First $5,000 paid in by Wayne Moore - Logan, UT. 2/7/15

Second $3,000 paid in by Wayne Moore - Logan, UT. 5/4/15

Third Calvin Chipman did some internal development out to a light demo mode

Fourth: Josh Sagert did a google earth simulation tied in to cell phones.

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

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

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Day 1

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

- Solution for solution minded people

- It can be molded to fit your industry

- Changes keep happening

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

- Brief overview of the framework

- Based on user permissions and valid logins

- All web-based and cloud-based

- Features and benefits - focusing on the benefits

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

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

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

- He talked about news and updates

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

- Customer queue

- Lots of moving parts

- Drea - "Adilas is play dough"

- Inventory tracking

- Reporting and building your own reports

- Labels and changes to the requirements

- ecommerce

- Payroll

- Accounts payable and accounts receivable

- Print checks

- emails

- Customize and working with the developers

- Security and back-ups

- Steve - Showing some hidden gems

- Small demo on flex grid

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

- We will be bouncing around

- Start with a guy holding tons of stuff

- Talk about the needs and how to organize things

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

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

- Cover the 12 main players

- Cover the 12 business functions

- Cover the 12 main world building concepts

- Mix and blend to get the desired results

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

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

- How does this relate to the adilas process?

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

- Side steps, back steps, and forward steps

- Going into advanced add to cart and sub functions

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

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

- Questions on Metrc

- Some new tables and new limits from Metrc

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

- API and server to server connections

- Challenges that exist

- Mixing old and new functionality

- Transfers

- Sales

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

- Getting back at the data - reporting

- High level vision

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

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

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

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

- The progression of building and breaking

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

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

- Template building

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

- Small questions on CSS and changing certain page colors

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

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

- Fixing current business problems

- Where is your pain? Start there

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

- At some point, accounting will need to follow

- Checkpoints and flowing data

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

- How does time play into the mix

- Comparing operations and accounting in a static environment

- Comparing operations and accounting in a dynamic environment

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

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

- Black boxes & white label options

- The whole deal

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

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Day 2

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

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

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

- User designs the label (step 1)

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

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

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

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

- Interacting with printers, browsers, and other hardware pieces

- PDF - actual size vs shrink to fit size

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

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

- Possible template options

- Be careful saying a compliant label

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

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

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

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

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

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Day 3

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

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

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

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

- The client log and how to use it

- Leaving personal footprints in the sand - using the log

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

- Cover you own rear-end

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

- Custom emails

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

- Transfers in and out and how to hide things

- Everything in adilas is flexible

- This new functionality is only a week old

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Pretend like you are a client

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

- Pitching GMext Pro - great demo and presentation

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

- Technology happens... embrace it and thrive

- Mass texting and single text notifications - similarities and differences

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

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

- Ways of opting in and out

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Day 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Easy setup

- Building your own little shortcuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- CPA homepage interface

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

- Going back to the beginning - balance sheet homepage

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

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

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

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

- Assets, liabilities, and equity

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

- Values and tax laws

- Depreciation and schedules

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

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

- Where you put things in very important

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

- Skate to where the puck (hockey) will be

- The formula is the most important part of it

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

- A balance sheet is a snap shot in time

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

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

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

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

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

- Liabilities and hidden liabilities - be careful there

- Hidden costs

- Triggers

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Owners - who holds the liability

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Equity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our product is kind like open source software only more of an open community software package (anybody could contribute and/or ask for something). They can't go in and make changes on their own, but they can help push things forward based off of input and seed monies. Either way, it takes time you have to pay someone to do that tweaking and/or changing.

As a side note, we are seeing more and more of a need for deeper and deeper ordering, backordering, fulfillment, shipping, manufacturing, sub routines, supply chain stuff, just in time stuff, and other operation based activities. We already have a number of those pieces, we just want to get them more built out and automated. I would really like to see some of this going into elements of time (mixing date/time values where needed) and also more of the data assembly line type methodology. Those would be my wishes.

Alan popped in and showed us some progress on his charts and graphs for some of the new homepages. I think that they will really help with some much needed look and feel for some of those primary homepages (invoices, PO's, deposits, and expense/receipts).

I went in and fixed a small validation bug and the started to work on a new joint venture non disclosure and non compete form with and for Full Circle Interactive Media.

Josh popped in and gave us a report on some things. Some of the report was dealing with a deeper need to mix and blend date and time options for discounts and being able to set things up with easy interfaces and yet be super powerful. Another part of Josh's report was dealing with education and getting clients setup correctly. Basically, there are so many settings that no one really goes in there and plays around with them. Also, another comment was that some of the settings and options were not related to their industry. They saw things like religious tax categories, stock/unit (vehicle and trailer stuff), and other non industry options. Our model is very open, but sometimes that creates a feeling that we don't fully know their business.

- Discount pricing engine and maybe even special my cart favorite buttons that are discount specific. This could be all kinds of stuff. We have also had some other requests on limiting discounting and even allowing or not allowing standalone discounts. It would also be super cool if you could duplicate discounts, clone things, and build off of existing items. Having bulk tools to help where needed.

- Here is some other research on discounts, pricing engines, and my cart favorite buttons, etc. I would like to go in this direction... https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3666 - you could also search the developer's notebook for pricing engine, discount, or my cart favorite buttons.

- Being able to create new items based off of existing

- Being able to do global settings for different industries... basically, set up a new corp, then be ale to click special setup buttons to update and change settings in bulk. We could have multiple sub options that may be clicked. As a side note, we could also program certain themes (actual folders) and use black box technology to virtually show/hide certain buttons, fields, features, settings, etc.

- Color coding for items going low or needing to be reordered - great idea

- Room based inventory vs a location based inventory (sub levels and sub locations)

- Limiting access to all other areas and/or rooms (once again sub levels and sub locations based on permissions)

- Being able to duplicate items and PO's even quicker. Basically, a save as type option to duplicate an item. Kinda like cloning an item or starting from a known point based off of other items. Make it quick and easy based off of existing items.

- Where is all of the data located? We have tons of great data but all of our data is on specific pages and requires a page to page progression (normal web flow). Some of the other systems are starting to pull multiple data pieces into the same page (ajax and jquery stuff). Basically, putting everything on one page or a one-pager type dashboard and/or interface.

- We have had clients who want us to auto close sub packages. This may be accomplished with settings and rules. Not everybody wants the same things. That takes us into settings and such.

- What about an off line mode? When no Internet is available? What about a local instance that could be synced up later on? This is bigger than you think... If you were to go this route, this may need to be a hybrid type solution where we mix localized software, some kind of queue type system (grabbing and holding the data), and then the ability to sync up the data later on. Alan was talking about a potential risk mitigation process and the need to have companies have other plans in place incase a disaster occurs. Both Josh and Alan were talking about possible news and updates that show options such as MS Excel, setting up a hot spot based off a phone, local software options, good old paper and pencil mode. Idea from Josh - What about a local label maker... that could really help as well (small and limited scope).

- Questions on multiple location pricing. What are the price points and price breaks? This got into a small discussion on what a white label or other entity charges.

- Let's keep working on making it pretty and simple and powerful. If you could mix these things, that makes it awesome.

- People want to set it and forget it... a one time wonder or single setup.

- People want the big dumb animal pictures... super simple.

- Once you become super familiar with something... it gets hard to let that go.

- Training a client to be proficient in all areas is really tough... it comes down to training and maintenance. Keep making things easier and easier.

- We might need to make the tips and tricks and news and updates easier to get to... if people want that stuff.

We gave Josh a task of getting out some pens and paper and sketching out interface ideas and going through the discount needs. We recommended that he use the pyramid (triangle) type approach. This would be starting at the top level (corp-wide settings), then go down to groups (customer types and part categories), then go down to tiers and/or buttons (smaller groups with rules and assignments), and then clear down to the item level. We also need to take into account both includes and excludes.

Alan popped in and showed Josh and I a demo on the new graphical invoice homepage. The page has a number of new graphs, charts, buttons, and quick stats and results. We gave him a couple of suggestions, but mostly told him that it looked good. I will include a couple small screen shots of the graphical homepages that he is coming up with. They are looking great.

The guys were in looking at bootstrap CSS pieces, templates, and dashboards. Steve, Dustin, Josh, Alan, and I were all looking. Here are a few of the links that they were looking at:

https://wrapbootstrap.com/

http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0F82581

http://webapplayers.com/inspinia_admin-v2.8/

After that, we all broke into our own little areas and worked on projects. I was working on some new navigation links for the snow owl theme headers. I got my code done and pushed it up live. More work on checking code for the sales tax project.

On the morning meeting with Josh and Alan. We went over a few new changes from yesterday. Alan reported on his work with Bryan and making a new black box database table (custom table - specific just for that client). Alan and I talked about some naming conventions and how all new black box database tables will have "bb_" to start the table name. For example: bb_53_some_table_name.

We spent a little bit of time going over some new needs for quantity and weight multipliers. Alan and I decided to add two new fields to get things into real numeric values. Currently, some of the people are using some of the existing fields, but those fields are strings or varchars (text based) fields vs real numeric fields. Alan will be making some changes. We know that this project will have two phases. The first one will be to add the new fields and then match-up what ever values we can. The other part of this is going through hundreds of other reports and top cart mini's (gram counters) and Metrc API reporting (state tracking stuff) and flipping the older text based logic into real numeric values and real math. We will be using a value of 1 in the numeric weight field as a default. 1 times anything is the same number. If they want to change that ratio, they will at least have a spot (numeric field) where to do it.

I then started to work on the sales tax project and bringing up all of the black box code to match the master code files (checking for new changes on the custom tax fields 6-10 and other dynamic naming). As a side note... Custom is awesome, but there is a flip side to that... It takes quite a bit of maintenance to keep things up to date if you are changing core pieces.

I spent some time reviewing some notes and info that Dave Forbis gathered up dealing with Stripe (online merchant processing and credit card gateway). See element of time # 4095 for some notes and links. After that, I got on a call with Dave and we went over a few things. We have four different topics that we will be looking into next. They are:

1. Reviewing some older things (tons of white boarding and graphics that were done by Dave from a couple years back) - The goal here is to circle through and pick-up anything that still has merit.

2. Start working on some billboard type sites. These are small websites that have a smaller focus and virtually point people and users to the bigger adilas application. These are things like world building, data assembly line stuff, new school accounting, 3D models for world building and digital story telling. Dave and I were also talking about some concepts that adilas is built upon that are either core and/or we've pushed pretty far. Dave was saying that we could create mini Ted Talk type videos and/or graphics. Get people thinking and talking. Use those pieces to point things back to adilas and what we are doing. Some great marketing ideas.

3. Currently, the adilas platform has a very high concentration of MMJ or Cannabis related industries. Maybe get a list of other kinds of companies that are using the system and show some of the diversity with how and what they are using in the adilas platform model.

4. Dave would like a list of the different domain names that we have and where we would like to focus on building small billboard type sites. I will get this together and send it to him. In a way, we are lightly playing the digital real estate game and trying to setup small little claims. Those claims have two fold purposes... One, they will become virtual billboard sites pointing to adilas and the core concepts that we are built on. Two, they will provide prior art - which makes it so that others can't copyright, trademark, and/or patent - intellectual property stuff. It basically strengthens and protects the main core of what we are trying to do. Good stuff.

On the morning meeting with the guys. Josh was showing some of his discount settings and pieces (new pages for setting discount rules and such). Alan popped in and gave some update reports. We talked about next projects and who was going to do what. My computer ended up doing a full reboot right in the middle of the meeting. After that, I did emails and research on user admin stuff for server database users. Nothing super special.

Random notes from the day. Brian Stewart is a friend and 30+ year computer guy and programmer. He works for a different company but we go walking and hiking together in the mornings. We talk business and code while we walk. Here are a couple of gems from today.

- There is a difference between working in your business or working on your business - Brian Stewart on a morning hike.

- Create systems... Instead of setting pass/fail goals... create a small system and then start playing the game. Success is playing the game and working the system. The results will usually end up following. - Brian Stewart on a morning hike.

- Brian and I spent quite a bit of time talking about good cop, bad cop, and helping to setup the community and environment that you want for your company. A lot of the discussion was dealing with finding that balance point between speed, function, stability, and beauty. Not everybody has the same personality and/or skill sets. Lots of mixing and blending. Some of the conversation was how to mix senior developers and junior developers and to help them play well together. Sometimes that mixing becomes an issue and also a who gets credit for what and who gets paid for what. Sometimes a tough mix.

On the morning meeting with Steve, Dustin, Alan, and Josh. We started out and got things going. Dustin is going on a trip soon and was reporting about some areas in the North East that he will be visiting. Sounds fun. Here are some other things that happened on the meeting.

- Helping Dustin with some FORM logic. He has a ton of form field data that needs to be dynamic, grouped, and passed over to an action page and still be able to maintain its complex data format and maintain its special groupings. We went through a number of scenarios and he took a number of screen shots. We talked strategy and I showed him some similar code that is used for duplicating PO's and passing dynamic data from page to page.

- Talking with Alan about the idea of on purpose allowing the view of the pages to fracture and be more controllable. We did a small graphic (drawing) and talked about how we have known form field values. We also have a known database table that could hold the data field settings such as show/hide, defaults, data types, special instructions, sort values, field name aliases, etc. We then talked about how we could potentially use ColdFusion custom tags to hold the logic to dynamically populate and/or build the HTML (web format) pages based on the custom tags. The custom tags are a combo between a function and an include. Anyways, we had a good discussion on that. Alan was saying that this plays in perfectly to the MVC (model view controller) type scenario that we would like to use. See attached for a small drawing.

- We had two other outside parties come into the meeting. We had Molly (an adilas consultant) and a guy by the name of Ryan McCorvey (a user for McCorvey's Pro Shop - Bowling). They both had similar requests. They have different pages and reports (or functions) that are hitting time outs. Both companies have tons of data and Alan and I were taking notes and looking for possible bottlenecks and either slow queries and/or slow database tables. They could do the same reports and actions with small amounts of data, the system just choked and/or timed out when trying to process too much data. Kinda like getting a huge mouth full and not being able to chew and/or swallow. Anyways, we worked with both individuals and took some notes. Alan started looking into some research on what causes those table level slow-downs and what not.

- As we get into bigger and bigger datasets, we have to play well with scalability, indexing, and being able to play the big data game. Interesting how things keep progressing.

On the morning meeting with the guys. Dustin started out and showed us some cool photos of his trip back to New Hampshire. Alan and I got into a discussion about MySQL databases and different table engines or table types. Dustin, Josh, and I then had a discussion on how best to code a page that has some complex batching and grouping. We laid it out with three proposals and chatted about each. Both Josh and Dustin are working together on this project. Dustin in coding things and Josh is helping him with ideas and best practices (peer tutoring).

I switched gears and started looking into the black box code on the sales tax project. Towards the end of the session, Steve and I got on a phone call and talked some strategy and where we are headed. We also went over some of our payables and made some plans there. Trying to stay ahead of the game.

On the morning meeting. Josh gave Steve and I a demo of his discount stuff. He has it far enough along that we could see him both adding and editing records (global discount rules based on dates and times). We talked about some standard adilas coding things, validation, and matching the look and feel. The main concepts are there, we just need to standardize things and then fully implement the new discounts and discount rules that he is building. It will end up being pretty cool.

Steve forwarded me an email with a small bug dealing with sub inventory and having more than 10 child or sub packages per parent line item. I spent most of the work session chasing that bug around and getting it fixed. It ended up that the code was dynamic (meaning it could handle any number of entries) but it was confusing number 1 (first sub or first package) with numbers 10 and 11. Here is an example: The code was setup to check for something like - " _1" (underscore one) where the 1 was dynamic. Well, once you get into items above and around 10... you get a match for _1, _10, _11, etc. That made it so that your results weren't perfectly matched up (due to the multiplicity of matches).

I tightened things up and pushed up new code to all servers. It now checks for a perfect match (1 to 1, 10 to 10, etc.).

At the end of the work session, Steve had some questions about checkboxes and showing saves selections when editing large number of checkbox options. We went over some key concepts and he was going to rework some stuff. I left the meeting as Josh was going to give Steve another small demo on his discount stuff. I had seen some of it earlier, and Steve was only able to catch a small portion of the demo this morning (Internet and connection problems).

Meeting with Hamilton with Full Cricle IM (interactive media). Hamilton was doing the small demo. Basically, he is going to be working with adilas and integrating his marketing product with adilas. Josh Sagert is going to be doing some work to help with that integration.

- new clients today (new customer/client start dates)

- check-ins today (customer/client queue)

- reminders (small messages to help people know different things - emails and text messages)

- coupons and broadcasts (sales and promotions)

- opt in/out to the loyalty points via a mobile number (quick text verification)

- internal inboxes

- scheduling texts and emails and reminders

- keywords (flagging and tagging different client records)

- auto watching for rewards earned and sending reminders and texts based on certain sales rules

- preferences and products that match certain clients and their profile

- Multi-numbers (virtual phone numbers) to handle more traffic and number of texts being sent

- API keys and storing client connection data

Good discussion between Josh and Hamilton about discounts, campaigns, and how to tie things together. They talked about goals and ways of figuring out the target marketing pieces using the technologies. They also talked about dashboards and showing what was sent out and what was returned (ROI). In Hamilton's words, he wants to reduce the sales friction. By combining things (adilas and Full Circle IM) it could and will be a great combo. All the pieces in the same database, that helps create a system and allows for major options.

They also were talking about integrating out to ecommerce and tracking click through's (general or generic interest) and also retention results (resulted in a full purchase). Tracking leads, campaigns, and effectiveness. They really want to focus on the end user's and how well and easy they can use it.

Talking about possible options of how to sign in - enter the number by the user or by the person doing the check in process. There are also options to text in and then use that as part of the check-in process. Basically, talking about checks and balances and making sure that they knew who was who.

Happy Halloween! As a fun side note, both Steve and Josh have Halloween as their anniversaries. They were able to chat and have fun talking about that.

Calvin popped in and we got some API stuff working on the adilas content server. He needs that functionality for the new adilas label builder app. Good stuff.

Alan, Dustin, Josh, Steve, and I were on the morning meeting. Steve had a couple of questions about some emails that were going around. We pulled in Alan and chatted about some database restructures, re-indexing of records, and full table rebuilds. We then talked briefly about a client that has a bunch of custom code but hasn't really been able to get things going. They are currently not paying their monthly bill and not responding to the David B. and Shari O. We have decided that we need to turn them off as it is costing our company trying to chase their company. If they want it, we can easily re-flip the light switch back on.

Wayne jumped in and we did some checking on his database migration code. We logged into the dedicated server and ran a couple reports. All of the data looks good and he will be contacting the client to let them know. This project has been ongoing for about 2 months now. Basically, we migrated about 10 corporations off of one of the shared servers to their own dedicated servers. Well, once we finished and released the new dedicated box, they came back and said, what about this other corporation that we had no notes and/or record of. Because it missed the normal migration process, and the new server was already live and consuming auto id numbers in the database, we couldn't do our normal migration process. Instead, Wayne had to write a new program that allowed for both servers to keep running at full speed and still be able migrate and copy database records across between servers. That may sound easy, but think of all of the auto id number and foreign keys based off of the auto id numbers that could get messed up. This was a very deep project. It looks great and seems good to go. That is awesome.

We intend to use this same program (actual software we have to run on the physical servers) to help us migrate other clients off of shared environments and into either other shared servers and/or to their own dedicated boxes. That is a huge break through for us. Good stuff.

After that, I jumped in and did some emails and tech support stuff. Towards the end of the meeting, Calvin jumped back in and we made two of his permissions go live for the adilas label builder. We then did some light testing on the live servers. It still needs some lovin, but we had a successful live test between data 0, the content server, and Calvin's adilas label builder app. That is pretty cool. He was going to make a couple changes and then get back with me. Pretty cool and some great progress.

On the morning meeting with the guys. Steve had a number of questions about static IP addresses and locking servers down based on IP addresses. He also wanted a report about the demo that was going on yesterday with the assisted living guys. I gave him a report and he made a few comments. Oddly enough, some of the same things that the assisted living guys need and/or want, the campground folks want the same things. Both companies are virtually selling and/or renting one or more of their locations (camping spots, RV spots, or apartments or rooms). Interesting stuff.

This is just for me, but I wonder if we should add a small flag to the locations table to indicate what is rentable or not. We could then pull certain reports and show what is available or not based off of that flag and elements of time. Just a thought.

Alan popped in and reported. He is working on gathering up all of the permission based code and putting in all together in one cfc (component or file). That way we don't have to search all over the place for that same code. Another thing he is doing is limiting the number of page level queries that run to populate the snow owl drop-down menu system (tons and tons of links all based off of permissions). We set up a time to meet later today.

Josh, Dustin, and Steve were going to jump onto a Zoom meeting to go over things. Dustin is working on bulk cultivation pages and custom code. Josh is working on a new and upcoming discounting rules and discounting engine for system-wide discounts. All great projects. We merged in Steve's branch of code and got him all set that way.

I spent most of the session doing tech support emails, a small bug fix for duplicating expense/receipts, and working with Drea (adilas tech support) on a question about updating child inventory quantities. I didn't quite get finished with the bug fix, so, I'll be working on that after lunch.

Mostly a work session today. When the meeting started, we had Steve, Josh, and Dustin on with us. Steve had a few questions and was trying to get some direction. He is making tons of progress on his manufacturing and build pieces. He now has in-line transfer invoices happening when you use his bulk build pages. I worked with Dustin a bit on some dynamic looping (not straight forward looping but associated looping or random looping). After that, I worked on my own projects and everybody else did the same.

Merging in code with Dustin and Steve.

Meeting with Hamilton from Full Circle at 10 am. They are looking for a January 1, launch date. Josh gave us a small update on where he is at. Customer dash board to show coupons, loyalty points, preferences, and maybe even a self check-in (add to queue). A possible manager's dashboard and tracking throughput and what campaigns are used and ratios for closing those campaigns and coupons. Josh is looking to build out some matrix to help show profit, costs, and other demographics (age, distance from store, etc.).

They are looking to add a flag at the corporation level as well as at the customer level on who is playing with Full Circle (who opted in). If both corp and customer levels match up, we can add additional functionality. As part of an advertising campaign, we may just grey out the fields and help prompt the users to sign-up to get the additional functionality.

Josh was talking about a virtual batting average per campaign - how many messages were sent out, what was the ROI and usage, etc. This will be more than just a response matrix, it will include prices, costs, profits, usage, etc. A mix of different stats and variables. Josh is also trying to tie-in things with his new discount rules and discount engine. This is a combo of both existing discounts in the system as well as mixing with outbound campaigns.

There have been some talks on making a standalone version to capture more market share. Basically, a special functional section for adilas users and another one that is just a standalone, that way it may be used in multiple arenas.

Timelines and vision - Josh is going to be breaking things into chunks to help with development and deployment. One of the keys that has been tied in, this past week, was the line item level of or for campaign tracking. That will be a huge key for reports going forward.

Question by Hamilton - what options do I have if I wanted to stand up my own box (server and databases)? He was talking about a go to market strategy. What are the entry points? Options (1, 2, 3, or 4)? Two scenarios, existing adilas users (what do they get) and new users, that don't use adilas (but maybe hit at what they could have)? Basically, Hamilton doesn't necessarily want two code bases but we may have to try to direct them to the main adilas system. Make it a double sale. Hamilton was talking about a mini version of the adilas platform (small and cute and limited) and then over time, allowing his outside users to eventually migrate over to adilas over time.

We talked about a mountain (show everything) vs a ice berg (limited view but more available)... Josh and Hamilton would like to flip the model and expose a smaller portion that looks awesome but has huge potential as they get deeper. It kinda comes down to the entry point (perception). This conversion is basically talking a mini version of the white label concept with a limited entry point. One of the key pieces is the domain name (it has to be pointed to a single server). We also talked about some dual entry points where we have both adilas domains and full circle domains pointed to the same box. Think of it like doors on a building... did they come in from the front, back, side, or up from the floor below? Piece of cake. It comes back to entry points, preferences, and traffic flow.

Hamilton was talking about "dangling" options in front of his clients... virtual up sales of what else if available. If you purchase adilas as a package, it may be harder to up sale the client - they kind of expect the full package. However, if they come in from the Full Circle side, they Full Circle, could sell and/or expose other pieces based on a more modular pick and choose type model. That could be really cool. Once again, showing the full mountain vs just an ice berg with more potential under the surface.

There were some light conversations between Steve and Hamilton about data storage and processing - who is hosting what pieces and where does the traffic come from? In a lot of ways, we don't really care where the clients come in the door as long as they come to play. We also talked briefly about Full Circle being able to expose small pieces as they become available (breaking the adilas mountain into modular pieces that are add-on's and virtual up sales).

As a side conversation, there was some talks about beefing up the reoccurring billing section (reoccurring invoices) and making it more modular and automated. Billing for our services is a big things for us internally. The easier the process becomes, the less time we have to spend chasing it. That leave more time for other tasks. The tuff part is the technical side, the fun part is the selling of the features - from Hamilton. Hamilton wants to use his existing adilas account and setup reoccurring billing from inside the system for his existing Full Circle invoices. We will have Josh and Shari O. help get Hamilton all setup with the reoccurring billing inside of adilas. Josh was stating some ideas about helping to automate things back and forth between the main adilas accounts and the Full Circle billing parts and pieces.

On the morning meeting with Steve and Dustin. We started out trying to track down a bug on the data 10 server. We finally figured out that a couple of the database tables were missing a couple of columns. We tracked down the problem and got it fixed. Josh and Hamilton from Full Circle popped in and gave us a small update on their progress. Bryan Dayton joined us and had a few questions about sub inventory and getting correct pricing for an API socket connection. We talked about how prices are determined based on possible options (order of operations). First, does it have any tiered pricing (quantity discounts), then to the sub, then to the parent item. Lots of deferring from one possible place to another.

That conversation and session (subs and getting correct pricing) turned into a small talk about the need for mini conversions and pushing the ball forward in that realm. Crazy how things keep going deeper and deeper and what not. Later on, we ended up talking more about the tiered pricing and how it gets kinda crazy with per item prices and total prices (back into a known total for a certain threshold). Things get pretty deep, pretty quickly.

Emails and tech support stuff.

9/9/19: Cory has completed customer tax categories in the cart, customer purchase histories from advanced add to cart, reoccurring eots, alt text for barcodes. 

Drea is going to complete new corp wide show email contact settings, Louisiana metrc update.

Waiting on delayed inventory counter (wasn't totally working- need Alan to take a look), also waiting on sub inventory updates as Bryan is still working on these...

Cory is working on most of these updates and will check with Drea on her status. 

Customer tax categories going through the cart, customer purchase histories being available as a quick look-up from the advanced add to cart, and update for inventory counts and new delayed inventory counter (check with Alan to make sure everything is uploaded on this one). Reoccurring elements of time, alt text for barcodes, discount engine for Josh, labels for Calvin, loyalty points for Eric, sales tax update, etc. Bryan had some new ones for 15 new flex grid fields, new corp-wide show email contact settings, maybe check with him as time goes by.

It's Monday. Josh, Dustin, Steve, and I were on the morning meeting. Josh checked in and we set up some time to work on merging in his discount engine stuff. We added some new permissions and created a new help file for him to populate. We are hoping to get all of his code rounded up and populated within the next couple of days. Good stuff.

Steve's summary from January - Mrs. Shari O. needs some help. We've got that going and Pat will be helping out. We need to make it easy, pretty, and powerful. Steve would like to circle back around and then we need to do some look and feel stuff (make it look pretty). We will keep building out the functionality but we really need it to look nice and appear more simple. If we can get the current model, more spiffy (nice looking), we can really wind some things up. It is a very abundant model. The future of SaaS (software as a service) is customization. People want to start very simple and slick but as they go, they start looking for more functionality and eventually really want it to be their way (custom code and customization).

What do people do the most inside our system? We can pull in stats from all of the servers and then look at them (the stats) side by side. We could then have Russell go in and help us with some cool look and feel on the top 10 pages. Once that is done, we could keep drilling in deeper and deeper.

Alan popped in and gave us a report. Steve and I were working on different projects. I'm working on checking in code that Will did for a thing called transitional PO's. The new PO type is between an order/request (not tied to inventory) and a live PO (fully tied to inventory and payables). The new transitional PO's allow for pre-payments (assets or pre-payments on inventory) and will be tracked on the balance sheet differently. The project has about 22 pages in it. Just going through and checking out code and adding my own flair to it.

Josh and I jumped on to look at some code for his discount engine and sales tool. We modified a few things and then started testing. My browser and version of ColdFusion were kinda old and he was using some of the latest and greatest new features. We got to a certain point and I basically said, you may need to talk with Alan as he has all of the latest and greatest features and versions of software. So, long story made short, I helped on the logic side and then was unable to help on the full testing side due to software versions and what not. Great session and we made some progress.

Josh and Eric popped in. I helped Eric with a small bug in his sub special account tracking project (loyalty points and gift cards). After that, Josh and I spent almost 2 hours doing some code review on his discount engine. We spent most of the time working on the action page (add/edit and committing to the database). It is looking good and really coming along. This is the first major tool that Josh has created for adilas. Sometimes those first code reviews take longer just learn each other's style and way of coding. Good meeting.

As a random side note, some of the developer like using Zoom more than GoToMeeting. Some of them say that they have less of a delay when using Zoom. Interesting.

Josh and I worked on getting his "set manager discounts (discount engine)" tool up and ready as a beta release. We went through the code, made a number of changes, and did some testing. Great meeting. This is Josh's first core adilas piece that is being launched.

By the time we were done, we were able to merge in his code to the master branch. We had to run a database update and activate a permission. All servers got new code and the database updates but we only pushed the permission on data 0 and on data 3. Josh has a client who has volunteered to help beta test his discount engine. Our plan is to help all servers go live on Monday with the new discount engine.

The new discount engine allows for a discount/campaign to be named, set a percentage off or dollars off, tie it to a customer type, a part category, or an individual item or part. The engine also allows for date/time discounts including daily, specific days of the week, and even time based (every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm).

The other cool thing is the system is actually setup to add discounts on discounts up to a set max. For a beta release, I'm happy and I know that Josh is super excited. We'll do some fine tuning and then do a full release. We also talked about some possible video clips and maybe some tutorials. Exciting.

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

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

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

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

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

Steve and I started out together on the morning meeting. Just the two of us and we were talking about who could handle what projects and how do we feel about each person and their load/contribution. Good talks. Steve and I also worked some code and some new logic that he needed for some clients in Oregon. After that, I started to rework a sales flyer the Naters did with the adilas doggie images.

Josh joined us and had some questions about how the current discount logic worked inside of adilas. The most confusing part was dealing with a tax category of with tax included and a discount. We went through a number of scenarios trying to get certain numbers. We kept running into math errors and unexpected outputs. We called in Alan and he looked around with us. As a side note, discounts get super crazy deep, especially when mixed with back calcs like with tax included or back figuring to a known target value. We made a number of tweaks and did some testing together. I fixed one file and then we planned on letting Alan go in and make some other tweaks, including some display changes to the advanced add to cart pages.

See attached for the graphic of the new sales flyer with the doggie images.

I got an email from Josh about a few new changes that needed posted online for the new discount engine (still in beta release). He has a demo and some training with a client tomorrow and needed a couple small tweaks. I went in and made the changes and modified a few things. Merged things in and pushed up new code to the servers. Let Josh know that he should be good to go with his training and demos.

Busy morning. Dustin, Steve, and I started out the meeting. We then had Alan join, Eric join, and Josh as well. Steve and I worked on some new code together. I then passed it over to him to test it. Alan reported on where he was at on certain projects. Josh had some questions for Steve and Eric and I worked on his sub special account tracking project (loyalty points, gift cards, etc.). A big majority of the time was working with Eric and making sure we could get his new database install up and working. Because we brought things up from the ground up, it uncovered a few things with our current project. Good progress all around.

Shannon and I met up and went over some things. We started out and I gave her a demo on a couple of the new things that are being released. I had some struggles with Calvin's Adilas Label Builder, but it got better. I took down some notes and will be reaching out to him. I also showed her a demo of Josh's discount engine and where that is at. We talked about some other converging projects, including Eric's loyalty points and gift card stuff (sub special accounts). We briefly talked about some sales flyer stuff and encouraged each other to keep chasing the dream. sometimes it feels kind of allusive and hard to catch. Good meeting.

Josh joined the meeting and we worked through a few small things. He has 5 files that needed to be looked at. We talked about a few things and he will be reporting back in tomorrow for the final sign-off.

Wayne jumped in and had some questions about where and how we are storing images. We talked about what it would take to get all of those images pushed out and stored on the adilas content server. As part of our conversation, we did a quick search to see how many pages may need to be updated. We got a number around 340 pages that deal with images and/or image paths. All of those files would need to be updated.

Back on the code review project for Eric and the sub special account tracking stuff - sub of the balance sheet for things like loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, etc.

Working with Josh on some code review for the discount engine stuff. We spent some time reviewing code and making small fixes to the database updates. Josh gave me a demo and we got some things prepped. We broke for lunch and re-hit things around 1:15 pm.

Back on with Josh. We worked on help files, final code merge, and pushing new permissions and help files to all servers. Josh went in and did some live testing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Parent items and fields vs sub inventory templates and sub attributes

- Browser issues - working in one and not in another

- Discount history and tracking all of those changes

- Styled cart and super limited

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

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

- Who can help Kelly? She needs access to a developer.

- One of her main requests is getting data out of the system. One page that she would like is a full parent inventory with all flex grid fields. See the top_secret/custom/full_customer_list.cfm page for a sample that does the same thing but for customers and flex grid.

- Pieces of pie analogy - and who gets access to those developers and how do we get everything tied back together.

- Symptoms of the problem - a non whole-listic approach

- Kelly is having to take the information out of the system and run her own reports

- Two main parts that Kelly wants tracking money and tracking inventory

- What are the minimum levels for a code developer? Looking for talent. Kelly and I talked about beginners, intermediate, and advanced developers.

- Project management software for adilas

- We need money and funding to keep going

- We need to focus on our own system and get it across the finish line as a product

- The model of independent consultants and/or developers can get very scary - the scary part is the inconsistency of how the money comes in - somewhat of a feast or famine type feel

- Developers: Wayne, Alan, Eric, Calvin, Bryan, Shawn, Josh, Dustin, Brandon, Will, Steve

- People believe in the tool and like what they are doing

- In order for adilas to get bigger, we will have to change some things

- Revisiting the entire business model

- Investments - pros and cons - period for two year (funding numbers)

- Let's setup a whiteboarding time and come up with a new model

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was gone for a couple of days. Most of the morning meeting was doing some catch up and getting back into the groove. We had a number of different developers pop in and give us updates. We had Dustin, Josh, Alan, Wayne, Eric, and Steve each give some reports. We answered some basic questions and then got to work.

Shari O. and Drea were also on the call. They let us know about a tech support issue that needed some loving (small error or bug). I then started to work on that bug. It was dealing with sub inventory attributes and being able to dynamically search by the attributes. The value in question was N11 (meaning the 11th numeric field). The old code had 20 custom text fields, 10 custom date fields, and 10 custom numeric fields. We are expanding it to allow up to 100 custom text fields, 100 custom date fields, and 100 custom numeric fields. That is just a number so that we keep it in check, technically, it could be pushed further, we are just taking smaller steps.

Josh and I met up over the GoToMeeting session. He is working on some custom inventory alerts and warnings for reorder quantities and levels. We had to figure out where the existing page settings were coming in and how then to incorporate his new settings. We setup another time for tomorrow.

After that, I went back to working on the code review and sign-off for the special account tracking project.

Working with Josh on some inventory controls. He has made a small feature that allows for category level thresholds. The code then checks the shopping cart and shows small warning icons if getting close to the quantity thresholds. We did some code review and pushed some files. We will link it into the main system later on.

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

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

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

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

Got on with Josh and helped him get some of his new inventory level warnings linked in and merged into the master code branch. We pushed up the new code, light testing, and setup some other work sessions. After that, I spent a little bit of time recording notes and doing some clean-up from the morning sessions.

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

Basic to do list stuff and emails.

Met up with Josh. He had a number of questions and just needed some direction. Some were dealing with his discount engine and resetting form values. Changing from limited text fields to bigger volume text fields (varchars to actual text fields - 255 characters to 65,000 characters of capacity). Some of his include and exclude lists are hitting the 255 character limits.

We also talked about some JavaScript functions to resort output, tables by column heading, and reusing datatables and code snippets. We also talked about ways of storing huge amounts of historical data. This is especially true on his discount engine stuff and what is needed for the audit trail on those pieces. I showed him how we are grabbing all inbound arguments when editing a location with tax settings and how we store those values in a big date stamped JSON object. Last of all, we talked about some other custom reports and how to help those reports show up for specific clients and corporations (different worlds). Great meeting.

Back on stuff for Wayne to help prep some info about corporation logos and watermarks (look and feel stuff).

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

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

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

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

2/26/21: Nixing this project as OK is getting metrc soon.

As of 5/26/2020: Need to assign a new developer.

AS of 3/10/20: Josh is adding more fields to the report after Drea met with client and they advised her of changes/additions.

As of 11/25/19: Report is pretty much finished. Will start testing live data with Drea's customer.

As of 10/7/19: Steve uploaded a bunch of files on all servers. Currently launched and in beta testing. Josh may need another week or so.

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.

Meeting with Josh and pushing some code for a custom report. Light rework on the report and pushing things up and rechecking.

Shannon and I met over a Zoom session. Steve and Josh were on the GoToMeeting channel. We did some review and worked on more content for the adilas user guide. We are currently still working on the limitations of world building, under a sub document called tools that we use. We also spent some time talking about our flex bubble type model and how that analogy and/or system plays into real life and plans that we make.

See element of time # 4791 in the shop for more details.
Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4791

Interesting conversation between Josh and Steve. The topic was dealing with project management and how quickly our developers can be highjacked by custom requests. Steve was recommending that we try to capture all of the custom requests out in the adilas community funded projects vs just having the clients go directly to the developers. There are pros and cons to that... If they go directly to the developer, they (our clients) get things quicker, but it has a hidden cost (called distraction and/or highjacking of resources). If they go through a channel, it has some different pros and cons. One, we could mix and blend and figure out project management, allowocations, budgets, and priorities. We could even match funds and do other things. On the flip side, sometimes, if it gets mixed in with all of the other projects, it may not get done quite as quickly. Pros and cons and each side. It is amazing how it comes back to a balance type dance.

Steve and I had some great conversations about our guys, our process, and where we want it to go. Another topic was dealing with returning and reporting and checking in. Sometimes we have huge projects and we don't get any communication for weeks on end. We are going to try to implement more regular communications. That should help everybody know what is what and where things are at. Funny how it goes back to forming, storming, norming, and performing (team building skills).

Eric joined the meeting and we setup some big blocks of time to work on the special accounts project next week. That is for customer loyalty points, rewards, gift cards, in-store credit, and other special payment or special accounts.

Eric, Steve, and I were on the morning meeting. Eric needed some code signed off. He also had some other questions. Steve was working on his own projects and I was working on my stuff. Lots of emails and what not. After awhile, Steve and I were chatting about progress and where things were headed. We talked about how certain companies really want some hand holding to help them make the jump and transition. We talked about some our efforts in that area.

As a funny side note, we were talking about how some people go through phases. The analogy of learning to snowboard was brought up. The first couple of days and first couple of times can be brutal. We talked getting people through the "this sucks" phase and how to help them keep stepping up. In snowboarding, if they get through the this sucks phase, they end up at the "this is pretty cool" phase. Then real progression can build from there. Sometimes software or software as a service (SaaS) is similar. There seems to be different phases that people need to go through in order to really catch on and buy in or see the possibilities and the vision.

Josh joined the meeting around 10 am. He is working on some consolidated big data reports for a client. This is a multiple corporation report with two years of rolling sales data on a single report. The report has show/hide and slide out type drawers with the data grouped per corporation per month per category. As Josh was showing Steve and I the report... we kept thinking about getting away from transactional data and getting more into data warehousing and aggregated data (pre summed up data per day, per location, per category). That would really help speed things up.

We looked at some other ways of speeding up the reports and even spent some time talking about master corporations and how a master corporation (world) could actually hold the consolidated data on a per location, per day, per category level. There might be some cool options there.

After that, Josh and I spent a good hour debugging one of the reports. We weren't getting very good error messages, so we had to keep moving a break point from top to bottom until we found the errors. Sometimes the debugging process is short and sweet and sometimes it takes hours to get to the bottom of the problem.

Shannon popped on and started working on formatting documents and past elements of time (adilas university stuff). She was waiting around for me, but I was still helping Josh with the debugging. We ended up chatting for a bit and then making sure that we have another appointment later this week. This session kinda got all used up but more good stuff to come.

Dustin, Steve, Josh, Eric, and I were on the morning meeting. Each of the guys checked in and then bailed out to work on their own projects. Eric had a number of questions dealing with showing some of the discount options and data. Discounts are so crazy... We have settings, tax settings, percentages, dollars off, bulk discounts, tiered pricing, customer type discounts, etc. It can get crazy. We are also seeing a need for more documentation out in the API socket land. What do these methods return and how can we get to that quickly.

Monday morning. Lots of action today. Steve and I were the only ones on the meeting to begin. By the time we were done, we had touched base with Dustin, Alan, Eric, and Josh. By around 11 am, most of the guys had moved on and were working on their own projects.

Steve and I were talking about a number of topics. The first one was dealing with a corp-wide setting that was setup way back but never had been fully operational. It was called show_tax_breakdown. After looking for a bit, we determined that it was setup in September of 2012. It has never been used. We did find however that a smaller version of it exists in a corp-wide setting called default_printable_invoice (option # 9 for that setting) on the mini invoice and showing a tax summary as part of the mini invoice (customer receipt). This question and subsequent look-up came from a client email that wanted to turn on the old show tax breakdown setting. It is funny how things keep circling around. Often, we do what we can, and then we know that we will have to circle back around again. We keep building out nubbins where we hope to tie things in later.

While we were looking up some history on the older corp-wide settings, we also talked quite a bit about master corporations, aggregated data, aggregated systems, and being able to move away from transactional data. We still need the transactional data, we just need a way to get to secure summed up and tallied data points. We talked quite a bit about posting, locking, and levels of being able to edit things. The analogy of water freezing into ice was brought up. Some users want us to go directly to ice and make things un-editable. Others require the options to be able to modify and edit data and values. We talked a bit about our data assembly line concept and having different permissions that allow certain levels of access in the flex bubble type model. Very interesting.

We also talked about VPS's (virtual private servers) and some times needing to go back into older environments or models with new features and/or needs. We talked about flagging data, maintaining known and trusted values, scheduled tasks, harnessing user clicks and actions, and even back filling data as needed. There were conversations about single logins, flipping between corporation, showing and maintaining aggregated totals, and validating the integrity of certain data points, sums, totals, counts, and grand totals. We are seeing bigger and bigger needs on first, sales data, and then on inventory tracking. Those seem to be the hot topics for now. Sales data tends to motivate all kinds of other sub functions such as cash flow, inventory levels, tax collection, repayment, etc. The list goes on.

Eric popped in and has a number of question about discount campaigns and how to set them up and track them. We went over ways in corp-wide settings, individual entries, and talked about the discount engine that Josh worked on. There were some talks about deciphering some data and exposing certain fields and values to outside 3rd parties through API socket connections. The users would have to agree to the 3rd party terms and turn thing on, but once completed, all discount information, campaigns, and calculated values and totals would be passed to specific 3rd parties for analysis (only if turned on).

More talks about circling back around and back filling and/or completing certain data values. There are tons of transactions, and certain records hold certain values. We may also need to expose how certain values are calculated, if it is not logical from the data itself. This gets clear into formulas, calculations, order of operations, etc. Discounts play along those lines. You can skip discounts, do standalone or dis-jointed discounts, in-line discounts, percentage discounts, dollars off discounts, mixed discounts, automated discounts, stacked discounts, etc. It gets pretty deep.

While we were talking to Eric about discounts, Josh joined in. We talked with Josh about getting with Cory and working on some concise videos and educational material for showing how to use the automated discount engine. We talked posting videos to help files, updates, and the news and updates page. We are seeing more and more of need to get the correct information out to our users. Basically, a number of things and features exist. However, due to how many there are... some times certain features are not used just because people/users don't know how and/or can't find any training on the subject. Some times they don't even know that certain tools and features exist.

Still talking with Josh, the topic started shifting towards more concise pieces. We have tons of things that are big and somewhat bulky. Those are harder to consume and digest. We need to get into smaller and smaller pieces. Along those lines, Steve chimed in and mentioned almost a marketing type approach. We need to be consistent and have some consistency between the info we are trying to share and how that is presented. We need to help people/users learn, but we also need to be putting our best foot forward. That takes things to a different level and almost adds a marketing level of showing off our stuff. There are pros and cons to that. A pro is it all looks super nice and makes sense. A con is that it requires still, time, resources, and a plan (one or more persons doing the same thing).

As we got deeper into some of the subjects, I kept thinking back to the word "teams" and what teams are we a part of? Certain people or certain teams need to handle certain parts. This really isn't a free for all, it is too complex and requires certain timing, skills, and resources.

After Eric and Josh were done, Steve and I worked with Alan. He helped me on some database query questions and then Steve worked with Alan on a project that both of them are working on for state compliance issues. A couple of other topics for the day were: directing towards teams and who does what. Using news and updates more for training and tech support, GPS tracking and delivery options, and using the right tools for the right job (talking about database and SQL query optimizers - built-in helpers for certain tasks with complex logic and tons of records).

Lots of moving pieces, all over the board. Towards the end of the meeting, I worked on some emails and then recorded a bunch of notes. Things are going so fast... the only way I feel that we can keep up is to record what is happening. We can't solve everything, but hopefully, we circle back around and get a sense and/or flavor of what transpires. Busy times.

Working with Josh on his discount engine bug and merging code. We ran into a small problem and had to back out some code. We will re-hit it later today.

Met up with Josh to go over some new discount code. The new code has a feature in it called max uses and deals with the number of times a certain discount may be used. We also did some debugging on his code for add to cart. We looked up some variables and moved some declarations up higher in the code. That seemed to fix the bug that was being shown. The code was merged in and uploaded to all servers.

6/9/2020: Notes from meeting with Kelly regarding upgrades/fixes to discount engine:

1)Currently for each line item you add through the discount engine, it creates a description in the non printing notes. This can get messy for searches. Possibly make this a permission- do you want this to print? Or, only print once.
2)Most people want to price items more than they want to give discounts. 
3)Needs to work in e-commerce.

Josh will be finishing up phase one of discount engine this week (9/11/19). 

Buy X get Y (a more flexible BOGO). This has been asked for quite a bit by clients. Josh estimates this is a larger scope, as additional fields would need to be added to the database. Estimated time would be 2-4 weeks.

Buy X Get Y
   -  Categories for X
   -  Categories for Y
   -  Parts
   -  Vendors
   -  Time Periods
   -  How many max uses
   -  Make any purchase on Friday, get a free joint

Buy 2 Get 1
Buy 5 Get 2

This is a big project that Steve wants Josh to jump back into in the next week or so. Josh has already done quite a bit of work on this. This will give clients ability to assign drivers to deliveries, see where the drivers are on googlemaps, use EOT for GPS coordinates. You will be able to hover over delivery car and see drivers name. Click on it to get info about driver and delivery. 

Attached are two screenshots- a mockup of a delivery dashboard (chooser) and a map view. 

Client requested sales tax breakdown for pdf- currently it exists only on mini invoice. Instead of just adding it to the pdf,  Josh can activate the other settings that can be accessed in the corp-wide settings.

Josh and Brandon completed the planning stage meeting.

Josh and I got together over a GoToMeeting session. He is working on an inventory engine that will warn you when certain items and/or item categories get to a low or possibly low level. His new code goes clear out the item level. The old code just went to the category level. We did some light debugging and just touched base. Pretty casual meeting. I did let him know that Steve has some new projects for him. He was excited about that.

Monday morning. We had Josh, Steve, Eric, Alan, and I all on the morning meeting. Dustin popped in/out really quickly as well but most of the guys were just reporting on where they are at and setting up other meeting times.

Steve is really excited to get things planned out and moving. Over the weekend, he had some talks and discussions with a client about setting up an analytical corporation and allowing the user/person to dive in deeper on some of the data (analytics and even deep surgery - without touching the master systems). We would have to set up a few different things, but basically a full system (aka just hosting a server or basic web hosting) for the client and then allowing them access to anything that they want (FTP, RDP, API sockets, auto processing of data back and forth, etc.). Interesting conversation. The other really interesting thing is the question, what is the value of data and being able to interpret that data? It is huge. Data and its interpretation are definitely a form of currency to some of these companies.

In between the different meetings, I was working on putting some outlines and drawing some boxes and lines on top of the adilas interactive map. The goal here is to display the different pieces and how the 12 main business functions play with the different sections that we have shown. Here are the 12 main business functions and each one will be a link to the newest image.

1. Sales, Inventory Tracking, & POS (Point of Sale) - shown on the map
2. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) - shown on the map
3. CMS (Content Management System) - shown on the map
4. Online Expense Tracking - shown on the map
5. Payroll & Timecards - shown on the map
6. Calendar & Scheduling - shown on the map
7. Create Data Relationships Between System Players - shown on the map
8. Backend Office & Accounting Functions - shown on the map
9. Histories & Reports - shown on the map
10. BI (Business Intelligence) - shown on the map
11. Web Presence & eCommerce - shown on the map
12. Virtual Data Portal (Big Data) - shown on the map

Met with Josh and pushed up some new code for what he is calling an inventory engine. Basically, it is a warning and threshold system for part/item categories and on a per item level. Once the system can tell the item is within the threshold (summing up total quantity on hand minus the current cart quantity), it will show yellow, orange, and red warnings, depending on how close the levels are to the set thresholds. In a way, it should help companies that use it to get their reordering done in a timely manner. Most of the session was spent on that subject. There was some light talk about some other custom reports and settings, but mostly on the inventory threshold engine.

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

Andrew Tarvin -morning keynote

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

-Teaching fellow workers about humor

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

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

-Keep learning

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

-Breaking down work

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

-You don't need permission to be happy

-Humor is a necessity

-Humor is different than comedy

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

M=medium=how

A=adience=who

P=purpose=why

-What gets fun, gets done

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

-Building on what is already there

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

-Come back into it with some humor

-Where there is laughter, there is listening

-Having friends in the workplace

-Build human connections

-When we laugh together, we stand together

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

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

-Knock Knock leadership -add some humor

-To humor is to human

-Take action and start

-gethumor.org/adobe

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

-You are responsible for your own happiness

-Humor is a choice

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

SESSION ONE

Getting Started With CF's Docker Images

By Charlie Arehart

charlie@carehart.org

-Both CF and Lucee

-carehart.org/presentations

-bintray.com/eaps/coldfusion

-Docker

-Command box

-PMT=perfomance monitoring toolset

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

-CF instances

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

-Container for the image

-Play -with-docker.com

-Docker as a service

-Exposing ports

-Running programs across different platforms

-Instead of installing . . . just pull/run

-Most Docker images use Linux in the background

-A common Linux kernel and then connecting to those images

-Redis storage vs normal CF session in memory variables

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

-Environment variables and setting things up

-Docker images are different than instances

-Use --help to get help

-Being able to both start and stop the containers

-Poke a hole and get at other files

-Orchestration

-Coldfusionmeetup.com

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

SESSION TWO

Document Workflow and Management Made Easy With ColdFusion by Kailash Bihani

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

-cf schedule

-cf document item, cf document section

-cf htmt to pdf, cf HTML to pdf item

-cf chart

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

-cf file

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

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

-Merge and Merging of PDF's 

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

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

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

-Document signing

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

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

-cf presentation, cf presentation slide, cf presenter

-You can also go from presentation to PDF

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

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

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

SESSION THREE 

Angular for ColdFusion by Josh Kutz-Flamenbaum

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

-Sponsored by Google

-TypeScript 3

-Bindings

-Auto creating background files

-Service layers, view layers

-RxJS - Reactive Interactions with JavaScript

-Observables - save this a cache

-Operators - tons of them

-Marble diagrams

-Observable data cache with update trigger

-WebSockets

-ServiceWorker

-NativeScrtipt

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

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

SESSION FOUR

Integrating modern day JS frameworks with CF by Jday Ogra

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

-Why such frameworks 

1.SPA(Single Page Applications)

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

-Frontend, rest API, backend

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

-He was using the Chrome dubugging tools

-Vue.js

-This uses a data struck and a methods struck

-REST - (Represental

uogra@adobe.com

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

SESSION FIVE

Sealing Enterprise Applications with ColdFusion by Piyush Nayak

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

-High Availability, performace, maintainability

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

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

-Max request workers=server limit * threads per child

-Connection pool size

-Connection timeout

-Max threads

-Max connections

-Connectors and getting and setting the backend Apache Tomcat server

-Maximum number of cached templates

-ColdFusion enterprise Instance and Cluster Manager

-Sticky sessions and session duplication

-Scaling both vertical and horizonal

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

-Using     RAM://somefile.extension

-Async programing and chaining 

-cf log

-cf save content

-Tweaking the underlying Java ot JVM

-Application Performance

-Sroring caches as an external or distributed cache model

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

-Using Redis as an external session storage engine

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

MEETING WITH STEVE AFTERWARDS THE SUMMIT CONFERENCE

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

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

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

-Airports - possible solution

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

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

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

-Add graphical homepages as a community funded project

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

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

-Using the buddy system

-Going faster better

-All of us together - collective

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

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

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

-Tools and cause and effect

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

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

Met with Josh and got him going on a project called - show tax breakdowns. As a funny side note, we actually started this project (at least the database part of it) back in 2012. We have one part of it currently working on the mini invoice or 3" customer receipt. The new project will activate the corp-wide setting (created clear back in 2012) and actually cascade it to a number of other sections. The end goal is to show a full tax breakdown per invoice. Some of these cities and states want tons of details on their invoices for compliance reasons. We have the data, we will just turn it into a setting and go from there.

We had Bryan, Wayne, Russell, Alan, Steve, Josh, Shawn, and myself on the training meeting.

Alan was presenting and we started really light and did a small review. We were going over components, objects, inheritance, extensions, and using some cfscript tags. They were getting into overriding attributes, values, etc. Lots of talk about the difference between tag based code vs script based code. ColdFusion allows both tag and script based languages. Adobe is leaning more toward script based as they go forward. Just an FYI.

We did record it. See attached for a copy of the recording.

https://www.petefreitag.com/cheatsheets/coldfusion/cfscript/ - cheat sheet link to some cfscript stuff

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

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

Shawn and I were touching base on 2020 tax and withholding updates. We also had Josh join the meeting and he asked some questions about tiered pricing stuff out in ecommerce land.

Working on some discount and my cart favorite research for Josh. He is looking at a possible project to add discounts to my cart favorites and also take the my cart favorite buttons and the group options (tiered pricing levels) out to ecommerce. Here were a few things that I found:

searching for "my cart favorite" in the developer's notebook - from 1/1/7 to 12/31/19 - sort by oldest first - then do a sub browser level search for the word "discount"

Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3659 - working on in-line discounts and wanting to extend them to my cart favorite buttons

Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3764 - need to expand the my cart favorite buttons - a client wanted it

Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4032 - more need and heading towards discount engine with Josh

Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=3666 - mixing of buttons and discounts

Web link - time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=748&id=4137 - three ways to tie-in discounts on buttons

Web link - developers_notebook_home.cfm?sort=ASC&q=tiered%20pricing - multiple entries with tiered pricing (may have to sub search in the browser for the words "tiered pricing") - as a side note, some of the tiered pricing pieces started to come into play as early as 2011. Interesting. Still a big need in end of 2019.

Met with Josh over the GoToMeeting session. We were looking at his code branch for the tax breakdown project. He had two projects on the same branch, we split things apart and made a plan for the rest of what was needed.

Got into Josh's tax breakdown project and started pulling out code and merging in pieces. Started with corp-wide settings, then on to mini invoices, then to printable invoices, and also on to PDF invoices. Ran out of time, but started to working on the print simple invoices (show multiple invoices at a time).

Alan did a team training event. We had Josh, Danny, Steve, Wayne, Bryan, Russell, Alan, and Brandon on the training meeting. The main topics were dealing with using different tools for different jobs and then going into a small quiz/discussion on what tools work best for what needs/jobs/projects. Good discussion. Some of the topics were dealing with loops, data structures, options, and scenarios for different tasks.

See attached for a link to the video.

Shannon checked in right on time. However, the training meeting went over a bit and two of the developers had questions after the meeting. Both Bryan and Josh had different questions about the projects that they are working on. By the time I got to Shannon, we ended up canceling the rest of our meeting so that I could prep and test the POS (point of sale) hardware for the demo. That really helped me out, as I was struggling to get enough time to test everything. Good stuff.

Team training meeting with Alan. We had Bryan, Danny, Dustin, Josh, Wayne, Brandon, Steve, Russell, and of course Alan on the meeting. The topic of the day was simple to complex data structures. We started out with Arrays and then went deeper. Part of the course was showing the difference between script vs tags (how to code ColdFusion - CF script vs CF tags).

We got into topics such as member functions, structures, queries, objects, algorithms, and deeper into conditional logic.

See attached for a link out to the video.

11/25/19: Check with Bryan to see if they are looking at a custom solution.

Josh has had requests to connect e-commerce to discount engine.

11/20/19:From Paul:  I'm reaching out because we are running into a bit of an issue with our customers and Ecommerce. We currently do not post our weekly specials to our Ecommerce page due to the limited availability of certain products, etc. We would like to begin posting these online however what we will really need is the ability to set "maximums" for items that way customers can only take 1 unit, for example, if we only have 10 vs trying to order all 10 and others wont be able to purchase any which is pretty unfair. Does Adilas currently have this feature where we can set maximums for items in inventory or is this something that you would have to program for us?

Cory is thinking if there is a way to connect the discount engine to e-commerce then this could possibly solve the issue, as limits can be set in there to determine how many of one item can be sold per cart or per line item.

4/20: 27.44

from 4/14: 30

Up to 3/1: 26.48

from 11/19 through 1/1/2022: 112.4

11/18: 15.56

11/17/21: 17.5

10/21: 12.08

10/18: 38.04

10/5/21: 27.07

John is working on this:

2/25/21: Notes from today's meeting with KW and SM. Also from another eot that I just found today.

1) Choosing the hour is available for the everyday option. When you choose a day or a range of days, you should have the everyday functions of adding time frames. Multiple per day would be great ie 9am-10am, 10pm-11pm (Happy hours- only Monday through Friday)

2) Settings that allow the discount engine to connect to e-commerce!! 

3) Possibly the discount happens in the cart and not when added to the cart. (In ecomm only adding one item at a time) This will help with the buy x get y. *We did determine that the limit of how many line items can  receive the discount happens in the cart, so it seems there is already coding there for this.
Minimum =needs to pull from the cart info and not from when scanned.

4) Adding functionality that allows for multiple categories and multiple items. Currently, if you choose one category you can assign specific items. If you choose multiple categories you do not have the option to assign specific items.

5) A snow owl pop up so you can sort the vendor list or item list as they are super long. Would be great if the vendor list only included inventory vendors, and even better only vendors who are associated with the categories or items. 

6) Not imperative but an add or edit or submit button at the top would be helpful.

7) Not imperative but would be nice to show in an item if it is linked to any discount engine items. Similar to how it shows that an item is connected to a smart button. Could go right there next to the smart buttons.

**There seems to be a weird scenario, where if you have the wrong vendors populated in the list for the item that you choose to discount, when you add that item to the cart it doesn't recognize the discount. Kind of goes back to limiting the vendor list.

Adding other notes: Everything on this date was quoted at $5000.

6/9/2020: Notes from meeting with Kelly regarding upgrades/fixes to discount engine:

1)Currently for each line item you add through the discount engine, it creates a description in the non printing notes. This can get messy for searches. Possibly make this a permission- do you want this to print? Or, only print once.
2)Most people want to price items more than they want to give discounts. 
3)Needs to work in e-commerce.

Josh will be finishing up phase one of discount engine this week (9/11/19). 

Buy X get Y (a more flexible BOGO). This has been asked for quite a bit by clients. Josh estimates this is a larger scope, as additional fields would need to be added to the database. Estimated time would be 2-4 weeks.

Buy X Get Y
   -  Categories for X
   -  Categories for Y
   -  Parts
   -  Vendors
   -  Time Periods
   -  How many max uses
   -  Make any purchase on Friday, get a free joint

Buy 2 Get 1
Buy 5 Get 2

3/13/20: Molly specific requests: Updates requested, including improvement for: Tiered Pricing, Buy x Get Y. Corrections for Buy X, Get X: not just Line QTY Requirements but Add Total QTY requirements so this works for people who scan. 

11/25/19: Not sure how high on the priority list this is. Putting it down in the list for now.

One client experiences that the discount engine takes quite a while to load (I haven't see this, but Drea did see it on this clients system). Wants to add buy x get y.

Interested in having boxes next to the days of the week so you could run a special Mon, Wed and Fri. 

Have the vendor list after the categories, and if you only choose one category, choose the vendor, and only have that vendors items populate in the list.

Can you exclude specific items from the discount, the way you can include specific items?

Discounting based on key words.

Josh popped in and was asking about simple bug fixes. He wants to be one of the guys to help respond and fix some of those smaller bugs (say 1-4 hours - little mini projects.). Yesterday, he and Alan knocked out a small one that our users needed. We were shooting around some ideas and challenges. There was some talks about ways to gather the help/support info from the user on a per page basis. We also talked about who services those tickets and how we track them. We are thinking about elements of time and using that tool to hold and process the help/support tickets.

Danny chimed in and was talking about the tech support process and also the follow-up after the fact. Building customer loyalty by providing the fish to the seal (reward) and following up. You gain a lot of ground that way.

We did a small demo of some of the new screenshots from Jonathan. Lots of good ideas and options. Steve really liked a number of the new concepts that he was brining into the mix.

Build and break, build and break. This seems to be a reoccurring theme. Build it, let people use it (almost even abuse it), when it breaks, you rebuild it and start over again. You have to do this over and over again.

Cory jumped in and we started to go over the list of adilas projects. The ones on the call/meeting were Josh, Cory, Steve, and Brandon. We created a new priority of 11 and started putting in smaller projects and bugs into that area. We also created a new small bug report, just for Josh to look at and start chipping away. Lots of good talks and communication going on.

People have been asking for more simple interfaces. This deals with bringing in inventory and running things through the shopping cart. Super simple stuff. They either want super simple preset interfaces or a fully configurable interface where they could point and click and show/hide things.

towards the end of the meeting, both Josh and Cory were talking about projects and list and Steve and I were on different calls and meetings. That is super cool as well. We have a lot of really good people playing the game with us. That is awesome.

Alan did some team training on if statements, switch statements, for loops, for each loops, while loops, and do while loops. We had Alan, Brandon, Steve, Danny, Josh, Russell, and Wayne on the meeting. Here are a list of smaller sub videos that were shown. Each of these are less than 4 minutes each.

https://youtu.be/IRY9B43QbBM - if statements
https://youtu.be/c6ObO5Ind8U - switch statements
https://youtu.be/jxfhdJsAD8I - for loops
https://youtu.be/o6S6NMrIPC8 - for each loops
https://youtu.be/NMoOKoAMJSI - while loops
https://youtu.be/9lTQlrbtHP0 - do while loops

See the attached video link for the full 1 hour training meeting.

- Steve would like a one page document that talks about history of adilas and how the hosting of the system evolved. Different server levels - shared hosting, semi-dedicated servers, full dedicated servers, VPS (virtual private servers), stacks/clusters (linked and joined dedicated servers), etc. Steve would like to use this document to help with sales and up sales of systems.

- Josh popped in and set up some times to meet with both Steve and I. We also talked about some other possible options using cookies and printing settings. CFCookie and CFPrint. Josh is working on a number of smaller projects.

- Eric joined and had some questions about special accounts and where we are headed from there. We setup a time to talk later today about taking special accounts out to the gift card level. That would be awesome.

I got an email from Josh and he had to help out with some family stuff. I pushed up a small file for him to test and we will reschedule our meeting. I used the time to do more emails, pay bills, and coordinate meetings with other guys and gals on the adilas team.

Alan lead some team training again this morning. See attached for a copy of the recording. We had Alan, Bryan, Danny, Dustin, Josh, Steve, and myself in the training session. We covered recursion (interloping functions and/or self calling functions) and got into closures as well. Some of these are somewhat advanced techniques. Along with that, we lightly talked about base cases, how to jump our of recursion processes, map, reduce, filter, each, stacks, queues, and other programming options.

We spent some time talking about FILO (first in last out), LIFO (last in first out), and FIFO (first in first out) operations. These are pretty common in computer programming and how to loop through various records. As a fun side note, those same terms are used in accounting and inventory tracking on how to account for items being moved through a company. Interesting.

We did some light dives into the underlying Java libraries and using Java stacks (arrays). Alan went over some options and member functions like push, pop, size, etc. We also talked about using built-in member functions to help format and string things together in modern script languages.

See attached for a copy of the training and recording.

Wayne lead out the training session. We had Alan, Bryan, Dustin, Josh, Wayne, Brandon, and Steve on the meeting.

- From Wayne - focusing on the process vs just the code. Strive for test driven design.

- Going step by step vs trying to design the whole thing at once.

- Currently, we all do testing as we are building the new code or features. The test driven design process leaves a virtual trail (crumb trail) of what was done and what was tested. That becomes very valuable as the processes get more and more complicated.

- It may take awhile longer on the frontend, but over time, you will save time and be able to have more confidence in your code and subsequence changes later on.

- We went through a number of test options. As a side note, Wayne spent some time making sure that we know that we can create mock datasets and be able to fake the results.

- Unit testing and making sure you are testing the smallest unit of that function. Be specific.

See attached for a link to the video recording.

Cory and Josh were talking about the number of clicks, settings, and being able to show/hide certain fields. The two hot points were the shopping cart and the PO (purchase orders) page. Basically, getting items into the system and then being able to sell out those items quickly. We are leaning towards some shopping cart settings and also breaking down the needs into smaller steps as we know that some of the pieces may end up being really big.

We talked about sketching things out on paper/pencil and then moving things into a graphic mock-up, coding and then wiring things up.

We showed both Josh and Cory some of the new graphic mock-ups that are being done by both Jonathan and Chuck. We looked at some of their ideas and mock-ups to talk about options, layouts, and configuration options. We talked about showing them, meaning our clients, some of the mock-ups and graphics of where we are heading, that would be way better than having them design things from the ground up.

Managing customer expectations. That is always a challenge. As we were getting deeper and deeper, we are seeing more and more needs/wants of being able to configure and customize their own settings and such.

One of the projects that we talked about was dealing with updates and helping to let our clients know about certain updates before they get rolled out, especially if the updates may have consequences and/or possible issues. Some of the high traffic areas are carts, invoices, and state compliance stuff. We talked about delaying some of the updates instead of just pushing up new code.

Josh recommended a update log that could be searched and even have a small blame section - who coded it. Hopefully blame is the wrong word, but we all know what that means.

Maybe a different section, like the developer's notebook, where we could publish some of the updates and make announcements. We also talked about scheduling the code pushes and making sure that we aren't running faster than we are able.

Molly joined us towards the end of the meeting and had some great comments. Good stuff.

Alan did some team training today. We had Brandon, Alan, Bryan, Dustin, Josh, Russell, and Wayne on the meeting. The main topics today were dealing with closures such as map, reduce, filter, and each.

- Using each - iterate through each element.

- Using filter - limit records based on a specific condition.

- Using map - modify or transform each element.

- Using reduce - convert data into new type.

- As a syntax help tip... most of the closures have this format for the possible arguments - value, index, array or key, value, struct.

- Alan like the reduce function - lots of power. As a note, when using reduce, there is a previous and a starting value (where did you start and what are you currently working with that was possibly altered from a previous loop).

See attached for the video recording.

Wayne lead a developer's training session on more unit testing and getting deeper into a group project for storing shared files, content, and assets for our clients. Wayne, Brandon, Bryan, Josh, and Alan were on the meeting. Here are some of my notes. See attached for the video recording.

- Setting a focus on certain tests. You could also exclude certain tasks or tests from running. Simple additions to the code. To focus a test, add a "f". To skip or not run something, add an "x".

- Unit testing and virtually telling a story of the steps in the testing process.

- Logical organization of your testing

- Behavior driven design (BDD)

- Talking about ColdFusion mappings, reusing code and creating functions, specs and executable documentation, mocks and creating mock-ups, and other topics.

- There was some discussion about extensions, classes, and sub classes - object oriented programming concepts.

- Creating code in a minimal view or minimal code base mentality

- What are the long term effects and the stability of the code when unit testing is added and/or included (including the confidence in the code base)? How does that effect the whole team and not just the individual who was running or writing the original tests. As a separate question, what do the results mean... think of the others who will one day run these same tests. Pay it forward.

- Thinking about asynchronous function calling and keeping local variables clean without cross-contamination (mixing variables and values due to asynchronous calls and responses).

- More on mocks and pretending to have certain values

- Testing and picking one piece clear through the end and then go back and add the next step. Follow it all the way through.

- The size of our testing code library - start small and where we are and then build up our library from where we are (current projects).

- Going back to your tests before and after you new changes.

- Many different ways of testing code. What is the value of writing tests?

- Keeping things small and tight. Unit testing should be both small and tight.

- Focus on the process (why) of what we are doing vs the what or how we are doing it.

4/6/20: See attached image for report look. Will pull from inventory engine and inventory #;sf. The report will pull from the thresholds set in the inventory engine (no changes to Josh's code) and only those items that are below the set threshold will show. Ex. if item is set to 20, and it has 20 in stock= won't show. If item has 19 then will show in report. The report will show the on hand quantity for the item (parent and subs) Same example, this item would show 19 as quantity.

1/21/20: Waiting to hear back from Molly's client on what direction they want to go.

1/7/20: Spoke with Josh about this and also Molly. Josh thinks he can do something that won't be super complicated if we use his existing threshold "engine." Clients would add min in his engine. We could direct it to a different page so clients wouldn't have to access from shopping cart. It would make it location specific due to the fact that it is connected to the cart location (I believe). He could do a simple report that pulled that data and if clients had different threshold settings per location the report could pull both.

Molly really wants to do something simple, but maybe a step above what Josh has, although the multiple thresholds for different locations hadn't originally occurred to her as something her client might want. We need to discuss further.

12/16/19: Currently exists in the shopping cart. Called Inventory Engine. Dealing with thresholds. Currently not tied to locations- only categories and items. If you have multiple locations it can get messed up. Not in inventory report itself.

Molly's vision includes another field in item itself. So when you set up the item, you put in a threshold quantity. Dashboard would show all items below their threshold grouped by category, vendor, item, and live quantity.

Brandon proposes a separate table- master setting for tracking thresholds- turn on if yes or no. No= leave it. Yes, allow for extra piece. Automatically set it up. Show the locations if they have them.

adilas will match funds if built as core.

12/12/19: I have a client who is requesting something related to adilas project referenced below. Specifically, they are requesting a dashboard, that shows inventory items (at any current time) that are below an item level qty threshold. 

Meeting with Andy and Paul from Elevele.

Ongoing Bio Track API issues

Josh and Alan joined the meeting to go over needs and current development of the pieces. Josh helped to run the meeting and did great. Alan and Josh were tag teaming. Alan was showing things on his screen and Josh was talking to the client. Towards the end, the client asked about more dedicated server type options. Steve was helping to give them some more information about the current server transformation options.

Andy and Steve were talking about technology, kiosks, standalone systems, using tablets, custom menus, etc. All kinds of ideas. Lots of ways to use technology and how to promote their brands and what not. Some cool ideas. Some of that gets into custom options and development.

Great team training meeting today. We were working on real world problems and things we do all the time inside of adilas. We went over building form controls how we have been doing and where it could possibly go. Really fun seeing the different ways and even how we could push it clear out to the component (reusable custom code/tags) level. Lots of fun. We had Steve, Brandon, Alan, Bryan, Danny, and Josh on the call.

We spent some time going step by step and building on the last code sets. We talked about scoping variables and when to not scope the variables (scopeless). We did quite a bit of training on reduce options and the power of modularizing the components. This leads into an MVC (model, view, controller) type level with options. Good stuff.

See attached for the video.

Alan, Josh, and I were on the team training meeting. We had quite a few ask for the video recording to watch it later. We spent the whole session dealing with backend databases and some technical stuff about database storage, indexing, primary keys, foreign keys, and other database engine topics.

After the training session, Alan and I chatted for a bit about where we are going with the training and also where we are going with some of the upcoming projects. Alan would like to see some of our team get specialized assignments and he would like to help manage the team better (project management). We briefly looked at the camp adilas project and how we can take that to the next steps or next phases of development. Awesome new project that could use some of the new techniques that we are learning about.

- Brief talk about application modes and how that works. This deals with how the system is broken down into the 12 main players or 12 main application players (think of the core layout). The modes work in a similar way. By default, the mode is the "data mode" or information mode. That means what is stored or organized per main player group. For example: All invoice information or data can be found under the invoice button or invoice category. In the data mode, you can get to the data for that main player group.

- If you switch the mode to say: "permissions mode", you would get all of the permissions that are related to that main player group. For our example: Say the invoice button or invoice category. You would get all of the invoice permission. You could do the same thing for settings and other main topics. Basically, you choose the mode and then select the player group. You then only get stuff that is related to that player group.

- The main application modes are: data mode, permissions mode, training mode, settings mode, usage and stats mode, tech/concept mode

- The 12 main application players (main player groups) are: customers, invoices, quotes, items, stock/units, elements of time, employee/users, vendors, PO's, expense/receipts, deposits, and balance sheet items. A couple other main  groups are things like banks, flex grid tie-ins, locations, corporations, media/content, and the list goes on. The primary 12 are listed first.

- The magic comes where you are able to click on a mode (data, permissions, settings, training, etc.) and then select one of the main player groups (invoices, customers, items, vendors, etc.). You are then able to see what plays into that section or group. Mixing the application modes and the player groups, allows for all kinds of combos.

- The concepts above are built from picking the mode first and then the application player group (example: data mode >> lets work with invoices). What if you were able to go the other way (example: work with invoices >> show me the permissions or show me the settings). It may be cool to go back and forth between the ways of interacting with the underlying pieces. As a side note, we do the same thing in a shopping cart (how we create quotes and invoices inside the system). It does matter if you start with the items or you start with the customer, as long as you get both pieces before you checkout, you are golden. Non-linear and information and relationships flow in multiple directions.

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

- Talking about the camp adilas project

-- 1 person doing Ajax calls (Josh) - hardcoded data is passed back and forth - no real connections to the backend (kinda middle ground), 2-3 people doing the backend wire-ups (Brandon, Eric, Dustin) - deeper or core developers - maybe one to do database connections and the other doing the service layer (wiring), plus the designer (Chuck).

-- We will make a basic concept page that has some different parts and pieces. We will then assign that concept page out to the different developers. The concept page is just so that we can get some ideas and virtual mini library assets.

-- On the concept page, we want to get a full sign-off on that page before we let the other guys advance. That is checkpoint of sorts. The concept page will be somewhat of a group type project just to make sure that everybody knows what is going on. Walk through it with them, then let them drive, give feedback as needed.

-- Set a standard for the new stuff.

-- On the Ajax calls - we are thinking about pulling back actual HTML vs just data - that way we could just replace certain pieces without having to worry about mixing HTML with data.

-- Brandon and Alan will work together on the project management side of things.

-- Have meetings with each role to get them pointed in the right direction.

-- We want to write out test cases as well.

-- We will be creating a new folder for the new camp adilas project stuff. This includes js, css, html, ajax, and code.

-- We will work with Wayne to help with domain pointers and internal mapping.

Josh and I met up and pushed up some new code for the driver license scans and being able to populate data into the add/edit customer records. After that, I did some email stuff and got back with Calvin and Jacob from the IT Dream Team. We are trying to setup a consistent monthly effort to keep pushing things forward. That's exciting.

Training meeting with Wayne. We had Wayne, Alan, Josh, and Brandon on the meeting.

- We talked about testing concepts. Lots of injecting and mocking things up. Simulator type stuff.

- Discussions on caching, session stuff, web components, efficiencies, and custom tags.

See attached for the video recording.

Alan lead the team training today. We did a light review and then jumped into more database logic and topics. We spent quite a bit of time discussing database data types and basic select queries. We had Brandon, Alan, Danny, Josh, and Wayne on the meeting.

See attached for the chat log as well as the video recording.

Database team training done by Alan. We had Alan, Brandon, Bryan, Danny, and Josh on the call. The topics discussed were: tables, layouts, relationships, joiner tables, one-to-many relationships, data diagrams, data types, triggers, stored procedures, functions, and views (snapshots in time or specific copies of table data). There was also some talks about automating actions, tight and loose connections and dependencies, multi-step processing, and other options.

We also spent quite a bit of time talking about how we have a lot of existing code in ColdFusion (server-side scripting language) and how we could move and/or transfer some of that power and control over to the actual database. This transfer of power and management could be code, logic, locks, and other database specific code and/or functions. As we keep going forward, we will most likely see more decoupling and loosening of the server-side scripting language (currently Adobe ColdFusion) from the underlying database code (SQL). The database may end up doing more work on its own vs having to be told what to do every time from the scripting language. Small transfer of power.

See attached for the recording.

Meeting with Josh to complete projects and select new ones. We ended up chatting, talking, and deciding on some directions. Josh and I set up some other time to work and do some code sign-off.

Team training meeting done by Alan. We had Wayne, Brandon, Bryan, Josh, Danny, and Alan on the meeting. We went over some basic database queries and talked about a number of key pieces dealing with queries. Some of the topics were: Select statements, in clauses, or statements, aggregate functions, counts, table joins, etc.

See attached for a copy of the video recording.

Josh sent me an email and he will be working with Alan tomorrow to push the code changes.

I worked on recording notes and reviewing things.

Alan did a team training on database queries and sub queries. I got lost at the end, just because it was new terrain. It is good to go over that type of complex query. We had Alan, Brandon, Danny, Josh, and Bryan on the training session.

See attached for the video recording. 1 hour.

Eric and Steve were on the meeting talking about direction and 3rd party solution stuff. We really want to get to the level where we are actively charging for what we are really doing. Josh ended up popping in and had a few questions.

Met with Josh and pushed some code up to data 0 to test parts page changes. I need to merge those 4 files into master and push them to all other servers. Also met with him to work on bulk labels changes and he will send me files when he tries to work something out.

Met with Josh and he had some questions about how to assign bulk custom PDF labels from the shopping cart. We went over the document management section and got him all setup so that he could deal with some of his questions. Mostly just looking for direction vs full on answers. Anyways, we got him going.

Worked with Josh for an hour. We got a few of the new pieces of code done that he has been working on to help control the default unit of measure on a per category level. We did some testing, made a few changes, and pushed up some code for testing. The new code only went up to one server at this point.

Merging and helping Bryan with his custom report for the thresholds that Josh built. This is a sub set of the inventory engine project. Eventually, we would like to replace the existing pieces with a more robust and location specific threshold system. Stepping stones along the way.

Met up with Eric to go over some new print settings for shopping cart labels. We determined that we would somewhat cherry pick some of the older code and then build from there. Eric seems to have a good idea and direction that he thinks will work.

Spring Big Meeting

Both Wayne and John were on the meeting going over server speeds and stats. Wayne was showing some logs and pages. Steve and Wayne were looking at logs and server availability and usage. Some of the clients keep growing and are putting more and more demands on the servers. Looking at pure traffic. They got into comparing usage, stats, CPU's, RAM memory, connections, data bandwidth, for some of the bigger boxes. We decided to upgrade a few of the boxes with more specs and options.

Servers can only go so far. If we can streamline the code, it helps way more than just adding new CPU's and more server memory (RAM). That also takes time though. We may have to come up with a balance.

Switching to Emerald Fields and their custom data dumps. They have tons of data but not knowing all of the data relationships. Too much data and they want us to help minimize those technical and almost back-end level needs. Steve and Cory met with Josh on 7/8 and discussed what he needs. As we talked about it, we came up with some thoughts. See below:

- Lots of our API sockets deal with simple data calls and showing that data. The Emerald Fields API sockets are more of deeper look into the database as a whole vs just simple pointed API sockets.

- We need to plan, quote it, break it into pieces, and then follow-up on the smaller pieces. Sometime, too big of a bite is harmful.

- Wayne said - it is like they need a custom report, but instead of giving them a finished report, we are building them new database customer report tables - where they can then pull and filter data from a more raw type source. Interesting view. We build custom reports all the time. This one just happens to be a custom view or custom dataset, in database mode or version, vs a normal custom report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phone calls, texts, and reaching out to some of my contacts. I'd like to reach out to Sharik Peck, Aaron Hill, Jonathan Johnson, Mike Hall, and Josh Wheeler - to start with. Maybe others later on.

Brainstorming on quick and small ecommerce packages. And then help them get it all setup and going. Kinda a free trial basis for a couple of months. Work some magic to do some quick sprints if needed (custom or general code work to help them out).

I also sent a big text to Steve to tell him yes, I'm planning on running with ship B (adilas lite). I told him last week that I would officially let him know on Monday what my decision was. Well, this was it. I'm in!

Lunch meeting with Josh Hanks. He's a friend from church and lives close by me in Richmond, UT. He has a fun startup story, and I found a lot of similarities to how I got started. He would go work for a company, figure out their processes, make improvements, and help them become better. Anyways, we had a fun chat and were able to find a number of similar circumstances as we got started.

Josh has used a few different CRM (customer relationship management) tools and I was going to pick his brain on likes, dislikes, wish lists, etc. See attached for some of my notes. Fun conversations and topics.

Here are a few takeaways:

- On SaaS (software as a service), here are some of the main complaints (not our product specifically but in general). People don't like extra steps, or required steps added by admin to do simple things. If the interface is too hard or too many clicks, it turns people off. If changes are made to flow, processes, or verbiage, people want to know (and yet they don't want to know everything - delicate balance).

- Mobile is really nice, but there are certain things that still work so much better on a laptop or desktop environment.

- Almost all of us have numerous channels and applications to use and balance. That could be emails, messaging, calendars, software, etc.

- People like to be able to edit things. If you lock it down too tight, it causes different problems. Let permissions, histories, and settings play in as needed to keep things secure but still open.

- People like options to control popups, reminders, feedback, snooze options, finished/completions, follow-ups, etc. They just want to control what hits them (virtually).

- There can be major pain trying to bounce and juggle too many calendars. For example, one for CRM stuff, one for projects, one for mail stuff, and one for personal. It can get kinda crazy. Lots of bouncing between multiple windows.

- We talked about one-to-many relationships and subs of time.

- As a wish list for CRM software - Josh loves to see recent activity, follow-ups, associated quotes, associated projects, progress and completion percentages, and even projections. Other things that are needed are good data, quick access, quick notes, and great drill-downs to other details and information.

- We talked lots about the need for custom fields and custom data points - per industry and per company.

- Opportunity costs and client acquisition costs - the hidden costs.

- The whole last part of the conversation flipped from CRM over to logging projects, hours (timecards per project or per location), quick notes, and logging mileage. Ideally, all of those things all nice and tied together. Josh was wanting and needing an app to do just those things (projects, hours, notes, and mileage). We talked about maybe making a mini version on some adilas features to make that happen. That could be really cool. The other need to that was availability to upload pictures and scans to those calendar events. Here's the kicker, we already do all of those things inside of adilas. We would just have to tweak it a little bit to make it flow, just like he wants. A small custom wire job of the existing tools and features. Pretty cool!

- Lastly, this is more for me, but when we build out fracture and adilas lite, I really want to revisit the settings and options for elements of time and scheduling. See element of time 8004 in the shop for more details. Lots of cool ideas.

Recording notes and then meeting with Alan to touch page. We gave each other updates on what we were working on and progress being made. I gave Alan a small pitch to show some stuff that Josh Hanks and I were talking about over lunch (see EOT # 10437) and how we could make a little mini app for projects, time tracking (hours), quick notes per day, and mileage - all tied into one little mini app. That could be really fun and would or could be one of our little industry-specific skins (from the value add-on core model).

Zoom meeting with the Yogen Fruz folks from Canada. Suzi and Steve were leading out on the meeting. Here are some of my notes... kinda random:

- They (the Yogen Fruz folks) want one stable platform used among all of their brands. Something that will lead them into the future. Reports in real-time, real-time analysis, data mining, deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole (big data wants and needs).

- They want to get a better picture and more control on the inventory control level.

- Accounting and operations (mixed) - they need to track flavors, add-in's, waste, accurate food costs, etc.

- Breaking things down into smaller and smaller pieces - more control and knowing where they are at financially. Basically, empower the users to see what is really happening.

- Being able to pull the data out of the system and support people.

- They had Phillip, Josh, and George on the meeting. Another lady was on for a bit but had to jump off.

- They wanted to see the fruits of their labors - they had given us some instructions and wanted to see where they (we) are at. Phillip was mostly leading the charge and asking the questions. He seemed very sharp and fun.

- They wanted to know about the clover payment integration system - progress, rates, and cash back amounts. Steve was talking about tokenized transactions vs raw data transactions. Also, they were talking about the need for breaking and re-establishing connections every couple of hours (automation stuff). Light history and evolution on some of the old and new payment options (merchant processing).

- Switched over to bulk product labels. They were worried about permission levels. They wanted to possibly have special labels that would dissolve in water. They may look at normal options if the cost is too high or only a certain label printer is able to handle that kind of label.

- They turned the meeting over to Suzi for a bit. She was showing them new settings within the cart. Went over a bunch of new things.

- Taking ideas that work for others and then using those ideas - shameless borrowing of ideas.

- Fulfilment options - fill in based on settings - timing - etc. Steve chimed in and had lots of info. He has helped and built a couple versions of the fulfillment homepage within adilas. That was pretty cool!

- Print and label settings from the cart - speeding things up. We may need to add some more settings to help with less clicks and automation options.

- Reporting - They are really looking for real-time data - top 5 products, top 10 products sold, etc. All at the click of a button.

- BI stuff (business intelligence) - projections and real-time data - even multi corp - enterprise level needs

- Steve was talking about paperless options and pitching other adilas backend office features.

- Steve built a special report for them while they were on the demo. He was talking about favorites and custom reports. So much power already exists.

- Limited time offers - LTO's - they want to track some of those things. It was important to them. We don't fully know what those are but they seemed to think that some of our existing functionality would work great for them. Somewhat unknown to us...

- The searchability of adilas - so many options to help you get a good flavor and taste of what is really going on.

- I got to show a few things - multi-level reporting. I jumped into some existing accounts and did a quick demo of a few things.

- Small talks about hardware and converting things from one system to another - switching things over

- Towards the end, they were talking about next steps - other meetings, changes, live testing on hardware, and SOP's (standard operating procedures).

- After the main meeting, Steve and I were going over some code stuff. Small tech talk stuff. Light re-camp and team meeting with the adilas folks. Suzi and Josh stayed on for a bit after everybody else left. Great meeting.

I was driving home from the Colorado and Canda trip. I pulled over at a gas station and jumped on the call. Everyone else was on the GoToMeeting session. Here are the notes that Cory took. Thanks Cory!

Hi Brandon-

Here are my notes- messy!

- They could use some more training

- They were asking for Customers and Loyalty points (Data had issues)

- They want enterprise reports (they don’t even have two corps to see)

- They brainstormed a list of what is needed

- 3 month trial

- Also interested in another software- Snappy PC

- Fight against loyalty points and gift cards

Question:

Are they using adilas since you left?

What are their expectations?

- Very strict culture

- They think enterprise is bigger than it is

- Dashboard with FranPOS- they don’t like it

- **Steve wants to know what the MVP is for them

- Brandon said it will take a few hours to come up with that

- Brandon said he will send them an email letting them know Sean is their point of contact and that we met and are coming up with an MVP.

- We need to let them know we have already invested 150K and we need to get a commitment from them.

- Phillip likes the customization but is leery about some of the processes.

- Example- When you add a new item and how to add a new button- this is so much work! All of this can be sped up. Buttons are not required, but they like them.

- They add new items quarterly so that will be some work for them.

- Takeaway: Need to have buttons on the enterprise level in order to roll these systems out

- We need to decide where we draw the line: the code is done, the rest is custom.

- We may need to have Josh tell him this

Phone call with Josh going over ideas for a new build out and quote from a bigger company. Just going over ideas and plans.

Meeting with Bryan. He is working on some white label options and fixing the forgot password stuff. We ran into some problems with the adilas university server and being able to push up new files via FTP. My credentials are old and outdated.

Going through tons of emails from while I was gone for a few days.

Meeting prep. As the meeting got started, we had Sean, Cory, Alan, Steve, and I on the meeting. Here are some of my notes: Kinda all over the place.

- Sean has set up the logins for the new users up in Canada.

- Looking at what it will take to come up with an MVP (minimal viable product).

- Steve bought some new hardware. He will be playing with it and getting it all wired up and configured.

- How do we keep pushing the ball down the road?

- Setting up limits. We want to play but don't want to get ran over.

- Going over a list of to do items.

- Steve really chimed in on where he thinks that we are at. He really took the ball and ran with it today.

- Risk vs Reward - We spent quite a bit of time going over options.

- Steve is excited about the number of items that the Canada company has. It's really pretty small.

- Number of locations - lots of potential there

- Steve was talking about a book - "The Art of War." - Making deals and business stuff.

- Show what we have done - clover integration - $23K, features, advantages, and benefits, list out an MVP, show a percentage of what we have to still do, things that are not on the list... wishes, future desires, tablets - online orders and delivery, website, ecommerce, we do the POS software. We can help with hardware but that's not our specialty.

- We have some depth - adilas - operations and accounting

- Look at what we can help them with...

- Mission statement - help your business succeed

- Could be some scale problems as we go along

- Promises made and expectations

- Deployments - it can get dicey (interesting)

- We have... list it out - we have a solution

- Get them talking and thinking about something else - distract them what they are worried about - sometimes, what someone is worried about, they are not as big of thing as you think. However, if all you ever do is just think about that one thing, it can change your focus. You aren't taking in the whole picture. Get them seeing the whole or bigger picture.

- Hardware - pros and cons - come up with a valid solution and then allow them to choose, buy, or configure their own system

- We can see our way through a bunch of things - looking down the road

- We can setup corps... we haven't really done much mirroring of corps and settings

- Alan - Sunk costs, new costs, and building going forward

- Alan - Getting direction (where are we going as a company?) - He likes where we are going

- Cory - He (Aaron - owner) needs to invest in us. Money and time - how long will it take and what do we need to still build out?

- Steve and Cory going back and forth - nice little volley back and forth - risk and reward stuff.

- We want Eric to ask for his other stores to be on adilas. Eric is a store owner.

- Alan - Once they are up and running, they may not need more right away

- Steve - We can build anything... there is a line or an end zone - a goal is in sight

- Goal - What will it take to get this thing to launch?

- Alan - Questions about customer support and server up time

- Alan - Other possible services - customer support, training, etc.

- Alan - They are trying to see how serious we are? Almost a test on us

- Alan - We get our hardware stuff up and running and we show that we have a solution

- Steve - Give us a list and we'll cross it off

- Steve - Like a game of football - How much time is left in the game and what are our plans?

- Steve - Pushing this company further down the road

- Steve - This could be our golden ticket - Let's punch it!

- Alan - If we don't do this, then what? Let's use our current team and get it done.

- Alan - this is not vaporware... this is right here in front of us

- Steve - They could be the last client that we ever need

- Helping them see the future and wanting to stay with us

- Steve - What about global ecommerce stuff and then locations where people could pick things up

- Steve - They, are looking for us... they hate some of the competition

- Cory - We may need to fake it (customers, gift cards, and loyalty points) - We have all of those pieces, they are just at the corp and cross-corp levels. Not at the enterprise level yet. If needed, we could just have them run per corp until we get the other pieces. That's our fall back.

- Alan - Just noting that we only have some data (not all of the locations). If needed, we could do it per location

- Cory - Wanting to setup some action items

- Steve - Wants to start a list, send it around, tout our horn, and show who is doing what

- Steve - Assume the sale

- This is a test

- If you are going to fake it until you make it, you need to pretend that it really works and it already exists - smoke and mirrors. We've been at this for over 20 years. There really is a lot there.

- Alan - We can't over promise - stick to the basics

- Steve - We are working on... Steve-hardware, Alan-enterprise, and Brandon-reporting

- Communication - short and sweet but keep it moving

- Steve - Asking about customers... direct vs enterprise

- Sean - On new customers, they just need a few fields... such as: first name, last name, email, cell phone

- Alan - Let's do the customers and gift cards at the corp level - We'll clean-up later

- Steve - He is planning on using one printer to handle both receipts and cup labels - sticky receipt paper

- Steve will work with josh a bit to help with direction

- Alan - Enterprise is a value add-on piece. We need to figure out the pricing structure there.

- Alan - We will gain some momentum as we keep doing the enterprise stuff - this is where we are heading.

- Alan - We add a lot to adilas but we never up our prices - We need to manage that better to recoup or get ROI - Dynamic billing

- Steve - no Metrc (statewide compliance system), under 100 items, not even tracking inventory yet - Let's do this thing!

- Sean - On ecommerce, they aren't really tracking inventory, they just need to use their menu and go for it.

- Steve - simple on what they need, scale on the reporting and needs - here we go

- We are figuring out where we are going... Okay, let's go!

This didn't happen. I was sick and had to cancel the call.

Meeting with Josh and Tobias. Small intro between all of us. We chatted for just over an hour. The goal was to see what it would take to revamp adilas. We eventually turned to what it would take to use the API to put an app layer or custom skin over the top of the whole platform. We talked about what FlyHi did with their API socket work and the app that they made. Here are some of my other note:

- Too much - not sleek - needs a reskin - needs to be an app

- The data entry person - who needs what? Keep it super simple. Go talk to them and figure it out.

- What does it look like - pair it down

- API sockets

- Assumptions and being willing to add layers over time

- Being a real business

- Tobias had a great approach based on the use cases not the software itself - don't think... what can it do or how does it work, think... what do I want it to do, don't worry about the current pages and/or limitations. How could this be used? Wouldn't it be cool if..., etc.

- Build on top, abstract, add layers - strip it down and make it specific for each industry - you could do this for any industry (app on top of a backend system)

- Find the low hanging fruit and start there

- Step function (layering it)

- building out a base and then using that as the starting point for other apps

- After they left, I spent some time watching the FlyHi video demo. This was a company that uses adilas but also built an overarching app to manage a whole other side of the picture (app side). They did a great job!

Setting up a new corp for one of Brandon's friends. He loves to play with CRM's (customer relationship management programs) and wanted to check out adilas. Prepped some things for him and got a new corp and new user setup. Went over to his house for some training. Spent a couple of hours showing him around on settings, customers, elements of time, and flex attributes. Fun little session.

Phone call with Josh and Phillip from Yogen Fruz. Good call. See email review that I wrote on Monday morning. Decided that it would be best to pause the adilas pilot with one of the Yogen Fruz locations. We are coming right into the biggest and heaviest gift card and loyalty points part of the season. Adilas can handle that, no problem. The main problem was that Phillip and the Yogen Fruz folks only have one location on adilas and all the rest are on a different platform. Without crisscross communications between the systems, it almost puts that one location that was doing a trial version or pilot of the software on a virtual island. We have manual work arounds to help with the process (gift card entries), but we are almost too late for implementing that right this minute. This was the best decision.

The adilas team will continue working on things in the background while things are paused. Steve is working on new hardware bundle, I'm working on some custom requests and reporting, Alan is working on some enterprise stuff. All is well. I'm in full support of the decision. We will keep rolling down the road.

My plan was to send an email back to Harsha and Moran, answering questions that they had. As I was heading that way, I got an email from josh with a comparison between adilas and another point of sale system. He also offered a number of solutions for them to look at. I also got an email from Sean showing them some of the promo stuff. Sean is using the demo site to help show them ideas and flow. Great idea.

I think that I will just keep building new tools and then do the email once some of the stuff is done. Working on some new settings and changing the defaults a bit for the mini scan cart. Started making a few changes. Tried to add a new corporation to my local and ran into some errors and/or bugs. Got pulled off in that direction.

Recording notes. Importing customer data for Josh Hanks. He is playing with adilas (one of my friends). Small fix on some links to the old customer homepage. Quick phone call with Bryan. Finished uploading all of Josh's customer contacts into the system for him. Light custom work on the import.

There is a training need... you can almost feel it - Bryan had some training questions and even needs some possible training in Spanish. We aren't there yet. People like what we do but then they need training. We really need to circle back around and try to focus here. This is a note for me, to circle back around. We have hundreds of videos on YouTube (adiasbiz channel), but nobody has spent the time to catalog them or put any text or verbiage with them. That could take a while but it could be super cool.

Phone call with Josh about ecommerce. Emails and light tech support. Looking into a new fix from Cody on the check write system. Pushed up new files.

Switched to Yogen Fruz stuff. Getting into custom reports and cash flows. Talking about daily closeouts - sweeping the floor. Steve was saying, let's help them so that certain things never happen (helping us/them stay within the lines). We also talked about being able to help them with their inventory (body shop line - bath and hair products - different company). Steve and Josh are setting things up to create some budgets and then work through those things (list of tasks, projects, and estimates). I spent some time and pushed up a video of part of our conversation. See attached.

Working with Steve and Chuck. Going over reports. Working on and building the dream - that's what we are pitching and selling. Talking about showing them the mock-ups. Helping to put a visual with the pitch. Steve has been kissing a lot of frogs (potential investors and venture capital stuff). He's hoping to find the one (just being silly... like a fairytale). Sell the sizzle...

Switched over to the website proposal and series of questions. I took a bunch of notes here:

- Need for website to be tied into the inventory management system.

- They want a CMS (content management system). They want to control all of the pieces and be able to make the changes. Steve was pitching our own mini CMS type system. Chuck was pitching WordPress with some plugins.

- Talking about running all of the services (one-place shop) for the client. We are your dev team.

- We have so many pieces that are close... they just aren't fully done.

- We may have to help them with a mashup right now. Then, later on, we may be able to build out all of the pieces for them (internally). Chuck is worried about the time to really build it out (right now).

- The power of mock-ups. If you have 14 different plugins... to install, configure, and manage, it can get messy. If WordPress goes down, it makes us look bad.

- Maybe pitch two options... one for WordPress and plugins route - the other, just adilas, we build it all and keep it all up for you.

- If we build it, things take time. real time is needed for planning, building, and we need real budgets, etc.

- We really need to control all of the pieces. They want full control and speed to market. If we build it internally, we have assets that we can throw at it. Basically, fully outsource it to us and we will run with it. We are your one stop dev shop.

- Maintenance fees to keep things going.

- Back to selling them the dream.

- We will save you so much time and effort by systemizing things.

- Talking about social media... that (social media posts and such) becomes the changeable web content, the main website is more of the backend stable piece, that's where you order and interact with the actual products and inventory.

- Talking about real native "mini" apps that tie into the adilas system backend. Keep them small, open or create the doorways, we will go from there. Basically, just a mini portal into their world. Mobile first approach.

Chuck had to take off. Steve and I were talking about inventory thresholds. We were also talking about the future of where things are heading. Lots of mobile stuff. Everybody wants efficiency. Josh is really helping to push on things. That is huge.

Small side note - Brandon was riding snowboards with Aaron Hill, on Friday 1/10/25, up at Beaver Mountain. They were talking about ways to make their clients sticky. When they had to go their different directions, for the day. Here is what Aaron said to Brandon - "Really make those clients sticky! Win that battle! Make it good!". Great advice!

Fixing a comparison document thing for Josh. He sent me both an email and a PDF that needed a little bit of tweaking. Converted the PDF into a Microsoft Word document and did some formatting. Sent it back to Josh.

Meeting with Yogen Fruz about the website and POS system. Six of us on the call together, talking about where we are at, and how to do things. Josh, Steve, and I were on the meeting from adilas. Light talks and small frustrations, both sides. This has gone on quite a while (over five months). Trying to figure out the next steps. We kept going back and forth between the POS and the website. They are somewhat tied together (projects as a whole). It seems like timing and figuring out comfort levels is the next logical step. Still in the waiting game a bit. I showed them a quick view of the new Knox report.

As a side note, when we were talking about the website... we are proposing a combo of a fully integrated POS system, CMS (content management system), and eCommerce. That's a pretty powerful combo, when you mix all of those pieces together. Other companies either do one or the other or have one or more plug-ins to connect with the other pieces. If any outside changes are needed, they have to be directly involved, meaning the outside vendors or companies. This happens over and over again (with other companies) vs a CMS that lets the users control things from an integrated system like adilas.

Email with some instructions for josh and how to access the Knox report (link to a small 7 minute video on the Knox report). Recording notes from this morning. Then working on the quick cart line discount stuff for touch screens and the mini scan cart.

Started to build out the first round of new price and discount settings. Got into a number of YF tech support things. Some texts back and forth and then some small phone calls and emails. Just trying to help.

Phone call with Bryan to go over some bank automation and pulling in data through an API (plaid) for catching bank activity (expenses and deposits). Going over thoughts and ideas and possible steps.

Clean-up and pushing up some force page refreshes for the mini cart display and the mini scan cart.

Emails and tech support - texting back and forth with Josh about Yogen Fruz and who is going to help them with their hardware configuration stuff. Working on the touch screen discount option for the mini scan cart. It's been a month since I was able to work on this project. It takes a bit to get back into it. Here we go!

Working on the JavaScript and popup modals to help control the discount options through a touch interface. Lots of testing. Got it pretty close. It pops up and shows the correct data, you just can't change it yet. That is next on the docket.

There were 12 people on the call. 4 from adilas (Steve, Sean, Josh, and I). The rest were from Yogen Fruz. We started out and Sean was giving a demo to their team. He started with clock in/outs. Then he showed some simple carts, checkout options, gift cards and loyalty points, and discounts. Simple POS stuff.

He was able to switch from the demo site out to the live site to show some real values. They, the Yogen Fruz team, got into some questions about the backend and cost of goods. It got into accounting pretty quickly vs just POS stuff. Steve took over and showed some new AI (grok) stuff that he is working on. I took a bunch of other notes. Here they are, no special order:

- They are wanting an offline solution. Adilas is a full web-based solution currently.

- There was a super diverse group, lots of questions from their different sides. Operations, POS, hardware, accounting, managing, etc.

- Steve was talking about adilas and how it is setup as a paperless office. Tons of options to add photos, scans, images, and other media/content or files for documentation. Currently, the YF team is very heavy into tons of spreadsheets and such.

- Talking about backend accounting options. Light show and tell session.

- Ivan - new guy - seemed pretty technical. He has some great questions and tried to keep the meeting on task. It was going all over the place.

- One thing that Steve and Josh were saying was, they could use their phones or any other web connected device, if the Internet went down. They were even talking, say a physical unit goes down (physical failure). They could even use any device until we (they) get them new hardware - different backup options.

- Lots of talk about API socket connections and connecting with delivery options and other possible vendors and 3rd parties. Mixing and blending pieces.

- AI talk... where we are heading - sanitation of data - security and transfer of data.

- Steve was pitching enterprise level mapping for customers and items.

- Aaron (main boss) was saying... we are planning to release these features in stages. Some of the questions were directed to POS, ecommerce, scheduling, payroll, financials, etc. Aaron seems to be catching the vision. I don't know all of the stages, but imagine something like: Stage 1, POS and inventory tracking, stage 2, ecommerce and menu boards, Stage 3, backend accounting, etc.

- Lots of talk about hardware stuff, including menu boards, printers, and POS stuff.

- They wanted someone to fix the Windows settings for multiple displays (2-sided POS station - cashier and customer side). They can do it right now, but they want it to be automated. That is a Windows thing but we will get someone on that.

- Towards the end, there was some talking about pricing and what is included - setup, monthly, ecommerce, support, changes, etc.

- This is just for me... It really seems like they want the moon, but they are trying to talk us down on everything (cost wise). Most of our other clients, we offer something, and they say yes or no. They do a lot on their own and we either train them or setup a plan to get them the help that they need. This one seems like there will be some direct handholding along the way. We just have to make sure that expectations are set before we (or they) commit to something. I have already seen some feature creep for this project (the scope keeps changing). I really hope that we nail down the stages or phases and then stick to that. It could get crazy if that is not followed.

- Good overall meeting. We left it in their court. Steve and Josh will do some follow-up.

Phone call with Steve going over some sales strategies and ideas. He was on a meeting with a lady who knows Josh from California. She was proposing that we change our onboarding process. Instead of talking to a company and showing them a small demo, basically telling them that we will do a 3 month free trial and help them along the way. She recommended that we find businesses that have multiple locations (say 2-50 locations). We then jump in and show them vs trying to talk them into saying yes.

She was also telling Steve some basic numbers... For example: If you take our total overall revenue and divide it by the number of clients (regardless of what they have paid), you get a simple client value. So, for us, it came out to an average client value of $11,000. So, even if it takes us a couple of thousands of dollars to get the client, they end up being worth $11K ish (average).

She was also recommending that instead of building out a huge demo site and then trying to show the client, we spend that same amount of time helping the actual client do their stuff and run their business. If we do this, we spend the same amount of time and potentially cut the training time and help a client see what we can do, first hand. Interesting ideas.

Here is the quick summary - just for fun - free trial - figure $2k onboarding - worth $11k average - give it away - go after businesses with multiple locations - reallocation of funds - helping businesses succeed.

Helping Steve with a quick merge conflict resolution for a file. He also showed me some of the efforts that he and Josh are working on to do voice automation bots through AI agents. They are playing around with a company out of California that Josh knows.

Meeting with Steve and the developers who are building the bot engine and AI agent for a voice-controlled POS (point of sale) options. They are using the adilas API endpoints and sockets to interface with us (currently). We got on the meeting and we went for a little over an hour. There were eight of us on the meeting. We would speak and then wait for them to translate. They showed us a small demo and had a small agenda ready to go. We talked about different options. Originally, they just wanted to use the adilas API sockets and endpoints. Now, it feels more like they want to build the engine inside of adilas to have more options and access. That is potentially good and bad. We want to look deeper into this before we just say yes, do it.

After the meeting, Steve, Josh, and I got on a call and talked about some possible options. We will meet again as a team on Monday afternoon to come up with a plan. We will then present that plan to the Nxtlinq (spelling?) guys.

On a meeting with the guys from Nxtlinq. They showed us some progress and had a few questions. They are just barely being able to start using some of the URL options and prompts. We still have a ways to go, but they are making progress. After the meeting, I sent an email to both Steve and Josh with a small overview of how it went.

Meeting with Steve. He and I were working on the AI agent stuff and where to go with it. We would like to include some code on our headers and footers to help the agent show up on every page. We really want to use the adilas mini API, full adilas API, and our new URL crafting (AI quick search). That is our goal. Josh joined us at the end, and we had some good conversations about ideas and options.

Emails and then a phone call with Josh talking about AI agent options. Looking for some scenarios and user stories to help with flow. POS or shopping cart stuff.

On a GoToMeeting session working with Bryan to help him get lined out on a custom data upload project for a lady who does candy vending machines.

Small fix for Cory. She sent me an email that was reporting some CSS being shown at the top of a page. It ended up being that one of our developers was not allowing output and was suppressing whitespace. It ended up not using some custom CSS that we had wrapped in cfoutput tags (Adobe ColdFusion stuff), in order to pull in special corp-wide settings, colors, and look-and-feel settings. pushed up new files to all servers.

On the meeting with the Nxtlinq guys. They had a couple of questions. They want to know when we will get certain deliverables done and live. We also introduced Bryan Dayton as a new adilas team member on this project who will be helping Steve, Josh, and I. That should really help. Often, Steve and I are on all kinds of meetings and don't get the time to get everything done that we need to. Adding in Bryan to the mix should really help. We will work with him to help pass the vision and help direct him in the right ways. Good stuff.

After the meeting, jumped on a phone call with Bryan. Talking about next steps and setting up some time to meet tomorrow. After that, I sent a text message to Steve with an update about what we went over and when we are meeting next. I'm excited to see where things go.

Meeting with the Nxtlinq guys. Steve, Josh, Bryan, Matt, Roger, and Vincent were on the meeting. We showed them some progress and sent them over some help file links. Mostly what we were able to show them was the new documentation stuff.

One thing that Vincent said that I liked was "Remove the friction". That should be our main goal in this venture. I liked that saying. If we could remove the friction on other parts, things would be even smoother. Without getting too technical, you have to have some friction, but making things smoother would be a plus. There is a balance point.

Recording notes. Reading over a plan from Josh dealing with AI stuff. He was chatting with an AI bot and got a number of suggestions and ideas on how to help train the adilas AI agent. See attached for that document.

Small side note, I was thinking and daydreaming about what it might take to help train an AI agent... I have trained quite a few humans - project managers, developers, designers, clients, users, consultants, and sales reps - just not an AI agent yet... :)

Meeting with the Nxtlinq guys. They were giving us some updates. They changed the word verify wallet to verify account. That will help out a bunch. They were giving us a number of other updates on things that they were changing and updating. We are all making good progress. They were making a few requests on and we were as well. Both sides and working well together. They are trying to get us some global admin permissions so that we can help and teach the agent. Lots of talks about ways to monetize things (we've got to pay for this thing). Steve, Josh, and Ted were heading that up. This is new territory for everybody. Anyways, the adilas AI agent (by Nxtlinq) was opened up (turned on and allowed) on every corporation and every server this evening. Here we go!

Meeting with the Nxtlinq guys. They wanted a way to get and show the error messages in the chat bot. If the page is able to navigate to the correct page, all is well. If not, meaning it throws an error, they want a way to get at those error messages. We also talked about helping to make better error messages to show what to do to fix things (make things more intuitive). They gave us an update and have optimized the memory functionality of the AI agent. There are now a number of users that can affect the global context (actual AI training) within the system.

After the meeting, Ted, Thomas, Josh, and I were talking about 3 buckets for our customers - low hanging fruit (those who are using it), those who could use it but aren't, and those who don't want to use AI. Ted was really pushing for us to try to get the people actively using it, even while we are training it. His focus is the commercialization process. We were talking about the need for data and feeding the AI agent. After that, we were looking at AI data and logs, encouraging people to keep going and ask for more (what else would you want from the AI agent - figure out what the customers are wanting). Somewhat of an outreach plan to help commercialize things to our customers.

Phone call with Josh to go over progress and direction. He wanted to know how the training was going, for the internal AI agent inside of adilas. I reported on what I knew and told him that the new persistent training was not sticking quite yet for the AI agent. I sent an email to the Nxtlinq guys, and they are looking into it.