Morning GoToMeeting session with Steve, Alan, and Russell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Build on what you have.

- Build as if for years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the morning GoToMeeting session. I spent some time doing emails and paying bills. Wayne jumped on and did some presenting on object oriented stuff and data access objects (dao) models. He wants to setup a meeting and do some show and tell for the guys. Kind of a meeting to get some direction and what not, as well as get some buy in on what is going on with some of the changes that he is making.

- On the object-oriented programming stuff, Wayne liked the analogy of virtually asking the objects questions. They then respond with already known answers and/or knowledge. This requires that the objects themselves have all of the data and logic, built in to them as the objects. We don't want to burry additional logic out further in the application. If the objects can know and understand everything from the get go, it just becomes easier. If we want some data or output, we just ask for it, and hopefully we have already formatted it and/or have it ready for quick output vs running additional logic on the output and/or answers. Anyways, that is the analogy.

- Talking with Russell - We talked about using WordPress (pre-built PHP CMS - content management system) vs internal building of the blog inside of adilas. The goal is to get the adilas features, advantages, and benefits up and online as quick as possible. This is both a training tool and a sales tool. Our conversation was dealing with where do we spend our time and energies. Building and developing new tools and features or populating content and getting the info out quicker using someone else's tools.

- Russell estimates that it will be at least 1-3 months... to build our own plus another 1-3 months to populate it. Or we could take the first 1-3 months and push up tons of content up to help things be ready. The later is a quicker process, but we don't get the new functionality. I always get stuck here and/or virtually fall off the wagon or the trail at this point, because I like to build internally.

- It will still take 6 months to get both product and features and get things rolled out.

- Russell is highly suggesting that we roll to WordPress vs building our own.

- We have to get the training up very quickly... Shannon is going to be having a baby very soon and she is currently one of our main support persons.

- See attached for a list of pros and cons, that Russell made, for a WordPress CMS (content management system) vs an internal adilas product that does what WordPress does. Basically, what Russell calls the adilas blog. As a side note, after the morning session, the list of pros and cons was sent out to Steve for review as well. He came back saying that he is excited to razzle and dazzle our customers and get more sales... meaning, let's jump on the WordPress option for now. That email helped Russell and I make better decisions later in the day. Good stuff.

I logged into the morning meeting and then started working on different things. Lots of emails and tech support stuff. I chatted with Russell over GoToMeeting and we just touched base on a few things. I did some more emails and changed the adilas shop over to the snow owl theme. I wanted to be able to use the HTML editor to keep the notes and such looking better. Later on, Alan popped in and we chatted for a little bit. I showed him a brief outline of what we are planning on doing for the revenue sharing stuff. He seemed to be ok with that. I also spent some time and did a group email to invite different parties to the preview meeting tomorrow with Wayne Andersen (object-oriented programming and data access objects).

Recording notes and doing some other clean-up stuff.

This idea came from Cory Warden. She would love to be able to copy user permissions from corp to corp (say, when bridging a user between corps) or when setting up a new user. For example: Say you have Sally in corporation A - if you bridge Sally over to corporation B, there could be an option that says, apply all permissions from corporation A. That would save tons of time. Another option might be something like this: Say you have Amy in corporation A and she already has a certain number of permissions. What if you could point to Jenny and say something like, give Jenny the same permissions as Amy (both users are in the same corporation). That would be huge as well.

As a side note, we are seeing more and more companies getting setup with multiple corporations. That copy and/or apply permissions option would be super cool.

We have had some requests from different users and consultants to increase the search options for sub inventory. These requests came from Cory Warden via email:

- We need a way to bulk close out packages that have reached a 0 quantity. Basically, a sub inventory clean-up process.

- When viewing the subs... we need a report that will show the prices of the subs vs the parent item pricing.

- Not from Cory, but still a sub inventory request - We need to have a sub inventory look-back report. The report would be date specific and would flex as it gets rolled back in time. This would allow for look-ups to be done to see where things were, back in time. The parent items can already do this... The subs can't at this time. That would be really cool and would help with look-backs.

Recording notes, emails, and working on the sales tax expansion project. Went through each server and grabbed corp-specific files that may need to be tested and looked at.

Russell and I hooked up over a Zoom session. Russell showed me what he was working on and we did a small visual walk through. He then was going to keep going and I was going to work on my own projects. We jumped off of that Zoom session and then I joined a different Zoom session to work with Calvin. With Calvin, I helped him get his local environment hooked up and connected as if he had multiple corporations. We enabled local web sockets, API sockets, and bridged users between systems locally. As a fun side note, Calvin was saying that he is going to be specializing more and more in mobile app development.

Back onto more sales tax stuff for corp-specific files.

On the morning GoToMeeting session. I helped Russell get some login credentials for the data 0 box. He is going to be adding some new databases and PHP options for the WordPress part of the site.

Wayne jumped on and we chatted before the meeting. Some of his stories about growing up in Idaho. He also showed us some stuff that he has created in Mindcraft - a huge super detailed castle.

- He started with a question, is the world round? His answer was, it is round, and that is what I choose to believe. Sometimes we don't understand the who, what, where, how, and why. We just have to take the information and either choose to believe and/or challenge it. How well do you accept things at face value?

- Things that are true and obvious at one point in time, may change as things progress. The same is true with programming. It is ok to question things and even challenge the norm. Be willing to break the models. We talked briefly about building and breaking things and then doing that again.

- Why do you write code? Alan - it is like a puzzle and I like to figure out the pieces. When you finish the project, you can be proud of what you did and created.

- Sometimes we like to show what we did and/or finished - that is a form of motivation (external feed) - We also love to talk and show people who can appreciate and understand what things are and what it takes to make that.

- Eric - He likes to build things. He loves the design part of it and then seeing it come to fruition.

- Russell - Easy, pretty, and powerful. Making things easy for others.

- Programs and technology can really make or break a company.

- What are the downsides to programming? Unpaid time that needs to be spent, people who don't understand, unbillable hours, the unknown, underestimating needs and/or requirements. Feature creep, pioneering and making things that don't end up getting used, etc.

- Eric - He likes to bill by the hour. He swallows some of the cost and calls it his ongoing learning process.

- Testing and test driven design - what is the style to do that and how do you accomplish that? Sometimes we get ourselves into our own little traps. If we take some time, sometimes we can step back and look at things from a different angle.

- Why do we test and why do we write tests? Confidence. Being able to verify that it does what you want it to do... Reliable and secure... What about the design? What if you did test driven design? Instead of just writing code, you virtually think of the tests that it needs to pass vs just the plain action code. What is your vision?

- Start with a test, then write the code to pass the test. The test might be the scenarios and/or the steps we want it to take. Have a bigger vision, but be willing to test and design as you build the component pieces.

- Think modular code and being able to test independent pieces. Super complex code that isn't modular may be bad code.

- Lots of emphasis on style. Appearance, the way things are done, systems, naming conventions, consistency, flow, a set of standards, easy to follow, other people/developers can follow along, patterns, directions and verbage, etc. A familiarity or comfort level.

- What is our style? Wayne likes to spread things out, spaces, white spaces, lots of comments, lining things up for easy reading. There are also section headers and/or natural breakpoints. Wayne really liked to break up walls of text into tabbed sections. He liked to line things up and make it more readable. That really helps.

- Wayne is using TestBox (testbox) a component of ColdBox (coldbox) for his testing.

- He broke his code into setup, before, after, and tear down type functions.

- Unit tests - tests a single set of code in an independent model.

- Database calls may be expensive (bandwidth, speed, and traffic). We need a way to emulate and/or fake the database calls. That allows the logic tests to be performed without full access to the database.

- Being able to mock things up is a huge key. Can we send fake data through the existing tests.

- DAO (data access object) - This could be a real dataset from a database or a fake or mocked-up dataset. The key is that the test can run if the data is real and/or fake. Either way, it is still able to run. This may not go here, but Wayne was breaking up existing methods and almost making mini black boxes even within the functions themselves.

- Where do you do your error handling? Wayne was specific where the error handling was and also where it was not.

- Simulating real database calls with mockbox (mock-up data).

- Formatting the data before the data is returned. Help prep the data so that it is ready when presented to the outside.

- Test suites (a family of tests). Wayne set these up with a keyword such as testGetPermissions, testObjectInit, testSomeotherFunction. The key word was the string test on the frontend of the function name.

- They, the guys, started getting more technical and actually looking at code and going over some of the test scenarios.

- If you really go into full on test driven design and unit testing, you have to be to a certain level. Similar to project management, if you are not at a certain size, you could totally over do things. You need to match both the testing and the project management to the size of the application and the size of the project.

- One of the goals of this test driven design approach allows for multiple different developers to play in the same sandbox. It helps to check tons of inter-dependency relationships (functions calling functions or other dependent options). It also helps your own code and making sure that all of the different scenarios can still play through. So, instead of retesting each condition, you already have tests in place to help it be more fluid and have a good confidence level of what is going on.

- Code once and use many. Having said that, don't repeat yourself... that usually means that you are writing bad code. Wayne was showing how he often setup a valid object, and then he changed one param at a time. That made it easier to see what piece had changed. Efficiency and trying to simplify where possible.

- What are the tipping points? Too repetitive, too long, too many forks, too many switches, etc.

- Wayne, on purpose, was showing tons of different coding styles. His goal was to show that we could do it in any number of different ways. We just need to format the style to fit our company and then try to go from there.

- Test the code that you wrote, not the code that some other company wrote (such as Adobe or Microsoft or Java or something like that).

- Labeling and getting things organized. Try to group like things together.

- Copying and pasting is very natural. It is very helpful, but can really duplicate problems. It can also make things fail due to lack of going back through and cleaning things up.

- As you mature, as a company, you will really want to continue upping the unit testing and get use to test first, then code, test first, then code. Once things are in place, the future changes get easier and easier. Especially having good tests in place.

- Russell asked for a step-by-step video on how to create things and even some best practices on what to do and how to do it. Wayne offered some other URL's, references, and links that will help us. How to install, how to tweak, etc.

- Alan's question - How do we help independent developers to buy into this? They are already somewhat fighting us on basic code sign-off. What are they going to say and/or do if we force testing, unit tests, and test driven design? Wayne was saying that if you get it, it will really help with future skill sets. There was then some back and forth questions on where are we going and what are we requiring? Both Alan and Wayne were talking about things. Wayne is going to go back through and create the initial test sets and then we'll need to go from there.

- All of this will get easier as we go along.

- Wayne - without proper testing... Adilas will fold in on itself due to the weight of the codebase and number of virtual cooks in the kitchen. It will start fracturing and crumbling without the pillars and support system. The test driven functionality and design will end up being part of the culture.

- Alan - we currently have some mega functions, that do way more than they should... those are really hard to test. We need to break things down into smaller and smaller function and be more focused and/or encapsulated into specific functions.

- Wayne - by learning how to do test driven philosophy... it has made his job so much more enjoyable and fulfilling. This is a life style change for programmers.

- Alan - If we go with test driven design and development... that means more dreaming on the frontend. He then said, Brandon, you will enjoy the more dreaming part of this.

- Eric - testing is sometimes dangerous being left to the original programmer. Sometimes we need a separation.

- Eric and Alan - MVC (model view controller) stuff - We have replicated things over and over again... As we get things better and better, we'll get a much cleaner code set. He really wants us to start pulling things into smaller pieces where we can get to what we need without all of the extra weight that currently exists. Think of adilas going on a code diet... we could really cut some weight and become more efficient. All we need is that little bit of logic or that little bit of validation.

- Maybe moving trims (trimming functions) out of database queries and up higher in the process. Setup the trims higher and then use all of the trimmed values as part of the re-usage. Once it becomes correct, use that value. Otherwise you could get disconnects and possibly be passing different values to different pieces without even knowing.

- One of the main goals is maintenance and starting to reform this code and application in new ways. Making the code rewrite that much more possible.

Looking over new black box code that we got off of the live servers. We have a number of developers who do custom code and we never see it in the master code branch because it is fully custom. I went to all of the servers and looked for certain files. I pulled them in and briefly looked over them. I also did an email update on the meeting this morning with Wayne Andersen about test driven design and what not. I sent the notes along as a PDF and uploaded the video from this morning. Other email stuff and recording notes.

Morning GoToMeeting

I was working on sales tax expansion project for Kelly - tying in the tax by customer type stuff.

Alan and Steve were working on some Leaf Data and Metrc API stuff

Russell and Steve went over the new WordPress news and updates section (adilas university, help files, media/content) for adilas features and such. Lots of good ideas and what not. Good meeting between Steve and Russell. Lots of questions and answers.

Michael with McCorvey's Pro Shop jumped on and chatted with me on some needs that they have. Below are some bullet points from the conversation:

Indiana - need this asap - county specific

North Carolina - I didn't know about that

FUTA - check Florida calcs

Employees clocking in at one store but they really want that value to be split between locations. We talked about departments and how the internal setup goes. We also talked about a combined P&L between multiple locations (across states) and across multiple departments. Maybe relate the employee taxes to where the person lives vs where they work. Somehow we need to combine some hours and maybe even allow for cross bridging of hours between different departments. They would really like to be able to clock in/out at different locations and have the system calculate things properly.

Problem with the cost of goods sold - they get items at all kinds of costs (sales, promotions, bulk, etc.) but they sale things and the system uses the last known cost. That creates all kinds of problems with the P&L.

ICC - internal cost corrections - this is important to do for items and usage under the bridge - bring things back to 0 quantity and 0 costs, where appropriate. This needs to be managed going forward. This needs to be done location by location - per item.

Michael would really like to get some data and the code for the part usage page and inventory adjustment pages - this would be database tables, data, code and page logic and also methods that are used.

Possible black box code for average costs - tied to the add to cart logic - this is a new twist and/or option since we last talked

Michael would really like it built in with a corp-wide setting that says something like - use last known cost or use average cost - this could be huge... it creates a nice alternative for similar businesses.

There size and the number of locations complicates the issue. Some of their managers are paid based off of the percentage (back to the P&L)

Item life cycles - at some point, the product will reach the end and/or die out.

Working with Calvin over a Zoom session.

He needed some help with updating PO's (counts and quantities). We did some navigation on the local browser side, and got his local environment setup. We then went through the update inventory count section. I showed him some pages and we talked about flow.

We spent some time talking about the future need of smaller getters and setters for core pieces.

On a GoToMeeting session with Bryan. We went over a number of questions. Some were dealing with the hardcoded special line item of "Collected" and how to get that into the cart and processing through. We looked at reports, P&L's, and flow. We then switched over to barcodes and creating PDF barcodes. We spent tons of time and even did some Google research on changing the image height on generated barcodes. We ended up using some ColdFusion ImageCrop functions and then re-writing the image back as a file. Lots of crazy back and forth, experimenting, debugging, and testing.

On the morning meeting with Steve and Russell for the first little bit. Steve and I were talking about the balance between custom code and internal code and development. We spend a lot of time on custom stuff. However, it also helps to pay for our guys and we gain some benefits by allowing it to happen. We do need to be careful, but if we keep it balanced, it can and will work great.

We talked about using the Ice-down dates and ICC (internal cost corrections) per locations to help keep things straight. This could be done to help close things out and keep parent costs in check. The real answer is in sub inventory and cost controls, but we have met with some resistance, especially from older or prior clients. They don't want to take the jump and do that extra step. Anyways, as Steve and I were talking, there was a definite undercurrent of the users need to use the tools provided and/or pay for future development. We would totally wear ourselves out if we did everything that was asked of us by our clients. We simply can't do it all. We need to make the dreams meet reality, on both sides of the fence. Good conversation.

Russell and Steve chatted about changes to adilas ecommerce while I started paying bills and fixing a small bug on the BSI (balance sheet items stuff) to expense/receipts. After that, I jumped off the GoToMeeting session and did my own stuff. I did a bunch of emails, paid bills, and got Wayne setup with Newtek as an authorized adilas rep to open and check on support tickets and such.

After that, I started to work more on the sales tax by customer type changes that Kelly is waiting for. This is a smaller part of the bigger sales tax expansion project. That has been a long time coming.

Working on merging in code for the sales tax expansion project. Working on being able to setup taxes based on customer types and other small dynamics. Not trying to add in all of the pieces yet, but starting down that path.

Working with Russell over a Zoom meeting to get some new files launched. We looked over a number of AFB to Adilas changes (mostly verbage and cosmetic changes) and then pushed up the new files to all servers. At the end, he was showing me where he is headed, dealing with the news and updates and adilas features and help files. Good stuff.

Emails, tech support, and then back on the sales tax project.

Working on merging in code for the sales tax project.

Emails and tech support. Then worked more on the sales tax expansion project and merging and checking code for the tax calcs by customer type.

On the morning GoToMeeting with Russell, Eric, and Steve. Eric and Russell were talking about tons of ideas on loyalty points and gift cards. Both guys have clients who have offered monies to push this project forwards. We are going to be trying to bring them both together to get the bigger master plan recorded and planned out. We will then build towards that and release things in phases to get it up and functional as soon as possible. See attached for a Word Doc that had a number of concepts and specs for the loyalty points and special account tracking stuff.

For the record... Steve said that yesterday he was able to help out Calvin - The grasshopper helped the master. Steve wanted to get that recorded. It was dealing with PO's, subs, and recording things in bulk backend processes.

Also for the record... Steve is saying that he is hearing Russell say "us" more than "you guys". We are happy to have him more and more on the team.

On the theme... We may want a bulk update to help flip users over more easily.

On news and updates... Steve was recommending that we build some standards for what is showed and what is displayed. Russell was saying, let the people write and build them and then let Russell virtually approve and get them up live. We are trying to go more to a template type scenario where we can virtually plug and play. What is it? What does it do? How do I use it? Videos, written instructions, screen shots, etc. Help make it as smooth as possible. Russell also wants all of the key players to help populate some of the features, updates, and help files. It will be a great team effort as it keeps going forward.

On barcodes and populating PDF labels with barcodes, we (Bryan and Brandon) did a job the other day that we had to crop (make the barcode height smaller). That way, we could put smaller barcodes on labels.

We talked about seeing adilas at the 10,000 feet level. Basically, what is the short elevator pitch? Steve and I were talking with Russell about how to present our model, what we do, how we do it, and why we do it?

Two good virtues - Being able to stand for something but still being open enough to listen. If you aren't open to change... how can you ever affect or make changes happen.

Labels are really heating up... We can do custom but we may need to build it so that individuals can do their own things and manage things as needed. We need to empower the users to build and create and store their own labels.

Going over adding inventory procedure with Calvin for his custom interface for Caisson Labs. He also wants to help push of the help files and web/API documentation for some of the new API sockets that he is creating. We spent quite a bit of time going over flow and where to get the correct documentation info for the web/API sockets and such. We also briefly talked about custom labels and options for cropping barcodes and making things as small as possible.

On a GoToMeeting with Bryan going over code for the white label payment option. Steve wanted me to remind Bryan to get some money from these guys up front. Anything can happen. Make sure and keep yourselves covered. At some point we need to figure out who is who and what is what... make sure we spell things out. We, adilas, may also need to help spell things out.

Anyways, we got in there, checked some code, fixed merge conflicts, and pushed up some changes to core pieces throughout the system. We also talked about future plans for other white label companies and/or companies who wanted to do a white label takeover. At the end, we also setup a custom email address and I pointed Bryan to some pages where he could take over the contact tech support page for white label companies. Lots of moving pieces.

After the meeting, I spent some time doing emails and tech support stuff.

On the morning meeting with Steve and Russell. They were going over the news and updates section. Lots of talk on where to store the filters and sub features - at the corp level, at the admin level, and even at the employee/user level. The filters and settings will help us display the correct feeds and news and updates back to the users. They also talked a bunch about pushing 3rd parties over to the adilas marketplace. The eventual goal is to get all 3rd party solutions to have an active adilas market account and profile before we add them to the adilas 3rd party solutions page. Kinda force them over there before we do any outside advertising for them.

Fun little one linear from Kelly Whyman - "If you touch, you track."

On elements of time, Steve is wanting to setup internal templates and being able to fully control them and/or lock them down. Basically, a way of making a normal template but not allowing the users to change and/or manipulate things. Basically, we create it and let them use it, but we don't allow direct editing of certain pieces (maybe only certain things or limited options). Steve was mentioning a virtual ice-down on some of the settings and features that are turned on/off. This is not an ice-down date, but it is a form of ice-down but icing down settings, features, and functionality.

Some of the custom settings are almost becoming their own database tables and we have to make sure that things are setup correctly.

At 10 am to 1:15 pm, Eric popped in and we worked more on the loyalty points and gift cart stuff. We went into media/content and looked at all entries under "loyalty" and got some good ideas. That spun us off on some side tangents. We also talked quite a bit today about how things will be tracked, showed, and how things will be held on the balance sheet. One of the good breakthroughs today was an idea of how we could tie in these new special tracking accounts to existing balance sheet items. See attached for a small screen shot.

The uploaded image is a normal BSI (balance sheet item). It shows a main and normal subs. We then talked about how we could add additional options such as: main_account_types (#1), account_type_rules (#1.5), special_accounts (#2), and special_account_transactions (#3). We also talked about some of the stacking order under the main balance sheet items and how that would play out.

We recorded a number of new notes and even did some light scenarios using small drawings and such. Towards the end, we talked with Steve about the accounting side of both gift cards and loyalty points. Gift cards need to be tracked on an invoice, the part number needs to not be recorded on the P&L (revenue) but needs to be deferred to the balance sheet. We also have gift cards as a form of payment. We talked about some of the invoice payments that might need to be tied into make that happen. We also talked about how loyalty points and coupons are basically future discounts of sorts. Those values don't really show up on the balance sheet, but do need numbers below the surface. A discount could be in-line and/or standalone. Both the loyalty points and coupons reduce revenue and need to be treated like special trackable discounts or price adjusters (variable of price). See other attached document for more details and notes.

Calvin called and needed to reschedule. I spent the time paying bills, doing emails, and recording more notes from this morning.

Bryan didn't show up for our meeting. So, I just kept going. Did some more work on the gift card and loyalty points stuff. Reading over notes and expanding other notes and records.

Joined the morning meeting late today. I had a dentist appointment. Got on and chatted with Steve about some new things that are happening and gave a light report. We talked about some light finances and budget stuff. I worked on the sales tax expansion project while I waited for Wayne to join the GoToMeeting session. Once he came on, we worked on adding cross-server DSN (datasource names) between servers and databases. Everything went pretty well. We stopped because we were getting an error. Everything else went well and Wayne was going to check with tech support on the error message. It could have been a firewall issue or a driver issue.

After that, I got on a phone call with Calvin for a few minutes. We were going to meet today but we will hit again tomorrow. Back on the sales tax expansion project.

Russell and I connected over a Zoom session around 2:30 pm vs the normal 3 pm meeting. He had some quick stuff to show me by way of the news and updates section. He is modifying some of the images and such to help make them look good. The new WordPress section is looking good. Short meeting. After that, I went back and did some more work on the sales tax expansion project. Trying to get the sales tax by customer type option ready for the internal shopping cart and other pages throughout the site.

I had some computer issues at the beginning of the session.

In life, I'm personally learning some lessons on pride, self-preservation, and how those two topics interact. I am finding that as I strive to keep things straight, I spend a lot of energy and effort to make sure that things go well (self-preservation and pride), in doing so, I may be focusing on the wrong aspect. I've learned this lesson multiple times, but here is the saying that is going through my head. "There is a big difference between trying to do good vs trying not to make mistakes." If you focus on not making mistakes, there is already somewhat of a negative view vs just trying and/or striving to do good.

When I got on the meeting, Steve and Russell were working with things. Then later on, Alan and Steve were working through database updates and pushing new tables to new servers. I was working on some sales tax updates and making sure that customer types play into the sales tax calcs.

On a Zoom session with Calvin. He was showing me his new custom tools to help extract technical web/API socket documentation from existing ColdFusion code. His tools only took some copy and pasting of raw code and they then did the rest of the hard work. Pretty cool. We also briefly talked about video stuff and using green screens to help with webinars and professional web/computer-based meetings.

Quick phone call with Russell. Answered his questions and then rolled back into my own projects. I worked on the sales tax expansion project and making sure that customer types play into the tax calcs throughout the system. Around 5 pm, Bryan called me and needed to get on a GoToMeeting session to check and merge in some code. We made the changes, merged a couple of small tweaks, and pushed files to all servers. We also talked about a small project to help make the system money types (payment types) dynamic per corporation.

Talking with Steve about preserving the "powered by adilas.biz" tag line, even on the white labeling options. Russell and Alan popped in as well. We also talked about black boxes, white label theme folders, and classic or core adilas. We need more hooks, push notifications, and pushing things more and more towards the white label options. We also talked about dashboards and more push type technology with notifications, graphs, stats, and other important things (adding some eye candy).

We also talked about training and internal training. We are seeing some push back from clients jumping from older classic style to the new snow owl theme. They think that it is pretty tough and/or a big hurtle. We need to help push our clients towards the new features and offer the correct amount of training to help them succeed. We also talked about lightly pushing the market towards the new pieces.

We talked about helping Shannon and Shari with live chat, using the little gear on the side of the page, and even automating things through elements of time and setting up ticket numbers, auto responders, etc. Eventually a full on live help and tech support option. We also talked about feeds, news and updates, and getting the word out. We talked about bottom footers, dynamic feeders for white labels and reps, etc. Basically a way to get the word out.

We spent a little bit of time talking about - what defaults do we want to turn on? What do we want to expose/show/hide? How can we get our users there quickly and easily?

We are building a business platform. Some people start with a spreadsheet, then up to a small business software package or database, then up to a web-based system or more full featured system, then up to a business platform and fully customizable app (mobile freiendly, configurable, easy, powerful, and pretty). Our goal is working towards full on business world building. That is where we are headed.

Keep pushing things more and more towards mobile. People are spending more and more time on their phones and mobile devices.

Adilas is an idea farm - keep harvesting the ideas from our clients, our competition, the market, and from our internal family. Ideas may come from anywhere or any source.

Adilas is almost a virtual white label option for each and every company. That is part of our model.

Lots of times in the past, I've tried to add a comment about using GoToMeeting as the medium that we use for our online meetings. I will start leaving that out so that I can focus more on the meeting content. So, in the future, if I say we were on the morning meeting... it will most likely be the same as saying we were using the GoToMeeting platform for our morning meetings. Anyways, just a small note.

Cascading tax calc changes through the ecommerce side of the application. Steve had me build a list of servers to send it to he and Alan for reference. They had server names, IP addresses, and other connection values.

csv export for customers for Blum

white label changes, including new session values and contact support (email stuff on the email server)

Met up with Steve over the GoToMeeting session. We need to train the system. What is green, yellow, and red? Think of a stop light and being able to let people know if we are good to go, caution, or uh oh. - From Kelly Whyman. Basically, make the system help us know where to go and what to do. That would be awesome.

Teaching people how to think vs just a 1, 2, 3 step process. Enable them.

Merging in Steve's branch. Talking about helpers and their schedules. Looking into a Metrc sales and sync bug. Small changes.

On a Zoom meeting with Calvin. He was showing me the progress that he is making on his custom app for Caisson Labs. He is mixing a desktop app (for Windows coded with C#) with an adilas.biz backend (web-based app) using a ton of custom API socket connections to bridge the gap. Pretty cool but quite in-depth.

Paid some bills and recorded some other info.

Bryan and I did a session over GoToMeeting. We started out talking about the barcode generator and how to either upgrade the existing Flash widget and/or totally replace it with a dynamic PDF barcode generator. We talked lots of options and I even gave Bryan a demo tour around the Flash environment. We started to make some changes but ran into conflicts between versions of ActionScript (flash code stuff). We reviewed other Flash widgets that we have and talked about the future. Besides the Flash barcode generator, we reviewed the adilas check write app (other Flash widget inside of adilas). We talked about how that one stores _x and _y coordinates and allows for dynamic positioning of the data.

After that, we ended up talking about white label requests and requirements and how they are growing. I deferred to Steve on some of the questions. It is getting to a level of company X wants to get data from company A, B, and C because they subscribe to their services. We have to protect the flow of data and treat it like a bank account or money vs just 1's and 0's (data). Basically, the data has a value and needs to be treated like money. Bryan was going to call Steve and chat with him.

Got on the morning meeting with Russell. We chatted and then I ended up going over to his house.

Met up with Calvin over a Zoom session. We went through his progress and I made a few suggestions. He is doing well and making his desktop application sing. It is looking good. He is currently in the add/edit stages of parts, items, PO's, line items, and sub inventory stuff.

Doing some last minute tweaks and changes for the sales tax expansion project. Prepping for a small code launch later tonight.

Uploaded a number of new files for the sales tax expansion project. There were almost 50 files that were pushed up to all servers. This section was dealing with allowing taxes to be calculated by customer type. Part of the bigger sales tax expansion project.

On the morning meeting with Steve and Russell. We talked with Russell about working for adilas on a more full time basis.

We got a number of calls and text messages from Shannon and Shari O. about tax update problems. Off to the races to see what we can fix.

Working straight through the day. I canceled most of my other meetings and just focused on cascading the tax rounding error through out the system. Super long day.

Working with Calvin.

Super full day. Started at wee hours of the night/morning and worked all the way through until 5 pm.

Most of the day was working on the tax rounding error buckets and cascading code there. We altered 45 pages of code and then started into the black box code. That, the custom black box code, will have to wait for another day. There is just too much of it to do today.

I did meet with Bryan and we talked about getting back into Flash to see if we could update the internal barcode generator. It currently is using a Flash widget. We know that at some time, Flash will no longer be supported. Eventually, we will need to update and/or move on to a new technology.

I also met with Calvin briefly to go over API calls and flow for his custom desktop application.

Most of the day was dealing with the tax rounding error and just cranking through as much as possible. Huge project, all compacted into a small sprint. By the end of the day, I wasn't worth very much... my brain and head was mush.

Working on updating custom cart code to help with the new rounding errors. Small tweaks and fully rewrote a custom auto add city fee for a client. Pushed file up and emailed the client. Other emails and light tech support.

Working on cascading tax rounding error buckets to custom black box pages.

The deeper we get into the shopping cart and custom carts, the more standardization we are needing. We are seeing huge time frames being spent trying to bring older custom code into compliance with the new structure keys and values. Not all of the custom code is part of the master branch, so we have to go look it up on the different servers, and then check things page by page. It is really turning into an issue. Maybe we need a function that will help standardize the shopping cart line items and at least make sure that each line item has the correct structure keys. They may not all be perfectly set (defaults and blanks), but we need each line item to have the same keys. Either that or we need to go back and force all older code to use the newer add cart line item methods. That way they always have the correct values. That would be best.

What about stringing together a series of smaller getters and setters. That would be really cool and allow for micro level controls without having to keep passing argument after argument when only small details are needed and/or are being changed. We need something different.

Working on custom code and light planning and recording notes.