Steve and I were working on a selection out in ecommerce for a burrito shop that Steve is working with. For example: Say you have a burrito or enchilada and want to offer meat or cheese choices. That kind of stuff. Anyways, we were fixing some code and advancing the ball a bit. It still needs a little bit of help but making progress.

The guys and gals joined the meeting and gave their reports. Both Sean and Michael seem to be doing pretty good and are out talking to multiple people and businesses. They are also following up on new leads and follow-up on older leads. Sounded like good stuff.

Recording notes from earlier in the week as well as from last Thursday. See these elements of time in the shop for more information. Quick phone call with John going over design questions. Quick merge and push code for Bryan on some date-picker changes.

Grabbing files from adilas university and putting them up on the content server. Compared folders for differences. Looking over and changing files that referenced to the older adilasuniversity.biz site. Testing and cascading code. Pushed up new files.

Sean checked in and said that the business cards were done and ready. John and I tried talking over the GoToMeeting but my Internet connection was bad. We ended up on a phone call. Going over plans, design, layouts, and next steps. I found a small bug and started working on it. Looking into a request to add a status filter to the advanced time search page for time sub flags and tags.

More work on adding in the sub special status filter to the advanced time sub flags and tags search. I had to alter the search page, the results page, the backend logic, and the export to excel pages. After that, I switched over to adding in a fix to help prompt users to setup sub inventory templates when attempting to add/edit sub inventory. If everything is setup, it just flows through. If it's not all setup, it lightly prompts, with a message and a link, on how to set it up correctly. Light little bit of loving for that sub inventory functionality. Merged and pushed up files.

Pretty quiet meeting this morning. I heard over the grapevine that the sales meeting was going to be pushed back to just Fridays. Anyways, both Sean and Shari O. checked in. Light questions. Cory is out on vacation so they had some questions about data migration for clients and how to do some of those tasks. Cory normally does that. I showed them around and gave them some links and instructions on how to use the corp-to-corp migration and special copy tools.

Part of the session, I spent it taking a file that we had found and making it into a more robust so that we could use it as a new migration tool. It was hardcoded, but we turned it into a more dynamic or generic tool. The new tool deals with being able to copy part categories between corporations.

Recording notes from the last few days of last week. I was going to meet with Bryan, but that didn't happen.

Meeting with Bryan and going over options for the tooltips on the horizontal time view and the timeslot page view for elements of time. We are thinking that small tooltips could really help there on those pages. After that we switched over and talked about the new employer withholding settings for payroll. Bryan is getting closer on that project. Just a little bit left. We also spent the last 20 minutes going over a new project for allowing a bigger logo/image for invoices. We recorded that small session. See attached for the video link.

Phone call with Newtek tech support on email issues. Submitted a support ticket. Changed some code and pushed up new files. Going over emails.

Dustin popped in and had some questions for both Steve and myself. We talked quite a bit about email stuff. That is a hot topic right now. It got a little bit heated and crazy. I'm trying but some of this stuff is over my head and somewhat out of my hands. Lots of pressure, both internally and from our clients.

We were supposed to get on a server meeting, but Wayne wasn't able to make it. I spent the next hour from 10-11 am rolling back about 38 files from pointing to the adilas content server back to the older adilas university site, where we had the old email API functionality stuff.

This is a side note, but sometimes I really wish that they (our team) would ask someone else to do it. I don't like being the fix it guy. That's a lot of pressure. Not my favorite thing, for sure.

This didn't happen. We ended up using the time to roll back some code for the internal email servers.

Working with Bryan on some new payroll and employer withholding settings. We got pretty deep into a code review. Working on custom calculations and dynamic looping (from 1-5 possible options - able to set them up with custom names, values, calculations, and show/hide options). We merged in some code and then did some live testing. We found that we had to fix some of the defaults, as this payroll setting had a couple of parts, and some companies had some and not all of the settings in place. We ended up remerging in some small re-work and code fixes.

While Bryan was fixing things, I was going over and through tons of emails and trying to do some catch-up. It's crazy to see how quickly an inbox can be full to overflowing.

John and Steve were on the meeting going over the chooser page and graphic options. We kept going back to ways of limiting things down by selections and/or settings. We have a lot and sometimes it gets hard to sort through things. Sean was asking about email stuff and what we need to do there. That is still somewhat of a mystery with some unknowns. We went back to talking with John about the look and feel changes that are here and/or coming down the pipeline. There is no way to get it all done at once. We will have to allow for different rounds and being willing to circle back around again and again. All part of the process and that's ok.

We talked about being able to search and filter different options. John is going to be working on adding things to the adilas docs. Dustin reached out and had me push some code for him. Quick phone call (mini server meeting) with Wayne. He was not in the office and was out doing stuff with his family. We'll reconnect next week and push more on the email stuff.

Doing emails, recording notes, and fixing a small bug on the classic homepage for the quick search. Pushed up new code.

Working through a number of notes from a client meeting. Work session on the requests for the custom code on the Bear 100 mobile app and the internal code. Spent most of the session getting back into the project. Read my notebook notes, looked around, tried a few things, and sent a text message to Chuck to see if he could help me out.

It was just Steve and I on the morning meeting for the first 20 or so minutes. We were talking about getting people started and getting things going and helping them to get up and running. Here are a few other random notes from our meeting.

- At some point, we would like to circle back around and get back to the vendor logs or payee/vendor logs project. Basically, this would be similar to the customer logs but for both vendors and employees (users). Steve started this project but it got put on the shelf as other things came up. We need to circle back around, when possible.

- On the chooser page, what if we allowed every possible page. That could be really cool. This is where a user gets to choose what they want to use for their default homepage.

- Steve was asking about settings and how we wanted to organize things. I told him that we have at least four known levels for settings that we know of, right now. They are: corp-wide settings (at the world or corporation level), group level settings (any of the 12 main player groups or sections that we have a homepage for that section), page level settings (currently using the slide out drawer on the right of the snow owl themed pages to show page level settings), and user settings or personal settings. At some future point, we may want to build out a master settings page that showed where everything is and/or is located. We have things spread all around right now. This may be a project for fracture - future project.

- The whole thing of adilas seems to be a pyramid or stacked layered application. There are tons of different levels that build on top of each other.

- The magic seems to come from progress and ideas. We do something, someone else sees it, adds to it, requests something, we build it out and/or add to it, and it starts all over again. Like a giant snowball or idea farm.

- One of the huge foundations seems to be settings and permissions. We are also seeing that these two key foundational pieces tend to split, fracture, or break into subs. Almost an infinite level of control and customization. Very interesting.

- Sean and John popped in and gave us some updates and reports. Dustin and Kelly also joined for a little bit. Their general vibe or message was - that people need help (generally) and if we can help, we are able to slide into place. It could be data entry, tools, functionality, systems, normalizing data, sales tax, inventory management and controls, financials, etc.

- My observation from today's meeting - it seems like all of the team is playing well together and helping to get things done. No way, one person could get all of this stuff done and handled, as it is going along and happening. I'm super grateful!

- John was showing us an update on the chooser page to help users select, view, and setup their default homepages. He is making good progress there. More good changes coming in the look and feel department. Good stuff!

Emails, paying bills, updating credit card on file info, recording notes, and pushed up some code for Dustin. Random little projects.

We have been using an email service for years and years. We are starting to outgrow that service and looking at ideas for what is next. These are just some ideas that I had written down on a post-it note but wanted to make sure and put them in digital form.

- Steve said to call and see what the provider of the service says as far as upgrades, ideas, and what not.

- We could always roll things back (we've done this as a temporary band-aid). We are currently using an older shared server to service the internal and API socket connections for the email service. It is called adilasuniveristy.biz. We wanted to move the code to a server that we have deeper access to (dedicated server vs a shared server). We tried moving it to the adilascontent.biz server but couldn't get it to work with all of the emails. It would work fine for adilas.biz email addresses but not for gmail, hotmail, yahoo, etc.

- We could check the certs on the content server

- Get Wayne's help

- Do a whole new rebuild, from the ground up

- Check whitelists and blacklists

- Include better error handling and record errors in log files and/or in the database

Prep for a meeting with my dad and his friend Harry. I made a small list on a post-it note for some ideas that I wanted to go over with them. Here are a few of the ideas and notes:

- Go over the elevator pitch for adilas

- Playing the game of add-on as a business model

- Finding pain points and coming up with solutions

- History of where we came from and how things developed over time - it's part of our story

- Demo login and letting them get in and start playing around

- MVP - minimal viable product, plan, person, presentation

- Graphics and world building concepts

- General rules and setup - what's the flow process

- Operations and accounting - horse and the cart - operations has to lead (it's the horse) and accounting follows (the cart)

- Permissions and settings - configuration

- Going over flow and processes

- Systems and relationships

- Simulating reality or simulating the real world - what really happens and why?

- Non-linear system - concept of the data assembly line

- Adilas quick search and standard navigation

- Our current goal - fill in the gaps

- Help files and videos

- Reach out and ask for help - use the whole team

Went into Smithfield to meet with my dad and Harry. We met for a couple of hours. They wanted a small overview. I had scribbled some ideas on a post-it note. We got through a few of the pieces. We recorded it, but halfway through, my laptop shut down and needed to be plugged in. That screwed up the video. Anyways, a good little meeting. We are going to meet again next week in order to keep pushing forward.

Sean checked in. I was doing emails. Shari O. checked in and had a few questions. We talked about projects and new settings for ecommerce. Shari O. has a client that wants to be able to turn active ecommerce (able to place orders and invoices) between certain time slots. Say 7 am to 10 pm. Anything outside of that range, the ecommerce pages wouldn't allow it to be placed.

We are getting closer on submitting taxes for 2022. Shari O. is getting ready to send things off to the CPA. I was having some internet issues and it kept dropping me out of the GoToMeeting session.

Meeting with John. We did a code review and merged in 3 different branches. They were things for the void prep, add/edit main expense/receipts, and expense/receipt line items pages. Lots of local testing and light code changes. We also spent some time looking over the chooser page and talking about CSS and styles. John is making a great effort on the look and feel stuff.

Emails, signing paperwork, and looking into an error message bug.

Meeting with Bryan and going over the bigger alternate logo settings for printable invoices. It got kinda deep and we need to revisit a few things. Code review and making some decisions on where things are going from here.

There were a few of us on the morning meeting. My internet kept dropping in and out. As we started the meeting, Sean and Steve were talking about 3rd party solutions and some of their needs. We are seeing a need and demand for better documentation of the adilas API sockets. We have them, we use them internally, and outside parties use them. We just need to keep giving that section some loving to really make it shine.

Steve asked me about my meeting with my dad and his friend Harry. I mentioned to them that they wanted to see rentals and reservations, as one of the first things that they wanted to know how to do. We can do it, but that too needs a little bit of work and automation. I will keep working with Bryan to keep fine tuning the elements of time and the rentals, reservations, and availability layers that we are working on.

After that, Steve asked a few code questions. He reported that he has been in conversation with some older independent adilas reps. They contacted him and may come join us, internally on our team. That would be cool!

John was showing the guys a demo of the new pages that he has been working on for new look and feel stuff. We talked about hiding some of the text in the forms and making it look simpler. As we were talking, we were telling John that some of those processes are very repetitive and once they learn it, they want to go as fast as possible. As a older side note, when we were working with Jonathan Wells, he had the idea of the education mode where you could turn on/off extra helper verbiage or helpers (handrails of sorts). Great idea.

It is amazing how fast GUI's or UI (graphical user interfaces) change. In a way, we and everyone else is competing with the big dogs as far as expectations and demands. That makes it tough. Along those lines, it would be really cool to gather more info on how our clients are using our system and what they like and don't like. We have tons of data, just no really way to process it and make an analysis of it. That would take a whole other person to really get in there and dig through settings, usage, traffic, choices, wants, needs, etc. That would be really cool but feels like one of those projects that is still out there a ways.

The last topic of the day was another plug for the datasource project and getting everyone on their own database (bus to motorcycle project). It has my vote as well.

Work session and code review with John. We looked over the verify expense/receipt page, verify deposits, and deposit line items pages. We also talked about using custom colors and then went over some of the next pages that will need some loving and help. Good session. Merged and pushed up a few branches of code.

Recording notes from both today and from last Thursday 2/9/23. I already had some done from last week, just finishing up.

Work session with Bryan. We pushed up code and did a code review on the bigger alternate logo project for printable invoices. We ended up touching a number of different invoice pages and invoice views (PDF, printable, printer friendly, limited, summary, mini, black and white, etc.). Pushed up code to data 1 for some live testing.

Recording notes from yesterday and today (2/13-2/14). Emails and other general to do list tasks.

Both Sean and John checked in. John and I were going over Calvin's bulk server FTP tool. John has it setup and may need some help configuring things. I went in and was working on emails and then I spent some time looking into a small clock in/out bug. Pretty quiet morning.

Shari O. and I looking at payroll and time clocks. We disabled double clicking on the submit button and extended the auto redirect from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. We logged into a client's site and looked up some historical pieces to help cross reference the data. Shari O. got ahold of the client, and they joined up on the GoToMeeting session. It appears that the main problem only happens once in a while and only on the clock out.

Quick touching base with Bryan. He is going to jump back into some of the scheduling and time settings. Quick meeting.

spent some time upping the form field date field size to handle the 4-digit years. Basically, making the form fields bigger and adding in date-pickers where needed. Big global search and making changes. Pushed up 89 files that were changed.

Steve and Sean were talking about selling stuff to trailer dealers. That's where we started and our current clients who are selling trailers, we don't hear from them much. They seem to be pretty happy with what they are getting. We were talking about some of the guys and gals and how they can help. It gets into budgets. There is tons of work to do, it just depends on who is available and what the costs are. It also comes down to can we ROI (return on investment) for those things that we have them do? We have a couple of guys that can do videos, but we aren't sure how much to put towards that area. There are some huge advantages, but it also takes a lot of time, effort, and funding.

The other guys stayed on until just after 10 am ish. Some of the other things that they were talking about were - finding a step or place and then going from there. Just getting started, the rest tends to fill in, and talking about the drive a good salesperson has and the special personality traits of a good salesperson.

In the background, I was doing code on the side for the date-picker stuff. I kept doing that until lunch time.

Notes and thoughts about an MVP (minimal viable product or minimal viable plan) for Fracture - future project for adilas:

- Dynamic yet standard CSS - allow for others to change their dynamic CSS (look and feel) - maybe hold some of this in settings and in the database somehow. That way, they could always change it and we could dynamically pull it in on the fly.

- Full API socket access with good documentation. Every feature, every function, super small getters and setters for each section.

- Funding options - real money, time, products, investments, selling percentages or shares, etc. Be open to lots of options. Multi million dollar stone soup type analogy.

- Along with funding the options, I would like to make a page that shows the time value of money based on total gross sales by Adilas, LLC. For example: If someone wanted to buy a percentage or share, they could see the total gross revenue (year over year sales totals) and then see what that value is multiplied by a factor, say 3. The standard is between 1-10 times of the total gross revenue as a general ballpark number. We could show them a price and then let them purchase that percentage or share (somehow contact us). Each day that the page is up, the price would go up daily, based on the total gross revenue. Just for fun, they could roll it backwards (view only), if they wanted to look at things based on past dates. Just playing with numbers. We may have to figure out some other things, just an idea.

- If we did seek some outside funding, we could put up 20-30% of adilas (shares or percentage for co-ownership). We could also open up options for funding as a loan or to lend or loan Adilas, LLC monies. That money could be put on the balance sheet with promissory notes plus interest.

- Just as a rough number, shooting for $10 million in funding for projects and future development. It very well could go beyond that. We could start on projects once we get a portion of that (seed monies). Technically, we could start with anything. Shooting for a smaller $2 million for a seed money level start. If further budgets were needed, they could contain things like marketing, sales material, training, education, documentation, look and feel, interface changes (UI/UX and GUI updates), new features, bulk tools, upgrades, maintenance, servers, team members, admin/management, developers, support staff, internal training, different roles and responsibilities, hourly wages/compensation, salaries, perks, plans, project management, R&D, AI (artificial intelligence), "Any" scheduler, design work, API sockets, consulting, white labeling, settings, permissions, templates, marketing, advertising, promotions, sales, certifications, merchant processing, external marketplace stuff, 3rd party solutions, and other areas. Just putting a number out there for a general goal.

- Another thing that we want to keep doing is creating content - written, verbal, visual, video, etc. Good, clean, data, and content.

- Make an MVP plan for where we are going - we already have lots of research and planning for fracture and other projects - just need to pull it all together. Pitch the pitch and review other notes. See the developer's notebook for other topics as needed. Most of the notes are stored there or are referenced there. Great resource.

Went into Smithfield to meet with Harry and my dad. Both had watched the videos on adilas university and were ready to go. We spent the 1st hour talking about options for selling part of adilas or getting outside investors. That was very helpful for me to have someone to bat things against and get some conversations going. Good stuff.

As we went further into our meeting, the value of good education and training and marketing was very plain to see. The next big question, how do we get there? After that, we flipped over and setup a new corporation and some users for Harry and his daughter. Just trying to get things started. We spent some time and did some settings, permissions, and going over defaults. We did record part of it, nothing too major. Great meeting and my head was spinning afterwards thinking about possibilities.

Met with Chuck over a GoToMeeting session. We were going over changes and requests from the Bear 100 folks. We worked on new tooltips, runner counts, and a new leader board. Due to time, we had to put in some fake data, but we will go back and reformat things and populate it with real data. Good meeting.

Recording notes from 2/15 - 2/16 from manual post-it notes to digital.

For me - I've really been thinking about education and harnessing what we already have. Also, using the talents of those around me. I don't know everything or don't have time to do everything. I do know people who can and are able to help in those areas. That's the key. Can we get the people and funds together to make it happen.

Just Steve and Sean were on the meeting with me this morning. By 9:30 am, both had bailed out to do different things. We were doing some quick updates and going over things before they bailed out. Here are some of my quick scribbles (notes):

- Gathering ideas from different people. Including new people who are already influenced by existing adilas theory and designs.

- The value of education

- Talking about options for selling shares, percentages, and maybe going public with adilas in order to raise funds for projects that we want to do and pursue. It's all about the connections.

- Steve was talking about the drive to make more money that is shared by most business owners and entrepreneurs.

- Selling adilas to fill in small parts of the business as fill-in pieces. Not piecemeal but selling certain tools and features to help round out other businesses, models, or software packages. For example: Say someone just needs ecommerce, online ordering, scheduling, timecards, or even things like gift cards. We pitch it, get them going on what they need and hopefully they like it and want to expand to other parts and pieces. This is an older saying from Russell Moore back in 4/13/16, "Adilas is a great companion software package for any business!".

- We are still seeing a future need for in-store credit and being able to apply those liabilities to outstanding invoices. You can do it right now, but you have to do everything manually. We would really like to automate that whole process and make it super easy and smooth. This will end up being another one of the special accounts type functions. Not everybody gets it, only certain people or customers need it, and it is basically a reverse account where you overpay and then get to use that value to pay for other things. Very similar to gift cards. As a matter of fact, you could issue a gift card for the overage and then let them use it at will as a payment. Once again, in-store credits will play along with other special accounts such as gift cards, gift certificates, loyalty points, punch cards, lunch cards, vendor credits, and other special account options.

- We got into some talks about deployment as a bottleneck and how training and education could help solve some of that pressure and bottlenecks. There is also a huge need to keep educating and providing learning for new functionality that keeps getting developed. That's an ongoing process.

- Small discussions about keeping up some of the demo sites and making them nice and clean. There is a huge value in nice, clean, data.

After Steve and Sean left, I sent the rest of the time looking over emails and looking into a possible bug on invoices and the new bigger alternate logos for PDF invoices (some new invoice settings).

Shari O. jumped on and showed me an error that was happening with a client and their PDF invoices. The error was dealing with the new bigger or alternate logo that we allow them to upload and use for different printable invoices. The settings were not being pulled per corporation and it was defaulting to the testing corporation and thus showing the wrong image.

We texted Bryan and he joined us on the GoToMeeting session. We were looking over things and eventually found a session value that was being used outside in the PDF realm. Session stuff doesn't work out there. We fixed it and tied the corporation look-up to the corp id that was passed in via the URL (web path) and that seemed to fix the problem. Crazy!

Small work session with Shari O., Bryan, and I. I'm glad that we got it figured out.

Emails and researching a different bug on gift card payments. I ended up just doing some looking around. Not sure where to go, based on the new stuff and newer flow processes. I know the old way, super well. But some of the new stuff is still kinda fuzzy for me. I may need to get with either Eric or Wayne to get some clarification. I made some other notes for when we meet that will allow me to get back to what I was looking at.

Working on digital notes from 2/16 to 2/20.

Meeting with Bryan on some of his new settings for the "Any" scheduler. We got super deep into the logic on the horizontal time view page. He is currently working on rostering for different shifts.

More work on recording notes and trying to stay caught up better. Time doesn't seem to wait for anybody.

Shari O. and Sean were on the meeting. Looking at email options. We checked out both some shared server and VPS (virtual private server) options. The more we talked about it, the more we really need to get this going and help it to be as solid as possible. Our current solution works great, as long as the shared server is up and running. Because we have that part of the puzzle on a shared server vs a dedicated server, we can't control all of the pieces. That makes it tough. Looking at options. I pitched a few ideas to both Shari O. and Sean.

Next, we went over some expense types and yearend totals. Shari O. is getting ready to submit everything for taxes. She is really doing great and giving it the extra look over. We also went over some comparisions between our merchant processing companies. We now have everything switched over to the new merchant and it seems to be going good with similar costs. All is well there.

Multi-hour server meeting. Wayne, John, and I were on the meeting. Our first topic was email servers and options. I pitched 4 options. Wayne came up with a fifth option. Here they are - in general:

1. Stay with Newtek on the same server and try to update code to help make it more stable. Currently on a shared server for email functionality.
2. Stay with Newtek and just upgrade the shared ColdFusion server to a newer version. Basically, request a plan change and switch boxes (upgrade servers).
3. Switch over to Hostek and use their email services either as a shared server or a VPS for SmarterMail.
4. Full custom and we setup the server, the services, and the API socket connections. There are a number of unknowns here.
5. Switch over to Google workspace and use that as our email server. This was Wayne's idea. We chatted about ideas, options, pricing and what not. He is going to run some experiments using one of our other domain names that we have to do some testing.

After we got done talking about possible email options, we started talking about the datasource project and options that we have there. This discussion took quite a bit of time and felt like we weren't making much progress until towards the end of the discussion. We were talking about tough situations like payees and users being bridged between corporations. We went over the need for GUID's or globally unique id numbers. We also talked about tables like customers and part categories where we use the auto generated id as the main primary field. We also talked about other tables where we allow duplicates based on a multiple column primary key. For example: Say deposits or PO's. We let the system create an auto id number that we don't use (auto number for the transactional ids) but then we do a special corp id and main deposit number or corp id and main PO number as the sub combos. Ideally, we'd like to make all of the tables so that they could have that multiple column primary key or key indexes to help keep the data separated.

Lots and lots of talk about tables, options, and details. Toward the end, I think that all of us had a better idea of what we are up against and how to tackle the project. That is awesome. Our next plan is to have Wayne play with some things and see what it would take to update and merge a couple of tables. Basically, we are going to start running some scenarios and testing experiments. We talked quite a bit about UID's (unique identifiers) and even converting them into numeric values to help with indexing, sorting, and such. Most of it came down to adding in an additional layer to the database where needed. It's not needed everywhere, just in certain places and that was good to see. Progress.

As a goal, it would be super cool to get the full database all mapped out and fully documented. Things like data definitions, primary keys, foreign keys, key indexes, combo fields, etc. As a fun side note, if we flip over to a unique id type system, the main work will be on the insert code (putting things into the database). Then making sure that each select, or view query uses that unique id (a real UID or a combo/multi column primary key) in the joins and where clause filters. Once again, good progress on the datasource project. It may end up being a combo of both new datasource names and better unique identifiers to allow us to mix and bled tables, datasources, and data as needed.

Next, we switched over to session variables and session management options. We talked about setting up global session variables, centralized place to manage that, and moving things into more of a session object with methods, classes, and functions. Get it all in one place vs having it in-line code on multiple different pages. All part of standardizing things and maturing code wise.

Wayne reported that he and Eric got the local docker image running on Eric's Mac with no problems. We talked about some image, media/content, and local paths that need some help and loving. Then at the end of the meeting, after Wayne had left, John and I went over a number of new pages that need to be updated with a more modern look and feel. Long, but a good meeting today.

Looking at the horizontal time view code with Bryan. We looked at it yesterday as well. It looked way better today. Light testing and making plans. He is going to do some clean-up and we'll push it up live in the next few days.

Small code changes to help with session gift card settings and gift card objects when switching between corporations. Light testing and pushing up new files.

Research on investing and a company that invests in SaaS type models (software as a service). Pushed up some code for Dustin. Recording notes. Phone call with Shari O. and doing email stuff. General to do list stuff. Looking up adilas videos on YouTube and adilas university.

Meeting with Russell over Google Meetings. He had me download the project - CSS theme and we did some playing with pulling in different component pieces of the theme. We also spent some time looking at the adilas university site and transferring ownership of the adilas university thinkific account over to me. Good meeting and fun to learn some new things.

As a side note, Russell and I were talking about change and how some people just struggle with that. Here is what he said, "We are almost helping our users build new pathways through their minds." It's more than just changes, we are trying to help, shape, and encourage them along the path. For better or for worse, we all have to deal with change.

Steve and Sean were talking about how quickly you could setup a company and just sell and redeem gift cards. We may end up pushing this a little bit further. This could be a quick way to get our foot in the door with a company. We did some playing inside of the demo site and even made a few buttons, setup some quick settings and defaults, and ran a few things through the process.

As a note, we have a number of other quick standalone features that our clients can use that don't require a ton of other pieces. Things like the customer queue (even generic placeholders), timeclocks and timecards, quick calendar events, project tracking, ecommerce, etc. As you get into more and more things, the complexity level does go up, but some of those things could almost be sold or marketed as standalone products or pieces. Of course, they are all there (included), they are just smaller pieces of the whole that may be used independently or with minimal training or other setup.

Steve was asking about a possible option for showing buttons (my cart favorite buttons) with choices (like options on a menu - what options or side do you want with that?). We spent a little bit of time talking about how the buttons could include choices or whatever. At some point, we would like to do some buttons that tie right into time and scheduling as well (time buttons). The button is nothing special. The big advantage there is that it can hold the rules and assignments or special selections or settings. Basically, backend code and/or choices or presets get assigned to each button. That's what makes the button so useful.

After Steve left, to jump on a call with Mike, Sean was asking about quick setup options for things that we do all of the time. I mentioned that we could easily setup prep scripts or special code to help do certain things and/or configuration steps. Say you have a process that would require you to do a certain number of steps (say 10 or 50 or whatever). If you created a quick prep script, you could click one button and then have the system do all of those steps (5, 10, 50, 100 steps) all in the background. Especially if it is the same thing over and over again. It could really speed some things up. This would be a great addition for our fracture project, going forward. Quick settings, quick setups, quick default, and industry specific prep scripts. That would be really cool.

At the end of the meeting, John and I spent some time looking over a page to help split an expense/receipt between locations. This is something like an insurance bill or a bill that needs to be split by percentages between locations. John is working on taking older pages and updating the look and feel. It's looking good. He has permission to merge that page into the master code branch.

Looking over site design options inside of the thinkific site for the adilas university site. Making a few small changes to the site layout. Recording notes in both adilas and the adilas shop. Spent some time going over Shannon's videos from back in 2016 on adilas university - 12 main players. Good stuff. Here are a few notes for myself about some of her videos.

- It's ok to leave things for other videos. You don't have to go into crazy depth on every button, link, or option. For example: You could say something like, we will come back later - and then actually do it.

- Shannon would do a great orientation and quick overview. Then she went deeper and started showing usage, flow, and tips on the features.

- When we do some of the training for fracture, I would really like to go through each section, page, and function and list out all of the options. Then do quick little 1-2 minute videos on each of the sub functions, tips, and power user tools. This master list may take some time. As a side note, there is already a huge outline that we made for the presentation gallery. It may not have everything, but it could be a good starting place - start on page 5, under business functions.

- After the good overview and explanation, then go in and do it in speed mode or show a few reps so that they, the users, will see how fast and easy it is to do, once everything is all setup and prepped.

Working on the quick search help file. Added new code for the quick search to pull a full balance sheet by using a date in the quick search field. This was a request from Kelly. Spent the rest of the time going over videos that Shannon made for the adilas university training. I watched the videos on PO's, vendor-specific inventory, generic inventory, quotes, vendors, and users and permissions. Good stuff.

- Shannon was showing multiple step processes, reviewing info, prep work, and helping to organize things. She was bringing out standard features, patterns, and helping to show that the tools are as flexible as you want them to be. Good information at the beginner level. I was wanting a little bit more, but that will come. Good stuff!

Research on video editing software and screen capture software. Checking out a couple of older external hard drives that had older videos from prior adilas training sessions. I saw tons of good info and data. It's just in huge chunks (hour long bocks or bigger). We will need to go through it, break it down, inventory the clips, and then publish those pieces. The content is older, but still a great asset and could be a great underlying base. I literally have days and days worth of footage (hundreds of hours).

We may go back and harness and grab some of that training material. If nothing else, it will give who ever does the new training something to stand on vs just pulling it out of the air. Lots of Q&A sessions, drawings, analogies, real user questions, explanations, demos, step-by-steps, etc. Once we inventory things and start to expose that content, that should help. Once again, it may be just as beneficial for our internal team (person who does the new training) as it will be for some of our clients. Great resource.

Here are a ton of YouTube videos - going clear back 10+ years. adilasbiz - YouTube

Here are some other older training videos. We'll be circuling back around and breaking these things into smaller and smaller pieces. We will also make them searchable, organized, and documented. That's the plan.

Recording notes for the day.

Sean was showing the guys a new gift card demo site, just for selling and redeeming gift cards. They were talking about trying to build a super simple interface to help pitch some of these smaller features that could be gateways into more of the system. Ideally, it would be awesome if we could build a simple page that could skip the normal start cart and search for an item functions. We could even skip buttons and my cart favorites (custom user-defined buttons with built-in searches) and just code it to be super simple and to the point. Ideally, they would also like to put the gift card amount (remaining amount) in the notes section.

Sean is going to come up with a plan and then email me a mock-up (simple drawing of what he is looking for). It may end up being a cross between a quick add to cart, quick redeem, light invoice stuff, and buttons to search other gift card transactions. We were looking at both the CRM (customer relationship management) page and the quick retail homepage. We will create a small mix between the two of them.

After the other guys left, just John and I were left on the meeting. We spent some time going over laptop and memory specs. We then did a quick page review for the receipt history page. John is working through a number of pages and giving them a more modern look and feel.

Zoom session with Calvin. He was showing me some of his new OCR (optical character reading) data extraction from images and PDF's. Pretty cool. I could see a company getting an invoice and then have the system OCR the data into the right spots. Tons of options that way. He was even showing me how it did with stuff like blacked out lines, scribbles, or scripty type handwriting. It wasn't perfect, but pretty darn good.

Working on gathering up ideas and data for a master adilas plan. Reading over notes, developer's notebook entries, and coming up with some scratch files to add to the plan. The goal is gather things, then copy and paste from the scratch document into a more organized and formatted official document of sorts. We may end up using the web, so that we can link and refence all kinds of other things. It also becomes searchable which is awesome.

As a side note for me, I'm seeing the adilas jellyfish model as a great starting point for our master plan. It has all of the services and extensions that we want to build out and define (that we can see right now). See attached for an older copy of that graphic.

To start the meeting out, just John and I were on this morning until Cory joined us at 10 am. We spent quite a bit of time talking about legacy code and how hard it is to decipher what is going on and how things look, without having the correct data and/or context of the pages. Some of that deep page rewriting requires knowledge, flow, good data, and why are looking for this or that. It can get pretty deep.

John and I were going back and forth and lightly butting heads (just talking) about where we go from here. We also talked about how sometimes it is harder to transfer info and knowledge vs just doing it yourself. That may be quicker, but it can cause problems later on. If people don't know or don't like something, they tend to start rebuilding stuff or altering paths. There is a huge need for a plan or path to follow. Some of the decisions that we make are between the easy way or the hard way. It's hard to know which way is right every time.

We switched gears and started talking about play sites, branding, and swapping out logos, colors, and other pieces. Someone has to put the data in as well. A demo site or testing site, without any good data, isn't that good. We went over some pros and cons of doing custom code (altering the norm). Then we chatted about options for local JavaScript validation on forms and what not. We have a ton of server-side validation but are needing to add more local client-side validation to help our users out. This helps users know that something is needed before they submit the form.

The next major topic was dealing with copy and pasting. We do that a ton and some of our developers, that's all that they do. It works great but if you don't go back through it, you end up having a small mess. Pretty common. We talked about the costs to maintain things vs building new things from the ground up. Lastly, we talked about getting our developers good local data to test and code against. That is really important and really helps get better pages and gives us a better look at how things really get used and how they work in the real world.

Meeting with Cory. Small bugs and small fixes. Working on quotes, projects, and general project management stuff. Cory had a list of things to go over. She has been out of pocket for a few weeks (vacation). Shari O. joined and we had a quick chat about numbers, budgets, and personnel.

Back to the main index for the master adilas plan

Master Adilas Plan - Jellyfish Model

Brainstorming Ideas and Topics:

- How big do you want to be? – See also the internal questionnaire responses and survey - tons of good info there - almost a mini plan by itself. Also, question 7 on the survey has a whole write up on the adilas jellyfish or jelly fish model and explains it further.

- The adilas jellyfish model - see attached - covers almost all of the departments and sub sections of what we are trying to be as a company. It is not the main product, but more of our internal and external departments, areas, and general areas that we will keep refining and working on.

- Possible numbers for the jellyfish model. Going from top to bottom and from left to right.
1. adilas.biz
2. Admin
3. Monthly Reoccurring Service
4. Sales & Marketing
5. Setup & Training
6. Tech Support
7. Design
8. Custom Code
9. Consulting
10. R&D
11. Project Management
12. Internal Development & Maintenance
13. Adilas University
14. Adilas Marketplace
15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World
16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

Areas, sections, and departments in more detail:

** for me - go deeper into each section **

1. adilas.biz

• Are we going to stay the same entity? Are we the same or are we different entities? Are we rebranding? Are we piggybacking?
• What version are we on?
• Adilas.biz or adilas lite? Branding? Marketing? etc.
• The thing that keeps us all together is the reoccurring monthly services subscription for the main adilas.biz system. It has been the glue that keeps us together.
• Offering upgrades from ship A (current adilas) to ship B (fracture or adilas lite)
• What are our goals for ship A? What are our goals for ship B? Are we building it up to sell it? Are we going to be replacing ship A? How do you transition between the two.
• We want to make our current product better. It then grew into a full or bigger rewrite. It seems to be changing more and more. Originally, it was pretty small changes.
• Timelines to get things done? What will it take?
• Ship A will be great salespeople for ship B, once ready.
• If people change from ship A to ship B, there needs to be an increase or at least a re-evaluation of monthly fees and services.
• Ship B, we are planning for tiered pricing and dynamic billing based on functions, sizes, usage, storage, and preset packages.
• Ship B, they can toggle on/off different settings, include other features, and change what they want. All of this will reflect on dynamic billing options.
• Talking about future plans - selling it, royalties, secession, retirement, etc.

2. Admin

• The admin's role is to manage the budget, make decisions as to the direction that we need to go, do HR type functions, payroll, manage the different groups and departments, communication channels, general running of the day to day business.
• This could be one person, multiple people, a board, a council, etc. Somebody or some entity needs to be in control.
• Co-owners, Co-Founders, CEO's, presidents, vice-presidents, board members, etc. We can figure that out.
• If we do one person, we need to have VP's or managers in the other departments.
• One of our problems is that none of us (on the current team) want to be that person or take on this whole responsibility.

3. Monthly Reoccurring Service - aka Billing (new name)

• This is billing, invoicing, receiving, dealing with monies coming in and reaching out to our clients.
• Accounts receivables
• This could be tied in with admin roles
• Debt collection, bad debt, accounting, financials, etc.
• Setting up new corps (currently) and sending welcome emails and collecting business contact info.
• Bank reconciliation, paying bills, prep the budget info, etc.
• We could automate some of this, in the future.

4. Sales & Marketing

• We like that they are together. This is anything to generate and keep new clients to keep coming in and paying for our services. This could be publicity, knowledge about the system, get new demos, entice our clients to buy and keep buying from us. Serving their needs.
• Currently, the main method of marketing is word of mouth and referrals.
• We have used sales reps, consultants, and light networking. Steve and Kelly have been some of our biggest sales type people.
• We want to listen to what feedback they are bringing back. Currently, the sales people and the developers almost live in two different places.
• Sales should have a good pulse on what is working, what is not working, and what people and our clients are asking for. We tend to get lots of good ideas from clients. Sometimes, what that takes or the priority, that can get tricky.
• How big do we want to be? Get everybody or get enough (sufficient)? Keep pushing into other markets or be content with good ROI?
• Helping with market research, looking around and checking out markets, and what do we need to do to penetrate those markets?
• We almost feel like being in no man's land - too big for just a few people to push on it, not quite big enough to really have the team that we need to push it. Do we push and go bigger? Or do we trim down and keep it like it is (not really coasting but strategically developing as we can)? There are associated questions about speed, reliability, and uptime.
• Along with sales and marketing, there are expectations that are set and keep changing (trends and expectations).
• We need to know who we are servicing. Currently, we are kind of all over the place. We have little accounts, medium accounts, and some big accounts. We could go any direction. We just need to decide. Where is the sweet spot?
• If we want to be big and grand, we will need some major funding and thus major sales and marketing. Or do we figure out the sweet spot and really refine and focus in on things.
• Making things more stable and more reliable. Keep improving.
• We have a lot to offer - no one has even heard of us.
• The new and upcoming business owners are going to be fully connected and have certain expectations. If you want to get those guys/gals, you're going to have to revamp things.
• Our current mix is very developer heavy. We really need to switch that focus and get things that people want. Easy, Powerful, and Pretty!
• We need this department to really keep us in the know on what is going on. Currently, we don't have anyone fully dedicated or assigned to this department. We've been missing this piece.

5. Setup & Training

• Originally, we didn't charge for any of this. We just wanted people to get on our system. We are now charging for this and even trying to presale some of the training, deployment, and setup stuff. We are finding and have found, that people who get setup correctly and have the correct amount of training stay longer on our system. It has a learning curve, and that proper setup and training goes a long way.
• Currently, one of our system admin persons has to go in and create the corp, do a bunch of the settings, assign the master users, setup the logos and colors, and get them going. Most of that requires someone from our team to hold their hand along that process.
• Futuristically, we really want to help automate a bunch of that. Have them setup their own corp, let them pick what industries they want to play into, help them with their settings (wizard style), and then even help them pull in their data (without any other involvement). Let them create a test account or a free version, play around, and then either upgrade or get some help.
• Offer services to help our clients. Also have a number of self-help tools and features to let them do it themselves.
• We would love to develop a number of preset packages and industry specific skins.
• We would like the setup and training to be coupled with education and the adilas university side of things. They are very related.
• Getting products, customers, vendors, and other info into the system easily. Currently, we have to do a bunch of that (data imports) on a one-by-one basis. We need to make that more global and self-help level.
• Provide a good starting point to help them succeed. Show them the benefits and advantages of doing it our way or how we help them succeed.
• This department or division could include the adilas university, training, tech support, setup, and training.
• Easy access to get help and direction if needed.
• We see a lot of user error type problems. Figure out ways of helping them stay in their lane better or put up guardrails or bumpers to keep them on track.
• It has only been recently that we have added more focus on the setup, deployment, and training.
• This department could also include on-going training and retention. That is huge. Things constantly keep changing and we keep adding on new features.

6. Tech Support

• Currently, we allow people to email or call for tech support. It's free but often bleeds over into full on training, not tech support.
• We could build out a report a bug or open up a ticket or an issue. Make it easier to get support.
• We could provide better help files, tips, how-to's, videos, tutorials, and in-person training events.
• Everybody uses the system so differently, that makes it kind of tough. It would be nice if we have tech support stuff that was industry specific or catered to a specific industry.
• Tech support really should be part of the training, setup, and deployment stuff.
• Tech support could be a small carrot for deeper training and/or offering other paid services.
• Helping to show the value of deeper training and education.
• Having a standard way of getting to training and even industry specific training.
• Offer some adilas university training courses - covering various subjects on scheduled dates/times.
• Really helping to push the training and education stuff. Tech support should be quick, temporary, and non reoccurring. Show them the benefits of getting properly trained.
• As we move forward, we are planning on simplifying things. That should help with the training needs and the tech support stuff. Helping them figure it out on their own.
• If people (our clients) really want more tech support, we could offer more robust or advanced support packages.

7. Design

• This could be websites, forms, reports, interfaces, dashboards, UI/UX (user interfaces and user experience). This is the pretty and easy part of it. The powerful may be from a feature or backend process.
• Most of our current guys are developers, not designers.
• We don't charge enough, as such, we tend to skimp on the design phases and processes. This tends to get skipped or minimalized.
• We tend to do function over form - however, most clients say that they want function over form, but really, they want form over function - they want it to work and look pretty.
• Our project management tends to be a simple one liner. Do such and such. No other plans, requirements, mock-ups, or fixed specs exist.
• Mock-ups, prototypes, samples, wireframes, flow charts, graphics, videos, etc. We want to show the plan, air it out, and then build to the specs.
• Modern look and feel and user experience keeps changing. We need someone to keep watching and keeping up with trends, expectations, and options. This needs to be monitored and maintained regularly.
• Figuring out and sticking to a style guide. We do have a section called the "adilas docs". We have been working on it, but it has not been fully adopted yet. We need to set those standards and then stick to it. This is our style guide, and we are sticking to it.
• Doing some test cases and getting user/client feedback. How did their experience work out and what did we learn from that?
• Planning in maintenance and upkeep.
• Our clients squawk at things not being consistent. I don't mind change but I don't like some change and other things not being consistent. We could also introduce settings.
• We could allow the users, or corporations, to choose their default layouts. Horizontal forms, vertical forms, stacked forms, or auto formatted. We also want to store those settings and allow them to change it on the fly on per user basis.
• We need some consistency - this deals with who the designer is, what we are designing and outputting, people's preferences and opinions, and where we are heading. We can all be different, but we need to be consistent.
• Allow people to try things out and/or fully switch over.
• There is a point when we need to keep moving forward so we don't have to keep supporting all of the older styles and themes. Help make that as smooth as possible.
• We have some needs for design work out in ecommerce, customer facing sites, portals, and even business websites or web presence stuff.
• We need designers to help with marketing and social media stuff. Once again, consistency, specific plans, strategic campaigns, etc.

8. Custom Code

• This is one of the things that really sets us apart from other systems. We love it and even encourage it.
• We currently have tons of black box options. That was a solution at the time. There are some great concepts there (black box stuff) but we did run into problems.
• The code base keeps changing. We have had people ask for things, we build it custom for them and then wrap back and make it standard. The ones who got the custom version are now off on their own vs being fully integrated into the main codebase.
• We offer a lot of this. Having said that, we don't charge enough.
• We would like to move as much as possible to data driven settings and permissions.
• One of our current issues in maintainability. If it was on the side (like a black box page) it got left behind. The main pages always got updated but anything custom was harder to test, and harder to main it.
• If we do custom code, we need to build in some maintenance costs to help maintain that.
• We could do a community type approach - who ever helps build it out, gets a commission or a usage fee for others using it. Kinda like a sponsorship or something. We just need to get enough to plan it out, build it out, test it, market it, and then do some sort of kickback or reoccurring usage fee. There may be different levels  - one-time, reoccurring, built in, full one-off custom code, settings, combined projects (we pay, they pay, we then get to use it).
• Custom code should be by our internal developers and internal development team. We need to make sure that it works and doesn't affect something else.
• We have had some maintenance issues. Who made it, what does it do, how does it work, what does it touch, what else does it touch up/down stream, where does it live, how can you get to it, and was there any planning or testing done to the custom code? Tons of potential far reaching questions.
• If we build something... we really need to get an ROI and market those pieces.
• We could do some pay as you go build outs. Monthly fees that get added to their bill. They could pay upfront and then get a payment plan, or set it up on a reoccurring basis, or whatever.
• We need to charge enough. We often shoot ourselves in the foot. We charge pennies to build on top of multi-million dollar platforms and applications.
• We need good planning, good project management, good estimates, and then good developing.
• Estimates - take what you think it will take and double it. Then double that. It's almost a 4x ratio. By the time you add the work to get the work, the work before the work, the work, the work in between the work, the work after the work. It all plays in.
• Paying for both quality and speed.
• On the estimates, we also need to think about opportunity costs and what are we not working on, while doing custom code work.
• Approving custom code. Just because someone wants it... doesn't mean we should build it out. How does it fit with our mission statement, goals, and overarching plans and rollouts?

9. Consulting

• Byproduct of the main reoccurring business services. Once we are in, the system starts generating byproducts and people need to know what is next, how to do certain things, where they could go, options, next steps, phases, etc.
• We haven't really tapped into this yet. We do it, but we could do it so much more.
• This could be tied into the training, setup, and education stuff. Teaching our clients the best way to use the system to get the most out of the system or platform.
• You start getting into paying for knowledge and experience and expertise.
• We have seen many of our power-users become consultants. They know the system, they know how to make it run, sing, dance, and play. That provides a value to others. Those people then offer their expertise and know how to help others.
• Currently, some of this is done on the side. Adilas has no part in it, and no kickback exits. We would love to bring this more inside but that takes money to keep those people on call or on staff.
• This could be a great thing to add to the adilas marketplace.
• We may allow some outside stuff to go on, but we need some rules. We could configure this any way we want, we just need some rules.
• This could be part of the adilas cafe scenario - our clients seeking out a professional to help them out.
• Do we want to manage this internally? What would that look like? Once again, we may need some rules here.

10. R&D

• Research and Development - You have to spend time here to move the ball forward. If you aren't going to move forward, nothing will happen, you will live and die. You have to keep up, especially with tech stuff.
• Exploring different avenues - there are costs for exploring.
• Cutting edge, bleeding edge, sweet spot, new ish, or older/classic?
• How much does it cost to be on that cutting edge?
• Vision, plans, and looking to the future. Where are we/you heading? Plans, how are you going to get there?
• It really comes down to where do you want to play (on the spectrum)?
• Training what is new.
• Maintenance for what was or has been developed. Technical debt.
• Stable and known or less stable and new - How quick will the older pieces change and/or be deprecated? If it's so new, it may not even stick.
• We make things and then it sits on a shelf. That hurts. There could be difference between development that didn't get fully funded vs totally new prototyping and experimenting.
• Is this something we should do? On not? Figuring out what it takes to make something happen.
• Looking into speed, efficiency, demand, cost analysis, needs analysis, scope, scale, and reality of doing certain things.
• Beta testing, prototypes, experiments, testing, pushing boundaries.
• Currently some of our R&D is mixed in with our code. We try things to see if it works. Without being consistent with other pages and code. We often have good intentions (prepping for the future - mini stubs or prepping for stuff) but then get pulled on to other projects. We do a lot of experimenting within our projects. Almost a revolving door or revolving code set. Basically, a fully working, living prototype.
• We are seeing a mix between custom code, R&D, and project management.
• Back tracing or reverse engineering things. Sometimes if you know what you want, you can then figure out a way to get there, that might be easier or better.
• Being aware of what's out there? How could I use some of that in my projects?

11. Project Management

• We have really been missing this piece. We do a ton of just in time project management. We are not very good at doing a more full design, plan, or architecture type layout.
• We do a lot of this one-on-one right now. One project and one developer.
• The project manager can and does act as the shield between the client and the developer. Buying some time or deflecting decisions.
• They help with quotes, estimates, and project specs, scope, costs, timelines, and details. Lots of potential back and forth communication is needed.
• We have spent a ton of time and money going back and fixing things that should have been planned out originally. We have also spent money where a developer makes a decision and just does something and doesn't ask or doesn't get any clarification.
• Teams - authority, accountability, and responsibilities - setting up clear expectations. We have played around here a bit. We need to refine things here a bit, based on our needs. We had some people who were so worried about how to do scrum that it didn't actually happen. We also had some problems with free riders. We want to use some small teams, but still need to get it refined a bit better.
• Dealing with teams, we were trying to do some training... and we didn't really have it all defined. Wasted time in meetings, talking about code, and what is needed. We then fall down based on assumptions or just verbal communication. It needs to be just a little bit deeper and more consistent.
• Team sizes and dynamics.
• As a project manager, not assigning yourself to a required task. Actually, make an assignment to do the project management.
• Someone needs to be available and be the virtual babysitter. Getting rid of hurdles and what is expected of them. Helping them stay on task/track. The project manager's job to help other people succeed.
• Slowdown
• We build and build and build... we need to slow down and test it, train on it, market it, and push it.
• Being able to plan it out so that we can reuse as much code as possible. Giving the developers guidelines, handrails, samples, and good instructions. If it's too tight, they don't want to do it (it takes out the fun of figuring it out). Figure out what developer needs what (how detailed) and then play accordingly. Developers need to accomplish something. Not just follow A-Z and you're done. It is a mix and a spectrum.

12. Internal Development & Maintenance

• This internally funded by adilas to work on adilas. This comes from revenue and budgets to keep the system up and running.
• Bug fixes, maintenance, changes, next steps, phases, testing, documentation, code review, etc.
• This needs to be tied into project management and custom code.
• This is the most defined area that we have inside of adilas.
• We get a plan from project management, we then build it out, test it, deploy it, and make sure that it works.
• We have had problems with guys following style guides. Everybody has their own ideas on what a good style guide is. This could be whitespace in code, tabs, naming conventions, etc. It also happens on the look and feel part of page or report.
• Alan had the idea of having a way of helping to force or standardize the output. Almost a forced style guide or validator of sorts. It all has to comply to a certain standard. Whitespace, naming conventions, comments, indents, variable names, components, etc.
• Keeping things separated - backend, database, objects, services, views, logic, functions, classes, etc.
• In object-oriented programming, you need good encapsulation (only contains what is needed) and low coupling (lower number of steps as possible).
• There is some great value in teams and getting different points of view. A better solution because we worked on it as a team. More well-rounded.

13. Adilas University

• This goes hand in hand with the training and deployment section. This is the training arm of the system. It may also tie in with tech support or consulting. We could combine some of this as needed. Similar type people and knowledge resources.
• General topics for training - One, how do you use the system? Two, how do you run your business? Consulting is a part of this as well - what are the best business practices and how to get the most out of the system.
• There could be standard stuff, custom stuff, and internal stuff.
• Each page would have how to videos, quick videos, and options for more or deeper training.
• We also need to offer some custom or live training events.
• For fracture, we experimented with a thing called the education mode. You could turn it on/off and the system would hide or show more options and information. You could turn it on from any page and all of sudden it would react differently. We have some great screenshots on this from Jonathan Wells. Along with this, the help files could be shown, side-by-side with the page that they are referencing. There were also options to toggle into the actual adilas university site as a tab withing the side-by-side help window.
• There is a known missing gap here on the education and training side of things.
• There could be free levels, basic stuff, and deeper more paid type levels of training and consulting.
• There could also be certification levels, requirements, status, and other testing and certification stuff.
• We are hoping that the adilas lite and fracture project will make it even easier to help train the users and because they can tweak everything, there will actually be less of a need for certain pieces of the education and training. They will still be there, just hidden as needed.
• This could be a whole other business entity, if needed.
• A new user really wants to be guided through - holding their hand. An advanced user may not want any of that stuff in their way, just let them do it quickly.
• Link to this from the adilas cafe.
• If we do certifications, maybe show or allow some of that basic info to show to other users, if they are seeking trained professionals to help them out.
• If we have trained users, those become a value to others who are looking for help or pros on those topics.
• Adilas University could be a stand-alone product, or it could be interwoven with the entire site. Both have the same content, they just either have a standalone navigation system or we help navigate for them based on what page the users are on (context stuff).
• There could be levels to the training... Think of a triangle - simple, basic, intermediate, advanced, and deep or backend logic or design level stuff.
• There may be both external and internal training pieces. Along with that, we may have to have permissions or something that open/closes those training modules for certain people or parties.

14. Adilas Marketplace

• Part of the adilas cafe. People could sell their products and services, buy products and services. Including adilas skills and other professional skills.
• Adilas creates lots of byproducts. This is a way to help harness and gather up those byproducts. 
• Options for 3rd party solutions, white labeling, advertising, marketing, etc.
• Online mini marketplace for adilas products and/or our users could sell their products and services on a mini Amazon or eBay type level (mini consignment type shop built for our users and companies that use our products).
• Possible payment solutions with interest, fees, commissions, and other small kickbacks for using the marketplace.
• Limitless potential for other byproducts and additional services that could be added on to this piece of the puzzle.
• This may need a separate team to help run, manage, and administer this piece of the puzzle. Automate as much as possible.
• Here is a rough draft - Russell did - way back - don't get stuck here... It could be so much more. Adilas Market

15. Adilas Cafe & Community - Adilas World

• A landing spot outside of any corporation or entity.
• A corp selector - where can I go (have permissions or access)?
• Get to the marketplace type stuff.
• Get to the adilas university stuff.
• Forum type stuff - ask Q&A type stuff. This could be answered by staff and/or other users. This would need a moderator or forum manager.
• Let people show that they have the skills that others (businesses and/or individuals) could be looking for. This may include direct messaging or some other way of communicating.
• White labeling options.
• Standardized portal - single sign in be able to jump between servers and corporations.
• Dynamic billing and making payments.
• Mini marketplace for adilas products.
• Sales and creation of new accounts - tiered pricing and auto setup options
• News and updates - configure news feed as needed.
• Interface with other companies and corporations. Get assigned, hub type model.
• Work, play (demo sites), buy, sell, training, social stuff, and participate.

16. Databases, Networks, Servers, & IT

• This is the whole backend of the application or hardware side of things.
• Load management, reliability, up time, speed, redundancy, backups, storage, orchestration, etc.
• Lots of security needs and requirements. They will also be majorly involved in implementation of security.
• Code interacts with these things, but they are separate entities or divisions.
• We will need our own documentation, permissions, training, etc.
• Maintenance and upkeep, prototyping, standardizing, testing, databases, servers, hardware, clusters, network, security, IT stuff.
• Patches, updates, protection, hacker prevention stuff.
• Email servers, text or communication servers, web servers, database servers, backend logic servers (ColdFusion or whatever).
• Monitoring services, requests, traffic, load balancing, stats, specs, remote access, database indexing, automation scripts, tons of IT type stuff.
• Migration stuff, off-hour updates and maintenance, backups, restores, and other tasks.
• Move data around, put things into and out of cold storage, special bulk data manipulation stuff, zip and archiving things, etc.
• Future proofing things.
• Offloading bigger or longer processes.
• API sockets, API endpoints, and being able to load balance traffic, requests, deal with sessions, server config, clustering, and managing small microservices.
• We need a way to get rid or purge some of the pieces. The current system builds and builds. It never really releases or virtually poops (dumps).
• We would love to get a full data dictionary to allow our new frontend to be more data driven.
• This could be multiple people - DBA, IT/Server guys, etc. They could cross over, but these are high level skills and high level people or teams.
• Everything on the hosting side of things. This gets deep but just think - what do we need for hosting? - SSL's, domain names, hard drive space, spinning up servers just in time, pointer records, DNS, DSN, puppet, orchestration, bit bucket, code repositories, ColdFusion Administrator, Fusion Reactor, Papertrail, Nagios, tons of outside services and tools.
• Servers - hard drive sizes, backups, RAM, CPU's, configs, and the list goes on.
• This could go deep and deeper... Etc.

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- Alan and I were playing with a mini version or what that might look like (see attached for a mini mock-up of the smaller mini model):

Adilas.biz - admin, monthly billing, and day to day running the company. They could do their own R&D (progress, speed, what the clients are wanting).

Sales & marketing - They could do their own R&D (advertising, pricing, features, marketing materials, etc.).

Consulting, tech support, setup & training, and retention. This could also be part of the adilas university (similar folk). They could do their own R&D (tied into sales, marketing, training, etc.).

Development stuff - project management, custom code, internal development, maintenance, & design. They could do their own R&D (code, frameworks, layouts, look and feel, etc.).

IT stuff - Databases, servers, hardware, hosting, etc. They could do their own R&D (speed, load balancing, redundancy, monitoring, etc.).

Marketplace and adilas cafe - This could be their own little piece or small team. They could do their own R&D (product research, options, pricing, hardware options, services, etc.).

We would love to see each of these sections or divisions (departments) be able to meet and interact with each other on a consistent basis (at least monthly or semi-monthly). Nobody is left on an island by themselves. Communication is huge.

Emails, fixing a typo, and upping the sort field size on the chart of accounts (expense types and deposit types). Pushed up new code and sent emails out about the updates and changes.

Light research on a possible adilas intern for web development. Reviewing his portfolio, resume, and website. Sent him an email to see if we could chat and meet up.

Making a plan and doing prep work for a pitch to Steve. Gathering data, reading over things, making notes, and starting to organize things. Mostly just research and planning.

Started playing with elements of time and setting up the main pieces for the adilas master plan. Here is a quick breakdown of the time id's.

Master Adilas Plan

All time id's are inside of adilas

2283 - Main Index

2284 - Jellyfish Model

2285 - Value Add-On Core Model

2286 - Adilas University

2287 - Adilas Marketplace

2288 - Adilas Cafe & Community

2289 - Fracture - Future Project

2290 - Budgets & Finances

2291 - Marketing & Sales

2292 - Other Timelines, Plans & Projects

Steve and Sean talking about gift cards, quick deployments, referrals, and other client retention stuff. John and I were going over flow and new pages. We got into a discussion about getting valued client feedback and making sure that we are hitting all of the requirements. John was saying that part of his job, as a frontend designer, was to get and decipher user and client feedback. He also said that he would like to talk with and get feedback from stakeholders (adilas co-owners) and others. That is awesome. He was also talking about "requirements engineering" and how that feedback is a vital part of the whole puzzle.

Note for me - as we go forward, maybe let the guys/gals define their own roles and jobs. That might be a good start and then refine things from there. Part of our plan going forward deals with defining roles and tasks better. This may fit right in and takes all of the pressure off of just one person. Just a thought.

John and I were talking about ways to get good feedback on new changes, pages, flow, etc. We also talked a little bit about the adilas cafe and community and how that may be part of our efforts for getting better communication channels. Good stuff.

We started out by John and Cory going over pages, options, and new look and feel changes. Talking about show/hide search criteria, scrolling, or creating new flow and/or better layouts. Making some good progress and John is making a number of updates.

KPI - key performance indicators - We have a client that is wanting us to build a custom dashboard page that KPI pieces as part of the dashboard. We may end up going in on the development costs with the client to help them get what we/they want.

Wayne joined the meeting and we were going over a number of lists and different projects. Wayne, John, and I met a few times while Cory was gone, so this was the first time that all of us were back together in a couple of weeks. Touching base on various projects. Looking over a few issues and small bugs. Shari O., Cory, Wayne, John, and I were on the meeting for a while. Things seem to be going well, in general. We are making progress in a number of areas.

Light talks between Cory and John on the discount engine and planning to roll things out. We are getting better and better at planning things and hopefully doing them (acting on the plans).

Emails and working on the adilas master plan. Spent some time updating the presentation gallery outline document. See attached. The old starting went a little deeper and was kinda rough. Smoothed out the opening and did some light formatting.

Meeting with a company that invests in SaaS (software as a service) models. We chatted and talked for a bit. We are a little bit on the small side for what they are looking for. Interesting meeting.

Working on the master adilas plan stuff. Copy and pasting from one page (a Word doc) to the web (elements of time). Ended up reading over the internal questionnaire and survey. See element of time 6740 in the shop for more info on the questionnaire and internal responses.

Getting ready to send some documents and starting info over to Steve dealing with the adilas master plan. It's not done, but we are making good progress and I've been gathering tons of info and details and data.

Just for fun, here's another element of time (developer's notebook entry) that deals with what brings value?