtual Post-It Note | 10/21/2016 |
-thresholds and numbers based off of numbers -Inventory levels and thresholds -New page and do it per location -Notify them when a threshold is hit or passed -time based -API socket connection to Push the reports -EOT #1014 in adilas community funded Projects -Extra service and functions -Text or emails alerts -Max and min levels -Between adilas customers and do feeds and feeders -(Hours) -(1:00 - 4:00)Go to meeting with Alan and doing Exports to excel -(4:05 - 5:15)Go to meeting with Bryan - doing a custom quote on a dashboard and summary page. -(5:15 - 6:00)Phone call with Dave Forbis - going over inventory thresholds, max and min levels,ecta.. API socket connections and general business stuff. |
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Shop 1052 |
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Adilas time | 10/26/2016 |
On a GoToMeeting session with Steve, Nick, and Danny. We started out the morning looking at a custom label page that Danny was working on. His code was not part of master so we actually overwrote a small part of it. We got it all figured out and talked about the concept of who has the last cookie (version control)? We then worked in our own little blocks. I did some phone calls and worked on a custom file to create CSV (comma separated values) files. Nick was doing black box stuff. And Steve was bouncing in and out of the meetings. Towards the end, Eric Tauer (developer from Salida, CO) got on the call. We went over our plans for a new page that will help convert inventory items that are in a shopping cart from parent inventory to child inventory. Lots of talk and ideas on the subject. This is needed as we have a number of outside feeders that make quotes and then we have to restore those items to the cart for final checkout, fulfillment, and other user related tasks. |
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Shop 2677 |
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Virtual Post-It Note | 12/13/2016 |
- Units of measure might need a count or quantity option as well as a weight option. We many need both fields to be able to cross over and play together. This is almost conversion stuff. - What about watcher and feeders? At what point do we take transactional data and make it more standard? What is really needed as a bigger endpoint or final goal. Sometimes if we are deep in the transactional data, we may not see the end. |
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Shop 4602 |
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Virtual Post-It Note | 1/2/2017 |
-On 3rd party API's we need to add the 3rd party validation back in...see the "old" web/webapi/full circle collection.cfm -More requests for pre-calculated data and aggravate functions for stats. Average ticket value, most popular, totals, sums, maxes, min, ect. People love that we catch so much data, the problem is try to calculate tons of data on the fly, we may need the water bags and feeders. |
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Shop 2130 |
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Adilas Time | 1/5/2017 |
On a GoToMeeting session with Steve, Alan, and Nick. We started out the day talking about an upcoming meeting with the server guys and trying to schedule a group meeting to talk about world building (database stuff and code stuff on our end) and backend technologies such as servers and data center stuff. We then broke into individual work sessions. I was working on the Beaver Mountain horizontal time view page for scheduling ski school lessons. That page is pretty deep and pulls data from multiple places and shows it all in a nice horizontal time view. Later on, Steve and I had a meeting to talk about plans and ideas. Here are some of the ideas from the meeting. - fast track to help people get to their magic number - kinda like a reverse snowball to build people. Normal snowballs go toward solving debt, a reverse snowball would be building up dependables - keep putting more tools in the shed - offer different services including basic web sites - if is easier to sell a full package vs. every possible module or special service - as more and more technology comes to pass, we could roll more and more features together - skate where the puck will be or is going to be - working towards an unlimited model - what do you want and need - it is all included - model of a base starting point and then charge for storage, processing, and bandwidth - fee based usage - get some percentage things in place with our inner adilas family members - as more and more clients use our services, we could even drop our prices. - we need to head to more mobile - Steve and I were playing with some numbers and projects - that is fun to play with some of the numbers - maybe look more into this and keep pushing and forecasting - make it more of a plan/possibilities - the footprint - what impact are you on the company's earnings - there are tons of other possible services such as storage, migration, cold storage, custom code, consulting, training, setup, ecommerce, usage, bandwidth, etc. - allow clients to virtually manage and/or drive their own systems - what do they want, what do they want to call it, how much, how many, how long, how much data, what other needs and/or wiring? - keep building on a generic model. we can then add skins, templates, and themes to help customize for different verticals - gps tracking and other 3rd party options. white labeling and other options. - keep building - piece by piece - slow and steady wins the race - sometimes it comes back to permissions, settings, and relationships - there may end up being more and more API socket connections - plan for that and help sew things together. - remember training and helping others see the vision of what is going on and the potential that is out there - keep building towards full world building pieces and concepts - mini conversions, sub inventory, sub part categories, qr codes, etc. Technology keeps going, we need to keep playing and trying to advance the ball. - Try to take things more and more to the dynamic level. Settings, permissions, database stuff, and underlying backend structure. - other project coming down the pipe line - tiered pricing matrix stuff, sub inventory options for ecommerce, more balance sheet stuff (watchers and feeders), more stuff with elements of time (rentals, reservations, gps, rfid tag, sub payroll, sub "any" assignments). |
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Shop 2229 |
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Russell Moore | 2/21/2017 |
On a Zoom session with Russell. - It is not as important that you know all of the skills but it is important that you know people who have those skills. Basically, surround yourself with talented and awesome people. - digital dashboards, visual homepages, and using Ajax, jquery, ect. Creating places and pages where admin persons hang out and watch what is going on. The virtual war room and how things are playing out. - This may need to be things like watchers, feeders, and live data feeds. Maybe even stand-alone declarations and other hardcoded or set pieces. - Build on what you have. Focus on the operational side of things. Put that horse before the cart. - Shortcuts and quick paths. Help people get things done, quick, and in bulk. You may need to provide both the standard path and the quick path. The quick paths only catch smaller and required data. The standard paths will show more flow, logic, validation, and information. - Russell's quick 3 - powerful, easy, and looks good - if you get all 3, the product will sell. - Quick setup options and quick paths... point and click, add things in bulk, don't worry about all of the other tie-ins. Add items, assume locations, loosen setting to be able to sell without a PO or an incoming fully set path. - If you want the full data assembly line concept... go for it. You may also need to allow more choices even though if they choose the quick path, it may be missing some things. It comes back to agency. - Maybe let people put things where ever they want, then when they want more details and data, it will already be there. Often we try to feed everybody everything... we need to cater that and only feed them what they need. Try to point them to what would be best, but let them make those choices. - Remember the bell curve analogy. You will have some that will be on the outside (outliers), some that will be mostly there, and some that hit right in the middle. Shoot for the 60-80% ratios. The other pieces still exists, but we have to shoot for where the main spot or meat is. Capture the main bulk of what is needed. |
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Shop 2447 |
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Shawn time and other general stuff | 3/9/2017 |
On a quick call and GoToMeeting session with Shawn. We talked about the payroll 1099's and some printing options. We also talked about a small plan going forward. After that, I was recording notes and Steve popped in and had a quick code question on showing sub inventory and parent inventory items. After we talked about some things, I scribbled down some small notes from our chat. - We need to wire up the connections between sub inventory and the PO/invoice line items table. Currently, we have to run multiple queries to see if a line item has any subs. Not that that is bad, it just takes time and you can't easily tell what is going on. We may want to look into this and tighten things up a bit. Think about search options and speed that way. - I mentioned to Steve and that Eric and I were talking earlier and how so many crazy projects were all somewhat converging at the same time. I mentioned smart cart logic, sales and promotions, custom labeling, sub inventory (parent/child relationship), mini conversion, discounting, pricing tiers, loyalty points (special accounts), and other things. He added to the list... ecommerce and sales tax as also being more and more in the mix and coming together. - The reason that Steve mentioned sales tax is that I told him that Eric and I were planning on doing something similar to a user-maintained balance sheet item for loyalty points and gift card stuff. He made the comment that sales tax is very similar... almost a mini account of sorts. He then started talking about a special sales tax homepage, searchable database stuff (already summed entries vs. full transactional entries), the need to go to multiple decimals for taxes and withholdings, etc. Kinda interesting that I didn't even think of sales tax in the same boat as in-store credit or loyalty or gift cards but they are very similar. - This made me think about some old ideas we had back in 2010 dealing with watchers, feeders, and standalone declarations. I wonder if it may be time for that type of stuff to come into play. - As Steve and I talked about converging projects and how they all interconnect, he made the analogy of a steeple on a roof or a church. Lots of different angles and roof lines all coming in together. That analogy was fun to think about and added some depth to the converging concepts, ideas, and projects. I really liked how it could go up (be built up virtually) in order to make room for all of the pieces to match up and play well together. Kind like a capstone or elevated portion of a building. My original thinking was sort of flat. Don't be afraid to add some depth (settings, permissions, time, etc.) in order to bring everything together. Good stuff. |
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Shop 2464 |
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Shannon Meeting | 3/22/2017 |
On a meeting with Shannon. We talked about a couple of custom projects and then chases some numbers around on the P&L (income statement) and balance sheet. We logged in on data 0 and used McCorvey's Bowling World as a data source to check the different drill-downs and reports. They, McCorvey's have tons of data and we bounced between different reports and such. We are seeing more and more the need to circle back around and add the watchers, feeders, and standalone declarations. We talked about how cool it would be to see a report that could show where things might be off or out of balance (known issues report) and also how things play into the mix over time. I took some notes and we had a good chat. I was grateful for Shannon and here listening skills. We talked about all kinds of stuff. She is doing awesome and has really bloomed as a tech support, teacher, customer care person. Pretty cool. |
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Shop 2582 |
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Adilas Time | 5/4/2017 |
On the daily GoToMeeting session with Steve. We started out the day just working through some small tweaks and making some new changes. 9 to 10:30 am - Making a few small changes. We added in a small tweak to the my cart favorites buttons. We made all of the disabled subs disappear from the my cart favorites view for smart groups. All other sub views were left alone. We also added in a date/time stamp to the advanced invoice searches. We added the date/time stamp to main invoices and invoice line items. This will help users see when the invoices were created. 10:30 am - Meeting with Kelly and Danielle about financials and such. In the financial world, they really want to see certain reports and certain views. This is huge for owners, investors, auditors, CPA's, and bankers. They expect a certain format and certain key indicators and such. - We talked about a possible policy about pushing new code and updates. We have people using this product on a daily basis. They rely on it. When we change it without letting them know, they freak out sometimes. - Chart of accounts and special groupings. Trial balance, month over month financials, year over year financials. - Currently, our users have to do tons of manual entry and tweaking the system to get their numbers. For example: The user has to pull data from tons of different pages and reports and then put it together in a manual process to get the views they are looking for. We have tons of the data, but it may not be formatted easily and correctly. - People want to see tons of different view points, averages, running totals, comparative values, trends, projections, budgets, etc. - Uploading budgets and then comparing to how things are going and doing. - People want to see the year over year values vs. a single one month or one year at a time. - People want to consolidate values, merge locations, look at all kinds of angles, etc. How can we help the person look at their data in a more standard way? - Currently there are a number of ways that things could get disconnected. People want to see GL (general ledger) details. There are also tons of possible disconnects and possible variables. Some of that is due to how we are built. That isn't bad, it just doesn't follow normal roads and normal expectations (for certain users). - We talked about us either being able to export to QuickBooks or build it out so that we look like we are a little bit more stable or standard. Somehow we need to bridge that gap. - Just as an idea... maybe use a simple dash (-) instead of 0.00 on some of the financials. The dash may mean, N/A or nothing to report. Sometimes a 0 (zero) makes it look like it should be part of the reporting but we have nothing. The dash may help show that no data is there to report or don't worry about it. Kind of a mind trick of sorts. - We may need to open back up the old chart of account number fields. This already exists, we just need to re-expose it. We then need to have some mappings to that number if doing cross corp or consolidated reporting. Also by way of a note, we need a way to flag where those pieces play in and what main group or categories they fit into. This could be to any of the main 6 categories such as: Revenue, COGS, Expenses, Assets, Liabilities, Equity. If we opened up the account numbers, it could help with cross-corp mapping and such. That way you map against the numbers vs. a naming convention that might have spelling differences. - We need to move more away from transactional data and go more into daily totals per location. The transactional data is awesome but we really need some preformatted numbers, values, and totals. That would really help with speed and reporting. We have tons of cool ideas (back from 2010 ish) dealing with watchers, feeders, and standalone declarations. Supper cool stuff - well worth looking back into. - On the adilas side, we really need to look into the system-wide defaults and what gets loaded into the system. These are the generic corp-wide settings that get setup when a new system gets created. As a side note, we may even need to take out the defaults for expense types and deposit types. The girls are wanting it super clean and simple (don't even add anything as far as defaults). Maybe figure out some standards and then even keep it super simple from there. - We talked about light world building and breaking up the bus into smaller motorcycles and smaller cars per corp. This deals with breaking up the database to smaller pieces. - Some of the problems the girls are having is on the consolidation between multiple corps. The bigger the business, the more pain there is as you try to consolidate things. Making systems talk to each other, that is the trick. This will end up going clear to a full API socket level at some time. Pretty cool. - We still need the special accounts and custom tracking accounts. This could be customer in-store credits, loyalty points, etc. There are also some other needs that need to be looked at. - Danielle's top 3-5: overall chart of accounts, month over month, year over year reporting, exportability of the general ledger. - Kelly's top 3-5: trial balance, general ledger, p&L and balance sheet on the same page (trial balance), formatting of views (month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year views), setting up the chart of accounts using the chart of account number. - We have some clients that want a really cool tool for accounting. We need both the simple and automated views as well as a more advanced model that has advanced tools and speaks a standard language. Think of a new view for users. Simple and automated or more robust and showing greater details. - Task from Kelly to me, look into opening up the chart of account numbers on expense types and deposit types. Check out the cause and effect relationships. At the end of the session, Kelly and Danielle were excited to maybe look into two different views. One for the general public and one for a more hardcore financial person such as a CPA and/or an auditor. We will tweak a few things around and see if it gives us more of the look and feel we are hoping for. Good meeting. |
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Shop 2741 |
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Adilas Time | 6/6/2017 |
On the morning GoToMeeting session with Steve and Eric. As part of the meeting, Eric was talking about De-normalizing data and where to use and set things. He was talking about query tuning, indexing, and other performance tuning concepts. Most of this was dealing with database administrator things. - What about watchers and feeders - What if we moved away from transactional data and more into preset aggregates and daily totals per category and per location. - You can replicate and index the id's but you don't want to replicate all of the other features. That is where you join tables and look things back up when searching and displaying the data. - Eric volunteered to be the adilas DBA (database administrator)... :) - Often you have to feel the pain first and then you start going in and fixing things. - Some of the aggregates and roll-ups are for the user who wants to see all of the data in the entire database. This is often done in data warehousing for system-wide or global analytics. We spent most of the meeting talking about the mini conversion project. We made some more progress and added a number of new notes and even tweaked out our database planning spreadsheet. See attached for more info. As a side note, we talked quite a bit today about prices and the pricing model. We also talked a little bit about sub part categories and how they play into the mix. See the scratch page for more info. |
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Shop 2743 |
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Adilas Time | 6/8/2017 |
On the morning GoToMeeting with Steve and Shari O. We started out the day looking at the sales tax differences. We talked about a virtual dust pan for catching any rounding errors on tax calcs. Our options might be: - We extend the original percentage spot - where the percentage is held (on the locations). We could go with say a 5 decimal level of accuracy. - We could use a small bucket or dust pan for tax calcs. This could be called the rounding error for the tax calcs. - We could rework the math on the tax calc function (this is the main function that is used over and over again to calc the taxes). Check for possible bad rounding errors. - We could show a flag on the invoice line items reports where a tax is off (say a color or an icon or something - say red...) - We could show the full extended math on the edit invoice line items page... this could include the extended price * the tax % - no rounding - and then the rounded value. - The biggest complaints are on the grand totals per tax category... This is just a sum of the details. We can't really adjust that number... it is just math. We can however get tighter on the individual sums or individual line items. - Drew some graphics on possible disconnects between calculating the taxes based on line items vs. invoice totals. We were talking about the disconnects on line items vs. grand totals. We came up with a number of possible options... - What if we calculated and stored the line item calculations at 5 decimals. We hold what it really is... - On the main invoices - we could add a number of new buckets to the main invoices... the only problem here is how much of a load this is... The ideas is: new buckets like: sub total, taxable total, tax total, all taxes (state, county, city, other 1-5, out of area), and a new one to help with tax calc diffs (rounding error or catch all bucket). - What if we ran things in a paired type solution where we have a total per tax section and the total taxes collected for that total. That way we could show a total and the calculation based off of that. - We will want to run each major report off of these new totals. *** new idea - this could be super cool *** what if... we did this summing and virtual bucket stuff on a daily basis... that would save tons of storage space. This is what we are hoping to call watchers, feeders, and even standalone declarations. We have been looking at things like this clear since 2010. - As a side note, we could propose a solution that taxed and calculated out to 5 decimals. Then at the very very end we could round it to real numbers. Steve would really like to take this proposal back to the state sales office to show them the problems and possible solution options. - We spent quite a bit of time talking about watchers, feeders, and standalone declarations. We made a number of small drawings and had a great meeting dealing with the vision of these concepts. See attached for some of the drawings. We talked about the 3D calendar and how things could play in if we caught things per day, per location, and per category (these are revenue, cost of goods sold, expenses, assets, liabilities, and equity). We also talked about possible options and how that could even be fed into a virtual video or play-by-play on the full financials of the company and how that plays out over time. Pretty cool futuristic ideas and concepts. - There is more information on these graphics in the media/content section. Additional explanations on watchers, feeders, standalone declarations, and 3D calendars. See attached and the descriptions for more details. |
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Shop 2772 |
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Adilas Time | 6/15/2017 |
On the morning GoToMeeting session. Steve and I chatted and talked about options for taxes and such. That seems to be heating up pretty quickly. We did some prep for a meeting with Emerald Fields. Lots of checking and planning on what we could do with the taxes and what not. Lots of changes coming down the pipeline. On taxes, we will be adding custom tax values 6 - 10. We already have custom tax values 1 - 5. Also, we are seeing both part category and customer type playing into taxes and tax calculations. This is a question related to those two filters... On prices and price matrixes, how do those same pieces play in? On our smart group buttons we already allow for a limit based on the customer type. What if we expanded that and allowed it to be a one-to-many? Currently it is only a single customer type filter. I could see that needing to go to a list and be a possible one-to-many relationship and/or filter. Eric popped in part way through and we talked about taxes and calculating things based off of both part category and customer types. We did some drawing and went over some ideas. After Eric left, Steve and finished up doing some prep for the other conference call. We go on a new GoToMeeting session with the guys at Emerald Fields. They had 4-5 and adilas has 3 of us on the call. We had Steve, Shari O., and myself. We did a small presentation on how we could help fix the taxes and such. We pitched going out to 5 decimal places, adding a number of new custom fields, and then cascading the stuff throughout the system. I also pitched the idea of watchers and feeders but they didn't really like it. They didn't have a problem with it, but they couldn't see the bigger picture of what we were trying to do and how it would help them... Anyways, I know they would love it, they just can't see it right now. The meeting went for about an hour and they were pushing on us pretty hard. I was drawing, showing calculations, and trying explain our plan. I think it went well, over all. Sometimes people just want what will fix the issue and how quick can it be done... I think that it is interesting that they are making millions and millions off of using our product but they are somewhat complaining about an uncontrollable rounding error piece that is like dust and shavings from doing a wood cutting project. Kinda interesting. Anyways, we have a small plan and will be starting into that here very soon. Good stuff. |
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Shop 2773 |
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Adilas Time | 6/19/2017 |
On the morning GoToMeeting session with Steve and Alan. We started out the day talking about a small hack that happened on the data 2 server over the weekend. We made a plan and sent in a ticket to the server team to make some changes. After we did that, we spent the rest of the time planning and brainstorming on the tax calc extension project. Like most other projects, this one is growing like a weed and sprouting new little twists and turns like crazy. We got in to topics like balance sheet, P&L, chart of accounts, and other financials. We got into topics of dynamics and allowing the special filters for all pieces are parts dealing with the tax calcs. We talked about two random fields that we use to have in the store location table and how we could rename them and use them for other specific needs. We talked about how to connect the watchers and feeders and how to catch the data per day, per location, and per category. The per category topic broke into multiple pieces. That was really good and will help us get a better idea on the mappings that are needed. See the screen shots and attached notes for more information. On the watchers and feeders, we talked about the need to catch the base numbers (transactions and underlying details), we also need to catch the values for what was caught, what should be the numbers, and what would be the difference between them. We also talked about how on the per category section, that we might need table names, column names, main id's, and even 1-5 special fields to hold special flags and such. See the two graphics and new notes in the scratch page for more details. |
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Shop 2847 |
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Adilas Time | 7/3/2017 |
On the morning GoToMeeting with Steve. Over the weekend, we had a couple of ideas about harnessing the work and actions of the adilas users. There is an small army of users that use it every day. One of our problems is how long it takes us to get new code and new changes put in place. What if they, our users, could help us? Wouldn't that be super awesome. They are in there working anyways, what if every time they go to the water hole, they take a load of laundry either to or from the washing area... (virtual analogy - we really aren't washing clothes or anything). - Harness the users clicks - help them build out the system and/or help to do the data migration stuff. Think of the thousands of clicks that each user does each day. What if we could harness that? All kinds of different options and scenarios. - We could set up a task to be done and then everybody could work on the same task. It doesn't matter who's data it is, they are system updates that a developer would be clicking through. No data would be leaked, it is just helping to take a load off of the developers. That would be awesome. - It could be pretty cool if we could turn tasks on/off with the click of a button. We want it to be very light lifting, so that we don't hurt or tax any body too much. These are just some numbers, but we have a current migration project that has millions and millions of records. We are estimating around 40,000 clicks for the developers. We can process about 3,000 records in about 8 seconds. If you take 8 seconds times 40,000 clicks. It would be 320,000 seconds of total time. That is over 88 hours of constant clicking at 8 seconds per click. We could take that down to 50 or 100 at a time and have it only take a half a second or a full second and we could get the job done pretty quick. That would be pretty awesome. - We don't have everything all worked out yet, but it could be a really cool feature. It is almost like having a dam and then running a hydro electric operation using the already naturally flowing stream or river waters. - no more batches... do real-time updates and processes - brick walls bring the challenges and then you have to have ideas to figure things out. That is huge and part of the learning process. - burning platforms and coming up with solutions - sometimes you have to be forced down a channel and then you have to figure out what to do. - everybody bring a brick... we are going to be building a pyramid... - we could use the user clicks to migrate data, get people off the bus, and prep and setup the watchers and feeders and/or run the daily processes for the days prior. All kinds of stuff. - Proactive approach vs. putting out fires all the time - make it part of the plan - Different topic... what about using custom tags to build form pages. We could tie this in with the custom database fields and settings. This is for things like show/hide, rename, set max and mins, custom verbage, defaults, etc. Instead of using CFScript (what Calvin did originally), we could use custom tags and then have the database pull the data based on a sort and then populate the HTML or web pages using the custom tags. Program the logic once and then use over and over again. This relates to the db_field _settings table in the database. Currently, we only have one page that uses it and it is for add/edit customer field settings. What if we expanded that and turned it into a global option or feature. You could virtually reconfigure your entire site and database if you could get everything dynamic and cascaded throughout the whole system. That would be super cool. Most of the day was spent as a work session. Steve and I met earlier this morning and then switched gears and just worked on projects. I was working on cascading the tax calculation rules (new database setting for calc taxes before or after discounts). I then switched over to working on the in-line dollars off discounts. Calvin called a couple of times and we worked through some ideas and options. Good session. |
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Shop 3050 |
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Adilas Time | 10/3/2017 |
On the morning GoToMeeting with Steve. We were talking about how quickly we could do a patch job for mini conversions. This is just a quick patch, not the real deal. Basically, you could create a new small table. The new table would have an auto id, a corp id, and the stored QR code value (text entry with a max of 50 characters or a varchar field). The QR code values would be in this format: qr_7777_77_7777 where it follows this pattern: "qr_subId_price_weight". The new table would use the auto id as the new barcode value. We were talking about the ^ (carrot sign or symbol). Say something like: ^27 or ^3555. The barcode would be that value. We would need a special page to take off the carrot and then look up the QR code value. It would then translate what was needed and pass it to the normal QR code page that Steve and Danny created. This is a simple way to use a standard barcode (smaller than 15 characters) and have it do the same thing that a 50 character QR code could do. The other things that were important were which pages to add code to help intercept the barcode searches and what pages to put links out to the new barcode generator. Steve took some notes and some screen captures of what we needed to do. Bryan Dayton and Steve will be working on this project. Both have already done some prep work and such. Steve built the original QR code page and Bryan has a small JSON object solution for storing and looking things up. The new patch would be to take that (both Bryan's and Steve's) code and make it into a new small mini table and a couple of pages to get the job done. We also talked about a number of other fun things on the horizon. These are just some small notes to help us remember what we were talking about. - We are excited to be working with Calvin and seeing what kind of fun internal 3rd party pieces we could come up with. We could do a texting service, bulk labels direct from adilas, exports to CSV files, and even getting back into GPS stuff. We talked about a bunch of options and even lessons learned from past projects. - We've got Alan back on with the database project - We've got Wayne working with the new frameworks and model view controllers (MVC's). - Bryan with custom projects - Russell with other projects, design, internal and project management - Nick small black boxes and icon menus - Steve made a comment that we already have a great popsicle. We just need to make it easy by putting it on a stick or on a popsicle stick. The easier we can make it, the better. It needs to have tons of functionality built-in behind the scenes... if we can make it look and feel easy, then we really win big. Keep it simple and easy. - Another comment that Steve made as he was talking. This one came from Kelly Whyman, an adilas consultant. "The sales taxes and tax pieces must be like the nervous system in the body... it goes through everything." We loved that the comparison was to the body and how things work. Wayne Moore (Brandon's dad) has made similar type analogies comparing body system to internal adilas systems. You could make some analogies that way. Think of the skeletal system, the nervous system, the digestive system, the endocrine system, the whatever system... It could be really cool to take it out to that level. - Steve was also saying that the key to keeping things going is delegation and training. We then let each person keep improving their own processes and such. - One other topic was dealing with possible look-n-feel/functionality of a one pager with multiple feeders, tie-ins, and even asynchronous loading and variable visual displays. Think of dashboards, drill-downs, charts, graphics, placeholders, movable pallets, expanding windows, etc. Thinking about future options and where we want things to go. Good session and lots of fun ideas and such. |
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Shop 3398 |
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Adilas Time | 1/25/2018 |
Steve and I got on together and chatted over the morning GoToMeeting session. We were talking about servers, databases, load balancing, watchers, feeders, summing things up, and world building stuff. Steve sees that we have 3 limiting pieces: They are: time, resources, and technology I thought that it was kinda fun that 3D world building concepts have 3 pieces. They are: x=time, y=resources, and z=space (depth, organization, layering, and stacking - spatial concepts). Steve and I also talked about some budgeting stuff and where we are headed. We got off the morning meeting within an hour of starting. We then both rolled into our own individual projects. I started updating a file that dealt with corporation data counts. I had to add a number of new tables to the list. This is a small page that counts data and database records per corporation. I then started to run some exports off of the live server. I need to restore my local database and thought that I would do a full adilas data back-up in the process. I spent the rest of the session pulling down live database data for my local machine. The plans are to burn a copy, put it with the other back-ups, and get my local developer's box with good data. |
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Shop 3612 |
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Adilas Time | 3/22/2018 |
Talking with Steve about preserving the "powered by adilas.biz" tag line, even on the white labeling options. Russell and Alan popped in as well. We also talked about black boxes, white label theme folders, and classic or core adilas. We need more hooks, push notifications, and pushing things more and more towards the white label options. We also talked about dashboards and more push type technology with notifications, graphs, stats, and other important things (adding some eye candy). We also talked about training and internal training. We are seeing some push back from clients jumping from older classic style to the new snow owl theme. They think that it is pretty tough and/or a big hurtle. We need to help push our clients towards the new features and offer the correct amount of training to help them succeed. We also talked about lightly pushing the market towards the new pieces. We talked about helping Shannon and Shari with live chat, using the little gear on the side of the page, and even automating things through elements of time and setting up ticket numbers, auto responders, etc. Eventually a full on live help and tech support option. We also talked about feeds, news and updates, and getting the word out. We talked about bottom footers, dynamic feeders for white labels and reps, etc. Basically a way to get the word out. We spent a little bit of time talking about - what defaults do we want to turn on? What do we want to expose/show/hide? How can we get our users there quickly and easily? We are building a business platform. Some people start with a spreadsheet, then up to a small business software package or database, then up to a web-based system or more full featured system, then up to a business platform and fully customizable app (mobile freiendly, configurable, easy, powerful, and pretty). Our goal is working towards full on business world building. That is where we are headed. Keep pushing things more and more towards mobile. People are spending more and more time on their phones and mobile devices. Adilas is an idea farm - keep harvesting the ideas from our clients, our competition, the market, and from our internal family. Ideas may come from anywhere or any source. Adilas is almost a virtual white label option for each and every company. That is part of our model. Lots of times in the past, I've tried to add a comment about using GoToMeeting as the medium that we use for our online meetings. I will start leaving that out so that I can focus more on the meeting content. So, in the future, if I say we were on the morning meeting... it will most likely be the same as saying we were using the GoToMeeting platform for our morning meetings. Anyways, just a small note. |
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Shop 3764 |
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Adilas Time | 5/22/2018 |
On the morning meeting with the guys. Quite a few of us were on this morning. Steve and Alan were mostly talking and dealing with some changes to the Metrc API and state systems. Wayne popped in and chatted with Steve. Wayne is looking to play a little bit deeper and be more of a regular developer. He is retired but looking to re-enter the scene a little bit more. Russell popped in and he and I did a different Zoom session. He showed me some of the news and update feeders. Basically, he is designing the snow owl footer to be able to consume internal corporation information (elements of time) as well as outside feeders from WordPress sites and feeders. Tons of new options and such. Pretty cool. Russell and I chatted about how deep things need to be in order to play the game. On the programming level, we have to go super deep, but on the surface level, we have to make it look very simple and easy. Somewhat of a paradox. While Alan and Steve were working, I was working on in-line discounts and in-line dollars off stuff. //////////////////////// Meeting with Anthony Harrington from All Greens. We did some light reviewing of changes since our last meeting on 4/10/18. I made some searches in the adilas shop for "pricing engine" and for "Anthony". Once the results came back, I read through and reviewed some of those notes. We talked about pushing the my cart favorite buttons to a higher level. He would love to get the buttons tied to time and to days (for example, just show up on Thursdays, etc.), be able to discount based off of category, and being able to apply those discounts in-line using percentages and/or dollars off. I did a small demo and showed him where we are headed with the in-line dollars off discounts and such. We went through a couple of scenarios. - On PO's, once you verify a PO, it still allows you to modify things. We talked about Ice-down dates and I showed him a demo of how things work on the invoice side of things. We talked about getting that functionality available for all of the other main system players (12 main player groups). - He had a question around rounding tickets or invoices to the nearest dollar value (no left over cents). He would like for invoices having $0.50 or less, go down, and $0.51+, go up. I quoted him at $200. He wants this new feature for corp id #1114 on data 6. This same functionality would be really cool if it was a setting... yes/no for auto rounding to the nearest dollar. We would also need to know, what are the levels? Such as, round up on anything over 50 cents or round down on anything below 60 cents (or whatever). Basically just settings to help it know what to do. We may also need to know what part number (id) to use and what verbage to use such as: convenience fee, rounding difference, etc. - He had a question on allowing invoices with partial payments (not fully paid). This would be an awesome setting as well. Image a setting that says allow credit to be extended or require full payment in order to submit cart for processing. Some new settings could handle that and help make it more automated. |
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Shop 3847 |
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Russell Moore | 6/7/2018 |
Russell got a hold of me and we did some code sign-off and merged in some new news and update feeders and custom feeders and footer options. |
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Shop 3929 |
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Brandon will be checking in | 8/9/2018 |
Checking in on the morning meeting. I have been out of the office most of the week. Steve and I chatted this morning about the need for new independent developers and getting people into the mix and into the family. There is a real need there. We then merged in some code from his branches and pushed up files to all servers. Looking over ideas for loyalty points. Lots of good info on element of time # 3778 in the adilas shop. What is a liability? What are the differences between real and phantom values? We need the values recorded for both real and phantom, the difference is how firm and/or fixed the liability is. Steve mentioned a term called a "shadow account" (that exists, but may not be fully tangible). We also talked about how it is the actual company that is creating these phantom and/or shadow type liabilities. That kinda changes things... it is the company creating their own liability based off of a point system to encourage customer loyalty. There seems to be two main part of the puzzle. How many points (ins and outs) and what is the value of those points? Lots of balance sheet transactions. Simple to more complex transactions... simple gift cards or simple gift certificates, basic loyalty points, punch cards, in-store credits, coupons. As a fun side note, some of these transactions are subs of the balance sheet. Kinda like sub inventory but on the balance sheet side. Maybe we need to think about how the transaction takes place. Is there already cash on hand (paid in advance)? or is it just lowering the total owed, like a form of a discount? Who pays for what? What about coupons that a manufacture pays for or pays a part of? On the main balance sheet items, we may need another switch to help us know if this is a main account and/or a sub account. We may also need to know if the asset, liability, and/or equity account is real or phantom (shadow). This is kinda fun, but we are seeing a fracture that is needed in order to record the balance sheet items. Everything is breaking into sub accounts. Going back to discounts and special discounts... do we apply the discount to the cart/invoice on a whole or do we have to re-distribute that discount back through the system? On a different note, we had a request from a client to be able to permission and/or fully turn off standalone discounts. Also, we are seeing that taxes make the discounts more complicated. We have options to do both in-line discounts and/or standalone discounts. Things get really fuzzy as you try to tax, especially with excise taxes and taxing things at the different levels (per item category, per customer type, per inventory type, etc.). We had a great talk about "bad debt" payments. Don't worry about the words (verbage), think about the concept. That helps to satisfy the invoice (monies owed to us), the taxes are fully correct, but it is then showed as an adjustment to revenue (rewards, coupons, loyalty points, etc.) on the income statement. Both coupons and loyalty points are similar. It is the internal company basically saying "I'm going to cover that part of the invoice". We claim that that invoice and/or ticket is x dollars and has y amounts of tax. We then cover the invoice by real monies and/or monies that mean something, but no real money changed hands. Look deeper in this. The main difference is the verbage between bad debt vs rewards or loyalty points. Maybe we should add some new standard payment types such as: Rewards, Loyalty Points, Coupon, In-Store Credit, Gift Card/Gift Certificate, etc. We are seeing the need for a good mix of user-maintained pieces, system-maintained pieces, and possibly some mixed-maintained pieces (user and system). We are seeing this in the watchers, feeders, standalone declarations, time templates, settings, etc. We need to let them play where they can and need to, but also make sure they have the tools and pieces to get the job done, even if we control the pieces behind the scenes. Eric would like to check in on loyalty points around 11 am for a couple of hours. He texted me and said that he was unable to meet today due to some things that came up. So, in the meantime, Steve and I had a great discussion and made some good breakthroughs. Good stuff. |
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Shop 4045 |
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Adilas Time | 10/1/2018 |
On the morning meeting with the guys. Talking about progression on servers, technology, needs for planning, programming, sign-off, technical writing, user interface, graphics and design, performance tuning, server tuning, hardware, etc. There is a huge progression that is taking place. It doesn't stand still. It always keeps going and pushing things from one level to the next. Bryan Dayton jumped on and had a question about a custom page that he is doing. We started out and only had 3-4 black boxes for the same page. Now he has 12+ for the same page. He was asking what the plan was and how do we start handling all of the black box requests. We talked about building and breaking and how that helps all parties keep progressing. I told him to push what he has and then talk to the client the next time to see if they are interested in adding in page level settings that will make the whole thing easier for them and for future clients. Bryan's next question was dealing with sub domains. Most of the adilas servers use a "www" sub domain such as https://www.adilas.biz or https://data7.adilas.biz - The question comes in... what about custom URL's and domain names that use sub domain names such as https://order.swcarizona.com/ and others. We have to go back in and add a variable for the sub domain. Once again, the ball is progressing down the field. More and more settings and permissions. The next conversation was dealing with an outside code developer (3rd party solution - developer) and them wanting to play with us inside of the code arena. Once again, new territory. Good stuff. We invited him into the GoToMeeting and talked with him. Bryan lead the discussion. We setup some basic guidelines such as a non compete and non disclosure, safe code, clean and top level sign-off, no direct FTP access, a new bit bucket account. Notes from Hamilton from Full Circle - They are a 3rd party solution that has been involved with adilas for quite a good time (text messages, email blasts, marketing and promotion stuff). They are looking to work with another 3rd party solution called eXPO (a financial solution and payment solution). They want to mix their products with our products to create a super mixed product. Kind of a touchscreen simple ordering area. This is a mix of ecommerce, sales, payments, and texting options. One of the main goals is getting the ecommerce process onto the customer's phones (mobile app). Shooting for a flawless experience that is super easy to use. Currently, they are going through our API sockets but want to build a more native application. We were talking about proof of concept and getting it into the hands of certain key players (existing clients). They also wanted to show some custom reporting dashboards. This would help with the sales and campaign tracking pieces. How many texts were sent, what was the response, what sales resulted, etc. Getting into the sales analytics and marketing of their different campaigns. Where are we getting the most traction (sales and dollars per sale). If you know your customers well enough, you can then really market them for upcoming events, sales, and campaigns. This is really getting into marketing, sales, and promotions. Dealing with multiple layers... lots of moving parts. 3rd parties working with other 3rd parties and those 3rd parties working with other outside parties. It gets deep very quickly. We had some discussions on full API socket access (play at the wall) vs building natively. It comes does to access. Is it from adilas to Full Circle to an outside party or is it Full Circle to adilas and Full Cirlce to the outside development shop. Hamilton with Full Circle is working as a go between and a project manager of sorts. One of the end goals is scalability and who will help us get to that level. The conversation trended toward ideas on white labels and what we have to offer. It doesn't matter who offers it (name and skinning the app), as long as the clients can get to their functionality, they may not care who does what. Lots of possible different levels and phases. We will end up with both long term and short term goals. Bryan chimed in and was saying that maybe we put the Full Circle stuff on to the adilas servers and we basically use their functionality as a marketing arm for adilas. Fun ideas. It may just be a sub folder on the adilas servers. So instead of pulling things through the existing API sockets, we move their code more inside, and then run native to native vs full API socket access. In a way, Full Circle wants to offer a targeting marketing platform and custom dashboard. They would love to move that functionality inside of adilas vs being an outside 3rd party. Basically, an integrated marketing arm. The complexity of who has the master database (say more than two databases with somewhat similar data)... if it is local or native, you take out the duplicated data and who is the master. Steve was mentioning watchers, feeders, triggers, etc. Some of those pieces (backend code watching and feeding in totals and analytics - summing up data and getting stats) will end up playing into the bigger puzzle. It is all part of the marketing and/or targeted marketing efforts. If we combine forces, it could allow multiple companies to gain from mixing technologies. In a way, it comes down to what services are available and how do you offer that to the marketplace? It also comes down to scalability and how things scale (how many pieces are playing and where the data comes from). One of the problems with API sockets is the ability to control the other parties that are playing into the mix. Steve's analogy was - you need to pick one girl to marry. Basically, as many pieces that you could have under one roof and one code set, the better. That becomes the "system". It is all of the pieces that combine to create the whole. Going deeper and deeper, we need to focus on the different aspects of a business. Who is going to market, develop, deploy, engineer, manage, maintain, etc.? Each of us, the different parties, could benefit by utilizing the other parties and who does what best. Combining to be more. I have been tagged to get the non compete and non disclosure ready for both sides. It will be sharing code between companies and needs to cover both sides. It also needs to say some verbage about non exclusive promises (there will be others). One of the big benefits of being first is they will gain traction and the adilas reps will help sale their services. Good plans are developing. Bryan is going to be the point guy on this multi 3rd party mix and match (mini mash up or combo project). As a side note, we were talking about creating a full custom 3rd party dashboard for Full Circle. We could tie it to their 3rd party solution selection (turning things on/off). We also talked about being able to do some reverse marketing and showing potential, even though full functionality is not turned on. From Steve - Finding our stride... we are looking for solution minded companies wanting a full solution. Going back to the railroad analogy. Once the tracks are put down and running... we are hoping that clients will see that potential and basically want to jump on board and go for the ride, using our tracks (the train - look and feel - may change). If needed, we could build more tracks and get more trains (engines and motors). See this link for some more info on the railroad track analogy. https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=3933 Steve was saying, that some of these outside parties are trying to setup real estate around our tracks and are even paying for what is needed to make it look and feel like what they want. That is pretty cool. We are hoping that others will do the same thing. ------------------------------- Different subject - long running queries and tables locking themselves... Alan and Steve were talking about chaining and locking of tables (both manual and automatic). Basically, the customer queue was locking the customers table. Both of those tables and sections deal with invoices and invoice data. One thing was locking the next, which was locking the next, etc. Chain reaction of sorts. This gets further into the rabbit hole by allowing 3rd party reporting based off of invoices (like a Metrc or other state tracking system). If they are slow to reply, it could cause problems going back up the chain. Basically, a data traffic jam. There is a deeper and deeper need to be able to fully watch and do traffic control on the actual servers. Basically a monitoring system with stats, graphs, and notifications. We had some other talks about splitting up tables and databases. Breaking up things, including data and databases, into subs of subs. ---------------------------- The last part of the morning session was chasing and following a bug in a custom cart for a client. We had Drea jump on the GoToMeeting session and show us where the bug was happening. No other clients were complaining, so we thought that it might be custom code. Upon looking, that client has 10 custom pages (black box code). We started looking into some code. Alan ended up saying that he would look deeper. Never a dull moment. |
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Shop 4133 |
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Adilas Time | 11/5/2018 |
On the morning meeting. We briefly talked about some updates from the weekend. We had a number of different developers pop in and make small reports. Steve and I were about system stats and reports at the higher system level. We also need some rules and how we allow and/or don't allow play. Not just reports on how much data we are carrying along (total stats and counts)... but also, what is added new per day (incremental reporting). We need to be able to analyze usage, storage, and even analyze bandwidth. What are they truly using. From Calvin, there may be potential in monetizing the usage of the application. If we are incurring a cost, we need to pass that on, plus adding in some profit. We have some clients that come in at a super low rate. Then they grow and develop and build and become more successful, but the system fees haven't increased to match that (at all). Basically, no one is monitoring the growth, storage, usage, and system stats. We need some report matrixes that we could show and then charge for. Calvin popped in and gave Steve and I pretty deep demo of the adilas label builder. We got pretty deep, we played, asked questions, and even got into some of the funding and financing of how do we pay for this, how do we fund it, and how do we keep supporting it? Good stuff. Some people want to buy it modular (every little thing) and some people want to buy it as a package (get everything and use what you want). Some of the matrix values might need to be: How many things get created? How often are they being used? How much data is being transferred back and forth? How do we monetize things and get a real ROI (return on our investment)? It comes back to sales, rules, and what we setup. Steve and Calvin were talking about putting all of the tools out there and then letting them (the adilas users) use what they need. Kinda like a big giant rental center... they could use the big tools, the small tools, and everybody could use whatever they needed. They were talking about small mom and pop shops, percentages, set fees, or some kind of mix between those different models. Lots of options. By us not monitoring server stats and usage, we and kinda killing ourselves. We want to come up with something that is fair and workable for all the different parties. That is where we want to get to. We want to track the cause and effect of data storage, file storage, processing (API socket calls, queries, data in/out), and maybe usage and bandwidth. Looking forward... We may need some snapshot info (aggregated data) to show corp to server stats. We may need to start counting reads (queries and looking at things) and writes (inserts and updates). We may need just counts per day per corp. This could become some of our general matrix values. Steve and Calvin were talking about possibly charging for the net results (what are they getting out of it). We need to store it, and then go back and use that as the histories, stats, and usage. Just an idea... what about showing stats per user and what they are browsing (who is generating the usage - who is looking at what). We could add some counters on the actual method calls (yep, Holly used me or pulled me). Steve - Every year that a company is with us, we keep adding a virtual train car to what they are pulling and/or hauling. At some future point, we may need a way to snip and clip some of that older data off (how much are they hauling). This could be in and may include standalone declarations and other watchers, feeders, and triggers. Certain tables just keep ballooning and we are storing and storing data. We need to figure out a way to archive some of that data. |
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Shop 4199 |
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Adilas Time | 12/19/2018 |
On the morning meeting. Steve, Wayne, Dustin, Eric, Alan, and I were in today. Wayne and Eric were talking query caching techniques and switching between aggregate sums and totals and non aggregated (simple transactional data). The conversation kinda went along the levels of watchers, feeders, hooks, triggers, etc. Eric was saying are we going to be building new aggregates based on the old design or are we going forward with a new design and then build aggregates off of the new design. Pretty deep data model changes. What are the impacts to those changes? One of the questions came up about testing impacts and how does that work. Are we fixing legacy and/or being pro active and moving forward. One of the questions was the po/invoice line items table. It currently has both PO lines (inbound inventory) and invoice lines (outbound inventory) in the same table. The reason goes clear back to location specific levels of inventory tracking. If no locations were ever needed, we would hold thing (line items) in the different tables. However, if you add an unknown number of locations, that complicates the data model and it get hard to be able to roll the inventory levels both backwards (going back in history) and/or seeing current levels. Going on to a different topic, Wayne and Eric were talking about a testing server and even stress testing certain queries and/or database tables. They were talking about caching queries and how often do we reboot these servers. Because we use Adobe ColdFusion, we've had to implement a nightly reboot to help flush memory. As Wayne gets into the servers and monitoring things, we are seeing that the servers are working pretty hard by the end of the day and then fully refreshing things based off of reboots. That is both good and bad. We are on purpose flushing the cache and the memory. However, sometimes a cache and/or an item held in memory saves tons of time. We still need to compare the info and see what the differences and advantages are. Like Alan said - we break stuff and then we fix it. |
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Shop 4280 |
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Adilas Time | 1/23/2019 |
Working with Steve on some JavaScript to help with a new production build (internal builds) page. Lots of dynamic notation. Steve has been working on main flow and carving out some basic pages. He is then pushing things off to Dustin to help shine it up and make it look pretty. Steve wires it up (round 1.0) and then Dustin takes it to the next level (2.0). Good plan. Eric popped in and had some questions on how to assign his sub special account tracking things to customers, payee/users, etc. After that, he and Steve were talking about future and upcoming projects. Steve was asking Eric about his backend skill sets vs his frontend design skills. We even got into some project management talks as well as backend database architecture. Eric has quite a few skills that are very marketable. We also talked about internal core projects as well as outside custom projects. Good conversation. Steve and I were talking, briefly, about our direction for the future and near future. Good stuff. Our goal is to keep working on the system, building new pieces, refining some of the older things, putting a new coat of paint on the application (look and feel stuff), and figuring out the master plan of where we want to go. We have so many ideas out in the developer's notebook area... it would be so cool to gather all of that up and really make a plan. The master plan could include things such as: database structure stuff (world building), graphical homepages, server structure stuff (universe level), fracture account ideas (things that we have learned and ways to break things into smaller and smaller pieces and settings), API socket access points, custom look and feel stuff, 4 different setting levels (corp/world, player/group, page/section, user settings), as well as additional rounds on balance sheet, elements of time, and subs of subs. This could also include all kinds of system stuff such as watchers, feeders, triggers and other ideas that are out there. That would be really fun, a huge project, but really fun. |
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Shop 4427 |
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Brainstorming | 2/25/2019 |
At some point, we want to circle back around and rebuild a bunch of the pieces and how they act and interact. We would like to call this new rebuild "fracture" or something to that effect. Anyways, here are some brainstorming ideas on the fracture pieces that we would like to sew together. No specific order: - object oriented approach (objects and data over time) - use teams and different talent pools - ice berg vs mountain type analogy (what is being exposed and what are the perceptions - visual exposure) - settings and different setting levels (corp, group, page, user) - subs... of sub (everything is fracturing into smaller and smaller pieces) - plan for it and embrace it - API socket connections and external work flow options - database scaling (corp-specific databases or corp-specific database tables) - real in-line database extensions (add/edit/remove database fields and help them flow through the whole system) - 3D world building - keep going and building out these ideas and concepts - one step at a time - data assembly line(s) - concepts of tracking phases, grouping, sub locations, allowing flex and checkpoints, permissions, mapping to financials, etc. - using time or elements of time as a base level and then mix, blend, and share sub functionality and tracking options (more objects and data over time stuff) - funding and making sure we can fund the planning, design, and development of our game plan - help files, videos, and SOP (standard operating procedures) - standard and custom - black box and ways to customize the pages, verbage, logic, and process flow - summarized data (aggregated data) vs transactional data (all the steps and transactions) - we need both - watchers, feeders, and triggers - following and dreaming the dream - it may sound way out there... but following that dream is huge - make a visual plan - include general testing, unit testing, validation (local and serer-side), and standardizing requirements - version control and deployment - going back and doing research and review of older notes - tons of mini gold nuggets to harvest from doing this over the years (make sure and harvest some of our own ideas) - use of sub homepages and graphical hubs of sort - also use graphics, charts, graphs, and other elements - summed up data with drill-downs or searches available (basic or advanced) - approach all most everything from a summed up version into a more expansive (expanded) view and/or format - be able to export any data to CSV, Excel, PDF, and general web format - smaller mini functions - getters and setters - for miniature database access and updates - use sub flags, tags, and other similar features - lots of ideas about sub phases, sub groups, sub locations, sub flags, sub tags, sub progress, etc. Lots of prior documentation on elements of time and subs of time, including how to virtually adopt functionality between main player groups (invoices, deposits, expense/receipts, PO's, customers, parts/items, stock/units, vendors, employee/users, quotes, elements of time, balance sheet items, etc.) - custom look and feel - able to match moving trends - responsive (able to change size and layout based on device or screen size) - mobile development - sales - how are we going to market and/or sell our products and services - how are we going to set things up for correct billing and tracking (usage, storage, bandwidth, queries, connections, data, files, images, etc.) - communications, push/pull notifications, automated things, queues and scheduling tasks, bulk and individual communications - good project management - sub permissions - almost down to the function type level (as needed) - dynamic verbage, custom layout(s), dynamic link builder (favorites), and simple look and feel If you are looking for other ideas for the fracture account stuff. See this URL or web address: https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=fracture |
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AU 3983 |
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4.40 - Look & Feel (custom colors & navigation) | 4/16/2019 |
4.40 - Look & Feel (custom colors & navigation) -We want your business to look and feel like you want it to. Some of this is done through settings so that we can speak your language. Some of it is done through visual interfaces and displays so we can make you feel more comfortable with using things and making things happen. -The backend is like an engine but we can use function and form to help you get what you want and the look and feel that fits your needs. -**Skin Your Engine Graphic - This has the motorcycle, van, sports car, semi-truck, UFO, all with the same engine. -We have a number of presets. The one we first started on is called the classic - very simple, non-moving, but very powerful and dynamic. Some of the newer ones have more mobile, responsive ones, more sliding/moving menus, more modern technologies built in. -We allow you to upload logos, alternate images, watermarks. You can change colors on virtually every single thing - backgrounds, roll-over colors, menu icons, buttons, link colors, messages, icons, etc. -There are many different settings that you can setup for reports, navigation, and hundreds of settings that let you control feeders, footers, headers, custom navigation. Tons of options for corporation links, individual links, and other options for navigation that can be customized for your particular needs or setup for your corporation. -Custom interfaces - we have thousands of pages which could be available to set as your homepage. If you need your own custom look/dashboard we can create that as well. Or we can blend those pieces together to get what you need. |
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AU 4025 |
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4.82 - Watchers, Feeders, & Triggers | 4/23/2019 |
4.82 - Watchers, Feeders, & Triggers -Watchers, feeders, and triggers exist in the Adilas system currently but we hope to add lots of future development in these areas. These watchers, feeders and triggers are associated with how things in the system interact and effect each other. This also deals with being able to get more and more aggregate, summarized, and bigger picture data instead of the transactional or individual level. -An example of a watcher could be something that is keeping an eye on inventory levels and alerts you when you get to a certain level. A feeder could be pulling information from many different sources to create a report of information you need. A trigger could be anything that causes something else to happen. -All of these things interact and are working together throughout the system naturally and normally as the system operates. We can create backend code that is watching and feeding in data for totals, reports, analytics, and so on; which could then be triggered at certain points to create summations or pull in other parameters to give comprehensive feedback. These pieces are at work constantly in the system and will continue to be used to produce greater tools. -As mentioned before we have plans to add more of these watchers, feeders, and triggers to provide access to more aggregate data and improve data analytics and tools for marketing. |
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Shop 4706 |
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Adilas Time | 6/24/2019 |
Busy Monday morning. We started out with Josh joining us and giving us a small report. He is working on some custom reports and making a few changes to the discount engine and the inventory engine projects. We setup a time to do some code review and sign-off for this coming Wednesday. Alan gave us an update on automation of USAePay (merchant processing) and reoccurring billing stuff. He has a client wanting similar reoccurring billing options built out for another gateway called Converge and Converge Connect. Alan also gave us an update on the invoice due date project, using internal universe API sockets, refactoring sub inventory, taking corp-wide settings out to a server scope memory cache vs direct database pull every time. That should be a good time saver and be more efficient. He was also talking about some new getters and setters (ways of pushing and pulling the data in smaller direct pieces). Cool stuff and he seems to be making progress. Dustin and Steve were talking about AJAX (asynchronous connections) and how some of the new changes have really sped things up with one-pager interfaces and loading graphics, and faster more direct database look-ups. Dustin was volunteering to add some of these asynchronous calls to other pages and reports. By way of definition, a normal synchronous (or in-line) call means that you go ask for some data and you wait until you get everything back. Think of one giant clump of data being returned. You then report back to the browser or user and show the page. An asynchronous call (or on-demand as needed) allows you to return basic information and structure very quickly (the user will see something on the page). It then uses asynchronous calls and connections and fills in data as it can and/or as it gets returned. This is great for data that may be a subset of the main data and/or you want a user to click or interact to see additional results. It is a way of breaking up the data and speeding up the loading and display time. Great stuff and Dustin is doing great on some of his sub projects. After that, it was just Steve and I on the meeting. We talked about a number of different topics. We have been doing more testing out in the AWS (amazon web services) land and getting things ironed out there in AWS land. Wayne is doing great and making awesome progress. Steve and I setup some time for tomorrow to work on balance sheet related project. We are going to be diving in deep and looking at how certain values are being tracked. That small conversation brought up some other topics such as caching, efficiency, moving more towards aggerated (summed up data) type transactions, etc. We are seeing more needs for watchers, feeders, triggers, etc. We even talked briefly about the underlying goal of getting all of the data organized into a 3D calendar of sorts. Fun to bounce back to past ideas and concepts. Good stuff. Eric called in and was out on the road. He had a couple of questions and gave us some updates on some custom 3rd party solutions and custom reports that he is working on. As an interesting side note, some of the comments between Eric and Steve had an interesting undertone. Nothing negative, but definitely complex and cross-corp oriented. They, both Steve and Eric, are working on custom consolidation reports, cross-corp reports, and even multi-corp syncing. The deeper we get, certain clients are wanting to standardize data across platforms, across systems, and even across servers. It is getting more complex and we are seeing needs where we may have a master corporation and then being able to cascade certain data from a master corporation setup to an unlimited number of sub or slave type corporations. We are seeing both data and reporting needs that need to be synced between multiple corporations. This syncing type need is in an effort to help with collaboration and standardizing data across systems. Almost getting into a data warehousing type need or data warehousing type environment. Kinda interesting. After Eric, Bryan joined us and had a few questions for both Steve and I. He is working on custom gram tracking (subs of the shopping cart) and taking certain gram tracking settings and helping them cascade all the way over to custom label building. It is interesting to see the levels of customization and the needs that some of these clients are expressing. The scary side to that is... how far are we willing to go and what will that take? Custom is potentially a huge swinging door. Awesome, powerful, but potentially bigger than we would like. In between these different little meetings. I finished up the documentation to go with the getWebGeneralInventory API socket method call. I was working on that project last week a little bit. I added a small working document (to do list and brainstorming doc) for the small changes and to help with the project scope. Nothing major, just wanted to record it. Busy morning. It must be Monday. |
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Shop 4722 |
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Working with Steve on the Balance Sheet | 6/25/2019 |
See attached for a small work document that Steve and I were using for some brainstorming on the QTI (between a quote, transition invoice, and a real invoice) tracking and process. Here are a few of the notes: - We may need to go to a line item level on the dates (po/invoice line items)… Currently, we try really hard to match the main (PO's and invoices) with the line items. There is some built-in code to help with this process. - We may need to pull some data... and see what to do with it - For example: you stand in this line, you stand in this line. (analogy between parallel lines and diverging lines and the bubble analgoy - small flex zones or small flex bubbles) - We would love to see the ice-down date, aggregated data, watchers, feeders, tiggers, 3D calendars, taking things clear out to minutes and seconds vs just 24hour dates (June 1st, June 2nd, etc.). - Steve and I were talking about "display only" pieces on the balance sheet... The future potential from QTI invoices may be a display piece, not a real book piece. Just like the liabiltlty for loyalty points. Just ideas. - Small talks about posting (old school accounting and posting to differnet accounts) vs a computer just running logic to figure out where things were at (roll call accounting) - a computer can figure it out and repeat those actions every time so that it just flows through vs having to post and post and repost. Basically, make it show up for roll call vs doing different journal entries every time. - To make the current QTI process work, we skipped the tax stuff until the very end... We also need to track both lists of invoices that are still in transition and those that are done. This is really true if you are going back in time. - We briefly talked about using aggregated data to show daily break-downs in the full P&L and balance sheet levels - even to the 3D calendar level - What has been changed and what has been iced down? - Evaluate those values as we move across time on a report and/or calendar? - What about using ajax (asynchronous calls to get the data) to figure out the aggregated totals as they show up. - It would be really cool to see the known issues and be able to drill-down to those values easily... even through the aggregated totals. |
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Shop 4899 |
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Adilas Time | 9/19/2019 |
Steve had some questions on using existing tables for custom or special needs within the system. We ended up talking about possible black box database tables - format "bb_53_some_table_name" - where "bb_" deals with a prefix, basically saying black box or custom database table, then the corp id, and then the custom table name. Steve is leaning towards the verbiage of "enterprise systems" vs "master corporations". This deals with using a new system (world or corporation) and housing aggregated totals in that world or system (consolidated data for multiple corps). Anyways, Steve is starting to use the terms enterprise system to meant that holding container. Getting into aggregated totals and auto processes. We talked for quite a while about either building just in time tools that populate the aggregated totals and/or building something on the serves that runs some kind of automated process, say like a scheduled task that either runs once a day or multiple times a day, depending. Alan jumped on and we talked about observers and subscribers - another way of saying watchers and feeders and triggers. Basically, he is wanting to get objects, per server, being stored per server (almost a mini cache of sorts), and then keying off of changes (events or triggers). Minimal effort on updates. Set the updates and then do a push type approach if anything changes. Often we just use the pull type technology (go get the data every time). Using a push type method we may change the flow and then the things are only updated when a real change or updates occurs. Other than that, it continues using the stored data, until changed by the push. We then chatted about the invoice due date project and showing warnings for late or outstanding invoices. We talked about showing things on a top or admin type level, showing color coded warnings, no totals, with links back to data 0 and online bill pay options. Help them be aware and then just get it paid, don't rub the values or dollar amounts in their face. |
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Shop 6039 |
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Loyalty Accounting | 3/2/2020 |
Great meeting with both Eric and Steve. All three of us spent two hours going over a number of key points. Lots of drawings, running scenarios through financial flow calculators, and talking about options and needs. - Math and logic for loyalty points One of the other major topics was the law of deferring to something else that has more details. That could be a sub account, a one-to-many relationship with details, payments, line items, sub accounts, transactions, or other things that have sub dates, types, groupings, values, calculations, etc. Often, we defer to the item that has the best information and/or the best vantage point. That is part of what we are doing. |
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Shop 6284 |
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Brandon Steve and Cory Herbo bid next steps | 4/27/2020 |
This was going to be a special meeting for a specific project but it ended up being an extension of the general touch base on quotes, projects, and plans. Here are few things that I pulled out of the meeting (not necessarily part of any one project, but more overview of subjects). - Both up and down traffic for enterprise systems. At one time, we were mostly focusing on smaller systems rolling up into a bigger oversight or holding type company. What we are seeing is that the clients really want both directions - roll up, and cascade down (two-way traffic). - Some of these enterprise type setups will be a cross between a permission and a setting. Who gets to do what and what direction or instructions are needed to make the data flow either up hill or cascade down hill? Interesting. - Looking at both aggregate systems and transactional systems - The watchers, feeders, and triggers may come in to play as data (things) rolls up or down, depending on task and flow. The watchers, feeders, and triggers may even become part of the communication process and how and where to track things that are going on. - We are starting to see the next steps... from transactions up to aggregate and from master back to transactional systems. We don't know everything yet, but patterns are starting to emerge and become more clear. That is awesome. Once we fully understand them, we can then document them and build them. - Steve was talking about starting at a master vendor list level and then letting those vendors be available in the smaller or sub systems. - We also talked about master lists for items, photos, part categories, sub inventory templates, etc. Think on three main levels... global (anybody could use), enterprise or master level (top level for a multi-level structure), or the individual corporation or world level. - Smart software and creating master global lists for known vendors, items, categories, photos, customer types, custom units of measure, time templates, etc. The list keeps going... - Lots of additional services - that is awesome, but we need to be able to charge for that and/or those services. We just can't do all of them for free. They are a cause and effect type service but also need to be a value add-on service that comes with a price. - There was some talk about bringing in some of our developers closer to have more control over output and processes. Trying to get away from the wild west type mentality. - Having Steve help more with project management. That could and is huge. He can and is able to point people in a good direction. He has done that for years. Originally, this was his brain child (meaning adilas as a company). - On some of the projects, we may increase some of the project bids to help include new settings. That seems to be where everything is going and/or heading. Permissions and settings. |
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Shop 6615 |
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Adilas Time | 8/24/2020 |
Danny and Steve were talking about sales and having a buddy along with you. If you are all by yourself, you tend to get depressed and demotivated - in some ways. A buddy really helps to pick you up and bounce things off of. You don't feel like you are alone. Eric joined and was asking about building out some of the off balance sheet items and off sheet liabilities for customer loyalty points. Basically, a real liability but not part of the main math on the balance sheet. We also briefly talked about watchers, feeders, and triggers. See this link form some other research on the subject. They were also talking about how 3rd party integrations get really tough and you can't take them out the full way just because things get so deep. Steve and Eric were talking about the pricing engine, the discount engine, tiered pricing - lots of options there. They were talking about expanding parent attributes, smart group buttons, dynamic QR codes, barcodes, and advanced label options. All tied in with pricing, labels, and tiered pricing. The topic changed into some project management and project planning options. Including a list of requirements, scenarios, design options, and the whole meal deal. Looking beyond the current project and how it, the current project, plays into the bigger whole (system thinking). Once we know the project scope, we could then setup timelines and estimates. You have to have all of the pieces in order to really provide the whole meal deal. After Eric left, Wayne, Alan, and myself were talking about frameworks and options for code and building code. A framework is a standard way of calling things, linking to things, ways of storing and organizing assets, and all the way into deeper hierarchical levels. They were talking about a product called ColdBox and how that may play into the mix. Most frameworks use some sort of MVC type model. Here are some other related topics to MVC (model view controller). An HMVC is a hierarchical model view controller. Lots of pros and cons were being discussed. Including who will do the research, experimenting, deciding, training and teaching - once a decision is made? What do frameworks do? What do they not do? How can you customize them and what tasks fit nicely under a framework type model? We also talked about our existing, home grown framework and how that works. Alan had a number of really good questions and seemed very versed on the subject. Good discussion. Our last topic for this meeting was an error with file uploads and images. Wayne is going to go in and add some logging and see if that helps us figure things out. It doesn't happen all the time, we are trying to figure out what it is that causes the errors. One of the tough ones... |
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Shop 6799 |
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Off Balance Sheet Liabilities | 8/26/2020 |
Eric and I spent a session talking and working on the off balance sheet items or options. We broke things down into 2 main projects. One was the flagging of data. Should I show up in the normal ALE (assets, liabilities, or equity) math portion of the balance sheet or should I show up below the bottom line - aka the off balance sheet items? The second project was dealing with how the math is done and getting into a combo or hybrid type model. This could include automating what we can, and also allowing for possible manual entries and/or adjustments. We went over a bunch of scenarios and talked about pros and cons of each. On the new settings, we wanted to make it positive - meaning, yes, show up for normal ALE math vs no, don't show up - special below the bottom line or off balance sheet items. More talks about hybrid BSI items and sub calcs. We talked a lot about outside watchers and feeders and triggers. Those are some deeper topics and things that are on our virtual wish list. Without going too deep, a watcher or feeder could be a known data source or place where data exists. We could then query or sum up some of that data to provide values and info back to a bigger picture. For example: Say sales tax stuff. It is held on thousands and thousands of invoice line items, but if we could sum it up, it would be a great piece for a balance sheet tax liability. there are tons of things like that... We are making progress, but there are tons of pieces that could be automated and mapped but have not yet been. |
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Shop 7821 |
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Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates | 6/1/2021 |
Going over schedules for the upcoming event and training conference. We also talked quite a bit about the sales tax aggregation project and the next steps (other part of the equation). We are getting close to getting the automated feeder (virtual feeding of daily aggregates to the balance sheet) part done. After that, we have to figure out the accounts payable portion where the company either pays things off (actual expense/receipt tied to a bank transaction). We already do tons of other payables sections for paying off things on account (splits), reimbursements, paying down PO's, stock/units, floorplans, etc. Paying down sales tax will be similar with a couple special twists to make sure that we have all of the pieces wrapped up. Should be fun. We also need to figure out the part, incase a company gets to keep some of the sales tax as a commission and/or credit. The last topic of the day was dealing with eventually automating payroll to a level where there are virtual watchers and feeders and helping those liabilities get automated. |
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Shop 9996 |
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Working on known issues list | 3/29/2023 |
Recording notes and working on a list of known issues. See top_secret/secure/known_issues.cfm for more information. For fun, here is a list of some of the items listed on that page. This list originally was started in 2009. Small list of what are known problems. Some of these things are real problems and some are just warnings. Lots of things have changed since then. It may need to be updated, added to, and some of the items removed, that have been patched, fixed, and/or finished.
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Shop 10217 |
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Recording Notes | 6/8/2023 |
Paying a few more bills and recording notes. Worked on notes and entries from 6/5/23 and 6/6/23. Lots of crazy days. Also, as a side note, I ran across some entries on watchers and feeders and doing daily category sums, counts, and other data per location, per day, per category. That may be something that we look back into for fracture. |
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