Meeting with Wayne, Cory, Steve, and Shari O. over a Zoom meeting. Talking about Wayne wanting to retire by the end of the year. He was reporting on his research and plans with the ColdBox framework from Ortus Solutions. I took a bunch of notes...

- Our development process – it's too difficult and hard to test

- Be able to make a plan, set some goals, requirements, and then be able to hand that off to a developer

- Unit testing

- Our product is super complicated

- Spaghetti code

- Included files – they are all over the place

- Knowing where to put things – tops, headers, body files, footers, etc.

- Spend a bunch of time developing and then spend more time trying to get the code actually launched.

- Our development process takes a long time and causes frustration to our team and our clients

- Back to included files

- Different processes – ways of using the page

- Element is undefined in xyz scope – session, variables, FORM, URL, application, arguments

- Things get lost

- Paths – all kinds - ../, ../../, other paths – that creates problems in different pages that are included in different pages

- Wayne talking about global variables and global listings

- Setting up a standard framework and setting up standard practices

- Even though our code is older, it has really gone a long way

- Because of the way that it is coded, it makes it harder for progression and ways to hand it off

- Steve wants to sell the cool-aid (our current product)

- Triage – what needs our attention first? Life threating things first.

- Steve was talking about some of the developers being lazy – kinda getting frustrated

- Wayne is trying to solve some of those problems and/or issues – he wants to show us some concrete evidence and ways to solve things.

- Some of our developers are up against the wall and doing the best that they can.

- Wayne would like to make our code as simple as possible – guide or a recipe type level

- Cory – to rewrite the entire adilas application – that would take years and years and thousands and thousands of dollars (millions – plural).

- Cory – What about clients who want changes to their current system?

- Steve – How does object-oriented programming play into this? MVC – model, view, controllers – classes, sub classes, view models, controllers

- Wayne really thinks that he could crank out some major changes in a hard month - at least a good indicator or model

- Tons of little maintenance stuff is already baked into the framework

- In our current code, we have so much validation, permissions, and sub logic work – 75% of the whole thing is error handling and validation.

- Cory – If Wayne leaves, what is the reliance on him and the framework? Wayne thinks that it will be even easier and work better – even for the long haul.

- Wayne – Open-source projects and making the framework better – he has contributed already to the main code branch and has had some of his code accepted.

- Steve – Can we do this little by little? Wayne – Sort of – It would be better to get it all done so that we are operating in a different environment.

- Steve – What about docker? Wayne – We would use docker for the main ColdFusion stuff for the servers – Not tied to the current ColdBox framework.

- Steve asking about the datasource project (bus to individual motorcycle). – Wayne was saying how we could do some work to eliminate the reliance on the primary key – Turn everything into combo keys vs the single primary key id. All of the tables could be intermixed with combo keys.

- Steve – We may need to abandon some of the old ways of doing things

- Wayne – Even our database structure needs to be updated and changed. It is built in the older style. Technology changes over time, speed, computing power, etc.

- Steve – We need to be careful where we go, because changes do happen – all the time. Skate to where the puck should be.

- More than one way to skin the cat – If it doesn't work, we could go a different direction.

- Wayne wanted to get a fully working prototype done and finished up before he showed us what was available.

- Wayne is starting on the payee level login as his first few pieces and pages. He wants to get it all ready and documented before we just jump. Wayne is still learning as well.

- Cory is glad that we are talking about this – She would love to see our developers be more efficient and get stuff done.

- Wayne – He feels this is something that has to happen. We need this as part of our solution. Looking forward, we almost don't have a choice.

- Steve – Wayne, you are part of the ownership of this company – Let's make it good for everyone. He was encouraging Wayne to keep going and even setting up the next meeting to show us more.

- Cory asked how Wayne found this framework stuff. Wayne explained how he found things.

- Wayne did a small little dog and pony show on some of his code. Showing rules, routines, variables, and lists.

- Steve and Cory – They both think that Wayne should keep going and bill as he does his work. We also want to make sure that John is up to speed.

- This is a personal investment on Wayne's part – building the future of adilas.

- Wayne has been using Toggl time tracking to keep track of his hours.

- Just for fun – Wayne wants to get it done well enough that we want to write him a check… :)

- Documentation on how you do things – Ortus books and live samples

- Hoping to save money, keep our clients happy, and have a stable product.

- Cory – you have to change to grow. Things that don't grow die.

This got skipped today. Instead, most of us were on a meeting with Wayne going over some ideas and prototypes.

Server meeting with Wayne, John, and Cory. We started out by talking about code that just sits on the shelf. We've got to get things finished up and pushed forward. We have to make some global changes and then make sure everybody knows about it. One of our goals is standardizing things across the board. We were also planning which branches are going live and who is on call for changes that are needed.

We have a big product upgrade coming out over the next couple of days. The big push is getting the enterprise level item catalog live on all servers. Making plans and assignments.

Wayne, John, and Shari O. had a meeting with Hostek. Good progress there. They were reporting about all kinds of stuff. We talked about disaster recovery stuff, plans, schedules, and contacts. It sounds like Hostek is going to try to work directly with our server admin team.

We talked about new email servers, flip flopping branches around on the testing server, and figuring out plans for all of those pieces. We then spent some time talking about changes to the look and feel. Getting approvals and other people to test and sign-off on things. Trying to coordinate efforts.

Eric joined the meeting to help us plan some stuff. As a side note, it is really hard to plan for every possible scenario. At some point, we need to move away from the classic theme (old look and feel). It is starting to cause issues because we still support it, but no new development is being done on that code set. It is also intermixing with other pages that are just on the new more modern snow owl theme (newer look and feel). It's causing more maintenance and larger pages due to keeping up with multiple sets of code (virtual supported versions).

At some point, we would like to automate some of the database updates to get rid of any dependencies when deploying new code and new functionality. John had some questions and we chatted for a bit after the main meeting.

Meeting with Mike Roundtree on SG&A costs. He's pushing hard to prep for an upcoming demo. He wants it all done and ready to roll out. Took a few notes. He is really wanting to pitch and sell some of these things.

After the meeting with Mike, I jumped on a phone call with Steve touching base on a number of different pieces and projects. Talking about funding, options, and plans. This thing is constantly moving. It's kinda like running a race everyday. It's hard to keep up with it.

Here are some of my notes from meeting with Mike:

- He really wants to tie in the time portion of that formula. Things gain COGS over time. It's the carrying cost that matters.

- On the P&L – Mike doesn't really want to see the SG&A on the P&L. He wants it included on the actual cost so that it appears all together. He doesn't want it separately stated. It has to be included.

- How can I increase the cost without effecting the quantity of the units themselves?

- Mike would like to roll out the buckets per day

- Assembly (grouping over time). Aging and costing.

- Mike is trying to get a big demo up and ready. Lots of different pieces that he is wanting to show. Payroll, forms, unitization, SG&A, loyalty points, P&L, ecommerce, message marketing, SMS & texting (not all the way done yet), delivery, manifests and paperwork, full Metrc integration stuff, etc.

o He wants a 10,000 foot view

o Just a sandbox

o Showing a few transactions

- Sean is prepping stuff for the demo.

o Sean – I would recommend that we use some of the pre-built Colorado stuff. We can add the California stuff later – but the CO stuff works right now.

- We can do all kinds of paperwork stuff

- Menu boards – we have some simple solutions – they are going to want a more glorified version

- Numerous backdoors to the ecommerce ordering system – queues, fulfillment, and the rest of the process.

Looking into running a database update for Eric to help prep for a new feature roll out. Looked into it, couldn't do it because there were too many dependencies. We would have to rework it a bit. Emails back and forth.

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.

Meeting with Aspen and going over her world building presentation and progress. She is working on scripting a presentation and then matching her slides up with her script. Also got her a check for the work that she has been doing.