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Adilas.biz Developer's Notebook Report - All to All - (147)
Photos
Time Id Color Title/Caption Start Date   Notes
Click to view time photos.
AU 2878 Daily Tasks 10/14/2014   • Emails on new permissions for invoices and limiting invoices to a specific salesperson. Also helping an intern with some css placement for a custom label job.

• On the phone with Steve going over direction for the sub inventory and cost controls (packaging) section. The first hour was basically a pitch to head towards round two of elements of time as a virtual wrapper for all main system player groups. We did a GoToMeeting session and were drawing and talking concepts for over an hour. Really fun session. We used the graphics from 10/9/14 as a basis of our discussion. We also used the interactive map and the GPS core layout graphic to show flow and concepts. I had a lot of fun. 3D or three dimensional pieces were brought into the discussion. As a note, the 3D elements are: x=Time, y=Money, and z=Space. (Please see sketch on scan in photo gallery)
o X – Time is on the bottom – it keeps running and may be broken down into years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc.
o Y – Money flows upward or downwards – In business a point or trend that is flowing upwards is often a good thing (not always). Also, we want all monies to be tracked clear to the bank and financial level. Think of cream rising to the top. As a historical note… My dad is the one who came up with money as the y axis. That came from a walk earlier this morning.
o Z – Space provided the depth structure of the items as they relate to time and money. Space allows for organizing, stacking, layering, packaging, combining, and separating. There are tons of things or attributes that may be applied to space.
o Anyway, back to the telephone meeting, we used the last hour and a half talking about requirements for sub inventory and cost controls. See elements of time #892 in adilas or time #2786 in adilas university (developer’s notebook) for the actual brainstorming document. We spent a lot of time dreaming and talking about subs of subs, extensions, matrix, rules, and assignments, sub attributes, packaging, barcodes, space, etc. Great session.

• An intern came over to work on the web/API documentation project. I helped him out a bit and tried to get organized. I started entering subs and elements of time to help us monitor custom code projects. We really need to do this.
• Recording custom code projects into adilas – using elements of time.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Adi 989 Real In-Line Extensions - Dynamic Database Table Extensions With Rules & Data Types 3/30/2015  

Currently all sub inventory attributes use these inline data extensions. 

Needs to be extended.

Also increased flex grid from 15 fields to 30 custom fields.

 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 882 Sub Inventory 4/12/2016   On a GoToMeeting session with Steve. We were looking over code for printing bulk labels with sub inventory attributes. We talked a lot about current projects and direction that we are going in. Lots of API and ecommerce stuff going on. Sub inventory is still a pretty hot topic as well. Our plan is to just keep going and pushing on things.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 1758 API calls 8/31/2016   On a GoToMeeting session with Nick. We worked our way through a custom PDF label that uses sub inventory attributes. We totally redid a big part of the page. Lots of testing and commenting the code. Sent a copy of the new structure to Steve and Danny Shuford.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 1625 Adilas time 9/6/2016   On a GoToMeeting session with Nick, Alan, and Steve. We launched some new code this morning and then got a series of different emails about small bugs and such. We were bouncing between the different emails and pushing up code as fast as possible. I sure am grateful for our user base and how much they help us. We learn about problems pretty quickly.

Anyways, one of the errors we found was dealing with corporations that had sub inventory activity but didn't have any sub attributes (special custom fields) to go along with it. So, they could see the items but couldn't get to a place to sell them due to there not being any attributes. All of the new code is based off of the sub attributes and the record count of the attributes. So, if you don't have any, it causes the system to stop short of doing what is supposed to.

Anyways, we spent some time and built a custom report to help find and fix the problem children pieces for sub inventory and assigned sub attributes. That took a big part of our day. That little report took about 3.5 hours to finish and get things all done. The report was stored under the temp folder with the name of check_for_sub_activity_but_no_attributes,cfm. Busy and crazy morning.

I'm super tired, I may go back to bed here soon.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 1879 Filling in deleted data 9/22/2016   Working on an update page to help with missing and lost sub inventory data. The old code allowed for deletes on the sub inventory attributes. Working on code to help restore at least placeholder data for pieces that had been deleted. Only data from one major table was missing. We had to piece together data from 4 or 5 other tables to figure out what was missing. Pretty in-depth recovery stuff.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 1882 Working on sub inventory templates and new form fields 9/29/2016   Pulled an all-nighter working on the new changes for sub inventory and being able to add/edit sub inventory templates and sub attributes. Lots of testing and then cascading some new status values around the site. There were 50+ pages that were changed and updated. Pushed new code to all servers and ran special database update scripts to add new columns and fill in possible deleted data from older code. Super long night.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2676 Virtual Post-It Note 10/6/2016   - Conversions are starting to get bigger and bigger as well. How does that play in with the part weight field.

- Part weight is playing in more and more - What do we want to do with that? Currently it is being used for gram control and/or an alternate multiplier.

- We would love to be able to name that field and make it more standard. Currently they are using the catalog_page field (aka the bin number). We may need a couple of extra fields here. This field is a varchar (text field) and allows for both alpha and numeric values. In some of our code, we are having to check for numeric values and then doing multiplication. If it is not a numeric, we are treating it like a value of 1 which doesn't change anything.

- We may need another unit of measure field to help with the part weight or some other key factor.

- Go back to the parent/child relationships - Is this data needed on the parent or on the individual child. Expand on this. Also, this information may be part of the conversion process. Some of the data may need to be stored higher and then cascading downward. It also may need to be recorded on a per child or per mini conversion level.

- The parent items may need a couple more fields that could be dynamic. We need both text and numeric data fields. Maybe thing shipping, ecommerce, weight stuff, alternate units of measure. For example: Say a single candy bar (1 each) may also need a spot to store the number of carbs or sugar content (2.7 milligrams or 5.67 fluid ounces or whatever).

- What about other possible thresholds? Think broad... this may not go here, but we have sub inventory, sub attributes, flex grid, corp-wide settings, etc. What about real in-line extensions of the database. That might be really cool. If they want more or less fields, it would be really cool to allow that kind of functionality on the parent item level.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 3796 Virtual Post-It Note 11/8/2016  

-Problem with duplicate Sub attributes with the same name. Check this out. Problem pulling things back up and it not finding either entry. The problem may be between different data types; strings, dates, and numbers.

-Platform as a sevice

-Scalabilty

-Saas based offerings

-Oracle public cloud

-Oracle marketplace

- Layers and architecture

- Future strategy and road map

-We are the provider

- You are the industry export

-Get familiar with the offerings

-Infrastructure as a service

-Skate to where the puck will be - think ahead and look up 

 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2105 Bug Fixes 12/24/2016   Working on a sub inventory bug fix for showing the sub attributes. We were getting some errors when text values looked like dates. This was pretty common for things like batch numbers and such. We added some logic to make sure it was really a date before formatting it.

I also reached out and contacted different developer's and got reports from them. I made a couple of small tweaks to the Beaver Mountain site stuff.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2062 Adilas Time 12/27/2016   GoToMeeting session. Working with Steve on the scan QR codes page. Added some new access points and worked through some of the logic. We then went into a big brainstorming session dealing with mini conversions and how to keep things really simple. Steve was pitching ideas of using sub attributes (numeric values) to help with the conversion stuff. I took some notes and we drew some sketches and talked through some things.

These are just some random notes:
- Mini conversions... this is coming hard and fast.

- Use the sub attributes and allow the numeric attributes to be of type "conversion" (this would be new). Similar to how the text fields could be "text" or "select". We could then add to the defaults for numeric as the cross-over or unit of measure values.

- QR code is a small mini database - able to hold lots of data.

- See the scan_qr_code_interface_action.cfm for some code stuff.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2140 Adilas Time 1/9/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Alan, Steve, and Eric. We started out going over current projects and what the priorities were. I gave a small list and then we talked about it. For the record, here is a small list of things that I saw as needed:

- Fix the forgot and reset password section. The old code only deals with a single server. We now have multiple servers that need to play as one.

- Planning out the next phases and projects.

- Changes to the Beaver Mountain site. They need some new code and logic to help automate things on the horizontal view of time (custom interface page for Beaver).

- Circle back around and work on the dollars off for in-line discounts.

- Scan and finish up the year end stuff. We talked about this and I will be sending it to Craig.

- Sub inventory updates and changes. We had some complaints that the sub attributes were being displayed in a horizontal view and you couldn't see everything all at once. We need to build some of those pieces into a vertical display.

- We need to go through the adilas API and update documentation and do some fine tooth combing and testing.

- Work on the adilas user guide.

- On sub inventory, we need to preset the checkbox for items marked as subs only on the mini add/edit PO line items page. This will help save a click or two.

- On invoice line items, we need to add a way to look-up possible subs incase something was miss recorded in the cart. The users want a "subs" button similar to what we just released in the view cart page. The cart stuff allows us to convert parent inventory to child inventory. The invoice stuff would just help with updates and recording the right RFID tags and other sub info.

After the morning meeting, Steve and Alan started working on testing state API's and such. I started in on some of the sub inventory tweaks and changes. We all did our own thing and interacted as needed. We had a client get on and work with Alan and Steve. We then had another developer get on and work with me on a possible custom cart and item based flex grid issue. We tested as much as possible and saw that it worked according to what we tested.

The rest of the time was spent answering questions, working on our own projects, and pushing the ball forward.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2141 Adilas Time 1/10/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Steve. I was working on changes to sub inventory and he was doing phone calls and what not. Most of what I was working on was a new vertical display for the sub attributes (they used to be horizontal or across the page). I also spent some time and worked on the my cart favorite buttons. Steve had a guy who asked if we could tie in the barcode logic for the my cart favorite buttons. We did and that is awesome. Here is how it works:

If your main item is a normal parent item, it will work as before. If it is set to subs only and it can only find one open package, it will play at the sub level. This could be viewing the sub package details page, adding a single sub to the cart, show the subs in the advanced add to cart page, or passing in custom values to the direct add to cart page or the advanced add to cart page. Super cool and makes the my cart favorite buttons play better with subs. The main key is the main item status being set to subs only. That is the main key.

I also fixed the advanced add to cart page and pushed all files up to the live servers. Light testing and merging into the master branch.
 
Click to view time photos.
Shop 2157 Adilas Time 1/24/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Steve. More notes on the QR codes.

- They want to be able to put their own SKU or item number on the label.

- Steve is allowing them to go to an open package and then populate what they are wanting... (mini preset conversions). They have preset multipliers (0.7grams, 1gram, 3.5grams, etc.). They can then enter amounts and watch to see what the total is.

- Steve is recording the number of the presets as a sub attribute held on the sub entry itself. He can then check against those numbers to see how much has been sold and what is still available.

- Instead of going subs and sub attributes... what if we break more into a traditional model (one-to-many) and start going vertical vs. horizontal. Create a physical grandchild id, record the weight, the cost, the price, how many made, how many sold, special description, etc. Example: Say PO #27, Line # 4, Sub ~15, Conversion `77 (`=back tick or #=pound). We could then use a QR code that was something like: ~15`77 or ~15#77.

- Keep going vertical in a one to many relationship.

- On pricing tiers and conversion templates... make these their own free roaming tables. We could then attach them to any sub templates. They exist outside (so we don't have to remake them over and over). We could then attach them as needed.

- Conversions will need rules, setup options, verbage, and conversions that allow back and forth traffic. Steve was calling conversions - never land - off in the clouds.

- We need to track cart status, quote status, and reserved status. See attached for a simple drawing. Here are some notes. The ~15 is the sub. It is in grams. The `77 and `78 are conversions. The m is for made, the s is for sold, the p is for price, the q is quantity (in grams - same as the parent), a visual unit of measure, and possible pricing rules. Along with that, we also talked about tracking the cart status, quote status, and a new one called reserved (who else if asking for it) status.

- We really need to get into sub categories before we get into smart cart logic. This will then make it easier for sales, promotions, campaigns, etc.

- How will loyalty points and coupons play into this model? Build the whole system out and let the computer help solve the problems. The loyalty points need to be as automatic as the pricing tiers. Think all roads lead to the same virtual outcome. Mix and blend as needed.

- The end goal is the employees scan the item and it knows how much, what, where, and when... Lots of one to many relationships.

- Along with this... we will eventually need to look into custom labels. Track _x and _y coordinates, custom verbage, auto feeds, dynamic mapping, etc. Logos, backgrounds, symbols, hard coded stuff, conversion stuff, and pricing tiers.

- Conversion land... You may be required to label with a QR code so we could track things back down. We may need to nail down conversions before we get into custom labels.

- This may bring things into the 3D world building level. _x = time, _y = resources, and _z = stacking and layering. Conversions and labels might be part of the _z level or Z axis.

- We are also seeing more need to track things via RFID tag and other digital models.

- Doing conversions... we still need to figure out how to show this on an invoice, quote, and/or cart. We still may need to get into more smoke and mirrors (hidden fields, hidden lines, visual quantities vs actual quantities, etc.). We have lots of other brainstorming ideas and notes on this. Check here in the shop, in adilas, and in the adilas university.

- On a different note... What about a cash drawer reconciler? We could add a new placeholder inside the cart struct and populate it with some kind of setting or something. Tie it to the login. It will change on a daily basis. We would then need to look at a way of recording this on the deposit or invoice payment level. We may also have some options based off of users, banks, and other things. This gets into sub locations or more Z axis layering and stacking.

- tie the deposits to the drawers. This could also include over and short options if off.

- small idea on the cart... if you need drawer management, maybe have a watcher on the view cart page that prompts for a who are you and what drawer. We could keep some of this stuff in the session scope so we don't have to prompt each day. Another option might be to have an assignment where a drawer could be assigned to one or more users per day. Kind of a management tool. If yes, it could look it up and record the values based off of the management tool.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2167 Calvin Time 1/24/2017   Phone call and GoToMeeting session with Calvin and Steve. We talked on the phone and went over things and then came back to the computer.

Steve was explaining to Calvin what the problem was and/or is for one of our clients. They are running the system similar to a short order cook that the person in the front gets the order and then has the person in the back fill the order. Things get kinda crazy building the cart and then verifying what is actually going out the door. Chain of custody is really important.

Currently we are using the QR codes to record the sub id, the price, and the quantity. This is helping but we need to keep tightening things down. The problem comes in when they start breaking down packages but they really don't add new items. That means that some of the smaller pieces are somewhat floating in the background. They are looking to record some details but not go clear to the mini manufacturing model of a full build PO. Basically, they are skipping some steps because it takes too long.

One of the goals is... At any given point we could see where the inventory is at... is it on the shelf, in the cart, quoted, sold, destroyed, unknown, etc.

We showed Calvin what we have and what we are planning. Our conversation today was mostly just putting the project out there and letting him know what we are looking for. He said that he would talk with the client and get back with us on Thursday to do more planning and figure out what we want to do.

See attached for a video recording of part of the session.

Steve is currently doing some light conversion stuff. He has built a page that takes a sub package and allows it to be broken down into smaller pieces. He has named sections (virtual units of measure such as eighths, cones, grams, shake, etc.), we then allows for a quantity, a weight and/or how much of the main item (at the main item unit of measure), and then a price. He then records it on the subs attributes for the child package.

We are using QR codes and putting the sub id, the quantity, and the price into the QR code. Part of the process is showing the total quantity that is available. This allows the person to virtually work backwards.

If we used a database table and recorded all of the actions. We could take a package and then allow it to be broken down into smaller pieces without doing a full build. Then on the QR code, we could tell that it came from sub or child ~25 and conversion `33 (back tick sign). We could then look-up tons of info on the two different pieces. Package ~25 could tell us batch numbers, costs, parent details, sub attributes, etc. Then conversion `33 could tell us the virtual unit of measure, the real quantity, the factor or fake quantity (show quantity), the price, and how many of these there are.

On a new table for tracking what is in inventory, queued up, in the shopping cart, in other carts, and what has physically gone out the door. Is this daily? Is this per corp? How do we clean up things?
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2168 General 1/25/2017   Working with Steve over the GoToMeeting session. More work on the print bulk cart labels. He had a couple small questions dealing with looking up subs and sub attributes for sub packages.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2300 SHAWN 2/2/2017   On a brief meeting with Shawn and on to more bulk print cart label stuff. Finishing things up and did some testing. Pushed up code and let key persons know about the updates. The piece that was missing was sub inventory attributes and custom mappings to top, middle, bottom left, and bottom right mappings.

As a side note, I can feel that pressures are mounting. I've got a lot of my guys very busy and things just keep coming. It feels like another storm is coming... We are also seeing an increased sense of requirements and huge expectations. All possible but we don't have that stuff done and integrated yet. That adds to the pressure.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2258 Adilas Time 2/23/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Steve. Calvin joined us just after 11 am. Steve and I started out the morning and got his new report pages up and running. We had to add some variables to calculate some totals.

After that, we reviewed an older video and took notes from a prior session between Steve, Calvin, and I using QR codes to do mini conversions. We took some notes and tried to prep for a meeting with Calvin. See elements of time # 2157 and 2167 for notes and other ideas.

This current element of time has a number of media/content pieces attached. There is a video recording of the session between Steve, Calvin, and I - It has some graphics, drawing, and some notes. We attached all of those pieces, graphics and notes from our session. The whole thing was dealing with QR codes, mini conversions, sub inventory attributes, breaking things into smaller pieces, and other incoming pieces. Good conversations.

Here is a link to the media/content for this element of time. It has tons of special notes about the graphics, the actual notes, and the video link. Please read the next page to get a deeper look at what was being discussed.

- A couple of things of interest were... horizontal recording of the data (fixed columns) vs. vertical recording of the data (dynamic one-to-many database records). We want to go vertical as much as possible. It keeps the relationships smaller and tighter.

- Dynamic flow and/or processes - We what to allow our users/clients to define what their virtual checkpoints are. This relates back to the data assembly line concept. If we can define the checkpoints, it should help with flow and quality control. If we could set those checkpoints up dynamically (customer flow) that would be awesome.

- The power of a relational model. Instead of duplicating tons and tons of data, you just create one-to-many relationships and allow the data to flow both up and down the chain. You only store what you need vs. a huge pre-set grid and/or matrix. It stays small but you still capture all that you need.

- We are seeing a converging of many projects for the POS (point of sale) system hitting or being worked on at the same time... They are: smart cart logic, sales and promotions, custom labels, sub inventory, mini conversions, discounts, tiered pricing, loyalty points, and other special account tracking options. See media/content for a quick drawing of the converging of projects.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2370 Adilas Time 3/7/2017   On a GoToMeeting with Steve and Eric. We helped Steve with some questions and then talked with Eric. While talking with Eric, they were talking about coding things for a drive-through pharmacy type model with digital signatures, photo captures, video captures, remote file upload stuff, etc. All kinds of digital paperwork stuff.

Calvin joined the call just after 10 am. We chatted and talked about mini conversions up until about 12 pm. Calvin and I divided and started doing some light research. I was looking in the adilas university site and inside of adilas for info on conversions. Calvin was doing some looking inside of the adilas shop site. Here are some of our findings:

7/16/09 - adilas university - Time Id: 2377 - Photos – Lots of loose pages and playing with ideas.

- Idea - catch the lowest possible increment (or value of 1)
- Everything needs a base of 1
- Cost per 1
- Weight/measurement per 1
- Weight/measurement per type
- Idea - there may be a difference between quantity and weight. We need to account for both.
- Idea - part of this element of time was around the time when we added multi decimal point accuracy (code name – adilas dewy decimal).
- Question - How are items sold? Quantity, Weight, Length, Package, Volume, or some other measurement?

7/22/09 - adilas university - Time Id: 1435
- Idea - New corp-wide setting for allowing part number (item) conversions. This was created but has sat dormant for years.

7/28/09 - adilas university - Time Id: 2380
- Photos - Multiple pages that show questions and answers for a single company and their flow. This was from Trinity Fasteners and how they work (buying and selling nuts and bolts). Good flow and ideas. Real life scenarios, needs, and requirements.

12/11/09 - adilas university - Time Id: 1590
- Photos - Notebook entries with some ideas and bullet points. Basically, there will be some dust (+ and -) - play in a ball park level and allow for rounding errors.

2/1/14 - adilas.biz - Time Id: 838
- Photo - whiteboard session with some ideas on it
- Idea - Qty in, u of m in, qty out, u of m out, multiplier qty
- Idea - add a conversion qty and a conversion u of m
- Idea - add a flag that says use or don’t use the conversion
- Idea - reverse recipes (preset things, hold all of the details, distribute pieces and products as needed)

/// notes from Calvin.
Time Id's from the shop...
1221
995
1480
1449
1633
1645
1054
1839
2062 * good stuff
2130
2193
2157 * (good stuff - grid drawing)
2167 * (good stuff - screen shot of conversion/pring: steves_mini_convesion_page_for_qr_codes.jpg)
2258 * (good stuff - more notes)
2260 * (good stuff - spreadsheet)
2403
2405

/// notes from Steve
- We have pricing needs, conversion needs, etc. Kitting, recipe/builds, batches, lots, packages, sub inventory, packaging and repackaging (unlimited number of times - make a box, put x number of boxes in a bigger box, take y number of bigger boxes and put into a case or palette).
- Every time you break down a child, we need to be loose-y-goosy. The parent and child needs to be the same unit of measure. Then below that, we can have all kinds of different price to quantity relationships. (quantity discounts, pricing matrix, cost of goods sold, etc.)
- We need a dynamic tool that could hold user-defined data.
- Steve sees the interface as part of the solution - (see his prebuild template for a starting point)
- The interface will have parent info, vendor info, child quantity and/or weight, child id, package tag, etc.
- Be able to name it (what to call the unit of measurement - example: cones, shake, trim, eighth, quarters, etc.), setup the underlying relationship to the parent and child unit of measure, set a price per, etc.
- We also need to track all items being tracked in carts, sold, made, created, available, reserved, etc.
- Be able to create a mini conversion template and/or conversion matrix. These would be standalone pieces that could be setup like a template and then used over and over again. Think one-to-many.
- Maybe have the parent item be tied to a certain conversion matrix and/or template. We may also see that the templates might need to be tied at the part category level (this may help cascade things out better and more efficiently).
- We need a tool that allows for individual business to decide what is what... and how they want to convert things, break things down, sell things, and display things. Very dynamic.
- We allow them to build as many main conversion templates as needed. They could copy, duplicate, remove, reuse, etc.

/// other notes...
- We talked about of the history behind a few of the bigger pieces such as the dewy decimal system, flex grid tie-ins, sub inventory, sub attributes, and current mini conversions. They are all somewhat inter-related and we have built from one thing to the next.

- We talked about building in a one-to-many traditional database model and go vertical vs. horizontal. This will help things be smaller and more agile vs. heavier and lots of unused fields and extra columns. Think just in time as a sub or mini conversion of the sub inventory packages, batches, or lots.

- We also talked about what is needed to show the mini conversions on a quote and/or invoice line item. We need at least three fields (maybe more). They would be the visual unit of measure (conversion uofm), visual quantity and/or weight (conversion number of some kind), and a flag to use or not use the visual (mini conversion) fields.

- Dealing with the show/hide options on the quote and invoice line items, what about setting the normal fields like we already do (main line quantity and main unit of measure), then we could either duplicate that data on the show or special visual fields or we could set it to some kind of blank or default value. The goal here is to decide if we want to use one set of fields to do the backend accounting and then have another set of fields that show what was really going on. If we made it consistent, we could run certain reports off of certain fields and other reports off of other fields. That way we would have to add any special logic, it would be real values vs. show values. That might be nice. Just an idea.

- When Steve and Calvin talked, they made it sound very simple and straight forward. When Brandon talked, it got technical and went into other requirements. As a side note, we may need a little bit of both simple and technical.
 
No po photos available. Click to view time details.
Shop 2357 Russell Moore 3/7/2017   On a Zoom session with Russell. We did three main things. First we merged in some new files and tweaks that he had been working on. Some of it was dealing with new videos for the ecommerce settings, new tweaks to the snow owl theme, and light CSS changes for mobile.

Second, we pushed up some files for a company called Campaign Rise to the data 6 server. This will allow the other developers to get in there and start the building process. We are building a customer facing website that will be pulling live data from elements of time, subs of time, media/content, flex grid, customers, and online ecommerce and invoicing. Big and fun project. Dave Forbis is running as project manager on that project.

Third, we spent the rest of the time talking about sub part categories, sub inventory, sub inventory attributes, and how we could get that stuff out to the ecommerce level. We looked at images, scans, and did tons of drawing. We looked at database tables, live data, current page flow, etc. We had a pretty good session and talked about how we really need to get sub part categories in place before we push too much further. Great discussion.

As a side note, we had a request from Kelly and Molly (adilas consultants) to add a new setting per sub inventory attribute. The new setting would be a show/hide on the web option. We also thought that it might be nice if certain attributes were searchable and even combo searchable.

If the sub part categories are added correctly... that could help filter things going up and down a logical chain. Then the sub attributes would allow additional and multi filtering options for the underlying products. We did a sample mock-up (drawing) using clothing, men's and women's clothing, ages, and styles. These were all part categories and sub part categories. We then went into sub attributes such as color, size, fabric type, brand names, etc. Those would all be sub attributes. Good discussion and good progress.
 
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Shop 2358 Russell Moore 3/9/2017   On a Zoom session with Russell. Part way through I got kicked off due to internet problems. We talked on the phone and then I was able to get back with him. Crazy day for random technical issues.

Anyways, most of our conversations today were dealing with sub part categories and sub attributes and how to mix and blend those two pieces. We started out looking at some ecommerce templates and how to show sub part categories and sub attributes. Russell had a couple of good sites that we looked at. Most of the sub filters were listed down the sided (right or left) and then submitted for processing.

- We talked about having some settings per sub attribute that allowed for both show/hide on the web and allow/don't allow searching on the web.

- We spent quite a bit of time talking about main categories and how to show sub part categories in the right spot. We also talked about cross showing sub categories under other main categories. For example: Say you had main part categories of "garden" and "tools". Then under the "tools" category, you had "garden tools", "hand tools", and "power tools". You don't want to create multiple items, but you may want the garden tools to show up under the main garden section. The list goes on... as far as buddies, crisscrosses, multi view items, recommendations, etc. This brings it to the question, which category rules, how are things searched, how are they displayed?

- What about sub tags and flags for items and item categories. There is already a section that is optional and setup per item. It is called special part web options (see the web_part_options table). This allows for things like video links, long web descriptions, specs, reviews, etc. What if we expanded that list and allowed for things like: flags, tags, keywords, similar products (list of product names or id's), people who bought this also bought, recommendations, etc. Optional and searchable fields to hold extra ecommerce level settings.

- As we were talking about this, add in extra part or item settings for ecommerce, I was thinking about SEO (search engine optimization) and how that is very similar to flags, tags, and keywords. Anyways, we may need other SEO type fields to help with this stuff as well.

- These same multi part or item web options could allow for options to allow items to be shown under other normal or sub part categories as well. Basically, build a small list of where it is allowed to go. Almost like a mini permission for items so they know where they can and can not go. Very interesting.

- Towards the end, Russell was asking how long some of these changes and ideas would take. I honestly don't know. And to be honest, it kinda scares me to see how many huge things (inter-related projects) are all being brought together at the same time and/or in a similar timeframe or scope. Crazy.

- Anyways, we talked about planning and brainstorming and then at some point, you have to jump off the platform and start swimming. We talked about brainstorming vs. try storming... It is ok not to know everything right this minute. Take the time, look at things, do some brainstorming, plan things out and then take a leap and do some try storming, knowing you may be circling back around over and over again.
 
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Shop 2455 Shannon Time 3/14/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Shannon. We logged into a company and looked at some P & L drill-down reports. We found out that the report was filtering by the main part category and the vendor. Thus it was only showing smaller sub sets of data. We also talked about flex grid and sub inventory attributes and how they could play together.
 
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Shop 2376 Adilas Time 3/16/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Steve and Calvin. They were talking about different development tools such as Ruby on rails, Apple devices, etc. Where is everything going? We still need desktops, laptops, mobile devices, servers, hardware, software, web, and other applications. Not everything will fully migrate one way or the other. We need it all.

If it is small enough and simple enough (the task or program), people will use mobile devices. If it needs more, they will use the tools that they need. For example: Calvin says that developers keep adding more and more monitors. They don't want to scroll and scroll. They need real estate.

We are seeing more and more needs to be able to help monitor and/or control the browsing environment. We need features that are available in native software applications but still play over the web and in the cloud. We have people switching between machines in order to get the tasks done that need to be done.

Calvin did a demo on where he is at with the conversion and mini conversion process. He showed us some queries and how things flow and work. We also talked about the difference between the processes of making and creating vs. printing the actual labels.

Questions from Steve:
- Can we return things back to what it was (undoing a conversion)? The answer is yes, we can go both backwards and forwards.

- Can we do these conversions just in time - at the time of adding them to the cart?

- How long do things stay in reserved status? What about quotes, carts, duplicating invoices, etc. Are there time restraints? How can we tell? What are the settings? Maybe some kind of time settings.

- What do we do if all we have is a product that is marked as reserved? Meaning, everything is either sold or in reserve. What would you do then?

- We need a way to flush things that are in reserve. This could be a quick query to show what is in reserve. We then click the checkboxes and say flush. This process would flip the status on the conversion process table.

- On a different note, we need to get the sub part categories done before we finish up sub inventory and get sub inventory out to ecommerce. People in ecommerce don't have a way to search things like a power user do. They need a way to virtually find their way through your inventory items. They need both sub part categories and sub attributes.

- In the future, we can see more one-to-many relationships from child and sub inventory and mini conversions.

- As a side note, on stock/units, we had usage options, common features, etc. We are seeing a similar need out in normal inventory items. This could be sub flags, tags, categories, types, etc. We may want to circle back around and check out the common features, usage options, etc. This could be cool to circle back around and really tie things in. Stock/units were and still are a good starting playground for one-to-many relationships. Help get things out to the marketing level.

- On sub inventory, we are seeing a need for more options and settings on how the items are displayed. Show/hide the disabled packages, or show only these ones, or whatever. Currently we are showing tons of data.

- On mini conversions and sub inventory, we may want to show what is out in package land and then allow them to alter things as needed. Show the whole trail (can you see your way back). Also, Steve is seeing the sub or child as the bin and/or hopper for the item.

- On the child inventory stuff - show options for adjusting right from the child and/or sub inventory item. Take the user to the source and allow things to happen from there.

- We need the whole team. We couldn't do this thing alone. Not a chance. Good stuff.

- Training and maintenance are huge. Keep helping our clients through training and planned maintenance. We need to keep a good balance and we need to stay ahead of the curve. Steve was talking about how important being aligned for a landing in a plane is, and what factors need to be in place and maintained for a successful landing. A giant balancing act.

We were going to be meeting with Eric at 10 am to go over the plans for special accounts. That got delayed and we will reschedule for next week. All is well.
 
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Shop 2639 Adilas Time 5/16/2017   On the morning GoToMeeting session. Steve and I started out doing some brainstorming about how to use custom mappings and special flag and tags to create some virtual mappings. We were talking about sub inventory and sub attributes but the conversation ended up dealing with ways to map things - almost the application flex grid level of mapping. We even talked about how accounting uses chart of account numbers to help with some mappings. The secret is the "chart" or "virtual mapping" part of it. Someone needs to go through and create some defaults and a basic mapping. Then people can modify things as needed. Kinda like a road or a path through the forest. Once that main road or path exists, it allows for others to expand and tweak things from there.

Bryan came on and chatted with us for about an hour. We helped him with his menu board project and then we talked about some of his other projects. We also spent some time talking about the adilas 3rd party solutions page and what we are planning for that area and section.

After that, I spent the rest of the session working on a custom page to help remove all existing customers from a single corporation. In this project, we don't really delete them, we kinda exile them to a different corporation which makes them seem like they are moved and gone. We then store a back-up of all of the id's and modify all other places and records to make everything tight and all cleaned up.
 
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Shop 2567 Russell Moore 5/30/2017   On a Zoom session with Russell. He was super excited because they have a number of new custom projects that have been approved and they even have some funding on those projects. As Russell was pitching the ideas and talking about the projects, I had a couple of questions and concerns. As we talked, it was appearant that Russell had some frustrations as well. Lots of it was coming down to who was calling what shots and who was doing what pieces.

This lead us into a big huge discussion about who is controlling the business assets (people, money, timeline, and promises made). We talked about goals and direction, roles, and who is doing what. It was good but you could tell that the frustration level was pretty high.

They have new projects that deal with sub inventory in ecommerce, sub part categories, related items, sub flags and tags, searching sub attributes, and simple sizes and colors for sub inventory. We were on the same page about 90 to 95%. It was that 5-10% that was throwing a monkey wrench into the mix. We talked about things and I tried to show him where we were headed and such. In the end, we decided that we would pull Steve in and chat with him about some options.

The whole day today felt like we were losing control on almost every side. It isn't that bad, but one things was leading into the next and we were feeling some accumulated affects. See attached for some graphics for projects that Russell was looking into.
 
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Shop 2532 Alan Time 5/31/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Alan. We talked about tons of stuff... lots of different subjects. We did a recap of where we are at with regards to internal projects vs. custom projects. We talked about finances, expenses, and revenue coming in. I then showed Alan the progress on the mini conversions project. We started talking about some disconnects with some of the new projects that are coming up. The new projects aren't too far off, but we need to communicate and pull our ideas together. We did a lot of drawings and going over what needs to happen on the sub part categories project. We also talked quite a bit about sub inventory and inheritance of the sub attributes. We even talked about possibly even looking into parent attributes vs. total sub attributes only.
 
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Shop 2740 Adilas Time 6/5/2017   On the morning GoToMeeting session with Steve and Eric. Steve and I stared talking mini conversions and then rolled into other possible business models with a trust, a market place, etc. Here are some rough notes from the first part of the day.

- When adding things to the balance sheet (for the new round). We need to talk and create a difference between monies paid in and time attributed. There is a difference but they both pull a weight. When real monies come in, we would pay them back the principal plus simple interest (say 10% per month off of the principal).

- We could even set some rules that says we can push monies toward adilas and we'll pay interest on that. We may even need to set some rules on how long monies could be held and stored. For example, a max number of years before it gets paid back.

- We need to work on some basic structure and virtual by-laws or rules for the game. The goal is working on creating the perfect business model (perfect for us).

- Eric came on and we talked a little bit about QuickBook integration. We did some light models and drawings. We talked about some numbers and at least 1/3 of our clients are on the older traditional double entry accounting model. Eric may build this out as a 3rd party solution. There may be some special mapping and/or a virtual model view controller type piece that is needed. There be a bunch of this mapping and needs that are custom per client.

- We are seeing more and more needs for parent item attributes or parent attributes. Currently, we only have sub attributes tied to part categories. This may end up helping with sub part categories. A new parent attribute section may help us get more away from leaning on the flex grid tie-ins as much. Let the flex grid tie-in pieces do a different job. Simplify and streamline where possible.

The whole last half of the meeting was used in more planning on the mini conversion project. We spent quite a bit of time working on the database table planning document in MS Excel. We added in some sort fields, changed some verbage to include a base unit of measure and a conversion unit of measure. We also got more into the invoice and full checkout process of what happens for activity and such. We ran multiple scenarios with different pieces to see how they would play through. I really enjoying playing with things and testing before we ever go to code. That helps us work out the kinks before it gets super technical. Good session.

See attached for a couple of small drawings, scratch paper, and the Excel file with the table layouts.
 
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Shop 2701 E-commerce projects 6/6/2017   On a Zoom meeting with Russell. We were talking about how to get sub inventory out to the ecommerce level. Here are some rough ideas and notes:

- There will be some settings dealing with selling parent items, sell parents tied to subs, and sell individual subs.

- We still need to allow selling of parents and then convert from parent to child within the system.

- We are seeing new needs on the sub attributes. We need a show on the web setting and a search by on web setting. We are also seeing a possible need for a flag called filter by purchase. The filter by purchase values may be a virtual list of requirements for being able to buy and/or add the item to the cart. Think of a requirement of - I have to have a color and a size before I will let you purchase this item. Or I need X, Y, and Z in order to checkout (think requirements and/or list of needed info). These could be simple checkboxes or whatever. This is at the sub inventory attribute level.

- There will be ecommerce settings that say, allow sub inventory attributes on the web and allow searching sub inventory attributes. This is different than the settings on the sub inventory template (tied to part category) and individual sub attributes. Think of the main settings as a master switch vs. the smaller individual controls on the sub attributes.

- We currently allow for defaults on sub attributes. We may need to build that out a bit more internally and be able to expose that externally out in ecommerce land. This could help with searches, filters, and even leading the buyers to what you think that they want. This could get a little bit crazy.

- If showing the sub attributes... We could allow a filter by drop-down option or an actual picture of the different pieces.

- We need to be able to add in photos for sub inventory. This could be a specific flag on the photos table or a whole new table to hold the sub photos. As a side note, we may need to allow a single photo to be used for multiple sub packages. Think of a pink or green phone.... We may end up having tons of sub packages that are pink or green phones. I don't want to have to upload a new photo over and over again. Maybe allow some key words, flags, or attributes to the photos.

- When adding a sub inventory item to the cart, we may need to show the sub attributes on the view web cart page. We do this already internally, but we may need this to happen out in ecommerce land.

- They are talking about tags and search options for parent items. They are also talking about using those tags for SEO (search engine optimization).

-------- different project - mini conversions and parent tags and parent attributes out in ecommerce ---------

- The parent tags or parent attributes are mostly for ecommerce and being able to search things without getting clear down to the sub attribute level. Think of parent tags or parent attributes.

- They are looking at making some top level parent attributes and main sections. Then within that section, they could select a number of options from within that main category. For example (see attached): A parent attribute called "Genetics". Then underneath that, items or options such as Sativa, Indica, Hybrid, CBD. Or a main parent attribute called "Forms". Then underneath that, items or options such as cured flower, shake, pre-rolls. Another option might be a parent attribute called "Symptoms". Then under that, pain relief, anit-anxiety, appetite stimulant, nausea suppressant, neurological, etc.

- As a note, the parent tag or parent attribute of "forms" brought on a whole other side discussion on the mini conversion project and how it ties into ecommerce. See attached for another drawing.

- We talked about how internally, we need to track parent/child relationships. The child pieces could then be broken down into the mini conversion pieces. We drew a model that showed one-to-many relationships going vertical (stacked). We also talked about the older or current way of creating multiple parents with slight differences or minor changes. This takes the model and makes it go horizontal (side to side) or virtually blows up the general inventory pool.

- There is a way to create like, similar, or related items. That is awesome and could play into certain industries. However, when you get into form or units of measure, that is not the best answer. It just makes a mess.

- We talked about how if you were ordering pancakes, you see an awesome glossy menu with options and prices. You then make the order and the waitress writes it down (collects the choices and options). The short order cook in the back has to fulfill the order and chooses what ingredients and/or pre-made pieces to use. It is then delivered. We are seeing ecommerce similar to that in a way. We need to visually display things, show the options, collect the choices and decisions, and then allow for the items to be put through a pick-up or fulfillment type scenario.

- Along with that option on collecting some additional sub details and data, we talked about a possible new table that could be tied to quote or invoice line items that could collect and hold different decision or choices from the user. For example: Say a quote or order out in ecommerce land. Say the person wants a blue, extra large, t-shirt, with a certain graphic. We could either show what we have or collect the data and then let the clerk or salesperson fulfill the order based on the choices. The new table could hold some JSON values or objects and hold things like the size, the color, the desired unit of measure (form), the price, etc. We could then show that info back to the person filling the order. They would then do the actual tie-ins to sub inventory, mini conversions, etc. Kinda like the existing convert parent to child inventory page that exists for quotes going into invoices.

- On the conversion rules table... what about some ecommerce settings such as show on the web, web or customer aliases, etc.?

- What about auto pulling in the main or base unit of measure into the conversion rules. For example: grams to grams. Maybe we will let them choose and if they want, they can do it themselves, that way it wouldn't be a forced option.

- What about allowing the words "unit of measure" being a corp-wide setting. This could be the full name or the abbreviation. For example: unit of measure, U of M, forms, sizes, output, etc. Basically, let the different companies name that and have it be at a setting level. That opens things up a bit.

- When showing options back to a user and/or a customer, we may need to summarize and group things based off of the show conversion unit of measure. For example: Say we have gallons. We could sum things up and say we have x number of gallons - even through behind the scenes we have y sub packages with z number of gallons each. Kind of a quick summary of sorts based off of the show or conversion unit of measure. Let the details sit a little bit lower.

- Another random idea... What about doing summary invoices. Say we had 13 gallons that needed to be showing on an invoice. However, 5 gallons came from sub inventory package such and such, and 3 gallons came from another, the other 5 gallons came from yet another. Behind the scenes, we would need 3 separate line items to help catch all of the details. If we wanted, we could set those items to hidden and then we could either add a forth line item that showed a generic line for 13 gallons at a specific price or something like that. Another idea is to keep things as they are... show all three specific line items, and then have the invoice do some smoke and mirrors by looking for similar parts, similar prices, and similar units of measure. Then the invoice would just combine them as a different view or different display mode. The real invoices would have all of the nuts and bolts, but the customer display of the invoice would be more friendly looking. As a side note, there is a small summary invoice that was created for a company called mile high suckers that does something similar. I believe that the path is something like top_secret/custom/custom_mountain_high_invoice.cfm - it groups things together and then shows the invoice based on the groupings vs. the actual data. Something similar to that might work awesome.

After the meeting between Russell and I was over, I spent some more time writing up some specs and notes from the meeting. They are listed above.
 
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Shop 2686 Russell time 6/7/2017   On a Zoom session with Russell. We were talking about visual displays out in ecommerce land. We talked about options for selling parent items and having it check to see if that item was already in the cart. If yes, just update the quantity and price and taxes. If it is a different item, just add it normally. This makes the cart line items look smaller. The quantity is increased but the line items are smaller. This will have problems when we get out to the sub inventory level.

As a possible work around: - We could keep all of the data and just display a summary (customer friendly view) or we could add in a sub array and hold more info behind the scenes. When we get to subs and mini conversion, we do need that extra level of detail. By way of a note, the summary needs to check for the part id's, the units of measure, and price. If it is all the same, we could technically show it in the summary view. If anything else is different, we need a new visual line.

Another project that Russell and Alan are working on is called real reviews. This is tied into elements of time and sub comments. Russell is looking to add an additional field to the sub comments. He wants to connect them out to customers (customer id's) and a possible value or rating field. Think of a review or blog post... It might be nice if we could rate things (5 stars, 9 out of 10, good, poor, excellent... etc.). We may also want to put a show/hide on the web setting for sub comments.

The deeper we go, the more we are seeing the need for sub notifications, sub communications, sub updates, sub sign-offs, and even deeper push type technology. Pretty cool to see how multiple different things end up needing the same type sub functions.

On related items... Russell is thinking that he will add a new ecommerce option for parts that will allow for list of id numbers. This will be similar to the long description. We are looking at additional items (virtual add-on's or packages) as well as the related items. For example: The additional items are similar to a build and sell recipe (a pre-set group or kit). The related items are like cousins, aunts, and uncle type items... One set is really tight (part of the main package) and the other ones are just similar and/or good companion type items. As a future note, we would love to get the build and sell recipes out into ecommerce land.

As a fun side note... Russell was using video recording of the project scope as part of the documentation and planning for the project. That way we doesn't have to go over it again and again for the different parties who will be playing things. Do it once and then use it over and over again. Good old one-to-many relationships. Good stuff.

On Russell's project called "tags" we would like to add the option to help the users be able to call it whatever they want (think naming and settings). We are leaning toward parent attributes and then attribute values. This could be called tags and tag values or whatever. We are seeing this as a way to expand the parent inventory table. It helps with searches, SEO (search engine optimization), filters, ecommerce stuff, drill-down criteria, etc. We could call it parent attribute groupings, parent attribute values, flags, tags, types, categories, etc. Think super generic or as a generic tool. As a side note, we may need some web and ecommerce type settings to go along with these values. Just because we have it and it has a value, do we really want to show/hide it outside in ecommerce. We may need some settings dealing with where it shows up (internally and externally) as well as do it have a color, a sort, an icon, etc.

What about parent attribute data types? This is more of a question than anything else. In sub attributes, we allow for text, data/times, and numeric. What about similar things for parent attributes? What about other data types such as yes/no (1's and 0's or Boolean values), long text or html compatible fields, etc. That could be really cool.

Russell was talking about how the parent attributes will play. Basically, they are tied to items and items are tied to part categories and sub part categories. Basically, he doesn't want to show everything... He wants to look under a certain main part category or sub part category and then pull back options from there. Basically, instead of just showing all parent attributes, we want the ecommerce pages to show the correct (lightly filtered) view to the users. That keeps everything relevant to what is being shown. There may be times that we need to show more options but we can figure that out.
 
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Shop 2707 Alan Time 6/19/2017   Entering some bills and prepping for a meeting with Alan.

Alan joined me in a GoToMeeting session at 3:30 pm. We went until about 4:45 pm. We covered a number of small projects and where things are at. We spent some time looking into the budgets on the Campaign Rise project. We did some light calculations and made some projections.

After that, we spent quite a bit of time talking about sub inventory out in ecommerce land. We talked logic, flow, round two vs. round three changes (still being planned), and how sub attributes play into things. We talked about sub colors, sub sizes, and sub barcodes (new proposed fields for subs) and how they play into sub inventory. We drew out some small database models and such to show the relationships between part categories, parent items, sub inventory, sub attributes, custom dates, customer numerics, and custom text values. See attached for a quick drawing.

We then talked quite a bit about how the existing sub inventory values play and what is coming through mini conversions as well as some of the changes out in ecommerce land. We talked about the options of showing parent items, showing parent items with sub attributes but still making them buy the parent but recording the sub details. We also talked about selling real subs and having things track all the way through. As a side note, we talked about the middle one (smoke and mirrors showing parents and subs but still selling parents until it was restored to cart internally). We talked about an optional extra line item storage database for collecting the desired sub attributes and their values without actually committing to a specific sub. Think of a short order cook and a person making an order based off of a menu or whatever the waitress writes down.

At the end of the session, we went over some wire job options and possibly using some of the code that I did for the adilas community funded projects. That deals with elements of time, light budgeting, invoices, line items, payments, and flex grid tie-ins. Alan needs similar logic for part of the Campaign Rise project and people signing up for paid events based off of the campaigns. Good session.
 
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Shop 2708 Alan Time 6/21/2017   On a GoToMeeting session with Alan. We were working through a number of different projects. We spent quite a bit of time talking about some sub inventory projects out in ecommerce land. We started out by talking about how to filter items based on sub attributes. We looked at some ideas and code concepts that Alan was working on. They had a lot of sub queries and union clauses. We then looked at some existing options and how those worked (advanced sub PO line search and results). We came up with a way of doing smaller filter queries and then doing some union intersect queries to get some good matches. We then use the matching results and join everything back up. It might sound technical, but it was making sense while we were talking about it.

Next we jumped into the topic of adding some special flags and sections to the parts and item photos. We went round and round on some options. We ended up coming back to the actual photos and adding 5 or so new fields to help us create virtual mini sub photo groups. The five custom flags and sections were: main photo, all, sub inventory packages, sub attributes (bigger JSON object), and options for mini conversions. There will be some rules and options to help set things up and maybe some builders, but the goal is to catch the options and then show the photos back to the users based on what they are looking at. See attached for a small drawing of some of the concepts.

After that, we jumped into a discussion on selling parents, selling parents using sub attributes (requires a convert to child later on), or selling plain children. Some good discussion on that. We did reference time id # 2701 for some earlier ideas. Good stuff.
 
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Shop 2692 Russell time 6/28/2017   On a Zoom session with Russell. We worked on some custom ecommerce stuff. He had a couple of questions about auto applying shipping, sub customer queues out in ecommerce land, and how to setup and display parts with sub attributes. We also briefly talked about the need for parent attributes and some new custom carts. Mostly just dreaming.
 
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Shop 2983 Adilas Time 9/8/2017   I got a call from Bryan Dayton this morning. He has a client that really needs to use the existing barcode generator but yet wanted to almost do the mini conversion stuff. We talked about some options and I wanted to record a couple of things.

1. The client wants to keep using the smaller barcode generator that is built into the system. This has a max of 15 characters on a 2" label. Yesterday Bryan and I talked about options to expand the label size to 3.5 inches or 4 inches but that gets really big. The current label size is awesome, except the barcode is limited to 15 characters.

2. The only places where actual barcode fields exist right now are parts/items, my cart favorite buttons, and flex grid tie-ins. There is already prebuilt code to handle all of those barcode search options. You could also add custom barcode stuff through elements of time, parent attributes, custom fields on the flex grid, or sub attributes per package but those options are custom and don't have any pre-built code to help search them.

3. As Bryan and I were talking, I mentioned to him that we could do a black box takeover of the quick search. We could then look up the special flex grid record and virtually submit either a form or a special URL to add an object to the shopping cart. We were talking about maybe looking for a $ (dollar sign) or something like that as the first character. This would be corp specific, but we could then look up the data and settings and push the item and correct values to the cart.

4. Inside the flex grid, we would need things like quantity to use, price per or total price, custom verbage for the description, and what sub package or sub inventory batch to use. If needed, we could use a key word like "current" or "currentPkg" or something like that to have the system look up the current open package and substitute in that package number or sub inventory number. The main piece of flex grid would already be tied to the parent item which helps us look up tons of other needed data for both the parent and the sub.

5. We already do a ton of this kind of catching and intercepting. Currently most of it is done on the parts homepage or the cart quick search page. The new process would just be creating an interceptor black box for the quick search (both items and/or barcodes), then doing a look-up based off the barcode value that was scanned (most likely looking into flex grid). We then take that look-up data and get enough to pass the request to the add to cart page and bingo, the item could be entered into the cart.

Anyways, this is a possible work around using the existing barcode generator, a quick search takeover, black box logic to look-up flex grid data, and then a special URL to pass the data to the cart once we have everything. Pretty cool idea.

Going back to other work... After recording ideas and paying some bills, I jumped back on the sales tax expansion project. Working through the recalculate taxes method and underlying logic.
 
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Shop 3057 We need to add sub barcode searches and custom fields 9/20/2017   We have had clients ask for custom barcodes per sub packages and per sub inventory child items. This could be really easy if we added a new sub_barcode field to the time_sub_inventory_[53]. We need the same kind of functionality on the mini conversion table as well. Basically, the users are wanting to come up with their own barcodes for the sub packages and smaller subs of subs. We could then make the field searchable and built-in to work with all of our normal barcode searches. We could even allow the barcode to hold more values than the normal 15 characters (the show value maxes at 15 but we allow up to 50 characters to be stored - the problem is how much room it takes to show that many characters in a normal 128-B barcode).

The other option would be to push more on the QR code. The QR code could also be the answer to whatever is needed. It might be nice to add an automated QR code generator or tie it into the flash builder. As a side note, we are seeing people storing and/or adding more sub details, sub locations, sub attributes, etc. into the QR codes themselves. Almost a mini database of sorts right on the QR code.
 
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Shop 3569 Adilas Time 3/5/2018  

Morning GoToMeeting session with Steve, Alan, and Russell.

- I was doing emails and getting caught up...

- Talking about the data tables and coming up against problems when we get into tons of records and/or big datasets.

- We talked about refining different processes - including the create new deposit process - do we really need to show all of those records? maybe play in bulk or have some grid based defaults. We also talked about options of adding some tables and/or grids to the add/edit new deposit page. This could have money types going down (cash, check, visa, mastercard, etc.) and then dates going across. We could then sum things up and help build the sales deposits in bulk vs showing all of the transactional data. Think of small checkboxes per section (today's cash or yesterday's checks). That could really help. As a side note, we may need to revisit a number of other pages and see what we could do to help speed things up and make the processes smoother and smoother. Good stuff.

- Still on building new deposits, we also talked about adding in new settings to show payments to be deposited by user and by money types. Make this a personal setting. Another personal setting could be how they want payments grouped. Once again, this could be by user, money type, dates, etc. More setting options.

- Russell showed us some progressive charts and graphs that could be advanced daily, weekly, monthly, annually, etc. The new stuff uses Ajax and JQuery and just grabs aggregate data (summed up values and counts). It also allows direct drill-downs right from the data points on the charts and graphs. See attached for a small screen shot.

- Concepts of the self-serve model... Because of the lack of training, we end up having a disconnect between our self-serve model and then getting our people to the training that they need. We talked about the need for Adilas University and getting that training more out there for the people who are using it.

- We need the news and updates piece first. We can then utilize that as a new and upcoming training tool.

- We would like to use tags, flags, categories, authors, dates, and other key word searches for blog and/or forum type interfaces. Russell would like to build out the options to show private data out to the public through a blog type site and such.

- Build on what you have.

- Build as if for years.

- Shannon is going to be having a baby here soon... that may be a good advantage to us to help get some of the other training and tips more readily accessible and searchable for our clients.

- Gear the new training towards the way people think... That just makes it easier.

- Simple search, like Google, and then let them get to their answers quickly.

- The more we get into white labeling and working with other 3rd party solutions, we need a way to allow these new companies to provide their own help files, news, updates, and training that is needed. virtually, we need to get out of the way when needed.

- We may need a master trainer - or train the trainers type interface.

- Russell and I were talking about ecommerce and how we setup a system of parent attributes, sub attributes, part categories, etc. We took that same concept and rolled it into elements of time. There would be parent time attributes, master time templates, and the normal main elements of time. This will help us categorize and make the elements of time more searchable based off of the parent time attributes.

- On the news and updates stuff... it is like "selling" training and education. Make it look cool and inviting. Even add some great look and feel and make someone want to be in there digging around to get the know how and additional info.

 
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Shop 3983 cross corp 8/22/2018  

Bryan and Molly jumped in and had a number of questions about both labels and mini conversions. Both of those topics are heating up and gaining more traction. As a side note, we are seeing more and more pressure from the outside state tracking entities. We are also seeing the need of for more cross-corp and/or internal mappings to help certain data fields (for example - sub inventory attributes) keep passing them along. Huge need for internal manufacturing, parent/child inventory, sub inventory, sub attributes, parent attributes, labels, and going clear out to mini conversions. All of this is fully connected and all of the pieces need to be there.

We are also seeing possible needs that will track the main quantity and main unit of measurement. We also need the mini conversion quantity and mini conversion quantity to be recorded. See the attached screen shot that shows both the main and the mini conversion values to both be recorded.

 
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Shop 3986 cross corp 8/27/2018  

Working with Bryan. We have had a request for being able to switch email addresses and contact info on invoices and quotes. Right now, most invoices and quotes pull in the salesperson info. The original train of thought was helping to make the invoices and quotes a virtual business card. We have done a couple of custom ones, where we switched out the salesperson info with company and/or location specific info or even static contact info. We are seeing more needs for this to happen, being able to switch what is being shown and/or presented. In response to that, we could add a new corp-wide setting that allowed them to make a switch between salesperson contact info and company/location contact info. That is a good idea.

Next, we talked about a company that is currently maxing out the flex grid and the number of custom fields (they are already using 15 custom fields). We talked about expanding that and what that would take. We also briefly talked about the concept of real in-line extensions and also sub attributes with sub inventory. We also talked about tying in the PO line items to elements of time. If you go that route, you have tons more options on the elements of time and subs of time arena. We have lots of tools and options. Sometimes it becomes tricky figuring out which ones to use and how best to mix and blend to get what you need.

 
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Shop 3939 Adilas Time 8/28/2018  

We came on this morning with a notice that one of the data servers had been compromised. Someone had hacked in and changed some file names and some background services. Basically, they, the hackers, change the files names so that the computer can't find what it is looking for. It doesn't mean that they take anything, it is almost just a calling card saying, hey, I've been in here... got ya. We have the server team working on things and will be resetting all access usernames and passwords.

Wayne popped in and we worked on some questions that he had with the sub inventory attributes and custom dates, numeric, and custom text values. That part of the system gets pretty deep. Good stuff.

 
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Shop 3957 Adilas Training Class in Denver, CO 9/10/2018   Adilas training course in Denver, CO. We will be at the La Quinta Inn and Suites. Englewood Tech Center

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).

 
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Shop 4037 Adilas Time 10/4/2018  

On the morning meeting with the guys. Dustin was reporting to Steve about some of his progress. He is brining some cool interface pieces to the table. That will be really cool. I was working on a non compete and non disclosure document for Full Circle and Adilas. We are going to be pulling in some of the Full Circle marketing, emailing, and texting services under the adilas roof. That will be awesome.

Calvin popped in and we had a small discussion on new permissions for his adilas label builder application/program. We went through a few questions and scenarios and then created the permissions. They are currently hidden, but will be release as soon as they are ready. We got the new permissions pulled down from data 0 to his local box for testing.

After that, Calvin gave us a label demo to those who were on the morning meeting. I saw a demo (recording) from a couple of days ago and wow, I was impressed with the changes and the direction. It was really fun and we even pushed it pretty hard to see how it would responds. Good report and great progress there.

Towards the end of the session, I was working with Steve on passing in dynamic sub inventory attributes for some of his bulk functions on his plant pages (move in bulk, add in bulk, record plant phases, harvest in bulk). Working with sub inventory and sub attributes within sub inventory gets pretty deep, pretty quick. Lots of moving pieces.

 
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Shop 4041 Adilas Time 10/17/2018  

Small discussion on weight based selling of eaches. The topic seems to have two parts... you have normal quantity and you have a possible weight or count that might be applicable. This whole section is a precursor to full on mini conversions and was somewhat of a simple (1 layer deep) mini conversion based on sub weights or sub counts. We are seeing that each item has a main unit quantity (recorded on the invoice and/or PO - what actually went out the door). It may also have a count or weight  (sub information) for the main unit quantity. Lastly, we talked about another section to hold a single weight or standalone value to help with reporting and equivalency stuff. As a side note, the naming may need to be dynamic because different things (categories) play in different ways. You might have a serving size, dosage, or count per package and then maybe even different percentages on different levels, etc.

Some of those could be sub attributes within sub inventory, but we were looking to give a few more fields on the parent item to record basic, non-changing information. Steve was talking about a converted piece... Basically, it shows x, but it really mean y, and needs to report or extend to z for certain reports. It is starting to get pretty complicated. We started to talk about a secondary multiplier and how that might play in. See the scans and media/content for our session playing with numbers and ideas. We came away, saying, that we need an out the door unit quantity (physical units or number of per's - single packages or units), we need a count per or a weight per (secondary multiplier), we also need a standalone value per (just for reporting in certain scenarios - equivalence values). Each of those three main pieces would also need a unit of measure to go alone with it. That way you could say, I sold such and such in eaches, they all have a count or weight of such and such, and that equates to this or that. It gets into tracking the different layering and depths of the information (the z axis - space, layering, and depth).

 
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Shop 4180 Bulk edit 11/20/2018  

Working with Bryan on the bulk edit PO page. We added in the sub barcodes and talked about adding in sub attributes to the bulk edit page. The sub barcode was pretty easy. The sub attributes was much tougher. We opted to break the project into two sections, that way we could release things quicker.

 
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Shop 4286 Adilas Time 1/16/2019  

Emails and tech support. Recorded some notes from a conversation between Steve and I as we were going over some custom project quotes. Started working on a custom invoice for a client. They provided a number of pages with circles, x's, and lines. I'm just following those notes and building the custom invoice.

Eric popped in and we went over how to record a simple touch history (only record a history if a change is made) for the sub special tracking accounts (loyalty points and gift cards). We also talked about what details we wanted to record when that change was made. He had some other questions about my cart favorite buttons and helping a company get a single button master and then have all other users in that corporation use those master buttons. We talked about what is needed and he took some notes. Basically, we just flip who owns the buttons in the background and change some permissions from normal add/edit/create to view only. Pretty easy.

After meeting with Eric, I kept building on the custom invoice for the client. I stripped out tons of the possible options. I think that they will like it, the new invoice is very simple and basic. Just for fun, I took off: all stock/unit stuff, line item photos, line numbering, tax categories, discount columns, sub inventory attributes, all payments, any possible flex grid, and options for elements of time. Super plain jane, but that is what they wanted.

 
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Shop 4331 Flex grid add fields 1/17/2019  

Bryan and I were going over options to expand the flex grid. We currently have 15 custom fields. We have a client that wants us to double that and go to 30 custom fields. We talked about it and came up with 3 possible options. They are:

1. Expand the current flex grid to allow for a total of 30 custom fields. We also talked about possible JSON (object level) storage within the flex grid tie-ins.

2. We build it out similar to sub inventory attributes and parent attributes - with custom columns, data types, and make it unlimited. This is kinda along the line of real in-line database extensions. This would be super cool, but caries a higher price tag. The benefits are real data types (numeric, dates, text, toggle/boolean values, etc.) and also fully unlimited.

3. The other option is a custom black box database table to help them specifically get what they want and what they need. This one takes a little bit more consulting and time with the client, but may end up being the best solution.

We took some time and put some light price tags on each solution. We also talked about how each one would be rolled out. Bryan is going to check with the rep and client and see which one they would like to do. Once we know, we'll circle back around and do more planning.

The last item of the session was looking at the sub inventory sales and invoice report. We had a request to help with a timeout error that was occurring. We looked at the page and upped the timeout option. Really, that page needs some loving to really make it hum and run super fast. That will have to be another day.

 
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Shop 4417 cross corp 2/14/2019  

Bryan and I spent the first hour working through a small flow related bug on a 3rd party API socket to auto add a customer based on a phone number and then add then to the customer queue. We fixed and tested the API socket calls and pushed up new files. We also altered a few of the error messages to help give some more information about what was missing and/or needed.

The second hour was spent on the cross corp mapping project (starting of the application flex grid stuff). We were deep in sub inventory land going over parent items, child packages, sub inventory attributes, and then custom dates, custom text entries, and custom numeric values. It gets super deep (quickly). Anyways, the best thing we did was write out some scenarios in plain English to help understand where the different parts and pieces comes from and/or go as a destination. Lots of good progress keeping it simple vs trying to write code without understanding the flow of data first. Anyways, good meeting and making some headway.

 
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Shop 4422 cross corp 2/20/2019  

Bryan and I were in deep looking over cross corp (invoices to PO's) with sub inventory and sub inventory attributes. Deep crisscross mappings. We did some drawing and even created some sample code with id's and what data is tied to what fields (scenarios and samples). Mostly an educational and exploratory session.

 
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Shop 4458 PO fields 3/6/2019  

Working with Bryan to cover some options for a client. The client wants to be able to record more information on a per PO basis. We talked about 4 different options. 1. Use flex grid tie-ins and black box code to get the job done. 2. Add more flex grid tie-in fields. Currently there are 15 and there has been some talk about extending that to 30 (double). 3. Use a custom form to collect the data, a custom action page to push the data where it needs to go, and build a custom black box database table specific to the task at hand. 4. Look into and build out the real in-line database extensions (be able to expand the native database tables as needed based on a per corporation basis).

We spent quite a bit of time discussing each option. Without trying, we ended up spending more time talking about the option 4, real in-line database extensions. See the link below for more notes about this option. We already have a few small in-roads to this solution, it just needs to go out the next level. As part of that conversation, we talked about a new table to help control the custom field names and assignments. This would be a new table that would allow us to setup the new fields, what to call them, what data types they were, and where the data would be stored. Along with this, we also briefly talked about the existing custom dates, custom numeric, custom text, and custom json tables. Currently, we already have some logic in place on sub inventory and sub attributes as well as parent attributes. Both sections use the custom tables to hold the data.

I warned Bryan that even though these new dynamic features sound awesome, there are some major challenges. Including searching, dynamic show/hide, requirements, sorting, defaults, custom instructions/directions, ect. In a way, it almost sounds like another project that is tied to a database table called db_field_settings. That table allows for normal or default database fields to be named, show/hide, sorted, defaults, maxes, mins, etc. They both have a similar flavor. The main difference is one controls tables that already exists and have fixed columns or field names and the other is kinda managing vaporware or fields that are wanted and needed but only exist in the real in-line extensions. Interesting.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?q=database%20extensions%2Breal%20in%2Dline

 
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Shop 4563 sub inventory 4/15/2019  

Working with Bryan on options to search sub inventory and filter ecommerce searches based off of sub inventory attributes and sub inventory search filters. We went over some code, started making some changes, and ran into a number of questions. We ended up talking about some existing options (selling options in the ecommerce settings - show and sell parents, show parents sell subs, or show and sell subs). We also talked about ways of doing some custom searches or reverse searches (starting with the subs and then going into matching parents). We went in circles a few times but hopefully came away with at least some ideas and better questions to ask the client.

Part way through our meeting, I got a call from an outside consultant that does some integration between Sage and QuickBooks. They are trying to help an adilas client and trying to get a good picture of how the client uses adilas on the inventory tracking side (PO's, sub inventory, sales orders, fulfilling orders, and shipping).

Recording notes and cleaning up for the day.

 
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Shop 4561 Meeting with Kelly 4/16/2019  

Analogies for defining deeper processes

Steve - Business is like a pirate ship - (who is the crew, are they good/bad, who is doing what)

Kelly - Business is like a body - (what is your tool to get to your goals)

- Goals and sub goals to get to the bigger goal. Adilas is just a tool. The people who use it are the ones making the goals.

- Talk is great, but we need to work on some implementations (getting out there and doing it).

- How do we implement the tool... this drives customer satisfaction.

- Adilas is so flexible that sometimes that is a problem

- Kelly was not saying don't be flexible... but we need a standard starting place

- There are new things that get launched all the time... without any training - this keeps deepening the need for good reps and consultants

- Unintended consequences

- Pressure and pain drives the current development cycle

- Everyone looks to a system to be "The" solution - systems can do a lot of things, but they can't save you from yourself

- Good physical control of the system is a huge key - stick to the plan and then go from there

- Many of the business owners don't even know what they are doing and then that translates to their business processes

- Helping to setup mini goals for the client... miniature options for success

- Addressing the physical before jumping into a digital realm

- Sometimes, a companies leadership will drive things right into a ditch

- Kelly has been doing some research on what other developers and companies do to help standardize things

- A good setup will make or break the whole deal... from there forward (what milestones are set and achieved and was there a good handoff between the software company and the rep/consultant)

- Accountability practices

- When a client has a question, have tech support use the user guide as their answer. As a side note, Shannon and Brandon are working on the adilas user guide.

- On numbering... instead of using a straight 1, 2, 3, 4... system (single numbers). Maybe think more along hundreds 100, 200, 300, 400... (lots of room to add and subtract as needed)

- Sub attributes - Kelly doesn't think that piece is fully "strong", yet we are building upon it. Steve thinks the concepts are pretty good. We just need to fix some of the coding pieces to help get reports, searches, and exports more up to speed.

- Steve was talking about the complexity of even servers - we had a meeting this morning that just dealt with servers (hours and hours). So many moving pieces and working with somewhat limited funding and talent options.

- Due to our current size, we almost have to say - in order to setup clients, you will need to setup an adilas specialist (in your company) and we will help train them. They will then help push that ball forward.

- Some of our squeeze points deal with persons who have the skills, talents, and time. We have masters like Steve, Brandon, Kelly, Daniel, etc.

- Start by defining the language that we are speaking - adilas is its own language - A good starting point - how do we communicate things, as a company

- People want organization and structure - being too thinly spread can be a big problem

- Allowing dreaming and custom options - we love it but that could be a problem - we may get in trouble by giving them too much or too many options.

- Maybe have them run with the standard options for 6 months and then talk about going into the custom realm - we have seen problems with people going into full on custom too quickly.

- Like an airplane - put the oxygen on yourself first and then help others around you - you end up selling what you do

- Setting clear expectations

- Maybe have some tools and education (training materials) about how to run a business and how to use the tools - Steve has had the ideas of putting on basic business seminars across the country. We could use the adilas tool as the backbone of the basic business training sections.

- We are seeing a bigger and bigger need for training, guided training, and even self training. This could be checked and/or quality assurance based on skills, tests, scenarios, sign-off's, etc. In traditional learning environments, there is standardization, testing, feedback, etc.

- What about using elements of time to help monitor the virtual checklist of what has been done and to what level?

- We do need a team, but at what level do we need to get to? That gets tough. People resources are always tough to manage.

- More training sessions - pros and cons to our current model - people want to learn in privacy - some of the training sessions get out of control (high jacked).

- Vocabulary and what things do and what we call things is a big part of the puzzle

- Some people don't want to know the why (that takes time)... they often just want to know how (show me quickly so I can do it)

- Education from gaming - 2 minutes or less - quick YouTube type mentality

- What kind of users are you? Do you like to self train? Do you want the easy button? Do you shoot from the hip (all the time) or are you a detailed oriented person who likes to organize and manage things? Great questions... help pre-qualify them in a way. The adilas system works best if the users want to put the things into the system (feed it) and play the whole game.

- Sadly, we can't fix everything... sometimes, we have to just go to the next person

- AI (artificial intelligence) and where things are going - automating setups and then automating tech support - keep going where things are going (skate to where the puck is going)

- Working on your company vs working in your company - focus on working on it and making it better

- What is the low hanging fruit and where can we start?

- How many touch points are needed to get someone setup? Who setups up the quote? Who turns things on? Who setups up things? Who does logos and watermarks? Who does labels? etc. - you get the idea - try to automate as much as possible.

- Somewhat of an internal bulletin board - who is doing what and what changes are going on in those shifts

- Just adding bodies doesn't always help things - events happen, how do you deal with that - there has to be an internal training process to take care of those things. It comes down to core things that are needed. Who is going to do those things (virtual checklist of what is needed)? Light talks about templates.

- Function vs fashion - where do you spend your time? We may not be able to solve everything but we can try to take the edge off of things. We want to show them what is possible. We want to present a nice package. We also want to make sure that things work (functionality) for them.

- Steve and I are trying to get out of the way. We are trying to fully get the process all setup and dialed in. Sometimes, if we are a pivotal part of the puzzle, it just doesn't happen, we are maxed out.

- Going back to consistency... We know we need it, we are trying to work through it and then actually using it. What can you expect every time? We also need a timing of those events... when should we do things, not just what should be done. There is a difference.

- Sustainability - We need to keep doing this (our business) for years to come... let's set ourselves up for success.

- Building our own processes to help with project management, task management, and to do list checkboxes before doing x (fill in the blank). Templates and automation processes. Help share the load.

- Things are changing super fast... nobody knows everything - we are currently letting different parties run with what they think needs to be done vs having one person giving orders and then getting a good return and report type process. Currently, it is somewhat of a community type effort.

- Why are we doing it and should we do it? Check this out before you jump in. Think of the consequences first.

- Kelly is going to help get a group together to help bring up the structure level and get the oars (some driving and direction) into Kelly's hands. We need a good driver who won't run us aground. We are going to let Kelly run with some things on the core management side of things.

- We are going to be starting at the very beginning and then going from there. A great place to start.

 
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Shop 4570 Working with Josh 4/17/2019  

- 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

 
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AU 4015 4.72 - Sub Inventory (parent/child inventory) 4/23/2019  

4.72 - Sub Inventory (parent/child inventory)

-Sub-inventory started out as a need for more data on an inventory item. Technically we have something called a parent item, which is a top level item or can even be a place holder for child items. Then we have child item, which become a sub of the parent. A simple example of this would be the candy snickers bars would be a parent item. Then underneath that you might have different batches of snickers bars such as different expiration dates, holiday wrapping, different additions, or some other value that needs to be tracked or compared.

-Some people wonder why it has to go that deep and it depends on how tight you need to monitor things. Certain things do great staying at the top or parent level. Anything that changes overtime, whether its costs, attributes, quality, ingredients, batches, lots, etc. - that should all be tracked through sub inventory.

-One of the benefits of sub inventory is getting perfect cost of goods sold. For example if your snickers bars are normally $0.50, then you get a new batch that costs you $0.55 then you can actually differentiate between the $0.50 snickers bar and the $0.55 snickers bars.

-We recommend labeling your sub inventory or having explicit process rules where you scan all sub items or only open a package at a time so that you can track your cost of goods correctly.

-There are ways that you can supersede or bypass the sub inventory controls. Usually it is at the clerk or counter person level where they scan one item and put it times a quantity instead of scanning individual items. This could be okay in certain settings or be a negative to a company wanting a tight tracking on sub inventory pieces.

-Anyone who has to report to state compliance systems or has some sort of outside monitoring on their inventory, we highly recommend using sub inventory. It goes to a much higher level of tracking including RFID tag tracking, sub barcodes, and other sub attributes.

-Dealing with sub attributes, these are unlimited and you can virtually build up your own database needs and requirements and assign attributes to any part categories. These may be drop down fields, numeric fields, date/time fields, open entry. These sub attributes are also searchable and may be printed on invoices, quotes, and labels. Basically it allows you to identify additional data points that you need and want to track.  

-There is tons of brainstorming and documentation on the potential scope of sub inventory - how deep it needs to go, where and what could be done with it, etc.

-Once you have sub inventory you can actually open packages, have them but keep them disabled, and also fully close them out. This allows you to dictate the flow of inventory going out and needed package controls.

-Sub inventory can be purchased, mixed, blended, sold, and the entire chain of custody can be maintained and held throughout the system. It is very deep level inventory controls.  

 
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AU 4019 4.76 - Tiered Pricing & Pricing Engine 4/23/2019  

4.76 - Tiered Pricing & Pricing Engine

-Tiered pricing deals with being able to change prices based on quantities. This can happen in a couple different ways. One you can have a number of preset rules, where certain quantities get certain price breaks. Or two, you can run specific discount campaigns through a discount engine.

-There is a thing called smart group buttons that allow for rules and assignments. Here you can setup rules, price breaks, quantities, custom assignments, who gets to play and what, custom descriptions, and even custom barcodes.

-There are a number of custom availability options as well that can be built right into smart cart logic and/or using sub inventory attributes to help control pricing.  

-Additionally there are some other things planned called mini conversions. This allows you to differentiate units of measure and quantities. For example say you wanted to sell water by the cup, by pint, by gallon, by the barrel, or by the drop. Mini conversions would allow you to do things like that.

-Prices are a variable and we allow that to be manipulated.

-If you are at the sub inventory level we allow you to set different prices on your sub inventory and that can track through the entire system. You have full control over direct sales prices of packages.  

 
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Shop 4626 Adding the part or item category to sub inventory data storage 4/29/2019  

The deeper we get in sub inventory, the more we keep having to go back and forth to figure out the part category. Basically, all sub attributes are based off of the part category. Maybe we should hold and store that data per line item vs having to look it up every time. It does duplicate data (for storage), but it would really speed things up. If needed, we could add a special watcher, in case the part category every changed, to help cascade all part category id updates, but at least we wouldn't have to keep looking it up. That seems to be a pain.

Long story made short... add the part_category_id column to the time_sub_inventory_[53] table. Make sure and cascade all entries (forwards and backwards), but that would really help with looking things back up. Faster on searches and less table linking needed.

Another note, along similar channels, sometimes getting to the actual sub attribute values (actual data, not the columns themselves, but the stored data) is sometimes really hard to pull back. Everything is related and multiple levels deep. Maybe look into that and seeing if there are easier ways of getting the information back. That could be more database columns and/or some other kind of flag that helps us look things up quicker. We are currently able to store the data pretty efficiently, but getting it back out is a pain in the rear. help this process out by looking at the common look-up options. If needed, it is totally ok to duplicate data to  speed up the look-ups. We just monitor things and make sure and cascade changes if and when a change is made.

 
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Shop 4625 Working with Eric 4/29/2019  

Eric and I jumped on a Zoom meeting and worked on a new export for sub inventory. The new export will grab all sub inventory items and will do the export without any sub attributes. We worked through some tweaks and did some testing. The new export report will be part of the normal advanced parts (general inventory items) report.

 
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Shop 4604 Elevele: eCommerce sub inventory 4/29/2019  

Talking with Bryan about code tweaks and changes for sub inventory. It gets really complicated when trying to dynamically output all values, even with crazy different sub attributes. Eventually, our conversation went into reports, building your own complex data structures, and showing correct results out on ecommerce. One of the things that gets tough is sub attribute names. Bryan has a client that wants all sub attributes with the same names, to be displayed together in the same output column. It just makes is tough to get back to the correct pieces.

For example, say you have 5 different item categories. Each of those is capable of having their own sub attributes (unlimited). But, for display and reporting, you want everything to show the batch number column in the same column, even though some categories have that as text 1, text 3, and text 4 (just for this sample). Technically, it may be named the same (human side), but in the background, the data is stored based off of column 1, 3, and 4. That makes is more complicated. Anyways, we are seeing multiple requests to help standardize things and make it simpler, even though, technically, it is based off of dynamic user-maintained one to many relationships. People want it to look and appear very simple. That makes it harder on our end to make it look and appear simple.

Took a little bit of time and recorded some notes on our sub inventory document.

 
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Shop 4628 eCommerce sub inventory 4/30/2019  

Working with Bryan on some sub inventory queries. We also worked on using lists and queries of queries to help filter sub results. Some of what he needs to do is filter by sub attributes. Those are very deep and kinda illusive in a way. Good session.

We ended up building a really simple page (I saved it in bryan's folder on my local drive) that pulled in parent items, all associated subs (packages), and then filtered those sub packages based off a sub attribute. Super simple code set but hopefully enough to get the ideas and concepts across. I emailed Bryan the file once we were done.

 
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Shop 4632 Elevele: eCommerce sub inventory 5/2/2019  

Working with Bryan on sub inventory and getting the searches correct. It gets really deep if you search by sub attributes and then try to go back up hill to subs (child inventory) and then up hill further to parent inventory. Pretty deep. Lots of drawing and looking at data structures and database schemas.

 
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Shop 4634 Meeting with Calvin 5/7/2019  

Questions for Calvin:

- What/when on your time lines and load? Timing and budgets.

- Having a hard time getting them setup (login credentials and who gets to do what)

- Charging for the adilas label builder wizard setup - once they get through... they can go far, it is just hard on the frontend

- How can we get this more inside the system? Maybe move more towards the web and setting things up that way. We need to simplify the frontend. Instead of full API credentials, maybe just check their username and permissions (web-based). Maybe going in doing some research. What is the next level.

- Maybe fill out a form and then send that to Calvin vs just an email

- 3rd party solution stuff - security

- Custom formats - currency, decimals, med date, sm date, long date, time 12, time 24, integer, other

- Being able to nudge selected fields with arrow keys - currently just drag and drop

- We need access to core sub inventory and sub attributes  - this could be a major challenge - super dynamic - on the PO side, invoice side, cart side, and normal part side

- bulk print from the cart (session stuff) - Crazy mixing pot - People are used to printing from here, but maybe we need to make it easier on the finished invoice side. How can we make it easier to get to?

- As some point, we will need flex grid values, vendor info, store/location info (could come later) - maybe even being able to mix some of these things.

- At some point, we may also need access to parent attributes (could come later)

- Audience questions... common user, tech user, designer, programmer - How do we select and train them - Ideally, we would like to have one person per corp that could do labels.

- Defining the database terms and fields

- Videos and other training materials

 
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Shop 4616 Adilas Time 5/13/2019  

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.

 
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Shop 4637 Patriot Care: Sub attributes 5/13/2019  

I met with Bryan and we went over 3 different projects. They were dealing with how to treat the Herbo whitelabel  stuff, options for filtering sub inventory attributes, and Full Circle API socket integration and some strategy on that project.

 
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Shop 4612 Adilas Time 5/15/2019  

Pretty quite meeting this morning. Dustin checked in and then bailed out. Alan jumped on and gave me a small report. We also spent some time looking at the custom tables for holding sub inventory attributes. We talked about some possible rework options and helping that process. We logged into a server and looked around at database activity, column counts, row counts, and basic database stuff.

I got back on the code review and code sign-off for the special account tracking project. This deals with things like customer loyalty points, gift cards, in-store credit, etc.

 
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Shop 4647 Meeting with Tim at herbo 5/23/2019  

Tim Lyons from Herbo was online with Steve and I. His goal in meeting with us to get to a working process. He was talking about sub assemblies (recipe/builds) and then building and mixing a number of those pieces. He would like to add the operational costs as he goes through the process.

Steve was talking about how adilas tracks all of the internal production stuff. He is really working hard on the production stuff. Just like cultivation, he is out pioneering pieces, and then he will turn it over to someone else to really tweak it out. Fun process.

Steve showed a small demo on his existing production home page. He was doing parent/child inventory tracking, extractions, internal build, RFID tags, unique batches, subs, sub attributes, etc. He was talking about elements of time, time based reporting, phases, sub locations, etc. It got into alerts, lots of time based reports, stages, phases, steps, etc. It got into concepts and tools and what is pre-programmed and what could be configured. Steve was talking about transfer invoices, external reference, combining quantities, and all kinds of good stuff. His demo was using his local environment. Lots of talking back and forth. Good conversation.

We were showing 5 decimals of accuracy, distributing cost of goods sold, pulling and pushing quantities, etc. Steve was bouncing between parents, child inventory, elements of time, PO's, category level options, etc. It got into parent attributes, aggregated recipe/builds, processes, SGA costs, distributed accounting, distribution models, trucks, product transfers, chain of custody, detailed tracking, GPS, Google maps, custom stuff, and all kinds of crazy details.

One of the next steps is going to be setting up parent inventory items and then figuring out the flow process.

Towards the end, Steve had to leave. Tim and I jumped into some other corporations and looked around at real data. We looked at corp-specific flow, a corporation with a number of sub locations and sub entities, and some of the automated reporting that is available for both cross-corp or internal reporting. We also looked at usage reports, quick sales reports, switching between different corps, and using the quick search to get around.

 
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Shop 4655 Full Circle: push code 5/23/2019  

Bryan joined the meeting and we were looking at a mixed filtering by sub attributes for sub inventory. Pretty deep. See attached for some of our brainstorming. In the end, we decided to go a different direction, but this was progress to make some decisions. Good stuff.

 
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Shop 4663 Adilas Time 6/4/2019  

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
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Shop 4674 Working with Eric 6/5/2019  

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

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

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

 
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Shop 4676 Push Dutchie 3rd party page 6/5/2019  

Working with Bryan. We did some checking on some custom ecommerce filtering (by sub inventory attributes). We actually had to log onto the server and run raw database queries to check for certain records.

 
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Shop 4714 Working with Eric on sub inventory API's 6/17/2019  

Worked on formatting complex data sets to include parent items, sub inventory (child items), and unlimited sub attributes. Most of this session was taking bulk or raw database data and making it presentable and structured so that outside developers may use it and/or follow along. Making progress.

 
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Shop 4767 General 7/3/2019  

Working on adding in sub attribute values to the getSubInventory and getSubInventoryById methods out in API socket land. They used to show the sub attributes (columns and column names) but didn't show any associated values. Internally, they are looked up on the fly. However, for the outside or public facing API sockets, they needed to be part of the same API socket call.

 
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Shop 4746 Adilas Time 7/8/2019  

Going over some new database updates that Steve was working on. We then switched gears and started working on some internal API socket connections. Steve is working on a small internal project that takes sales data and passes it between servers for a consolidated mini report of sales per corp.

We then got into a small brainstorming session about corp-specific aggregated data (summed up data) and how we could help with a multi-corp consolidated aggregated data type model. Eric said something the other day about having a master corporation and then getting data from that one (from the master) to feed the smaller or sub corporations. We talked about taking that option out further and how another corporation could be a great collecting spot for the cross-corp and/or consolidated aggregated data.

Random notes from our brainstorming ideas:

- Start with the corp-specific aggregated data. Each corporation will end up needing their own corp-specific aggregated data table. Our goal is daily totals per location and per category (we need to figure out what those categories will be, but pretend that they are at the category level).

- We were talking about terms and how best to state and/or call the consolidated aggregated data - if they (different and multiple corporations) want consolidated data... we could sell them another system and get cross-corp aggregated data passed back to that system - not sure which way it sounds better (two options): aggregated consolidated data or consolidated aggregated data

- What about cascading our model - we may not want to alter our model, we may just want another consolidated corp and use internal API sockets to update master controls.

- How do location(s) play into the model? What do location(s) look like on a corp-specific model vs consolidated data and what location(s) are/do out there? We talked about maybe having different mappings from corp-specific data to consolidated data and what is tracked and shows up and what may be combined together. In a small way, it almost feels like application flex grid type mapping and such. Fun ideas and concepts.

- Going back to a master corporation. We could setup a master lists of items, a master lists of customers, etc. If any of the subs add/edit things... we could figure out if those add/edits go uphill or only roll downhill (direction of updates and changes to data and master lists).

- We may need to take the part/item categories to a multiple level (deeper one-to-many system). This is an older project, but it has laid dormant for awhile. We may need to pick it back up.

- Technically, we could do the cross-corp consolidation stuff right now, we could remove the double entry out of the solution and help automate things. Figure out the flow of data.

- Eventually, we will want (or our clients will want) location specific aggregated totals, even out in the consolidated aggregated model.

- We talked about maybe having a special mapping table on the consolidated corporation side. More application flex grid and advanced mapping stuff.

- There may be some huge advantages by using existing tools such as invoices, deposits, expenses, PO's, balance sheet items on the consolidated side of the equation. Many of those things are already mapped to income statements (P&L) and balance sheets. That might be a good approach to helping out with the consolidated reporting.

After the brainstorming session, I left the meeting and starting do some other smaller tasks. I payed bills, did some emails, and got on the phone with a couple of other developers. I chatted with Calvin about custom labels and maybe getting into sub inventory and sub attributes. I also talked with Alan about helping out for the rest of the week as I will be out of town on a scout trip.

 
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Shop 4771 General 7/8/2019  

Recording notes and trying to get the sub inventory API sockets up and live. Worked some on getting back sub inventory attributes.

 
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Shop 4736 Adilas Time 7/17/2019  

Dustin and I worked on getting some data (small sub report) out of the sub inventory attributes section. That subject and topic has caused us much grief. It gets so deep, it becomes hard to pull the data out easily without knowing the whole data path (what relates to what and where are things stored). It is all there, it just may not be the most effective storage so that easy retrieval can happen.

Eric joined and had some questions about the adilas 3rd party solutions page. That page is starting to get pretty big and everything is virtually wrapped in smaller conditional logic pieces. It gets pretty deep. He also had some questions about showing loading bars (spinning graphics) to show that certain actions were in process and then showing the user when they had finished.

After Eric left, Wayne joined in and had some questions about the shop (ecommerce area) folder and how a corporation gets setup and/or acknowledged out in ecommerce land. We talked about form, URL, and session values and which ones take precedence. After that I spent some time recording some notes on what was going on.

As a fun side note, my hiking buddy and I were talking about a number of fun topics this morning. As a precursor... my sister Shannon and I were talking about the progression of the tools that we use yesterday for our afternoon meeting. My hiking partner, Brian Stewart, and I were discussing some of these same concepts this morning. The tools that we use progress from simple to more robust and more complex. See this entry for a deeper look at what we are trying to cover...

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=371&id=4029

Anyways, after progressing through the lower tools (head, paper and pen, computers, databases, software, web, etc.) we were talking about these topics. I just wanted to record some fun ideas and concepts that we may use later on as we go deeper.

- Data Fusion - mixing data from multiple sources.

- Big data - how much data, where does it come from, how did we get it, how do we analyze it, what trends are we seeing? etc.

- Digital currency - like bit coin and other digital currencies

- Trends - watching for, discovering, and anticipating trends

- Security and privacy - huge topics that have different levels from head to paper to computers to web to bigger...

- Independent systems - there are certain things that we don't want to interconnect and/or limit access to. That is an important topic (limiting access and/or limiting outside connections).

- Auditability or history or audit trail information - how easy/hard is it to follow the audit trail? This is way deeper than just a one-liner. What was the lifecycle, steps, states, and phases of x (fill in the blank).

- AI (artificial intelligence) - What level of AI are we talking about? Simple if statements, cases, switches, states, or fuzzy logic with decision making power. How does this play in and how will it affect things in the future?

- Integration to other platforms - Once something is on the web, do we allow for integration, do we pick strategic integrations, or leave it open for any possible 3rd party integrations? That starts getting into strategy and even ethics.

- If you do allow integrations, what about syncing data (making sure that data on side a and side b are the same) and figuring out rules of master/slave type relationships between syncing parties. What about integrity of the data sync or data syncing process.

- What do the clients want? If we are avoiding things on purpose, does that get us in trouble? A simple survey of our customers may help shed some light on those topics. What are they wanting, expecting, demanding, and/or wishing for?

- Real-time transactions and flow of funds - batching (time delayed - per month, week, day, etc.), I owe you accounts (who owes who and when will it get paid), real-time transactions, real-time payments, allowing vendors, banks, and government agencies real-time access and real-time payments for products and services. Along those lines, who negotiates those terms and deals? This sounds like more permissions and settings on a per corp (per world) type level.

- Systems vs standalone applications - sometime you can gain great advantages by using a system vs a single standalone tool. Having said that, sometimes as you add more players and pieces, there is a virtual drag (resistance and/or friction) that may go along with that. If it works, sweet. If not, you have been creating an anchor of sorts.

- What are some potential warning signs that we put up... company pride, individual pride, not listening, avoiding certain topics and/or features, seeing and acknowledging hidden threats, on purpose staying a certain size (not reaching our potential), working on a private agenda, and other possible warning signs. As a side note, this topic was toward the end of the hike (we were actually driving home from our hike) and we started talking about integrations with other existing software companies and their platforms. The main topic was the accounting giant "QuickBooks" (and other like products) and why we are not trying to integrate with their product(s). It got pretty deep, but my hiking buddy was concerned that we might be missing out by not integrating with QuickBooks and others. I know that some of our clients would like that, but we have on purpose delayed and kicked that can down the road multiple times. Some of it is pride, some is money and cost of doing so, and some deals with challenging tradition, and some deals with following true to what we are learning and exploring (what if we can do it this way or that way vs just following the crowd - love of exploring).

Anyways, without going too deep. We had a great conversation the whole hike (see notes above) but when we said that we on purpose were not trying to integrate with other accounting systems, the whole conversation changed and it seemed like all of the other topics that we were talking about had no value (basically a game changer). I thought that was very interesting. I will bring it up with Steve (my partner in Adilas) and see what he says. My personal vote is to just keep going. We have a great plan. We just need to keep working the plan. To note a much earlier talk that I with another buddy of mine (riding up a ski lift), he asked, what/who is your major competition? My response was "tradition". I'd have to stick with that answer right now. Tradition is our biggest competition. Interesting and hopefully correct, there is still lots of things that need to play out. We'll see where it goes from here. Yee haw!

 
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Shop 4822 Molly: sub reports 8/2/2019  

Bryan and I had a good work session. We were working on sub inventory searches and results for invoices. Currently, the code allows for searching of sub inventory by a single part/item category. That keeps all of the sub attributes lined up and programmatically readable. The new challenge is allowing sub inventory searches on any and all categories at the same time. This has a number of challenges.

For example: Each category could potentially have the same sub attribute name (the id's are different but the names are the same). All sub attributes are setup on a per category basis. The different categories could potentially assign different data types to the different sub attributes. The known data types are numbers, text entries, and dates. All of that data is stored in different tables based on the data types. Say that each item category has a sub attribute called "Batch Number". If I have 5 categories with batch number as an attribute, they don't want to see 5 different filters, they want to see one filter (a grouping) of that sub attribute. This gets into a deeper problem of pulling the data back out because technically, the data is stored based off of id numbers and column numbers (order within a category). All of those could be different. It becomes a mixed bag.

Anyways, this was our challenge today. We had a good work session and made a list of to do items to help guide us along the way.

 
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Shop 4824 sub invoice line search 8/5/2019  

Bryan and I got on a work session. We first looked at a bug with an export to CSV. We found the error and it was in a custom include file. The problem was the path and making sure that it was relative to the calling or processing page.

Next, we jumped back in and looked at the sub inventory invoice line items search with all sub attributes being allowed. This may seem super easy but it really has a lot of teeth. We did some conceptual planning, took some notes, and Bryan is going to go try to build it. We will meet back up tomorrow or the next day to see how it turns out. Good progress.

 
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Shop 4826 Meeting with Calvin 8/6/2019  

We were talking about parent attributes and sub inventory attributes. We need a way to flatten the data in order to work with labels. Calvin and I were on a Zoom session. We did a lot of drawing and talking about ways to show the human side of things and the computer side of things. We ended up looking at data samples, drawing database schema maps, and brainstorming ideas on how to help flatten and/or standardize sub inventory attributes and other dynamic data driven objects. The tricky part is that sub inventory attributes could be anything... we virtually let our users build their own databases (specific data points that they want to catch and/or track). We then have to allow them to use those values in labels. It gets pretty deep.

 
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Shop 4833 Virtual Post-It Note - Barcode Info 8/7/2019  

This was some text from an email about barcodes and how they work inside of adilas. It has some good links and info:

Hey guys,
This is Brandon. Just chiming in on this topic. The main Adilas barcode generator is Adobe Flash based. There are no Adilas settings for what label printer, what label scanner, or what brand a client may use. That was on purpose. Eventually, it comes down to the individual drivers, hardware settings, and browser settings. Adilas does not control any of that.

Here are a couple of help files with some good information about barcodes:
https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/help.cfm?id=361&pwd=barcode – barcode generator
https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/help.cfm?id=362&pwd=tech – tech info on barcodes
https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/help.cfm?id=413&pwd=cart – how adilas scans and uses barcodes

Another option that exists now, thanks to Calvin, is the adilas label builder app. This plays with Adobe PDF (Acrobat) technology. The new adilas label builder requires a little bit more technical knowledge on the setup, but it is available. I would recommend that we possibly go that route. If they don't have anyone who wants to play, I would be willing to work with the client. I'm not a master, but I've seen numerous demos and have played with the product before. The new app allows for labels from invoices, customers, PO's, and inventory items. It can do individual labels, custom labels, and all kinds of sheet labels.

Calvin is currently working on sub inventory items, sub inventory attributes, and flex grid connections. That will be really cool.

Here is a link to more information about the adilas label builder app.
https://data0.adilas.biz/MyEasySoftware/adilas_label_builder_app.cfm

If push comes to shove… I'll be their label tech. I'm a $100/hour but happy to help. Anyways, just chiming in. Thanks guys and gals and have a great day.

Brandon Moore
435.258.5504 (home/office)
435.881.1536 (cell)
brandon@adilas.biz :: www.adilas.biz
"all data is live and searchable"

 
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Shop 4839 Leafbuyer: discounts API 8/12/2019  

Bryan and I met up and talked about possible ways of getting and showing discounts. See attached for our scratch page. As part of our conversation, we ended up going out to the server and looking up certain values in the database to see what options were being used. We looked up automated discounts, customer types, individual customers, parts/items and their settings, tax categories, parent attributes, sub attributes, smart group buttons (tiered pricing), different manual and standalone discounts, corporation settings, custom cart logic, menu boards, and black box code. Lots of options.

 
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AU 4030 Brainstorming Adilas Glossary 8/13/2019  

Glossary Terms:

A

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

B

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

C

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

D

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

E

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

F

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

G

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

H

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

I

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


J

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

K

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

L

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

M

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

N

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

O

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

P

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

Q

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

R

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

S

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

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

 
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Shop 4845 sub report 8/13/2019  

Bryan and I got on a Zoom session and worked on a dynamic sub inventory report. Last time we had talked about taking over the numbering system and passing in hidden counters behind the scenes. This was going to help us be more dynamic and even allow us to group like sub attribute names (from different item categories). He had gotten that done and it was looking great. We then rolled into the output and/or search results. We were getting results but it was pulling in more data and values then was needed. We spent most of the session talking about how to show/hide columns dynamically.

As a side note, we do tons of this on the flex grid tie-in reports and output. The flex grid table has over 70 data columns but sometimes we only show 4 or 5 columns based on data that is stored. We end up converting all output to numeric lengths, blanks are a 0 length, and valid data is converted into a length or number. We then watch for columns that have a positive length (sum up the column lengths). With the correct logic in place, we can virtually show/hide all of the other columns until they have valid data in them. Anyways, we were working on similar type dynamics for sub inventory attributes and whether or not to show/hide certain columns in the output report.

 
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Shop 4850 Meeting with Cory 8/20/2019  

Talking about delayed counters and working on phase 2 of that project. Molly, Cory, and Brandon were on the call.

Known needs:
- we need to be able to include subs
- we need to be able to scan subs - currently only scans parent subs
- we also need to be able scan and hold (scan every unit in a bin) and then have that count for you
- multiple locations and being able to scan and hold - not really real adilas locations - kinda like sub locations within the same location
- be able to ultimate review before submitting for processing
- on the review, you could see who scanned what

// ideas

- Maybe a new button that allows for multiple scans (scan to count) - Once it comes up, maybe a spreadsheet like column with multiple lines

- On the review and commit page, be able to search and filter by item and by person and by notes.

- You also need a way to remove and/or combine certain pieces. Kind of a fully functional master overview.

- They would like to see some new quantities such as total amount scanned, system count (on hand), and an open field for the real quantity. Maybe even show them the math before we actually do it, meaning another quantity called math adjustment quantity (non adjustable >> just a math calc).

- On the review page, they wanted a little bit more info without over doing it.

- We may need to change the database model and move from JSON text to real database entries. This would help with searches, show/hide stuff, and better ways to clear and/or delete things out of the process.

- Molly was talking about the importance of date filters and date/time stamps

- They don't want to see all of the sub information (too much). They would like to rework the normal update PO process. (update_inventory_count.cfm page). They would like to have all of the subs open by default, take off all of the extra sub info and sub inventory attributes. Keep it simple and easy. They like how simple the delayed inventory counter looks but even that one needs some new fields.

- Some of the people use this process every day. Many of them use it at least monthly. They really want it work on a Wearhouse type model. Lots of scans and less clicks. They want more of a barcode based model.

- There was some discussion on how to display the review and submit page. Some of the comments were grouped by parent item and then broken down by person who did the scans. They were talking about having a total summary line per item and then some sub details that could be showed if needed (collapsible like the show subs option for sub inventory).

- There was some talk about storing multiple steps in the session scope. Basically another way of delaying the inventory counting. Currently we submit each page... the question was raised about submitting multiple pages and then having a final review to do the real submit process.

- As a side note, the action page for the delayed count process aborts and shows a dump. We need to help and clean that up.

https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/time_web_gallery.cfm?corp=22&id=1485 - community funded project for this piece.

See attached for a link to the video recording of the GoToMeeting session.

 
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Adi 1499 Adding different costs to subs than parents. Mini Conversions 8/21/2019  

This might tie into mini conversions.  Selling each but assigning weighted value. Deeper than it seems.

Currently the parent 'cost' and the sub cost can be different. 

But they must share the same unit of measure, however mini conversions would allow each sub to be broken down into different UoM's 

This is mini conversions. srb


This client uses minimal parent items ie Blue Dream is the parent item for bulk, 1g shake, pre roll, 3.5, 7g. and 28 g. So 6 items. They designate the weights through sub attributes. This keeps minimal parent items and works well. Except, when they bring the items in- because they package them at one place, then bring them in. So, instead of being able to create one line item for Blue Dream with 6 subs underneath to represent the various weights, they have to bring in another line item for each weight, since the cost of each weight is different, and the cost must be identical to that of the parent.

 
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Shop 4920 Working on sub inventory reports and logic 9/6/2019  

Worked most of the day on Friday - working on this report. I stated at 7 am and worked most of the day until 8:30 pm. I had a lunch break and went to the city party with my kids for a bit, but most of the day was spent on this report and logic. See elements of time # 4919 in the shop for more details. Lots of testing, rewriting, and some praying. This was pretty deep but somewhat developed into a series of smaller funnels and grouping and filtering to get to smaller and smaller data sets. Minimal trips to the database and then back and forth between memory objects to filter the data. It's not all the way done yet, and it has only been tested locally, but I feel that it has some potential, not just for the current report, but also for a future database feature called real in-line extensions.

The crux deals with a record set and then being able to filter that record set based off of numerous (unlimited) outside filters with somewhat randomly connected data points. The random data points, in this instance called sub inventory attributes, are user controlled fields. These custom fields point to custom tables that are not part of the main database tables. They basically hold the custom data and allow for the full structure to be reconstructed on the fly. We have future plans to use similar custom tables to hold data type specific values for all other areas of the database.

We have a thing called flex grid tie-ins and they now have 30 custom fields. Those fields may be named and used as needed. The main problem deals with a thing called a data type. The different data types are (generally speaking): text values, dates, times, numeric values, decimals, and on/off switches called toggles. We also have custom bulk object for storing JSON objects. Anyways, the data types allow for special things. The older flex grid tie-ins (all 30 of the custom fields) are strings and may hold all kinds of data. However, when being looked up and/or filtered, they are all treated as strings (simple text values). That makes it hard to do things like find something between this and that value, add things up, figure out max and mins, average, etc. A data type is required for that types of action. Anyways, lots of work was spent today on trying to work around those pieces and params. Good stuff.

The only other notes for this entry are some hints: joins, filters, and groups or grouping - doing these things over and over again, helped us get back to the requested and filtered data. Repeat the process as many times as needed. Keep narrowing the players.

 
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Shop 4932 Working on the output of the sub inventory search 9/11/2019  

Spent hours and hours working on the display output for the advanced invoice sub inventory search results. Some of the time was formatting and some of the time was testing with some live data. The corporation that I was testing the pages on was huge. Here are some rough stats:

46,026 records for a 30 day period.
The spreadsheet amounted to 108 MB (that is huge for spread sheet)
It took 11:37 minutes for the system to build the spreadsheet
Excel couldn't even over the 108 MB file. I waited almost 20 minutes and it still couldn't open it.
They have 74 sub attribute filters. When grouped by attribute name, it comes to 40 sub attributes (grouped)
A different stat - for 35,074 records (slightly different search), that was 2,365 unique packages

Anyways, here is what I found. The web view, with pagination, ran pretty fast. The export to Excel was as slow and big as cold honey. We need to provide more general stats, totals, groupings, and different report types. We need to show the stats - such as total quantity, total package count, total item count, totals on cost, quantity, and price. Lots of quick info vs 46,000 records. Nobody wants to look through that much data. I think that they are more interested in groups, totals, and other stats.

 
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Shop 4940 General 9/12/2019  

Working with Steve on a project that he is working on with the adilas community funded projects. Also helped Calvin on a Zoom session get some new local data setup for working with sub inventory and sub attributes for his label builder app.

 
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Shop 4895 Adilas Time 9/18/2019  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
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Shop 5054 Adilas Time 10/29/2019  

Our whole system is made up of tons and tons of one-to-many relationships and they keep going deeper.

Both permissions and settings are breaking into small and smaller pieces.

Need to be able to search parent attributes and sub attributes. We can assign them, but they are not very searchable. This has been a request from some of our users. They want these sections to be as searchable as many of the other sections. Because those sections are so flexible and customizable, it kinda makes it hard to standardize things as well. Somewhat of a mixed blessing.

 
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Adi 1560 Simplify adding inventory items and bringing in inventory 11/24/2019  

Possible ideas for clients not on metrc would be to simulate some of metrc process. 

For the PO, create PO- instead of current way, you would have an interface to create the main part similar to the small option on the bottom of the metrc add new inventory page. Once you filled that it, you would go to the mapping page, like for the metrc api. it would have all of the parent items for that vendor and fields where you could enter quantities, similar in look to the update po fields/boxes. This would create the new subs, and you could also add the sub attributes on this page, so you don't have to go back in to each sub on a PO and add sub attributes ie strain, testing, etc.

If the parent doesn't exist, there is a link where you can add new, just like currently on the api mapping page. 

 
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Shop 5250 Adilas Time 12/24/2019  

Steve and I spent the morning working on a custom gram tracking project that Steve is working on. He introduced a number of new settings and variables. Most of them were in the sub inventory level and dealt with sub inventory attributes and custom mapping and weight multipliers. We were working on code and following logic through the process.

 
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Shop 5343 Danny conditioning fields for special characters 12/26/2019  

Met with Danny to work on allowing certain special characters into sub inventory attribute values. Certain special characters may be dangerous due to a thing called cross site scripting (XSS). Normally we restrict certain things to keep the data clean and safe. There is a new label requirement coming for 1/1/2020 which requires the clients to be able to use certain special characters in the sub attributes. Those values will eventually be used on labels.

Danny and I got in there and made a few changes. We merged in the new code and pushed it up online. After that, I kept working on the two new servers and prepping things so that we could release them as live production servers.

 
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Adi 1602 Auto Populate Sub Attribute Data in Production Processes (build/extract/package) 1/6/2020  

3/4/20: Spoke again with Molly on this important  project. Need a template when packaging to add sub attributes.

1/23/20: Spoke with steve today and he asked to have this assigned to him so he can start working on it.

Spoke with Molly about this project. Needed to be added to the project list.

Second step of this process would be converting each to grams for metrc purposes in the build process.

 
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Shop 5303 Adilas Time 1/7/2020  

Steve and I were on the meeting together. We went over the data import and talked about some next steps and how to keep the client involved in the process. Some great ideas. We then worked on some of his custom code and trying to figure out what happens where and what else is needed. Pretty deep looping and checking on a gram tracker. It deals with settings, carts, items, sub inventory, sub inventory attributes, multipliers, etc. Deep water.

 
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Shop 5481 Elevele: eCommerce purchase limit planning 1/8/2020  

Bryan and I pushed up some new code and some custom reports. We then spent the rest of the session talking about ways to virtually extend the functionality for clients. We went over some of the existing pieces such as black box code, flex grid tie-ins, parent attributes, sub attributes, web page settings (JSON or object storage), and then we settled on real in-line database extensions.

We did a lot of drawing and talked about how we could virtually extend any table without hurting any other corporation (super light and non intrusive). This concept allows us to virtually use the custom tables (custom_numeric, custom_text, custom_dates, custom_json) and create new add-on columns for almost any database table. I showed Bryan how easy it was and we even when through some mock-ups (text and drawings based on scenarios). The nice things about these custom tables is that the data could be a specific data type (a real number, a real date, a real string/characters, or a JSON object). Plus the tables are much smaller than normal flex grid tie-in records.

Here is some older research on custom extensions, real in-line database extensions, and custom columns on a per table basis. Aka - the big brother of the flex grid tie-ins.
https://data0.adilas.biz/top_secret/developers_notebook_home.cfm?sort=asc&q=in%2Dline%20database%2Bdatabase%20extension

 
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Shop 5898 push code 1/29/2020  

Bryan joined the meeting to go over some code. We spent quite a bit of time on the delayed inventory scan and count page. It still needs some refinement but we are making progress. It got complicated due to sub inventory and sub inventory attributes and other sub filters. There is also an export to Excel that is slowing things down. The real reason is how things are stored vs how they (different companies) are wanting things shown and/or searched. There are some pieces that are pretty deep and when you get thousands and thousands (or millions) of records, things just slow down.

Towards the end, we went over a different project and I recommended that we create a virtual reroute to help the users return to where they were vs pushing them off to a different page. We did some drawings and I even showed him some sample code to help with that process. One thing that Bryan does better than anyone is, he keeps kicking the ball further down the road. He does that daily.

 
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Adi 1745 Global Parent Updates additions 4/16/2020  

12/23/2020: As of today, 5 and 8 are completed. The rest of the project is multiple projects and needs to be requoted if K wants to proceed.

11/9/20: Surfacing parent and sub inventory quantity(view only)one value: #8=Pulls off the parts homepage. $400 for this one.


11/6/2020: 8 hours to date:
10/28/20: #1-4 have been completed as of today. 

#5 will completed this week.

#6-9 need to be fleshed out.

9/28/2020:

top_secret/secure/global_parent_core_updates.cfm

1) item description: yes, easy

2) reference #- yes, easy

3) Bin #- yes, easy (this is an alias- called catalog page)

4) Barcode-yes, easy

5) Discounts- in a different spot- talking to a different table= different project.(not related to this project)


6)U of M- slightly complicated= deeper (wait)

7)category: hardest of all. wait on this

8)Qty- Surface parent and child inventory (view only)= deeper

9)Replace the categories piece with multi boxes instead of one= deeper. Database change

7/13/2020: Adding more items to be globally updated per client request for a quote: will need 2 hours per each. Kelly will pay- put on Balance Sheet

- Item Name- why would you want the name to be the same? Wait on this...ability to bulk edit messy items

- Item Category- ok can do. Flip categories ok
- Item Description-ok
- Reference #-ok
- Unit of Measure- ok
- Weight - already exists

- Bin Number -ok
-Barcode-ok
-Discounts-ok

Qty: Surface the parent and child inventory to view only.

Replace the categories piece with single selection to multiple boxes.

5/11/20: Global Parent attributes and global sub attributes updates:

4/20/2020: Vendor was made visible by Steve over the weekend.

4/16/2020: I have found this functionality to be very useful, but it is difficult to understand what items need to be changed quickly without research. It would increase the ability to clean up systems and implement E-Commerce if we added a column for the Vendor Name and Qty field. I also think the ability to update the Bin # and Reference Field would also be useful to quickly change reporting from item exports and invoice line item exports. 


If I was to prioritize this project it would be:
1. Vendor (Done) and Qty - Visibility
2. Bin # & Reference - Ability to change
 
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Adi 1784 Fix sub attribute function in e-comm 5/11/2020  

5/11/2020: Currently sub attributes act funny when you choose the setting: show subs sell subs. Could be something simple. Need to do some internal gathering of info to determine what is happening and what the fix would entail.

 
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Shop 6298 Adilas Time 5/21/2020  

There were a bunch of guys on this morning with Steve when I got on the meeting. They were chatting and helping each other out with questions and responses. Good stuff. Eventually, Eric, Steve, and I were the only ones left on the meeting. We spent the rest of the meeting talking about sub attributes for customers and how that would look. Lots of talk about real in-line database extensions and how those might be able to play in to the mix.

For a current project, we pitched and threw around 3 different proposals. Option 1 was to leave the core customers table alone and add a new wholesale customers table with options and settings. Option 2 was to expand the main core customers table with some new columns to hold the data. Option 3 was to build out "flex attributes" (aka real in-line database extensions for customers. This would allow our users to add whatever fields they needed to customer with specific data types (text, drop-downs, numerics, decimals, or dates). Great conversation.

Eric, Steve, and I spent a bunch of time writing down ideas, notes, and drawing diagrams of how things would look and/or function. I will attached our notes from the meeting, but the main thing was dealing with how to create a super generic table to hold the sub or flex attributes for customers, PO's, invoices, expense/receipts, elements of time, users, vendor, stock/units, etc. All of the 12 main system players.

Lots of talks about core values vs the new dynamic flex attributes. We also talked about auto creation, auto setup, and mapping to help make these new values work. Exciting stuff.

 
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Adi 1847 Gram controls for Ianthus AZ 8/10/2020  

8/10/2020: 4 corps need new gram control for sub attributes and ids

 
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Shop 6787 Flex extensions 8/19/2020  

Bryan and I met and went over the flex attributes project. He recorded a few different segments. We talked about what we have already got by way of other applications that have similar concepts. We also went over some planning and details. Here are some random notes - no particular order.

- Flex grid tie-ins already have 30 custom fields. They are already built out to play with and handle all 12 main application player groups. Flex grid is pretty cool but it lacks data types and it has grown to be pretty large. All of the custom fields are text or varchar characters vs real data types.

- We are looking for a cross and a hybrid between the power of the flex grid, the dynamics of sub inventory attributes, and make these new real in-line database extensions play throughout the entire application. Cool concept.

- Here are some pages that already have similar type code - places where we could harvest some ideas and code: All of these are in the top_secret/secure folder.
-- sub_inventory_template_home.cfm - Lists out all of the sub inventory attributes per part category. We would want to do something similar but for all 12 main player groups.
-- sub_inventory_templates.cfm - Add/edit page that deals with sub inventory attributes. Our would be for all 12 main player groups.
-- add_edit_flex_titles.cfm - This page lists all 12 main player groups, uses settings and custom naming, and also checks for permissions. We would love to mix this page with the lists from the sub_inventory_template_home.cfm page. Nice hybrid.
-- edit_sub_part.cfm - This page dynamically builds form fields for sub inventory attributes. Eventually, we will need something similar for all 12 main player groups.
-- sub_inventory_view.cfm - This page dynamically shows any extras or sub inventory attributes without the edit capability options.

- Existing tables to look at are: sub_inventory_attributes, app_types, custom_text, custom_numerics, custom_dates, custom_json, parent_attributes.

- As we were talking... we are thinking of a couple new tables... just ideas. One would be called flex_attributes and the other would be called flex_attribute_data - the data table would allow for text, numeric, and date values. Somewhat of a combo table as compared to custom_text, custom_numerics, and custom_dates tables.

- We asked some questions... shared tables or corp-specific tables? Auto populate and build or just in time? New tables vs old tables (add or modify existing)? Think of the number of servers, number of corps per servers, developer instances, etc. All of these deal with scope, maxes, mins, pros, and cons. Design decisions. As a fun side note, I challenged Bryan to spend a couple of hours and plan things out. I also challenged him to use Excel (spreadsheets) and do some mock-up data and get a feel for things that way before any code is written.

- We also talked about the database field settings project vs these real in-line database extensions and flex attributes project. The database fields settings is somewhat similar in the fact that you get to name, sort, add descriptions, create your own aliases, show/hide things, etc. The main difference is, the database field settings are already tied to real live database columns and fields. For example: Say in customer you have a field called terms. You could rename it, require it, and then search it. Even though you did all of that, the database still calls it "terms" as the actual field name. The real in-line database extensions or flex attributes creates a brand new field and gives it an id number. No matter what you call it, all of the new data is tied to that id number with whatever you want to call it. If you want to kill it, you can. It is not really part of the original table. Anyways, we went through some small differences between those projects.

- Lots of drawing and building out samples. One of the topics was special dev flags or special fields just for developers to use - (dev = developer). We talked about how dynamic this table will end up being. We may want to build in some special fields that allow us to flag and tag the data as needed. Basically, thinking beyond our current project to where it will be going.

All in all, a great session. I'm excited to see what Bryan comes up with. As a small side note, we may need to provide an instructions field for flex attributes, we may also need a flag to show/hide on the web. Very similar to the database field settings. I hope we keep building and learning from our current prototypes and experiments. That makes it fun.

 
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Shop 6690 Meeting with Calvin 8/25/2020  

On a Zoom meeting with Calvin going over the adilas label builder and needs and wants there. We ended up doing some debugging and walking through the code together. We also made some notes of other possible hang-ups. Especially with sub inventory and different sub attributes per part category. That gets really deep.

 
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Shop 6814 Hypur checkout API 9/1/2020  

Work session with Bryan. We spent quite a bit of time going over the flex attributes project. We were doing some planning, scenarios, research, and discovery type things. We ended up talking a lot about the concept of try storming and being willing to circle back around. The flex attributes project is a cross between four different projects. It has takes us quite a while to get to this point. We are mixing and blending flex grid tie-ins, sub inventory attributes, parent attributes, and custom field names and defaults. When you mix all 4 of those older projects, you get flex attributes. These are what we are doing and going to use for the real in-line database extensions and options. Pretty cool. This is a big project and may take some iterations and looping (on purpose circling back around) to get it done.

Bryan did record some of the meeting and he made some notes dealing with datatypes and other requirements.

 
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Shop 6826 Flex extensions 9/7/2020  

Progress is being made on the flex attributes project. Bryan is following the flow from sub inventory attributes for the new flex attributes. The flex attributes will end up being new database columns for all of the 12 main players. It is currently just in prototype mode but looking good (for its level). Bryan and I went over his existing progress and did a light critique. I authorized him to spend another 10 hours and see where we end up.

 
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Shop 6946 Euflora 10/5/2020  

Working with the Euflora team. They sent an email with a small tick list of items. We then got on a GoToMeeting session and spent a good half an hour going over things. Some of what they wanted was things like... missing sub attributes (it ended up just being a setting), problem with API sockets (ended up being a subdomain thing - small fix), and and extended data dump (extension of the printable inventory list plus a bunch of new columns from other tables). This half an hour needs to be billed out.

After the meeting, Steve and I got back on the meeting to talk about options. We talked about adilas as a companion software package for any business and how we could be the whole thing (full business system and platform) or just a great sidekick. We talked about the options of being that flexible sidekick type package. Kinda fun. We also talked about if we sell some percentages, we need to pass on the taxes to the buyers. Taxes are at 20% (15% federal and 5% state). That is a pretty hefty fee.

 
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Shop 6979 danny id 1824/1825 10/14/2020  

Danny and I worked on his local development environment. We had to re-enable some sub inventory attributes. After that, we went over a basic outline for the new projects that he will be working on. We did some small drawings and a general overview. I think that helped get us on the same page together.

 
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Shop 7338 Suzi and team, John Brandon Steve and Cory 1/21/2021  

- There was an original email dated back in July - Cultivation report for Ianthus

- Suzi and Philip from Ianthus were on the call - there were quite a few adilas folks on the call.

- Cultivation mapping - done by Dustin

- When a plat it changed from one phase to other phase, you auto populate those fields.

- They have some custom fields (sub inventory attributes) that they want auto filled when certain actions happen - changes of specific phases

- Maybe setting up which sub inventory attributes show up based on what phase. Also, does one or more of them have (sub attributes) a mapping from other data that is being entered up higher. It may take some more mapping. We may want to show/hide certain sub attributes based on the phases. That means we need to go through the process and really detail out what is shown and what is hidden. Along those same lines, they would love to set it up so that if a sub attribute is being shown, it can get a value or its data from one or more spots (other user entered form values). 

- Currently, some of the info that they are wanting to catch (automatically) is dealing with dates and sub dates.

- As a side note, because we allow each corporation build their own sub attributes, we then have to be able to show/hide and map out these pieces as they go through the different phases. The eventually need all of this data, but we are showing so many fields, it makes it more difficult. We are catching all of the data right now, it just isn't organized (visual report or visual form) to make it easy.

- Another thing that they were talking about was getting to those sub attributes later on - other reports  and passing that data along to other places.

- Just an idea... what if we build a phase builder type app - these would be settings, user controlled, and allow you to setup a single phase, what data to gather (maybe a point and click interface to setup what will show up), then the ability to setup defaults, show/hide fields, what to default things to, other data mappings, etc.

- There were some talks about back filling the data - separate tasks going backwards. Along with that, if we back fill things (update the data), we also need to build it going forward so it becomes an automated process.

- Eventually, they were getting into the nitty gritty details of each phase. The start of one phase sets certain values, the end of a phase closes things down (other actions) and also starts the next phase. We need to detail out each phase. I'm just dreaming here, but virtually a way to setup pods or sections of a virtual data assembly line process.

- The first phase would be a backfill type report - able to do things in bulk. They were talking about being able to select a PO date range and then applying specific dates to all line items on the PO. There were also talks about a PO number range.

- Light talks about required sub attributes and optional sub attributes.

 
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Shop 7318 Brandon and Cory work on Data 0 Server Health 2/4/2021  

Meeting with Cory and Steve - Working on a super deep inventory report. Looking at aggregating quantities and counts, mins and maxes, reorder options, parent attributes, sub attributes, flex attributes (new), core values, build your own reports (point and click), save and name your own report, setting pages (defaults), template and builder processes, and in-line database extensions. Lots of fun topics.

We talked a lot about "core" attributes (existing database columns and fields - core attributes).

We also talked about building, using, and deleting small aggregation tables for current part quantities. Great little work session.

 
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Shop 7184 Working with Shannon 2/9/2021  

Working with Shannon on vision statements and general goals for the next 1 year, 5 years, upto 10 years. See attached for our progress. Here is a list of some of our semi-short term goals that we will be adding to our business plan and vision plan:

Without going into too many details here are some elements that will be included in our plan:

- Keep tweaking on the transactional core

- Move client services more internal to Adilas 

- Expand into other verticals

- Allow for custom code where needed

- Get into aggregated and/or business intelligence (BI) type levels

- Grow the platform into an enterprise level app/system

- Along the way there are plans to do a full re-write under the code name “Fracture”

- Revamp the look and feel - improve user experience 

- Create and facilitate the Adilas Café and community

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We also talked about using the key word "core" for different starting spots or base level options. This could be core transactional systems, core database columns or fields, core or main pieces. An example may be something like: Using the word or phase core values vs parent attributes, sub attributes, flex attributes, etc. Hopefully that makes sense.

Prepping things and doing some pioneering. All part of the game.

At the end of the meeting, I ended up pushing up some code for Danny and his custom labels.

 
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Shop 7373 Adilas Time 2/15/2021  

Looking over some security stuff with Steve, John, and Eric. We were looking at cfqueryparams (Adobe ColdFusion Query Parameters). We also got into a custom report and looking at an update page with Steve for sub inventory attributes. This is a special date specific clean-up page for a client (bulk tool for sub inventory attributes).

 
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Shop 7597 Follow up with iAnthus 3/11/2021  

Follow up meeting with a client. Here are some of my notes:

- The current custom page that exists, they will leave it somewhat hidden and not connected. That way only certain people have access to the page.

- They would eventually like it to be fully automated and even hidden if possible. This deals with mapping custom sub attributes to certain phases and processes. Fully custom, just for this client. the automation deals with passing phase dates to sub attribute dates - this would require a small mapping to keep apples to apples.

- MVP solution (minimal viable product) - keep it small and tight. This is just for one client, we don't want to make this standard.

- Steve was pitching some other settings and status values for settings. Instead of just having active or inactive settings (use or don't use). He was proposing view only or admin only settings. Basically, pulling in a level of permissions on the settings themselves. That's nothing new, but sometimes as you build, you don't realize that you have to protect and/or figure out the levels when you first build it. Often, the idea is build it and then forget it. However, if the users have to keep going to the settings, you run the risk of someone who shouldn't be changing global or master settings and they switch something which causes problems. Basically, permissions and status levels within the settings. Interesting how everything eventually breaks into sub levels of control. Think of sub permissions.

- We did some light planning on the next phase of the automation process.

- There were some small look and feel requests. Once everything looks and feels good, they (our clients) are comfortable. If anything is off, even small ish, there is a small tension level. Very interesting.

 
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Shop 7614 Weekly Project Update(s) - John 3/17/2021  

Update meeting with John and Cory. John reported on a number of projects that he is working on. Here are some brief notes:

- He is working on the payroll project to setup and select holidays for timecards and clock in/out section.

- Troubleshooting the HTML check printing in the classic skin

- Cultivation and phase dates project dealing with sub attributes

- Servers with Wayne

- Developer's notebook migration project - moving it to another server so that it doesn't effect the main data 0 box

After we got an overview, we ended up talking about other things that he would really like to do. He has an interest in doing more design work. Maybe mixing and blending between backend code, servers, and design work. Full stack mixing!

We went over some questions that he had on the payroll and holiday selection project. Small work session. He also wants to help out with our own setup processes and helping to refine those pages, steps, and processes.

 
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Shop 7482 Adilas Time 4/1/2021  

We had a bunch of guys on the meeting this morning. Sean and Marisa were asking questions about using sub inventory out in ecommerce. There are tons of different settings. Ecommerce was not designed for the customer to be super detailed, like they are inside the main system. Out in ecommerce, they just say something like - I want this and that. Behind the scenes we have to check packages, counts, quantities, and other availability. This makes it kinda interesting... We have to play in simple requests but record things in crazy levels of details.

Steve was helping to guide the discussion. He did a great job and it was fun to watch and participate. We ended up having Alan pop in and go through things. As he was talking, I was scribbling down notes, ideas, and such. There are so many moving parts and pieces. All part of the same game or same puzzle.

We got into some Metrc and state compliance issues and needs. We ended up checking out some data for a client. They had added things, removed things, set things to inactive, voided things, and adjusted quantities using adjustment tools in the system. A complex series of events and timing. Also, different things done by different people. Thank goodness for histories being kept and maintained by the system. We ended up having Sean and Marisa do some fixes and then reach back out to the clients to let them know (passing on the knowledge and info - training).

Putting in another plug for a couple of other things that we still need to build out and/or refine a bit:

- We need to add a history table for sub inventory. The table already exists, but has not yet been wired up. That would really help.

- A quick search tool for RFID tags, media/content (files and links), and sub inventory attributes and packages (batches). The quick search already exists, we just don't have those things listed in the available search options. That would be really cool.

- The story about what is happening is so important. Eventually, it will end at a certain state or status, but what happened to get it there is huge. That's where the history and story comes in.

- We added more to the known issues report and known issues list. This will become part of the master code branch so that we can gather up ideas and such. We are hoping to get this report and tool out soon. Still under construction, but coming. Yeah!

- Steve is doing awesome on JIT (just in time) project management and delegation. Super fun to watch him work today.

- Steve and Kelly were on a meeting earlier today - as part of that meeting, they were using elements of time (calendar objects) to schedule recipe/builds to happen on certain days (production). The elements of time hit the calendar and the individual elements of time had links to fire off or do certain recipes on certain days. Creative use of both tools and mixing them together. As a side note, we are seeing elements of time being used more and more to coordinate and orchestrate different pieces as needed. So powerful!

-  There is a value of group trouble shooting and putting the puzzle pieces together. Not too many, but enough!

- Some of the jobs and tasks require planning and even pre-planning.

- We deal with moving targets all of the time - static (non moving) vs dynamic (constantly moving)

- Out in ecommerce, we have different levels. Inside the system, we help take the users into deep waters, based on permissions. However, out in ecommerce, we need to keep it simple (customer view and customer level), yet eventually we need the deep water info. What do we automate and what do we leave or make as a human type interaction? There is a balance and not situations are the same. Wouldn't it be cool if we could virtually setup the data assembly line with automated tasks and manual entry tasks. We can do that, but we have to be involved every time. Wouldn't it be cool if we could build the tool to help configure things as needed and have it all tied into the big picture software package or system app. Let's keep working towards that!

 
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Shop 7649 Deep dive on AWH reports-Kelly, Steve, Cory Brandon 4/12/2021  

Great meeting between Cory, Steve, Kelly, and I. The main topic for the meeting was talking about some advanced inventory (both parents and subs) search and export feature. The new report would bring together pieces from the main invoice tables, PO (purchase orders) table, parts (parent items) table, sub inventory, sub attributes, and parent attributes table.  This will end up being a combo type report - pick from viewable options, add filters and sorts, view report, get export, and be able to save the report for quick reference and usage.

Kelly had some great ideas as we were talking. Not all of these are directly from Kelly, but she was providing a bunch of these:

- Our clients, like to record the data and deep details about their inventory and their processes. However, once recorded, they need searchable and exportable access to all of the data, at every level. Basically, they want to get it back out (be able to use the data).

- Be able to point and click, name, and save the reports - under my favorites

- Lots of talk and ideas about parent attributes - how to help collect that data, how to show the data back in reporting, how to use it outside in ecommerce for marketing and stats.

- Talk about multiple or disconnected pages. All of the pieces are there, it could just use some more defined and simplified flow - workflow or data flow (interface and UI stuff).

- One-pagers - build in options for core part/item values, parent attributes, sub inventory attributes, all from one page and/or interface - our users are wanting more one-pagers.

- Kelly was saying - "The juice isn't worth the squeeze" - basically, the results are not worth the effort (at times). We need to find that balance point. More intuitive and more simple.

- Currently, they can do everything that they need to, but it requires some back and forth and even multiple touches (between add and edit) for certain pieces. The recommendation was to go clear back to the PO's and new item creation process. Maybe even allow for certain things to either be defaulted and/or hidden to make it more simple.

- Some of our conversations got into the next gen (next generation) of sub inventory and being able to allow sub attributes to flow across part/item categories. Parent attributes can flow over or across categories but sub attributes currently can not cross those boundaries. Kelly would like us to allow sub attributes to cross categories. Great idea, it may take some recoding and restructuring, but it could really be advantageous.

- Computer sprawl or digital sprawl - build, build, build - sometimes even without a full plan (like urban sprawl in certain neighborhoods).

- Training "if/then" statements is hard to do, especially if there are deep branching logic choices and consequences.

- Eventually we will want some great reporting for ecommerce and even activity out in the ecommerce land - not just buying but even browsing trends and client behavior and habits.

- Core attributes - currently, we sometimes call these the main attributes or main data fields. We will be using the term "core attributes" more and more to mean the main or primary fields or values for a certain group or section (12 main system players).

- We can use some of our existing code and snippets to build these new pieces. That will really help. We experiment all the time, let's harness some of that development.

- New term - web core or web core components

- Getting into marketing and customer trends and searching info (BI - business intelligence). Aggregating the data, even backend usage and stats (clicks, usage, page views, time spent per page, unique visits, and other demographic type stats). Everything is heading towards marketing and analytics.

- How can we speed up these processes? We know what is needed, we just need to figure out how to best wrap this or this whole thing (processes and procedures). That is one of the big challenges. The good things is, we've figured out a whole bunch of the smaller pieces already, let's just go to the next step.

- Breaking up these huge projects into smaller or bitesize pieces - that is big key to allowing multiple people and/or parties to play the game.

- Dealing with breaking things up, not only the projects, but maybe the UI (user interface) options. Things such as accordions (collapsible sub sections), show/hide pieces, tabs, dynamic - on the fly content and choices, cards, and other cool layout options.

- For this round, we are shooting for a mix between the advanced customer search reports and the save as my favorites (saving the reports).

- What about going back in time? Certain reports work really well for showing current (just in time) values and counts. What about being able to ask the system what was going on or what things looked like back in time (at a past date). Current (right now) vs going back to a date/time in the past. Playing with objects and data over time.

- We want to get to some futuristic or some predictive type reports in the future. Watching tends, alerts, and forecasting.

- The only way we can do it is to go step-by-step and take it slow. Sometimes we can only see just around the next corner, we can't see all the way to the end. One step at a time. That is ok!

- Towards the end, we got into some talks and conversations about building templates and virtual starting places for the next person who has to pick up the pieces and play the game.

- Steve and I will be working together to build and develop some of these pieces. Once we get things pioneered out to a certain level, we may get some others involved. Sometimes it is too hard to convey they whole vision. Sometimes, getting someone started so that they can see a little ways down the road really helps that process out.

- On data imports, it really helps us (the backend developers) if there are both human readable fields (text and verbage) and computer readable type fields (id numbers). Helping to prep for the next person down the line (who is who's customer).

 
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Shop 7797 Alan Brandon Steve item catalog deep dive 5/17/2021  

Alan, Cory, Steve, and I on a recap and planning meeting. Alan was going over a recap of the enterprise models and the enterprise vendors. Our next goal is to get into enterprise items and enterprise parts.

We did some planning on the next steps. Moving into the enterprise levels for parts and core items in the system. We talked about locks, permissions, images, media/content, and sharing or using enterprise level catalogs. The upcoming needs will be enterprise level vendors (done), part categories, parent attributes, sub inventory attributes, core parts and items, etc.

Cory went in and showed Alan some pages with parent attributes. Light training.

We then had some small talks about reworking sub inventory options before we turn them into high level catalogs and enterprise level models. They need to be refined a little bit deeper on the transactional systems first. Our current priorities are: part categories, units of measure, core part values, photos, and media/content. The parent attributes and sub inventory attributes will need to wait for a bit.

Lots of talks about conserving data and conserving space on the database, based on these mappings and enterprise level tools. Lots of data normalization and control.

Steve and Alan talking about funding and what the future plans are - new markets, refining our product, and playing into new markets.

If we make these high level catalogs - what if a vendor could almost dictate to their distributors what they get and what they want? That would be so cool! Steve and Alan were dreaming about ideas and where things could go! It was fun to listen in and hear some of their ideas.

After Alan left, Steve and I chatted for a bit about our crew and future plans.

 
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Shop 7935 Working on custom data extracts for a client 7/28/2021  

Custom data extracts and special queries for a client. Deep SQL queries and reading up on outer joins with aggregate functions. Helping John with some data for his local balance sheet. He has a project that deals with special formatting of columns and data totals on the balance sheet. After that, back on the advanced data extracts. Ended on the sub inventory extract. It got pretty deep with all of the sub attributes and custom mappings.

 
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Shop 8075 Working on a custom data extract 7/29/2021  

Back on the sub inventory searches and custom data extract reports. Working with sub inventory attributes, packages, and data. Lots of planning out ideas and working through the process. Lots of scratch level planning. It gets pretty deep. Imagine thousands of parent items with multiple child or subs per parent. Then you have to check almost 60 sub attributes and do a text based match from 60 down to 7 attributes that need to be displayed. Major funnel type project of slimming things down for a custom data extract.

 
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Shop 8032 Adilas Time 8/9/2021  

Steve and Dustin were talking about sub attributes and using smaller getters and setters to modify data as needed. We talked about different level of coding - in-line, using methods, and using dynamic getters and setters. We would like to use the getters and setters where possible. The more dynamic we can make it, the better off we will be. Code once and then use many. They were also talking about more settings on top of what is currently hardcoded for some of the verbage. It is so important that these companies speak their own language. It makes a huge difference.

Eric joined and checked in on the USAePay and EMV chip reader stuff. We are making progress, but there are many parties that seem to be involved. Steve and Eric were talking about adilas jumping in and being more of a middle man and actually pitching and selling some of the merchant processing pieces. We talked about some options and making some plans as we move forward. Part of our plan will be to provide a super robust and fully integrated system and payment solution. We have a bunch that work, but nothing that we are actively behind and trying to sell as our recommended solution.

John and I checked in and merged in a small branch of code dealing with his payroll and timecard projects. Small tweaks. We also setup another meeting time for later today to get into the new timecard logic a little bit deeper.

Cory joined the meeting and had some tech support questions. We looked into some small changes and requests that were wanted.

 
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Shop 8324 Meet with Dustin for project updates 10/13/2021  

Dustin was checking in with Cory and I. They were going over some smaller pieces and doing some follow-ups. Dustin is currently working on some samples and sample packaging code. Sample, in the cultivation and production area are very common. They need to be tracked and monitored, but they aren't really like real inventory (kinda a mix).

Dustin was going over some layout options and changes that he is planning for the sample packaging build section. Lots of crazy gymnastics for the different test types and API socket data (state by state) that we get back. It makes it hard to program things with all of the dynamics.

Cory is going to reach out to clients and see if she can get requirements and screenshots of what the clients are looking for. It is so helpful that she is willing and able to coordinate research and customer needs.

As they were talking about things, the topic switched to sub attributes (child inventory and child or sub attributes) and how deep they needed to go in the new process. Showing and hiding the attributes when needed and making sure that they are there at other times. Pretty dynamic process.

Light talk about code repositories and using bit bucket. Cory was asking for more communication and keeping us posted on changes, timelines, problems, and launch dates. We aren't done yet, but Dustin was asking about the next steps and next projects.

After Dustin left, Cory and I were chatting about clients and some of their needs. Some of our clients are very demanding.

 
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Shop 8686 Internal tech support calls and meetings 2/24/2022  

Sean sent me a text and wanted to jump on the GoToMeeting channel to go over a possible problem with pagination on the parts homepage. It looks like adding in the new snow owl datatables, new updates and changes launched last night, that the pagination messes up bulk add to cart options on the other pages (beyond the first page of multiple pages of search results). Basically, the datatables allow you to change the sort order and even limit certain fields showing up. If they change anything, it can put a parent item on one page and the subs on the next page. The code looks for the parent item stuff, if a sub is selected. Basically, if both the parent and the subs were on the same page, it worked. If they, the users, through different searches, filters, or pagination (going to the next page) they could make it break if the parent and the sub items were not on the same page together. This also happened if there were so many subs that the package that they wanted was on a different page. Anyways, small little complication and small little bug. We found a number of work arounds, but that requires training and education or experimentation.

After I finished with Sean, I got a call from Cory and then we jumped on the GoToMeeting session. Cory was relating some of the tech support questions and complaints that she was receiving. They, our clients, wanted more info than what we were showing them. We tried to trim some of the reports down and make it easier on the eyes. Our clients, depending on what they were doing, really needed all of the data and sub attributes and RFID tag data. Kinda interesting.

Anyways, we may need to go back and provide more options. Long story made short, we really need real client feedback and input. It is invaluable and muchly needed. As a side note, it keeps coming back to settings and even settings at different levels. We need corp or world level decisions, category level decisions, and even user or page level decisions. It keeps coming up and would really help to provide a solution or multiple solutions where the users are in full control of what they want to see and use and even how things act and play through. That is one of the things that we want to add in on the fracture project - full control of what they see, what columns, show/hide, sort order, naming, aliases, etc. Almost to full custom without making everything fully custom. Just base it off of data driven decisions or layered settings, permissions, and templates. That would be awesome!

 
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Shop 8812 Fixing reports and small issues 3/1/2022  

Small fixes on a custom report for a client. Merging in some code for Chuck on the view parts page. Small fixes for RFID tags and sub attributes on the view parts page and the sub inventory tab. Started working on a fix for Marisa on ecommerce images and setting up default logic based on actual images, item defaults, and category default images.

 
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Shop 8869 Adilas Time 4/4/2022  

On the morning meeting, Marisa was showing us some sub inventory issues that need to be smoothed out dealing with sub inventory attributes and template settings. I was doing some emails. A question was brought up about New Mexico state payroll and state withholding. We used to have that state, we just need to circle back around and make sure that everything is updated and good to go.

Shari O. and I spent some time going over progress with USAePay and getting information from them. We have both made multiple calls to our contacts at Newtek and haven't really gotten the information that we need yet. Kinda frustrating, we just want info on account types and how to help our clients sign-up for what they need. If we can't the info that we need, we talked about going in a different direction. Both of us will keep trying, for the time being.

Switching subjects, Shari O. and I spent quite a bit of time talking about our transition from full 1099's for all of our guys and gals to the multi member LLC (partners and ownership) options. Eventually, we may need a hybrid type solution that allows for owners, 1099 folks, and even employees and W-2 folks. Still trying to figure things out there. As a note, Shari O. is recommending that we slowdown a bit and make sure that we have watched budgets, gotten documentation, and standard procedures in place before we jump too quickly. I showed her the adilas docs section, inside the adilas site, and she had never been there. If we do build out more internal flow and owner type handbooks, that is where it will go. It will be called our standard operating agreement or something to that nature.

Shari O. and I talked about budgets, watching and tweaking those budgets, and then making some decisions. Lots of talk about timelines and timeframes for some of the upcoming changes. Good stuff. I'm super glad that she cares and is willing to ask hard questions.

 
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Shop 9174 Working with Bryan 6/30/2022  

Meeting with Bryan over GoToMeeting. We started into some questions on automating discounts and then into sub inventory. Bryan had been working on a project to show sub attributes on save as PDF invoices. The sub attributes already existed in the other invoice views, it just wasn't on the save as PDF version. We merged in the code and pushed the files to all servers.

 
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Shop 9188 Brandon, Steve and Cory discuss projects 7/21/2022  

Long meeting between Steve, Cory, and I. Cory was reporting on tons of different projects and getting our input and suggestions. We covered tons of different topics. Here are some of my notes (from 10 pages of post-it notes - didn't know it/we would cover so much). The original meeting was only setup for an hour. It went a wee bit over... :)

- Talking about tons of custom label options. More talks about what to do with Calvin's custom label builder. We've spent a lot of money there and want to really get a return on that investment.

- We talked about bringing projects more internally with our guys and breaking things into smaller and smaller pieces.

- On labels, we had a request to be able to do serialized labels (up or modify counts and counters based on batches or packages).

- Using tons of our existing tools and refining those pieces. We have a ton of tools in the shed (virtually).

- Lots and lots of talks about breaking up the bigger projects into multiple smaller pieces. Along with that, we need to be able to charge money for bigger estimates. Everything takes time and effort. Either that or be able to recoup the amount within the bid or estimate.

- If we are doing real custom work, we need to charge for that. Often, we end up taking a hit.

- The trend seems to be (globally) transactions and details going into aggregates and summaries. We have had so many 3rd party analytical companies wanting to use our API sockets to harvest and use our great data sets. We would like to do a bunch of that analytical work inhouse vs farming it out to a 3rd party. All of these 3rd parties are just working for individual companies, but you can see the trend happening. Our clients are really wanting to get to the business intelligence level (BI) for viewing their data, snapshots, counts, summaries, and other aggregated data or stats.

- We went over some pros and cons of using the adilas API sockets. Back and forth on monetizing those channels and also making sure that they don't get abused or flooded.

- Lots of talks about the item catalog and the image catalog. As we use more and more API sockets, we could really use bigger and bigger bulk tools to help with data standardization and speed of deployment. Lots of positives. We, as a company, could also sell more systems if we brought in the enterprise level (way up - cascading info down to lower systems). Good stuff.

- More bulk standard tools. This just adds to the votes for building out the value add-on core model with different levels. Just as a recap - the value add-on core model deals with 5 known levels. They are: 1. Transaction core (current adilas system), 2. Industry specific skin, tools, and features. 3. Any custom code on top of the main system. 4. BI - Business Intelligence levels (stats, sums, counts, averages, mins, maxes, aggregates), and 5. Enterprise levels - connecting multiple worlds in a hierarchical type system (roll ups, roll downs, transaction corps/worlds, aggregates and sum corps/worlds - also dealing with permissions and access). We really want this type of a system for our future fracture project. We already have a number of pieces to this project (all kinds of prototypes spread all around the system), it just isn't all put together. That would be so awesome, clean, powerful, and hopefully pretty!

- We spent some time talking about our clients. Sometimes they get pretty creative. That is both good and bad. If they get creative, and find errors or break things, we just fix them and keep going. Other times, they totally use certain tools in ways we never would have imagined and/or foreseen. That can get interesting.

- There have been some requests for bulk tools for updating sub attributes and bulk sub inventory tools.

- Cory kept asking - Who are we? We tend to build generally but then we have all of these industry specific demands that keep coming at us. It makes it really hard to know where to focus. We really need to decide who we are and then hopefully that or those choices will help guide us.

- Dealing with Metrc (state compliance systems), we've had the request to build out more individual user type functions. This is dealing with more employee/user type permissions and settings. Currently, most of our Metrc transactions are done on a corporation or world level. The new requests are to do the exact same things but break it down on a per person basis. That sounds awesome, but that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in development. We would have to create the one-to-many relationship, make sure that they were valid, then sync up users and permissions between systems in order to play. Then, to further make it kinda crazy, you would have to check user permissions (remotely) then attempt the connection, then if it failed, figure out if there was a global (higher up) option that you could do so that it wouldn't break all of our code and processes. It could be a huge project. Lots of unknowns. As part of this project, we would also have to add more history tables, who did what, who changed what, who has permission to do what, and making sure that each individual keeps their keys and tokens updated. It sounds like a small nightmare.

- We seem to build in general and then use it specifically as needed. Custom code on top of our own standard package, tool, or feature.

- Going over the cost of building and building. One you have to build it, then you have to maintain it, and upgrade and support it. The costs keep increasing. This topic lead us back to questions about who are we and where should we be focusing?

- There is a growing need to use asynchronous type loading like AJAX or some way of breaking huge datasets into smaller pieces. It is totally common for us to need to show or export 10,000+ or even 100,000+ records at a time. The current process tries to take that whole thing as a single bite or single attempt. It's just too large and slows things down.

- Some time was spent talking about loyalty points and keeping track of the total liability. More talk about other reports that show sums, grouped values, look-back capable reports, and using ACV (actual cash value) for recording loyalty points. We do a bunch of that, just refining the process and making it even smoother.

- Need for messaging or using the message marketing features that we have already built. There is a growing need for push notification and two-way communications outside of the main app or website. The client portal is growing in needs and options. More mobile ready or full mobile pieces are going to be coming down the pipeline. Everything seems to be trending in that direction.

- Question - do we fill in the gaps on functionality or try to update the look and feel? It sure would be awesome if we could virtually turn things on/off based on the UI (user interface) and settings. We would love to set things up super simply and then let the users add on or take away from our smaller base level. A new mini version of the shopping cart is in great need of these fracture type level settings. Start small and simple and then let the users build on or configure things as needed. Hide anything that we can unless asked for. Then when it is done (using the tool or feature), it can be hidden again. Every page needs show/hide options on a per page or per section level. Totally customized.

- Along with the show/hide options talked about above, it would be so cool to show all of the options and then say - what do you want? You tell us. More fracture stuff (where we are headed). Mountains and iceberg analogy stuff (it still needs to be there, but what is shown and/or exposed).

- We talked about extra costs and prices for some of the other add-on tools and functions. Some of our stuff (tools and features) takes a major amount of work and effort. We would love to sell more training, consulting, automation, and other professional services.

- News and updates and the importance of keeping our users up to date and informed. This seems to be a constant need and keeps evolving. Content and making and creating new content (creation and maintenance).

- Lots of talks about prioritizing efforts for different persons (parties). Diving out responsibilities and sharing info across departments and across people (users).

- Using videos - the value of education and training. Selling our other services. Scheduling and setting up ongoing training efforts. We would love to make lots of polished smaller videos. Laying it all out for our clients (on demand education or just in time education). We could really use our website to toot our stuff for different business verticals. For example: Revamping our manufacturing site and pages. We can handle... (fill in the blank) for manufacturing or whatever. That is a deep pool (manufacturing and production type businesses). The trend seems to be leading us more in that direction.

 
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Shop 9270 check and push code 7/28/2022  

Emails and research. Then working with Bryan on some table column spans and alignment issues. He showed me a number of scenarios and how things were looking and lining up. This was all dealing with invoice sub totals, taxes, and grand totals. The main switch was whether or not a line item and/or invoice had sub inventory and sub attributes being displayed. The code was looking good, so we merge it into the master code branch. Pushed it up to all servers.

 
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Shop 9222 Adilas Time 8/22/2022  

Talking about sales and follow-up calls and emails. Steve, Sean, and I were going over some emails that we got over the weekend. We decided that we would reach out to one of our clients, as another potential client wanted to ask some questions to some of our existing clients. Making plans and getting ideas from each other.

Cory joined the meeting and we broke into a small project overview and question session. She was out of the office most of last week and just had a pile of emails and questions for Steve and I. There were 3rd party solution needs, emails, small bugs, and new requests. It doesn't seem to slow down... and if it does, it isn't for very long.

Cory and Steve were going over the compare Metrc inventory page and talking about ideas to help shorten up that page. We have a client that is getting so many sub packages that it is causing problems (too much data). We talked about other possible bulk tools and ways to help them clean-up there data and/or be able to easily filter their records and results sets. Kinda funny and kinda not, but we build and break, build and break. Our clients keep pushing things to huge extreme levels. All you can do is build and break, build and break, try to respond and look forward as far as you can. It becomes an interesting game.

After that, Cory was bringing forward some new requests to be able to duplicate PO's with sub inventory packages. We have been able to duplicate PO's for years now, but not with sub inventory packages because those are all fully independent and have varying sub attributes and usually it's not a straightforward duplication process. It requires too many other questions, variables, and switches. Anyways, that is heating up and we may have to figure out a way to get that going.

 
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Shop 9350 Working on a custom data extract 8/25/2022  

One of our clients wanted to see all of the sub inventory attributes on a custom data export. Doing some testing and prep work.

 
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Shop 9378 Working on changes to a data export 8/31/2022  

Working on the 710 Labs custom data extract and data export. They wanted all of the sub inventory attributes to be passed back with every sale and line item. Working on the new code and writing new logic.

 
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Shop 9379 More custom code 8/31/2022  

More work on the code for 710 Labs and the custom data extract that they are wanting with all sub inventory attributes and invoice line item data.

 
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Shop 9332 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 9/6/2022  

Steve and Cory were talking about looking up projects in bit bucket (code repository stuff). Being able to check on commits and branches. They were then talking about different industries and how they are financing some of their developments. Lots of games that people play and how do we fit into that mix. While Steve was still on with us, Cory was reporting in on some meetings that she had had with Kelly dealing with the adilas label builder and sub inventory attributes. Both of those subjects seem to be heating up a bit.

Our current goal is to focus and try to get some small victories (projects being done and across the finish line). Cory and I spent some time going over projects. We talked about the need to test everything. Even small stuff. We have had it bite us before. Next, Cory and I looked into a possible bug in some settings. We looked and looked and couldn't see anything quickly. We may have to jump in deeper, when we get a chance.

Shari O. popped in and had some questions about getting a new internal email server. Our current solution has been giving us some problems lately. We don't change any code on our side and it works great, all of the sudden it will be down, and without any changes on our side, it all of the sudden starts working again. Kinda crazy. Shari O. calls it the gremlins or email gremlins. As a side note, later in the meeting she popped back in to let us know that it was working again. Random.

Wayne joined the meeting and got Cory and I up to speed on a few things that he is trying to work on. Performance tweaks.

Cory and I then started going over her list of possible projects, quotes, and estimates.

- Need quotes for inputting sub attribute data all at one time upon PO creation (start with build page)
- Bulk update sub attributes interface
- Mapping of EOT (elements of time) data to sub attributes (settings for cultivation and manufacturing)

Along the way, we were talking about options and settings that relate to the concepts of the data assembly line, recipe/builds, showing subs in the packaging and production pages, and managing recipe/build output better. Lot of talk about bulk edit tools for sub inventory attributes, batches, phasing, sub locations, and moving subs along a known path or virtual assembly line.

Dealing with the data assembly line concepts, I was telling Cory how we setup both rules and assignments for smart group buttons (tiered pricing buttons). I was mentioning that we could use something similar to help setup and do the mapping between elements of time, sub phases, sub locations, sub groups, and monitoring the progress of certain things. We need the rules (what or how to do things) and the assignments (who or what to connect or monitor). Using the two pieces in combo (rules and assignments) we could then have the computer and/or system help us monitor progression and progress. They are good at that, they just need instructions and the who, what, when, how, and why and they can do those jobs over and over again.

As we keep rolling more and more towards the concept of fracture (future adilas project) I would really like to keep working on the data assembly line concepts and using rules and assignments to get the correct flow and mapping in place. I see that as important as we keep going forward.

 
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Shop 9392 New format changes for the Hoodie guys 9/7/2022  

New changes to the output for the Hoodie guys. We changed how the sub attributes were displayed, took off some URL encoding formatting, and forced some of the JSON object keys to all lowercase. Other light changes, at their request.

 
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Shop 9331 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 9/12/2022  

Cory had a list of questions and things that she wanted to go over. She asked about how the top 15 customers were figured out on the some of the dispensary homepages. We went into the code and looked around. We went over invoice due dates, how to allow customer/client terms to show up on invoices, and other projects.

The next major topic was parent attributes and parent attribute sorts. We talked a lot about reworking all of the sub inventory pages and our virtual wish list with regards to sub inventory and parent attributes. It is super flexible and very needed. It currently works but could use some enhancements, polishing, and refinement. Never ending process.

Along those line, there has been requests for better bulk tools for both parent attributes and sub attributes, better reports and advanced searches, and ways to speed things up and make it even smoother.

Cory and I went over some quotes and talking about the need for better project management for our internal projects. We are really good at doing just in time project management but some of our project really need some more base level requirement and expectations out of the gates. Sometimes we hand our developers a simple one liner and then they take off. They just need a little bit more instruction and direction in writing vs just talking and verbal. If good notes weren't taken, things fall through the cracks.

 
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Adi 2236 Sub attribute modal for not enough stock in cart 10/3/2022  

10/10/22 checked and pushed code with Brandon.

Code edited:

classic/view_cart_body.cfm

classic/view_cart_bottom.cfm

secure/custom_cart_5.cfm

Client paying for modal and settings to allow view of sub attributes when not enough stock is available upon adding to the cart or flipping a transitional invoice to a customer invoice.

 
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Shop 9434 Adilas Time 10/20/2022  

Danny was on the morning meeting this morning. The topic was videos and marketing. Danny is working on some quick tips and then some deep dives, dealing with different videos. We spent quite a bit of time talking about how best to get the word out. We also talked about themes - do we want to be more serious business or mix and bled and get a more playful theme. We kinda like the more playful theme.

Once the videos are done, we need a way to spread that information and link to those videos from various places within the system or within the site. One of the hardest things with adilas is how quickly things change. It is super hard to keep up and keep our users up to date on what is changing and happening. Often we will build something new and no one knows about it. That same topic "spreading the knowledge or know how" has been and is becoming more of an issue.

Sean and Steve were talking about recipes and production stuff. Sean was trying to figure things out and we finally figured out that one of the categories was missing some sub inventory attributes. We talked about making the error message a better error to help direct the users to what was needed.

We also spent some time talking about look and feel and being consistent. We kinda have a half-painted house right now - switching from classic to snow owl themes (all look and feel stuff). The last topic of the meeting was talking about setting up time with the developers and getting a full rundown on new functionality and doing some of the deep dives or developer level demos.

 
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Shop 9820 Adilas Time 1/26/2023  

Each of the guys were reporting in on what they did yesterday. Sometimes people discount us and our product because our rates are so low. The guys were talking lots of hits and some of their visits are kinda rough. It's tough being on the frontlines and in direct firing range.

Note for me - On items that are set to subs only, maybe help prompt the user to setup sub attributes, if we can tell that they don't exist yet. That has been a problem and we have to explain it all of the time. People forget that step.

Talks about internal training and having the guys help us figure things out.

 
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Shop 10005 Adilas Time 4/4/2023  

Steve and I were going over sub inventory attributes. We got into all kinds of attributes. We talked about sub inventory attributes, parent attributes, and flex attributes. Currently, each section or attribute does a specific thing. There is a growing need for more or better sub attributes and parent attributes. Easier to get things into the database for storage and easier to pull the data back out. I mentioned to Steve that we would really like to add a few fields and values to the current sub inventory attributes. They are things like: part category id, app type id, main id (tied to the part_id), and sub inventory attribute id numbers. We have some of those columns but there has not been a project to standardize things yet. It's still on the wish list.

Quite a bit of talk about new corp-specific tables and data storage. Evolution... everything is evolutionary... look and feel, logic, business flow, and even sales (how we sell our products and services). We will keep working on making it easier and easier to use. SG&A costs (selling general and administrative costs) and going clear out to the financials. To the client, it is just data storage. To us, we have to make it all flow and work together as a system. Sometimes that's a challenge.

As recap - for sub inventory attributes or sub attributes:

1. Add the part category id as a look-up value (this would be a new column)
2. Add the main part id as a look-up value (we could use the column called main_id to hold the part_id - it would work perfect)
3. Add in the correct app type id as a look-up value (we already have this column but don't use it for sub inventory attributes - we just need to use it and tie it in better)
4. Add in the associated sub inventory attribute id number as a look-up value (this would either be a new column and/or repurpose an existing column that is not being used in the custom_text, custom_dates, and custom_numerics tables).
5. If we do change things here, we may want to go through these tables and rename fields and values. It was originally created for a specific project and then used over and over again for other semi related projects. Now that we know what it will be used for... we should take the time to future proof it a bit.

If we could add these fields and/or data points into the sub inventory attributes, it would be so much better for getting the data back out of the system. Currently, things are tied to the sub inventory id or sub reference id. We then look that up to figure out the part id and then use the part id to look-up the part category id. It would duplicate a little bit of data but it would make it so much easier to find things and quickly reference things. Currently, we have to join multiple tables and go virtually up and down the chain to find everything that we need. I would recommend that we do a special project, add the above, do some clean-up and then move forward. That would really help. Just my two cents.

 
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Shop 10059 Bug fixes and data clean-up 4/18/2023  

Small data fix for Kelly on data 34. Had to fix some sub inventory attributes for a PO that had been voided but had sub inventory on it. We did some back and forth via text message and we got it all figured out.

After that Cory had me look at a custom PO label that needed to be fixed/tweaked for a client. The barcode was missing a small piece and thus not scanning the number that we wanted for the sub inventory package. The number was right, it was just missing the "~" for the sub package or sub id number. For example: Say it was sub id ~34, the barcode was only scanning as 34. On the phone with Cory, made the small fix, and pushed up new code. Also sent the update to John and Steve to push into master. My local box is still kinda broken.

 
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Shop 9990 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 4/24/2023  

Cory and I going over different projects. One of the new things that needs to be done is some new code to help with emailing invoices as PDF's. Currently, we send emails with links to web based invoices out in ecommerce. We have a client that has to get their emails as a PDF invoice. Anyways, we talked about needs for that project and being able to automatically email clients who owe us money with the PDF invoice, be able to save it, attach it, and also do a clean-up routine for keeping things tight on the server. We talked about some new settings to make all of that happen.

Along with our conversation, we were talking about being able to do these things asynchronously so that the user doesn't have to wait. Also, as a side note, if we did this, our client would be happy and Shari O. would have an easier time. She does all of our billing stuff.

We flipped over to recipe/builds and a custom report that mixes elements of time, recipe/builds, flex attributes, and inventory planning. We made a small bug fix for the USAePay EMV chip transaction stuff. After that, we spent the rest of our meeting going over custom report requests. It's amazing what people want to search by, group by, and what things they want to mix and blend onto a single report.

As we were talking, Cory had the idea of building a big robust report builder that allowed for all kinds of stuff. Basically, a smorgasbord with options, filters, and such. We then put that power in the hands of our users and let them go at it. In rough terms, it will be let them pick and choose, save it, run it. That would be really cool. We also talked about linking and mapping things internally for sub inventory, kinda like family groups for sub inventory attributes. What are they paired with, how are they related, etc.?

The last subject was dealing with mapping, relationships, groupings, and aggregates. Everybody wants all of the data (details) but they don't want to have to wade through it (sums, counts, maxes, mins, averages, etc.). Those are the aggregates. Everybody wants sales data, inventory, and sub inventory data.

 
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Shop 10109 Kelly, Brandon and Cory talk about high level report settings 5/2/2023  

Zoom meeting with Cory and Kelly. The whole thing was dealing with inventory reporting and an advanced report builder concepts. Kelly wants to throw-out a wider net and see what we can catch. Instead of going super deep to financials, she wants us just to focus on the invoices and PO's. Basically, an inventory and CRM (customer relationship management) mix. Leave the accounting alone right now (for these reports). Just help our clients get their data in and out quickly. Basically, it's operations stuff.

One of the goals is to show, teach, and allow our clients to use a mix of vendors, customers, invoices, PO's, inventory items, sub inventory, parent attributes, and location information as needed. All of these things interact on both the sales and customer relationship (CRM) levels.

Here are some my notes from the meeting:

- Talking about building a report building engine. This deals with groupings, filters, show/hide columns, sort orders, etc.

- Kelly was talking about getting to the meta data of the database data (going deeper). What is related, how does it work, what can I get out of it - including mixing things that a company and/or individual is looking for? Even things that we can't think of and/or thing about. Extracting those data analytics and details out of the system. Lots of value there.

- Be able to export to CSV, PDF, and web formats (normal HTML or data tables).

- Ideas about display options - Nested groupings, even pulling and storing data in temp tables, data dumps, and then querying that data. ETL - extract, transform, and load - manipulate the data however we need to. Leave the raw data alone, just tweak out other pieces or tables.

- Show all of the tables and their fields. Preset a few things so that the defaults are showing (not everything is checked by default).

- Use the data tables, be able to save the reports, see new reports from the saved favorites, all kinds of advanced report building options.

- Put this new advanced report builder engine under its own new permission.

- Thinking about vertical tabs (for a layout view). The tables or basic system players would be the left most side (left vertical tabs), the right side would show other settings per table. For example: Say the tabs down the left were things like vendors, customers, invoices, PO's, parts/items, etc. Then when you click on the different tabs, it would show which fields belong to what table (on the top of the page) and then the filters and grouping options would be below that. When you are done, you click to view the report. You could also save a new report name, set the sorting or sort order, and who can see it (assigned to who or just a assigned to all option).

- Help educate the users on the database structure. This could be a great side agenda item for this advanced report builder engine.

- Kelly was asking - Is this new advanced report builder a value add-on? How do we monetize it? We decided that for now, we'll just roll it in and try to sell it as a feature of the whole or bigger picture.

- We talked about sub inventory attribute mappings and creating groups (things or attributes that can cross over categories). This is a form of layering for the sub attributes. Basically, each item category can have any number of sub attributes. We then go in and allow a user to setup groups or which sub attributes are buddies or tied to other sub attributes in different item categories. Making small or mini family groups for the sub attributes. Just an idea to help with reporting and consistency.

- We won't build this in yet, but we have to think about things on an enterprise level. If we build this advanced report builder engine on the corporation or basic world level (where we need to start), it won't be long and some of our bigger multiple world level clients will want an enterprise level solution for the advanced report builder engine. We know that is coming!

- Along with the enterprise level, we know that some of our clients really want the business intelligence (BI) level of reporting and aggregation. It's a known need. That's a whole other plan and topic.

- There may be versions and phases of this report builder engine.

- I was asking about big reports and possible timeout issues. We may need to show sample data and then build out the bigger (in needed) reports and then let our clients know that they are done or finished. Some of these reports could potentially be millions and millions of records. As a note, I know that Wayne was working on something similar to this a few months back. I'll check with him on ideas for timing, flow, and notifications.

- We may want to build in options for details (default level) and/or aggregates groups, sums, counts, etc.

- If you are wanting to get more money from people, it really helps if the people that you are dealing with want the same things (that you want). It creates a common want and need.

- In a nutshell, this project would be mixing and blending all (maybe not all) of our existing advanced search features into one bigger master report builder. Because this project could get so big, we may end up playing around and building a mini version and/or a prototype of sorts.

- We talked about timelines and even ways of distracting our clients to buy some time. All of this takes time and resources to plan, build, and deploy.

- As an addition - it would be really cool if we had some presets (pre-maid selections and choices) to help people get started. That would make the building process simpler. We could show some defaults and then let them modify that vs building from scratch every time. This idea came from Aspen (my daughter) who was listening to the meeting while working on other stuff.

 
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Shop 10133 Brandon, Kelly and Cory discuss sub reporting 5/11/2023  

Zoom meeting with Cory, Steve, and Kelly. We were talking about sub inventory. Subs are great but do require more work and effort. Getting info in, out, reporting, and bulk updates and bulk tools. When we started, we didn't even know what was needed. As things unroll and unfold, we are beginning to see a bigger picture. That is awesome!

We have mountains and mountains of data. Now what?

As the meeting progresses, we spent some time talking about the challenges to sub inventory. Here are some of my notes:

- Sub inventory attributes and being category specific

- Settings all over the place - configuration

- What about changes, updates, and flipping categories (after the fact)?

- Possible mapping of categories, sub attributes, etc. Talking about mapping by id numbers and not names or column numbers.

- We need a sub inventory history section. Tables are already built, but they have not been tied in.

- Some of our clients want so much control

- Sub attributes, parent attributes, flex attributes, flex grid tie-ins, and other different levels or layers

- Master list of sub attributes and then repurpose those per category. This could be tied in with the mapping options listed up higher. Either start from the top (master list) and go down (what sub attributes are needed per category) or list out each attribute per category (current model) and then tie and/or map them back to a master type list. We may have to go in both directions. Just some thoughts.

- Kelly likes how parent attributes can be bridged over categories. Having said that, we need to be able to search by sub attributes, parent attributes, and flex attributes.

- Certain clients want to pull data without the category specific reliance. Basically, once we catch the data, we have to be able to let it be searched, pulled, filtered, shown, and exported. It's all part of the puzzle. Being able to get at and use the data. That's a huge key. Just being silly - ADILAS - all data is live and searchable

- Maybe upping the permission level to add/edit sub inventory or sub inventory templates or sub attributes. Once again, we need some histories of who is doing what in the system.

- Steve was talking about - 1. Capturing the data. 2. Then being able to get it back out (in any form - CSV, Excel, PDF, printable, web). and 3. Being able to play in bulk and deal with automation options. Those are some of the goals (small summary).

- We have people who are wanting to add certain sub attributes on the fly, as part of a sub process or sub phase. This gets into sub locations, sub phases, and sub processes and/or steps. Currently, we only show the subs at certain steps and make them go back to certain places to add/edit or update that data. There is a lot of manual work involved. How cool would it be if we could help them and let them setup their own processes, phases, and sub processes. Mini concepts of the data assembly line.

- There is a need for bulk update tools, easy flow processes, and being able to setup their own data flow based off of the subs or steps within a process.

- The use of templates to help control other actions, defaults, rules, and assignments. Having that example and/or template really helps answer a number of questions.

- We went back to the main need of being able to pull data out of the system (quickly and easily) - all data is live and searchable - We really need this and keep going with what we already have.

- Kelly and Steve working on advanced reporting and moving beyond a band-aid. What about going back and correcting the plumbing from the get go. Planning for the future.

- Need for more controls, handrails, and ability to scale.

- Build and break, build and break. Well, it's time to fix it again! it's breaking!

- What if we re-imagined it??? What would it look like? What things do we need to consider if we were to rebuild this out?

- Kelly was recommending that we get into a real life system to see the challenges. We made some plans to meet with Kelly again see the tools that she uses, how she uses them, and what is still lacking and/or needed.

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

This is more for me, but what are the next steps in the planning process for new phases, data assembly line stuff, and where do we want this to go? Help lead and guide it! Keep pushing for more bulk tools, bulk options, and bulk tools to add, edit, update, change, pull data in, pull data out, etc. We can do a bunch of things on a one-by-one basis, let's keep pushing that to the next level. Yee haw!

 
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Shop 10075 AZ Sub attributes 5/15/2023  

On a Zoom meeting with Kelly, Cory, Steve and I. We were going over a number of different topics. We started out on expense/receipts and logic on limited expense types per vendor. Kelly was saying that we should only limit things if we know enough information to actually limit things. There was an error where a vendor had been assigned to a single expense type, but then that expense type got made inactive. She couldn't get into the expense/receipt. We had her go to the vendor and remove the limit by expense type value and everything worked fine.

We then switched over to talking about sub inventory and sub inventory attributes (sub attributes). We spent tons of time and I took a bunch of notes. Here are my notes:

- Kelly went through things to find the gaps

- Parents and children are so separate - you have to know what goes where

- She started on the grouped inventory report (just shows counts from the parents).

-- She was hoping that those quantities and costs would be able to show the same values.

-- Investigating and auditing - Going deep

- Cost of sold adjustments - 2 sides on an invoice... one positive and one negative. ICC - internal cost corrections (future project) - cleaning up the dust - bulk tools are needed.

- On big reports, we need to look at the size, and maybe do backend data pulling and then showing data.

- She has to go to the usage on each one to look at what is going on.

- Accurate inventory values - this is a big lift

- She needs an extended cost per - cost * qty = extended. We just show the cost and the quantity, not the extended cost.

- Clients are saying that their reporting is way off.

- Disconnects between PO line items - parents and subs

- She was using Excel pivot tables to get super close details to what we were showing.

- Cost changes, rounding errors, some parents and some subs, negatives, etc.

- In order to find all of the possible problems, you have to get so deep in the usage and details.

- How do you help clients fix items, quantities, costs, and usage, etc.

- When auditing subs... it would really help to show which ones have which costs

- Part status - active and allow sub only - could be both.

- The knowledge level to do an audit.

- Multiple tabs open and pulling data at one time.

- Level of trust... - I could pull more data but is it even what I'm looking for?

- Pagination of the data - say 40 pages - I need it all summed up - with what was what... in/outs, cost changes, etc.

- In Excel, she had to do find and replace, build special comparisons, standardize the data, etc.

- She had to figure out what was off and then go in deeper. Basically, she would love to see the known issues or sub sets of the data. Maybe even comparing things and helping them find the issues.

- Some of the dates... in the past - you can't even fix something - How do you fix it without adjusting things going forward.

- It would be nice if there were alerts, notices, or somehow finding those problem children.

- It becomes so complicated that they skip it. It is very manual on the fully deep audit.

- Locking things down - ice-down dates - being able to lock/hide things. We need this on all of the main players.

- If there is a difference between po line items and subs, we could show the problems... all at once. Similar to the bank balance helper report.

- Read them and weep numbers - too bold

- Our basic user's comprehension is not very deep.

- There is a need for oversight, maintenance, etc.

- Helping all our users to know what the problems are. It seems like it is coming down to known issues and disconnects.

- The cost field is so important... we allow that to be changed. Kelly was saying, the cost runs downhill.

- We talked about the balance sheet homepage and that it should run a number of checks before it does it stuff, and/or we need to let people know that there is a possible problem (or problems).

- Talking about some other check fields (aggregated values) that could be held on the main to show problems, disconnects, or whatever.

- On E/R's and deposits, we allow posting and locking. Most of our PO's and invoices can lock lines, but never get to the posted level.

- We rely so much on PO's. We don't have a ton of control over them.

- People are looking for the easy button - things keep evolving and users are expecting the system to help them along that journey.

- More guardrails

- Huge need for aggregates, counts, sums, averages, maxes, mins, and other values. This is a huge need. Bigger than we can say... We are very good at getting all of the data (transactional level). We need the aggerate levels. We have so much data. We need to get it summed up and other aggerate levels.

- Controls - at all levels

- We have seen users create more issues trying to correct other issues... Tons of cause-and-effect relationships.

- Inventory that goes into the negative. Ideally, this shouldn't happen. If it does, we need to show it.

- Visibility - start here - helping our users see what is going on.

- Parent/child issues - looking for disconnects.

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

Switching over to sub attributes

- Kelly has a client that has sub inventory and existing categories and wants to re-categorize the inventory. Category to category moves, in sub inventory. This totally creates a disconnect.

- People want to consolidate their categories or break things into smaller categories. We didn't know that people would be flipping the categories. That's a higher level of flipping but it has cause and effect drop-down effect.

- Currently, all sub attributes are tracked on (or off of) the column number (not the sort order or name, literally just the column number), not the id number. This can make things go off the rails.

- Is there a quick solution? Personally, I think this is going to take some time.

- One of the biggest problems is - we can't get the reporting out that we are needed. Because of this, they start altering things to solve their need. That can cascade potential problems. They want quick reports, quick exports, etc.

- We need to be able to cross over categories.

- We think that we need a master list for sub templates. In Kelly's words, maybe build above it. Along with that, we may need to build on both sides, build above it (master list) or build below it (custom cross category mapping).

- Build and break - build and break - part of the cycle

- Steve was talking... what about the next version of sub inventory. What would this look like?

- What about bulk tools?

- Kelly's goal was to show the different sides of what we are learning.

- Software has to evolve! What is the next step?

- From Steve - It keeps feeling like our users are wanting the software to go to the AI (artificial intelligence) level.

 
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Shop 10135 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 5/15/2023  

Steve, Cory, and I stayed on the Zoom session after Kelly left. We were talking about the evolving nature of software and how it seems like it keeps heading towards a form of AI (artificial intelligence). We were talking about developers, projects, and project management stuff. We really want to get that datasource project done (bus to motorcycles or world building project). We spent a lot of time talking about funding. We are pushing as hard as we can, we need some gas money. Big requirements and a tiny budget. It takes time and resources. Our product and our users keep evolving. Project management and quotes with Cory after Steve left.

- It may be good to do a pros and cons analysis of attributes - parent attributes, sub attributes, flex attributes, flex grid tie-ins, and other in-line database extensions. Speed, bulk, capabilities, searchability, show/hide on all or certain templates or views, etc. Where are we headed next or how can we tighten things up to make it even better?

- We first have to get the data into the database. They we have to be able to get it out. Next, what happens if anything changes? We need to think through all aspects of lifecycle of the data.

- We really need a plan - detailed out - commit to it - then really do it.

- More and more of a need for bulk tools (data coming in, data going out, and updating and changing things).

- Charging for what we are doing. We, as a company, are missing out.

- The value of our user/client base as a testing group. We couldn't pay for what they are doing.

- Cory and I were talking about requirements for industry specific software. Expectations of our clients. We have a standard package and then we customize on top of that. It's really tough to do everything, well.

 
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Shop 10150 Research 5/18/2023  

Research on sub inventory attributes and changes to sub inventory - over time. Started working on a document to chronicle the timeline and what we have learned over the years. Here is a link to show some of the entries that I was looking at.

 
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Shop 10137 Brandon, Kelly, Steve and Cory sub reporting- how to move forward 5/18/2023  

Zoom meeting with Cory, Kelly, Steve, and I. Going over plans for sub inventory reporting. I took a number of notes. See below.

- Kelly did some prep work and had a small spreadsheet- Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gI92xKVgBeDA1Qnd0N5ygrYYjLdisNA2KDYYqodrQeI/edit?usp=sharing

- Some of the report settings need to be at the user level vs the corp or global level- for example: the new advanced part search settings. They are controllable at the corp level but not at an individual user level. We are seeing a need for deeper levels of control, per user.

- She, Kelly, found a good report (that still needs some tweaking)- advanced invoice sub line search for all item categories. The current report shows and does some sub attribute grouping (text based off of the names).

- Kelly thinks that a limit of a 31-day month (whatever the range) would work for now. For both PO line items and invoice line items. If they want to pull info per item category, no date range limit. If they want everything or "all" we limit it to a month or 31 days.

- Ideally, she would like grouped output for PO's, invoices, and items. That's where subs play (currently).

- Steve is working on some sub inventory reports right now.

- We have a currently working model in the advanced invoice sub line search. If the part category of "All" is selected, the actual search page shows all possible sub attributes as filters. We then pass that list of combined attributes over to the results page. The results page then loops over the combined list and fills out what it can. We may be able to use some of these pieces.

- As a side note, we actually looked over some code for the working model to see how it was switching, grouping, and pulling the data. For now, we may take that code and push it over to other sections as a patch and/or band-aid of sorts.

- The sub reports need all of the main line item details plus the sub information. Currently, the sub reports are only showing the sub details. Kelly wants all of the data out of the system. Cory wants to be careful not to get in trouble if we add a bunch of new columns (past history with clients complaining - changing their reports or exports).

- The reports homepage is kinda messy- We may need to rework that page to make it look better.

- We need sub attribute information on its own, parent attribute information on its own, and mixed sub and parent attribute information together. Along with this... We need these same reports for PO's, invoices, and items in inventory. We need all of these pieces. Consistency across those reports.

- Kelly is sort of stuck- helping out the clients. She is pulling tons of reports and piecing them together. She is looking for some time savings and better reporting, out of the system or out of the box vs having to pull things and piece them together.

- Up next, once we have the good reporting that we need, we can build in bulk update tools where you can see it, fix it, repull the report. Export it as needed. We need the visual representation of the data first (good reporting). The other features and tools will come later.

- Steve, Dustin, and Alan are going to be working on some bulk tools for subs.

- Be able to export beginning inventory, ending inventory, and what is in between. That's the goal.

- Kelly likes the super invoice line item search/report. Could we add on a bit there? That might be nice. We talked about creating a super sub invoice line item search (same as above with subs). Maybe a link to that new page from the bottom of the advanced invoice search page (maybe at the top as well).

- At the end of the meeting, Kelly was asking what we needed to get going. She is going to build out a spreadsheet with columns and instructions per column for us to use as a reference. That should really help. We will pass this on to the correct developer to help them know what is wanted and needed.

 
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Shop 10077 Steve, Cory, Brandon-Catch up on projects and updates 5/29/2023  

Going over lots of requests for new and enhanced reports. Small errors and fixing a few things. Cory had a small list. Lots of talk about flex attributes and the need to build them out on all 12 main application player groups. Currently, we have them on customers and elements of time. It seems like the next one that is warming up is PO's. We have clients that are wanting to be able to add new and flexible data points to PO's (purchase orders). Of course, once they get added, they for sure want to be able to search by those new flex attributes. They also want them to show up on all the correct spots, forms, searches, reports, and exports. Not a problem, it just takes a goal and some time.

It seems that across the board, our users, on a global level, are wanting more and more control of their reports and exports. This inclues settings, preset and saved favorites, show/hide certain fields or columns, able to rename fields, set and remember the search criteria or filters, and be able to pull down any and all data (reports or exports).

Cory and I were talking about "visibility vs searchability". Our users want "visibility" first, then they want the "searchability". Basically, our users want to see the data and then be able to limit it and/or filter it down from the results that they got. From a coding side, it is easier to filter (control what will show) vs showing everything and then filtering after all of the data is shown and/or pushed out to the user (way more traffic, memory, and bandwidth). On the coding side, we would much rather have you know what you want, then we only have to serve up those records. Sort of a flip flop on who wants what and which way they approach their data and report results.

We have a report that the users want to control multiple parts of an object (say PO's or purchase orders) all from one export and/or report. Granted, the PO has multiple one-to-many relationships, table joins, and records that need to be matched up and presented. Imagine a report search page that has show/hide checkboxes for all of the main PO data (location, vendor, total amounts, PO types, dates, notes, ties to external invoices, etc. - 20 some fields). They then want all of the show/hide checkboxes to show/hide columns for all of the line item details (quantities, costs, prices, items, descriptions, etc. - tons of new fields - 60+ fields). Next, they want any sub inventory information (sub reference id numbers, barcodes, units of measure, special sub attributes, RFID tags, etc. - tons of other fields - another 15-20+ fields). Without going too crazy, they also want any new flex attributes (extra data points or in-line database extensions), parent attributes (inventory level controls for parent items), and other data. I didn't count, but it could be well over 100+ fields that they want to be able to pull, show/hide, filter, and organize. It gets into some advanced settings and big reports with lots of dynamic logic. Not that it is hard to do any of that, it just gets more difficult when you are mixing so many things or parts of the object together.

Cory wants us to start with the "visibility" of the data. As a side note, we may have to off load some of the processing for these bigger reports. I want to be careful about building on possible already tippy code or projects. We have to make sure that everything is stable. After this conversation, Cory and I lightly talked about budgets. We also looked over some code and did some quotes for clients. There are many challenges when trying to mix and bled and mix viewing with searching huge datasets.

Lastly, we talked about fair compensation. We are heavily underpaid and not showing our true value. That gets complicated as well. It's an interesting mix and an interesting game.

 
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Shop 10291 Merge and deploy updates for SpringBig time zone issue 6/29/2023  

Merging and pushing up code with Eric. After the initial work, we spent some time talking about data modeling. Here are some of my notes.

- Eric would love to do some more data modeling and taking things into consideration and making a plan. He used to do this for other companies that he has worked with and for. Great resource. We could really use his help with adilas lite or fracture. This was like a mini database and data modeling lesson of sorts. I was loving it and scribbling down notes as quickly as I could. Fun stuff.

- We talked about flex grid tie-ins, flex attributes, and parent attributes. Basically, things that he sees that we do that might be built out into more efficient tools and features. Maybe rework some of this and/or combine some of the features.

- What really connects to other things (natural relationships) or what things are forced together (forced or special relationships)? We may want to look at use cases and try to pull out the natural relationships. Then build your application according to those natural relationships. You may still need to allow the forced or special relationships, but those become the edge cases vs the norm.

- If something happens over and over again, this should be part of the core system. Currently, we do use a lot of flex grid tie-ins to help with some of these special cases. As a side note, some of these one-off features are becoming more normal and should have their own logic and tables vs putting everything into the flex grid tie-ins. Great tool for getting things started but eventually, you may need to build out specific tables, logic, and pages. Make it more normalized and more efficient.

- As a note, what does the flex grid do? It allows for one-to-one connections, one-to-many connections, add log notes to anything, tying things together (main id's to sub id's or main id's to other main id's), and it also allows for up to 30 custom fields. Once again, it can be on a one-to-one basis or used and setup as a one-to-many relationship. Here is a help file that has more info on the flex grid tie-ins.

- As a note, the flex grid tie-ins have been the big brother to the things we are trying to build called flex attributes or real in-line database extensions or real in-line extensions for short. Here is a small, older graphic link, of what we are trying to do.

- We talked about the bus to motorcycle project (datasource project or world building project). We are headed to a new model where the corportion id numbers (corp_id) will be left out per database. Each company will have its own database and thus may not need the corp id number. This deals with table names, joins, and data that gets stored in the database.

- Back to the flex attributes and a possible option to build them right into the main entities or high level tables (for the 12 main players or wherever we see fit to put them). This option has some pros and cons. We'll have to work this out. Currently, I'm really leaning towards something similar to what we did for the current flex attributes or parent attributes. Let them build and setup any custom fields that they need. Dynamic relational model. Just for fun, here is the progression - flex grid tie-ins (2009), sub inventory attributes (2015), parent attributes (2016/2017), flex attributes (2020).

- Lots of talk about data modeling and being able to take off the corp_id. Including on the end of corp-specific tables - for example: invoices_53, invoice_payments_53, time_sub_inventory_53, and a slew of others.

- Maybe break the pili or po invoice line items into two different pieces. It was joined together to help with inventory counts over time and across multiple locations. Anyways, we may look at separating those tables into multiple pieces. Super important, make sure to remember and include locations. If just a single location, we could do the architecture differently. However, with multiple locations, it gets a little bit more complicated or tricky. There are tons of other possible options.

- The payee table should be broken up as well. Currently, if a person or entitiy is tied to an expense/receipt, a PO, an inventory item, it lives in the payee table. Payees consist of users, employees, vendors, and special customers that had to get paid out of the system (a copy and convert process). Anyways, we may want to break that table up into users, vendors, and special customers (something like that).

- We talked about a concept called "attribution" and data normalization levels. There are two main types of data models. You have the logical data model and the physical data model. Entities and entities have attributes. Eventually, those entities and attributes get translated into tables, columns, and fields in a database. Often, most attributes become their own database column or field.

- Attributes are different than types.

- We talked about fields like "flag_for_1099", "password", etc. Those are attributes for certain entities. However, does a vendor need a password field, most likely not. Each field or attribute needs to go with the entity that it belongs with. We, at adilas, tend to mix and blend some of the attributes between different entities. In some ways that is fine, but it requires explanations, instructions, and training. It's not as easy to follow without someone to guide you along. Anyways, some good conversations about data normalization stuff. What goes with what and why does it fit like that?

- Make the names readable and logical where possible. We do a pretty good job on that, but there is some randomness in there as well. Along with that, we jumped into talking about a section called special accounts. We are planning on using that for gift cards, loyalty points, in-store credit, vendor credits, punch cards, and other special account transactions where we almost need a bank account style with a rolling number and being able to add/subtract using individual transactions or actions. Anyways, we have a few fields in there called dev_flag_1, dev_flag_2, and dev_flag_3. We use those flexible fields to help with certain parts of the process. In a way, we didn't know what we were going to need, so we added in some flex fields. Well, now, those flex fields have rules and hold certain data that could be its own column or field. However, because we didn't know what would be needed, the fields are somewhat mixed, depending on what is stored there and what kind or type of transaction record is being stored (loyalty points vs gift cards or whatever).

- The conversion trickled over into human reference fields vs computer identifiers, ids, or computer reference fields. They are different and play different roles.

- As you think things out, eventually you have to transform or go through a transformation from logical models to physical models. Eric kept saying that we should be shooting for the third normal form (data modeling and database modeling). Figure out the whole business world (plan it out as best you can) and then build out what you need, based on what you see and/or know.

- We talked about aggregates and data warehousing. I mentioned that I would like to build out tables for yearly per location, quarterly per location, monthly per location, weekly per location, and daily per location. We would also have the underlying transactions or transactional database tables (raw data that holds all of the data). The other tables would be what we transform the transactions into (a form of aggregates or business intelligence).

- Along with aggregates, Eric was saying that sometimes you can watch the database and see what tables, queries, and reports cost the most (data, traffic, or processing time/energy/frequency). You then build out aggregates based on those findings and/or known needs. For us, we've been doing this for long enough, we know a few places that could really help with speed, server load, and provide great BI or business intelligence levels.

- Our system has to go clear out to the full accounting level. That changes how we do certain things. That is awesome! Our sort of end goal is perfect accounting, aggregates, per day, per location, and per category. Some of those (category levels) vary but they have mostly been defined in the current system. That is huge. We have a plan, we have a path. We just want to refine it. Eventually year over year reporting, monthly by month comparisons, real-time data - all data is live and searchable (adilas).

- Snapshots, aggregates, different preset and controlled data levels. We may need current data (tables without any dates - assumption of current counts, values, sums, totals, averages, maxes, mins, etc.) as well as dated or historical data (tables with dates to allow previous or prior lookups and date driven lookbacks).

- What about enterprise mappings and cross-corp stuff? We need to plan that out as well.

- We also need to consider servers, speed, reliability, backups, redundancies, and how deep we going?

- Lastly, Eric could help with a ground up data model. We could pick a topic, break it down, and do a number of smaller sessions vs a big push. That would be too much. Anyways, great meeting and Eric could be a great resource for planning, checking out our decisions, and planning out the best course of action. Good stuff!

 
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Shop 10564 Working on the scan cart 10/6/2023  

Finished up the link builder mini app on the mini scan cart settings page. Started working on some larger tool tips for the sub inventory attributes on the mini scan cart.

 
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Shop 10565 Working on the scan cart 10/7/2023  

Recording notes from yesterday. Merged in some new code for the mini scan cart settings. The new link builder is done on the settings page. I also spent some time working on the popovers (bigger tool tips) for the cart. I converted all of the sub inventory attributes into a small popover that is hidden by default. It you mouse over it (hover), the icon, it will show all of the correct data. I'm hoping that will help make it look even more simple (layout wise). Pushed up new code.

 
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Shop 10810 Client meeting - API questions 1/15/2024  

Meeting with Mike from Cannapages (3rd party vendor) to see what they were missing on the API endpoint side of things. We found two main attribute lists (parent attributes and sub inventory attributes) that were missing. They can look-up the data and values, but they were missing the master list of what to loop over. We built a quick couple of pages (web forms) and pushed them up to data 7. We will build out the API sockets that go with these. That takes more time. This was just a quick band-aid. They should be good to go for tonight.

 
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Shop 10870 Meeting with a client 2/7/2024  

Meeting with the Cannapages guys over GoToMeeting. We started out by debugging an API call. We tried a few things. I then had to login to the client's site, flip some switches, and then try it again. They are pulling menu info, but we had to turn on some ecommerce settings to let the pages (API sockets) play through.

They also expressed a desire to get two more API endpoints for pulling sub inventory attributes (list of values) and parent attributes (list of values). They then take that data and loop over it to populate their menu forms. I sent an email out to Cory with an update.

 
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Shop 10878 General 2/10/2024  

Email to Wayne about ways to improve or fix the tables for storing sub inventory attributes and parent attributes. See attached for a copy of the email. It has some light plans on how we could change the columns on the custom_text table (and other custom attribute storage tables - numeric, text, date, and json).

Fixed the error messages and moved the unique id/error code to lower on the error message. Trying to make it look better. Wayne just added the unique id/error code a couple of days ago.

Started to work on an advanced search page that shows parent items, parent attributes, and sub inventory attributes, all on the same report. Bryan originally made the report. Just going over things and lightly cleaning things up. Refining some of the logic.