When I joined the meeting, John and Steve were talking about hours, work, documentation, and projects. After that, Steve and I jumped in and talked about SG&A costs. I showed him some of what I launched and how it works. We recorded two different sessions. Only the first one saved correctly. See attached.

Shari O. and John were chatting about a meeting with Hostek that they had with the main admin server team. Sounded like some good stuff was discussed.

Cory, Shari O., and I were talking about budgets, hours, and recording times, and notes. Small meeting about emails and our needs in that area. We have some email compacities but want to improve and refine those processes. We need a strong communication channel, auto emails sent out daily for collecting monies on accounts receivables, sending invoices, sending quotes, sending statements, etc. We also use emails tons out in ecommerce land to notify both customers and merchants about new sales.

Making plans and moving forward on our email services. Sadly, our current solutions have been a small thorn in our side. We need to provide an enterprise level communication channel. Some of our bigger clients keep wanting more and more high-level enterprise functions and support. Along those same lines, we talked about new development and being able to copy users and permissions between corporations. Other demands keep coming and piling up. It's hard to keep up and make sure that everything is tight and fully functional. Sometimes we feel like ants trying to serve virtual data giants.

Bryan and I were merging and pushing up some new code. Small changes to some of the existing projects. Talking and planning the next steps for online scheduling, rentals, appointments, and showing things on the horizontal time view page. Briefly talked about other time settings (see EOT # 8004).

Met back up with Bryan for a planning meeting. Going over horizontal time views (see EOT # 8004 and # 6967 for more info). Coming up with ideas for the any scheduler. Looking at ways to reuse concepts, functionality, and code from existing pages. Especially the horizontal time view page and the calendar view pages.

Emails and light tech support. Reviewing a small video showing SG&A costs that we did with Steve earlier today. Recording notes from 4/25/23.

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

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

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

- Unit testing

- Our product is super complicated

- Spaghetti code

- Included files – they are all over the place

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

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

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

- Back to included files

- Different processes – ways of using the page

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

- Things get lost

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

- Wayne talking about global variables and global listings

- Setting up a standard framework and setting up standard practices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some of my notes from meeting with Mike:

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

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

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

- Mike would like to roll out the buckets per day

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

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

o He wants a 10,000 foot view

o Just a sandbox

o Showing a few transactions

- Sean is prepping stuff for the demo.

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

- We can do all kinds of paperwork stuff

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some my notes from the meeting:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John and I touching base on a big code launch and the responsibilities of each developer to see it through. We've had a few of the guys basically dump it on us and say, get it up and running and feel free to debug it if necessary. We don't like that. No one would like that. Anyways, we spent 45 minutes talking about best practices and how to help our guys follow those best practices.

Sometimes we have a limited launch window as some of our clients are 24/7 system users. That makes it tough. Our best window seems to be between 12 am and 4 am. We talked about the need for documentation to help others on the path. There is also a need for a slightly more rigid corporate structure. We are pretty loosie-goosy.

Another thing that we would like is to automate some of the database updates. We also need to beef up some of the communication channels and figure out and address any of the communication breakdowns. As we were talking, we decided that partial is sometimes better than nothing. We'll keep working at it.

Phone call with Cory to go over plans and logistics. Emails, checking on the Herbo server, texts and emails, and working on a database update for Eric - pulling out a dependency in the code.

Meeting with Bryan. Talking about rentals and what the next steps are? What options are available? We also spent some time talking about the horizontal sub time view page. We have a page that shows the parents or main elements of time in a horizontal time view. We were talking about options for showing subs of time in the same type of a view. There is functionality already built in but we want to beef it up and make it even easier.

Spent some time talking about other options for making rentals more visible and easier to use. Maybe even some custom buttons, pages, views, and/or pre-build bulk forms. Lots of good ideas.

Got a call from Harry, my dad's friend. He was watching videos on how to make Facebook work for you. We have some much content, no one knows about it. Harry was pitching an idea of doing piece work for dollars (based on content, posts, videos, images, etc.). The whole thing was reusing what we already have. If we could get the right person, and pay them a piece work fee or rate, we could push out soooo much good content. It just needs the right person to virtually recycle that content and push it out in the correct channels and spots. Great idea from Harry!

I was a little bit late, but jumped on a Zoom meeting. It was a demo prep meeting with Mike Roundtree and his crew. Their plan is to do a quick demo, get in and get out. Almost a brochure level demo. It sounds great.

Mike was marshalling the troops and getting a plan in place. They are working on a small demo outline.

After the meeting, Sean and I got on the GoToMeeting account and did a small little follow-up meeting. I helped Sean setup the SG&A parent items for the demo site. We also looked at some small errors on the enterprise system side of the fence that he was getting for enterprise vendors and copying vendors down from enterprise to transactional corps.

Recording notes. The computers (our servers) were down, so I just typed out notes on my local box. I was working on notes for a bunch of days. See the notes for 4/26/23 to 5/2/23.

Great morning meeting. Eric and Sean started out and were touching base and coordinating on a big demo and a big feature release. They were planning release times, testing times, and fall back plans if needed. I thought that it was really good. They were also talking about different servers and plans per server, based on the demo and the extra functionality. For the demo, they may script it and use an outline (direct links) and/or screenshots of the two different pieces, in case we don't get everything all merged together before the demo.

Sean and I switched gears and were talking about SG&A costs and using expense/receipts (E/R's) vs PO's and capitalized inventory. Sean kept waking up last night and wrote down a number of ideas on a Word document (see attached). We went over the Word doc and drew pictures, made notes, and talked about options. It was just Sean and I, but we beat it up pretty good. See attached for some of the notes.

Here are a few of the notes, beyond what Sean had pitched (once again, see attached).

- E/R's is where it all starts. Maybe just keep it there vs going clear out to PO and capitalized inventory levels.

- E/R's already have a normal date and a due date. The difference between the two is already a built in date range - how long to track the life cycle of each E/R.

- In Sean's notes, he was talking about to the exact minute, second, etc. We will be sticking with a daily value to keep it more simple. Most likely, it will be scheduled at a certain time so that we get consistent results, it can handle weekends, holidays, and becomes a built-in procedure.

- I liked his idea of flagging each SG&A vendor with a special flag. That will help us treat expenses from that vendor in a different way.

- If we run it through the E/R side of things, it will be very minimal effort and input from the user. Most of it will be done and distributed behind the scenes.

- Inventory still in place, keeps get hanger costs. Once it sales, that hanger cost stops and it gets recorded. Otherwise, it is sort of in a state of flux.

- If we get to the tightest level that we are thinking, it will add value for owners and managers to see what it costs over time to keep bigger on hand inventories. Being able to see past what is on the shelf and what that costs. Pros and cons to different inventory stocking models.

- If we hang (add hanger costs) to an E/R, we could reference (key word reference) the PO, invoice, item, sub item (sub inventory), etc. It doesn't add any weight to the current flow, it would just be a reference to those other pieces and/or items.

//////////

After Sean left, John and I were talking about some server stuff. I mentioned to John about getting him a higher percentage of adilas (as a co-owner) than what he currently has. He's playing an important role and doing server stuff, backend code, as well as frontend design stuff. I think that he is doing a good job. We will just keep refining things and playing well with others.

We ended up talking about servers, moving hardware to a new section within the Hostek environment. We also talked about internal developer training that is coming up, subjects, topics, and ideas. We really want the developers to virtually own or have ownership of and for their projects.

Research on companies that invest and/or acquire software companies. We have a SaaS (software as a service) type model and just looking at options. We don't really want to sell but we do want to raise some capital to help push this thing to the next level. Checking out some of our options.

Meeting with Bryan to go over progress on the time settings. We did some work on setting up the new time template and what settings to set. Spent some time playing with the setting defaults and figuring out how to auto add or sub control the templates. Basically, we deny the users the ability to update these special time templates. However, we need some of their input in order to make it flexible enough to solve their needs but not full control (that would be too hard to code to for this specific usage scenario).

How we are doing this is denying them usage of the main add/edit tools that we use to add or update normal time templates (too flexible). We then put some values or show them a smaller (paired down form) in the settings page. They interact there (with a super limited number of fields) and we pull the rest of the data over and stamp it where needed. In that way, they feel like they have some control over the output but really it is a super limited view of all of the options.

It ends up being an internal one-off to control key pieces and not let the user have full reign and freedom over which things to choose. That could screw up our code or make it harder to do a certain task.

Recording notes both in the shop and inside of adilas. Spent lots of time doing notes for 5/2/23. Lots of good meetings. Slowing making progress.

Steve and I going over SG&A costs and maybe using expenses vs PO's. Going over some of the ideas that Sean had the other day (see element of time # 10085). Sean ended up joining the meeting and then he and Steve were talking about ideas. We keep taking the next logical step and getting closer and closer to the goal. That's about the only way that you can do it, keep taking the next logical step and advancing the ball.

As the guys were talking, it was clear that operations needs to lead the accounting - almost every time if not ever time. Otherwise, it gets all messed up. Steve was talking tot Sean about accounting principles and how we then to simulate or emulate those pieces or procedures. We use different means, but the principles are still the same. It really is a form of inventing, prototyping, and experimenting. I kinda like it.

While the guys were talking and going over things, I was looking over emails in the background.

This is for me, but yesterday I was reviewing my notes from a gospel related conference session. These little words stuck out to me  - "Begin again...". I can think of all kinds of ways to apply that. If something isn't just right, keep tweaking it. Refine it, make it better, constant improvement. If it totally fails, just begin again. What did you learn, what could you do differently, etc.? Instead of feeling stuck with whatever you've got, you could just begin again. I realize that doesn't apply to everyone and everything, but those words gave me courage to get in there and see what I could do to alter things (whatever things that I need to - personally, business wise, physically, or even spiritually). We are free to choose how we will act and respond. Good stuff!

Cory joined the meeting. She, Steve, and Sean were going over a few different projects. They were talking about combined PDF's (previous uploaded docs per item, per sub, or per PO) to generate delivery manifests and what not. They were talking about all kinds of stuff for an upcoming demo in the next couple of days. After those other guys left, Cor and went over projects and did some project management stuff.

We went over some cross corp mappings for a client. We removed a few mapped items (just the mapping) so that they could redo a small portion. We got onto the server and looked around by pulling queries on the database. We modified three small records and that should be enough to let them redo the section that they want to do.

Next, we started talking about a new project to allow customers to have vehicles added and assigned to them on a one-to-many basis. We have a machanic shop that really needs this and we can see some other applications down the road. We went over what it would take to set this up, build it, script it, add pages, add logic, and general data flow. We also need this info to be available in the shopping cart and show up on invoices and quotes, as needed. We talked about settings and other pieces that would be required. I thought that it was a fun session.

We will treat this new assign vehicles to a customer similar to how we allow for additional customers to be assigned to other customers, invoices, and quotes. We may use that existing functionality as a handrail or guide for where and how this new assign vehicle relationship will show up and function. I can't tell you how important some of these existing handrails are to our developers. Once they latch onto what the older stuff does, they can virtually back track and/or trace the routes and make the modifications to do the next pieces. Good stuff.

We did some other quotes and estimates. After that we jumped over to ecommerce and were looking at the show subs and sell subs settings. Lots of AJAX (asynchronous javascript and xml) and cascading and looking up choices (manipulating the page on the fly based on a prior selection without a page refresh - one-pager stuff).

Lastly, we talked about some other projects that just aren't ready yet (to even get started on). Some of them have to almost simmer for bit before we really know which way to jump and what to do. If you force it (jump before the picture or vision is clear), you may not get what you really want. It can be painful (to wait or put things off), but some of our best stuff has developed slowly over time (simmering) and we've taken small steps along the way that allow for the next step or phase to happen. Nobody can jump from A-Z, however, if we keep taking the next logical steps, it gets easier and closer to making that jump.

Helping to look-up some custom code for a client. They wanted a new feature, but we had built them a black box page (custom code) back in the day. We ended up having to remove the custom code so that it would flow back into the normal page and code path.

Phone call with a guy who is an investor about options to buy a percentage of adilas. Briefly talked numbers and such. Fixing a small black box code page (custom code) for a client. Emails, text messages, and a quick phone call with John to talk about a server.

Meeting with Hamid (adilas intern) to go over his progress. He is almost done with the billboard site for the "Business Zipper" site. A billboard is basically a site that points people to another place (like to adilas.biz from the business zipper site). Anyways, he had a lot more content this time and it's looking good. This is just a fun starter project. We chatted and made some plans to get the full version up and live. I'll wait until he hands me off the files and then we go from there to review it, push it up, and have it go live. Making progress.

I had a dentist appointment, so I jumped on late. Cory and Sean were touching base when I joined. Cory had me look at a report that was needing a little bit of loving. We spent the whole time looking over code and seeing what was going on. We found a couple of things that were questionable. Most likely, we'll have the developer who built that report look back at it.

On the server meeting with Wayne, John, Cory, and myself. Sean and Eric popped in for a bit as well. We were talking about email servers, merging in code, and making plans for pushing up new pages. Eric joined and Wayne merged in his code for the global item catalog - enterprise stuff. Once that happened, I pulled the branch down on my local box and was clicking around to see if there were any errors. Looked good.

Small code merge for Dustin. Then working with Wayne on his ColdBox framework stuff. We talked about users, payees, vendors, multiple corps, and memory and session management stuff. Small Q&A with Wayne and John about the framework, plans, and how we will handle certain pieces of the puzzle. Light plans for the future (wish list stuff). After that, John and I spent a little bit of time talking about internal education and training for our developers.

Phone call with Shari O. touching base on budgets, tech support questions, and a new project for a client. The client has reached out to both Shari O. and Cory - trying to double dip and push their project through.

Paying credit card bills for domain name renewal, bit bucket code repository fees, new merchant processing integration packets, and web hosting stuff. Recording notes from the past few days and some from last week. Recording notes from 5/3/23 to 5/9/23.

Fixing small issues with SG&A costs with Sean. They had setup a system and started running things. They were a little bit too deep and we had to back some things out (going from child inventory to parent inventory - going upstream a bit). Sean and I were working on some back dating of invoices. He was trying to get a balance sheet in order and up to date for a demo. We found a small error, if doing some back dating and got it fixed. Lots of backend database work to get things cleaned up.

We found an issue with both loyalty points and gift cards. If the invoice date was the same as today's date, no problem. If the invoice was back dated, it went through the cart ok but the dates that got stamped were the adjusted date/time stamps based on the user's time zone offset. What we really need is the transaction date to be applied to those invoice payments and any auto clean-up processes behind the scenes. We'll get it all figured out. The way was found it was on purpose doing tons of back dating and then immediately checking the financials and backend accounting reports and records. Good stuff.

Cory and I going over projects and assignments. Sub inventory reporting and getting into system wide aggregates. We also spent some time talking about supporting our team members.

Checking on auto dates for loyalty points and gift cards. Didn't fix it but thought that I found something. I'll have to circle back around. The problem was dealing with an adjusted date/time or the actual transaction date (especially if back dating an invoice). We need those two dates for different things and processes. It looked like some of the code was using the adjusted date/time for both the effectual (when should it show up) and the historical date (when did it happen). They are different.

Working with Bryan on new time settings and a sub view of the horizontal time view (for subs of time). Merged in some code for him dealing with a show/hide button/link on an interface page.

Light research on a possible disconnect between transactional dates (effectual dates or when it shows up for roll call) and historical dates (when it really happened). Sent an email to Eric with some questions. Listed the issue on the known issues page. This is a running list of things that we know that we need to watch out for. At some point, we'll have to fix all of those things, but at least we are recording what we know and are learning. That's part of the game.

Sean and I talking about a big demo that he and the team did yesterday. The other company is doing a huge mashup, with all kinds of different system all mixed together. That is super common, these days. Inventory tracking in one system, ecommerce in another, loyalty points in another, financials in another, etc., etc., you get the idea. We are trying to do all of that from one system. We like that.

We switched over and added in a sandbox merchant processing option to one of the demo sites for Sean. He had requested that. Steve joined and they, he and Sean, were talking about finding the sweet spot and how to help companies (that want to be helped). He and Sean were talking about SG&A costs and where that is headed.

After that, the topic switched again. This time it went over to social media, training, pod casts, videos, and piece work. We talked about training manuals, SOP's (standard operating procedures), and the progression of things. At some point, we would love to help show people the game of business and then let them play it (the game of business). More talk about pod casts, social media posts, and steps to success.

Spending time to help and support our clients. That is big for us. We talked about finding companies that want more and more of their wants and needs. They are willing to put some money and funding into the system. We love that! There was talk about getting referrals from our current clients.

As a side note, we are seeing a number of clients and/or potential clients doing their own stuff on spreadsheets. That is a great tool but at some point, will breakdown. It is one of the tools that we use, but not the end all. We also talked about how eventually, everybody needs some custom stuff. We just need to figure out how to get in front of the right people.

Once the other guys left, just John and I were left on the meeting. We spent some time going over code and new page views.

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

We have mountains and mountains of data. Now what?

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

- Sub inventory attributes and being category specific

- Settings all over the place - configuration

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

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

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

- Some of our clients want so much control

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sean and Shari O. were on the morning meeting over GoToMeeting. They were going over clients and who is doing what and what needs are being expressed and acknowledged. They are doing a great job. Shari O. is doing a bunch of client one-on-one help and training. Sean was reporting on a demo from last week. There is a difference between frontend and backend expectations, as far as requirements and system needs and wants. In this case, the frontend guys are the ones doing the daily interactions (primary users or customer facing users) and the backend folks are more managers, accounting, and owners (secondary users or more specific users for certain tasks or internal facing users).

Shari O. and Sean were talking about internal reporting and setting up flex attributes and custom data fields. Along with that, it is hard to enforce specific standards, best practices, and other ways to help normalize the data. The more I watch, from the background, I can see a need for maintenance on data, practices, and training. Maintenance is a huge deal. The end goal is to make it all uniform and be able to get it in, get it out, and make it useful. Actually doing that can be a tricky move.

I was doing emails, listening, and scribbling down some notes. I had to jump off at 9:30 am to join a different meeting. I left and both Sean and Shari O. were still on the meeting.

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

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

- Kelly went through things to find the gaps

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

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

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

-- Investigating and auditing - Going deep

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

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

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

- Accurate inventory values - this is a big lift

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

- Clients are saying that their reporting is way off.

- Disconnects between PO line items - parents and subs

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

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

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

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

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

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

- The knowledge level to do an audit.

- Multiple tabs open and pulling data at one time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Read them and weep numbers - too bold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More guardrails

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

- Controls - at all levels

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

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

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

- Parent/child issues - looking for disconnects.

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Switching over to sub attributes

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

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

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

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

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

- We need to be able to cross over categories.

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

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

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

- What about bulk tools?

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

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

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

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

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

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

- We really need a plan - detailed out - commit to it - then really do it.

- More and more of a need for bulk tools (data coming in, data going out, and updating and changing things).

- Charging for what we are doing. We, as a company, are missing out.

- The value of our user/client base as a testing group. We couldn't pay for what they are doing.

- Cory and I were talking about requirements for industry specific software. Expectations of our clients. We have a standard package and then we customize on top of that. It's really tough to do everything, well.

GoToMeeting session with Shari O. and Sean. Going over emails and client communication channels. Hoping to get with Wayne a bit. Shari O. had a quick question about merchant processing and some settings there. Light talk about some wish list stuff.

Reviewing time and scheduling stuff with Bryan. He is working on showing subs of time in a horizontal view. Going over a small list of bugs. Talking about how loose or tight to make things. Talking about flow, drill-downs, options, and search filters. We got into talking about experiments and learning by trial and error. Eventually, we would like to come up with all kinds of scenarios and then check to make sure we are hitting the mark.

Along those lines, we need to keep asking ourselves, what about this and that? The more questions and answers, the better. Also, there is a value of working in the system as a real user, not just a developer. If we are in there enough, we tend to find ways to speed things up and smooth out the corners (user vs just a developer). Good meeting and making progress.

Recording notes from the day (5/15/23).

Eric jumped on and we looked at gift card logic. Apparently, a little bit of code changed. We were pretty tight a couple of days ago and then got a note yesterday that a client found an error (only if selling two or more gift cards on a single invoice). We were checking things out and retracing some of the steps and logic. Lots of good back and forth - dialogue. Eric was able to get the same error on his local box so he will take a look at it. After that, John and I were going over some layout stuff.

Long meeting today. Started out talking to Wayne and Shari O. about emails, internal emails, external emails (outbound to different clients), and possible options. Wayne repointed the IP addresses yesterday back to the original way we had the email system setup. It was kinda wacky for a couple of days. Anyways, we put it back to what it was. We still need to look deeper into this, but it should be stable for now.

Steve was asking about the bus to motorcycle project - datasource or world building project. Wayne was reporting that some of his new code is trying to deal with this issue or these issues. We talked about the current state and where things are going. Briefly touched base on combo primary keys and removing major dependencies on existing standalone primary keys (database connection and relationship stuff). Along with the datasource topic (which database to talk to as a single time) the conversation also included our ever growing need to do cross corp stuff. We didn't talk about it, but some of this is very similar to the adilas cafe talks and discussions that we have had.

If we get majorly into cross corp stuff, and each corp has its own database or sandbox, we may end up doing cross corp stuff through API socket connections. That sounded like a good idea. We'll have to look at it, as we may do unions, API sockets, or other temp database tricks to show and/or report combined data.

We flipped over to the new framework that Wayne is working on. He did a small demo for us on what he is working on. These are just a few of my notes. See attached for a 1:39 - one hour and 39 minute video of of some of meeting.

- Our switch to a new framework is not just a time saver. It goes way deeper than that.

- Lots of conversation about supporting different frameworks, themes, and versions of code.

- The whole new framework is setup as an MVC framework or MVC model - model, view, controller

- We need to keep moving forward in order to stay valid

- Layouts and views

- Everything is event driven

- We have both raw input (info and data directly from a user or customer) and we also have cleaned up and formatted data (okayed, approved, combed, retrieved, or sanitized data).

- These are just some keywords and concepts - handlers, events, models, interceptors, layouts, views, classes, methods, etc.

- One of the goals is to get rid of all of the repetitive, ticky-tacky maintenance code. This is stuff like params, validation, permission checks, making sure that certain values have been set, etc. Basically, the prep work before the real meat of the page begins. Some of our pages may be hundreds of lines of code deep before we actually get to the meat of the page. The framework would help us simplify and standardize some of the prep work stuff.

- If we build this way, it could open up options for multiple layouts and/or views (what it looks like). Keeping a separation between the business logic and the view or presentation of that data.

- Events, watchers, and triggers that help us run clean-up and other processes and routines. Key everything off of certain events.

- Getters and setters - smaller mini functions for each class, object, and property within that class. All built-in and/or available. We really wanted to do this for the fracture project (future project for adilas).

- Options for self-documentation

- Debugging, tracer options, logging, and security stuff already built-in

- Lots of talk about the benefits of using a framework.

- Mementos and smaller sub sets of data, that may be pre-formatted and/or setup how we need it - saving time in conversions and retrieving available data.

- Defining things and then using them over and over again in other pages.

- This is huge, but the framework already has a ton of built-in documentation and samples. That takes a lot of work and preparation. Also, it is able to self-generate basic documentation based on how we code it (based off of keywords, hints, notes, and rules).

- If we build off a new framework, we could use either Adobe ColdFusion (current model) or we could use Lucee - open source CFML engine. The framework can flip flop pretty easily between the different backend engines. It's basically a config option.

- We do lots of things over and over again. Make that more simple, standardized, and compartmentalized.

- They offer a standard set of options and configurations. We can use that and/or pick and choose or customize whatever we want.

- Light talks about the pros and cons of an ORM model (object-relational mapping - mixing of objects and relational databases)

- Shooting for a more modern approach - use of code, technology, and a layered approach

- Wayne really wants to come up with a process of how to convert our current pages and code into the ColdBox framework. Think of a set of instructions (virtual recipe) and then allow other developers to help convert the pages. Basically, a road map to follow.

- Our customers really need and want us to be more stable and reliable, as a company, and as a software system. This includes how we develop code, release and deploy code, and manage systems and servers. In a nutshell, they want us to grow up, as a company and have a bit more of a standard structure and presence.

- We are heading more and more towards clustering, enterprise level stuff. We need to build towards that.

- As a side note, Wayne says we have way too many includes (files that get included and/or strung together to make the whole).

- One of our major focuses on switching the backend architecture is customer reliability.

- Wayne sees a need for radical changes to simplify, stabilize, and build things out for the future. It has to be sustainable and sustainability. Light talks about evolution vs revolution or changes over time vs drastic changes all at once. Things are smoother if software can evolve vs just being harshly changed. However, sometime things need to majorly change, hopefully for the better. There are some pros and cons to both approaches.

- Building new has a motivation factor to it - true story - what keeps us going?

- This is a chance to rebuild it like we want it - build to the dream

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We switched subjects and were the guys were talking about hosting companies and how that scene is changing in the datacenters that we are using. We have seen a lack or lowing of the customer service levels. We may end up checking out some other hosting companies.

John and Cory were talking about other projects and timelines. They were also talking about uptime, downtime, and databases. We talked about coming up with new SOP (standard operating procedures) for pushing up code, code rollbacks, and deployment of new features. That got into talks about manual and automated database updates, scripts, auto processes.

That topic lead to a discussion on roles and responsibilities and who does what. There is a need to define some of the roles a little bit deeper and make it clearer who does what and in what order. More SOP stuff for the backend processes and procedures. There also needs to be good communication between the developers and the system admin persons. We have to keep up those communication channels. That is really important. Nobody can read minds.

Towards the end, John and Cory were going over projects and coordinating dates/times for testing, review, look and feel changes, and testing. Good stuff.

Recording notes and pushing up videos from this morning. Tons of good notes from a meeting with Wayne and the crew. See notes from 5/16/23 for details.

Eric popped in and we went over gift cards. He had made some small changes. We merged and tested some the pieces. I also talked to Eric about some needs coming down the pipeline for aggregates and deeper business intelligence (BI) levels. Eric was requesting deeper access to real database and SQL prompts on the test server. We talked about scheduled events, creating a manual trigger, and ways of getting at server logs and database logs. We talked about possible workarounds and getting things done.

After Eric left, John and I looked at his GUI page for testing results for page re-works. Small code review session and merged in and pushed up the code to data 0. John went in and did some live testing. This is a new tool to track code review, page sign-off, and who tested what on the new pages. It's a graphical tool to show progress on code/page sign-off. Looks good.

Review the itinerary for the professional development training session. This is going to cover the adilas docs, CSS training, bootstrap training, and code sign-off stuff. John and I met and chatted about the plan and itinerary a bit. After that, we got into talking about responsive data tables. Eventually, we would like to do a full rewrite of the system and make the whole things fully mobile responsive and mobile ready.

We also talked about some great professors that John had at school and some of their teaching styles. Also, getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of our guys/gals (our internal developers). Talking about more modern ways of thinking and coding. John is really looking for some feedback from this internal training session and professional development session. Good stuff!

Recording notes. Working on entries from 5/10/23, 5/16/23, and 5/17/23. Some of it was already done and some of it was new as of today.

Recording notes. Tons of ideas on sub inventory. See entries from 5/10/23.

Steve and I got on a phone call for a good hour. He was asking me what I thought was the next major step. I told him that I thought that we needed a good plan, and that was the next major step we needed to take. We spent the whole hour kicking around ideas, pitching ideas, and talking about what we want, where we want to go, and where we have been. Great conversation. We talked about prototyping, experimenting, and in the trenches experiences that we have had and are still having. Tons of good ideas, we just need to get it all lines out and make the pitch.

Regardless, the plan is a next step. If we decide it will be too much money, at least we will have the plan. Otherwise, there are just too many unknowns. Lots of big ideas and dreams. Let's see what we can come up with, as far as a plan goes. Steve wants us to create a new element of time to track what time we spend on making the plan. Here we go!

Sean and John were on the meeting. We were going over ideas for a car window decal or sticker - advertising adilas as a business software solution for operations and accounting. We spent some time pulling together assets, logos, and chatting about what it should say and look like. Both Sean and I were giving John some feedback. I'll reach out to Russell and see if I can get any of the older assets, logos, and originals.

Recording notes and other small to do list stuff.

Research on sub inventory attributes and changes to sub inventory - over time. Started working on a document to chronicle the timeline and what we have learned over the years. Here is a link to show some of the entries that I was looking at.

Zoom meeting with Cory, Kelly, Steve, and I. Going over plans for sub inventory reporting. I took a number of notes. See below.

- Kelly did some prep work and had a small spreadsheet- Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gI92xKVgBeDA1Qnd0N5ygrYYjLdisNA2KDYYqodrQeI/edit?usp=sharing

- Some of the report settings need to be at the user level vs the corp or global level- for example: the new advanced part search settings. They are controllable at the corp level but not at an individual user level. We are seeing a need for deeper levels of control, per user.

- She, Kelly, found a good report (that still needs some tweaking)- advanced invoice sub line search for all item categories. The current report shows and does some sub attribute grouping (text based off of the names).

- Kelly thinks that a limit of a 31-day month (whatever the range) would work for now. For both PO line items and invoice line items. If they want to pull info per item category, no date range limit. If they want everything or "all" we limit it to a month or 31 days.

- Ideally, she would like grouped output for PO's, invoices, and items. That's where subs play (currently).

- Steve is working on some sub inventory reports right now.

- We have a currently working model in the advanced invoice sub line search. If the part category of "All" is selected, the actual search page shows all possible sub attributes as filters. We then pass that list of combined attributes over to the results page. The results page then loops over the combined list and fills out what it can. We may be able to use some of these pieces.

- As a side note, we actually looked over some code for the working model to see how it was switching, grouping, and pulling the data. For now, we may take that code and push it over to other sections as a patch and/or band-aid of sorts.

- The sub reports need all of the main line item details plus the sub information. Currently, the sub reports are only showing the sub details. Kelly wants all of the data out of the system. Cory wants to be careful not to get in trouble if we add a bunch of new columns (past history with clients complaining - changing their reports or exports).

- The reports homepage is kinda messy- We may need to rework that page to make it look better.

- We need sub attribute information on its own, parent attribute information on its own, and mixed sub and parent attribute information together. Along with this... We need these same reports for PO's, invoices, and items in inventory. We need all of these pieces. Consistency across those reports.

- Kelly is sort of stuck- helping out the clients. She is pulling tons of reports and piecing them together. She is looking for some time savings and better reporting, out of the system or out of the box vs having to pull things and piece them together.

- Up next, once we have the good reporting that we need, we can build in bulk update tools where you can see it, fix it, repull the report. Export it as needed. We need the visual representation of the data first (good reporting). The other features and tools will come later.

- Steve, Dustin, and Alan are going to be working on some bulk tools for subs.

- Be able to export beginning inventory, ending inventory, and what is in between. That's the goal.

- Kelly likes the super invoice line item search/report. Could we add on a bit there? That might be nice. We talked about creating a super sub invoice line item search (same as above with subs). Maybe a link to that new page from the bottom of the advanced invoice search page (maybe at the top as well).

- At the end of the meeting, Kelly was asking what we needed to get going. She is going to build out a spreadsheet with columns and instructions per column for us to use as a reference. That should really help. We will pass this on to the correct developer to help them know what is wanted and needed.

Recording notes from yesterday (5/18/23).

Shari O. and I were looking at the verify payment logic for expense/receipts and expense payments. We had some questions that one of our power users had brought up. We recently made some visual changes, and we think that is what caused the confusion. The new interface as a graphic or icon where some words used to be. You can get a tool tip if you mouse over the icon, but it no longer spells it out in raw text. The same link and option exists, it's just smaller and tied to an icon vs a normal spelled out text link.

We are all so much of a creature of habit, we tend to go super-fast and not slowdown unless we need to. The slightest change can throw us off if we aren't ready for it. After we got done with our research and checking things out, I spent the rest of the hour doing emails.

On with Cory and Kelly going over new requests for sub inventory reports. Kelly had created some spreadsheets and we were going over those pieces. Great review and we are ready to hand this project over to the developer. We switched topics and started talking about sales tax aggregates and creating manual switches to help force an update.

Cory and I were doing some planning for a server meeting and some decision making. We talked about doing some R&D on the new frameworks that Wayne is working on and almost doing a mini scratch app to get all of the kinks worked out. After that, Cory and I went over a number of other small projects and plans.

Emails and then rolling into a meeting with Bryan to go over subs of time and showing those subs on the special sub horizontal time view pages. Bryan had to bailed out to fix a few things. I was doing emails and recording notes.

Back on with Bryan going over the horizontal sub time view page. He added in some options for subs and subs of time. We did some code review and fixed a few things. We are getting close to launching this new page.

Sean and Steve were on the meeting talking about the adilas label builder. They would like to create a simple label homepage. They were also talking about other smaller homepages or landing spots. Things such as the gift card homepage, loyalty points homepage, label homepage, and other industry specific homepages.

Eric joined the server meeting and we were talking about the sales tax aggregates and what kind of love is needed there. It's up, working, and just needs a little bit to really be fully functional. We talked about getting that code outside of the database triggers and being able to do manual or force updates. We spent 40 minutes going over pros and cons of automated database triggers, manual switches, scheduled tasks, and how best to tackle the aggregate counts, totals, and sums. We only have a few things aggregated right now, but a ton more options are on the horizon.

We then switched to the backend and frontend frameworks that we are looking into. We got into a conversation about technical debt (older or legacy code) and where we are headed. We really want to move more into an MVC (model, view, controller) type framework and application. We would like to change the main structure and underlying conventions that we are built upon. This brought up conversations about breaking the link between view pages, model pages, and controller pages.

Cory was saying that we beat the odds of how long we have lasted on our older code set, and lifecycle as a software company. We are really good at building new things. We would like to get better at planning and strategically doing maintenance and upgrades to the core and/or foundation. Ideally, we want to take some of our older, bigger, monolith code and break it up into smaller and smaller pieces. Things like helper files, microservices, MVC models, and restful API sockets. We already do a bunch of that, but the whole thing is not yet fully there.

Our guys (developers) keep running into things that are slightly off and/or could be changed. Sometimes, that makes them slowdown and either figure out what was done and/or them wanting to fix it, to make it smoother or better. There is a maintenance cost associated with training and learning. Sometimes you only learn by dinking around and playing with things (experiments and trystorming).

We may need to get some funding in place, even to help make the plan. This has been one of the things that has been missing all along (lack of funding). Sometimes, it also feels like we need some fresh blood (new energy or new talent). We are all getting a little bit older and have been pulling this load for quite some time now. That ends up wearing on you, even if that wasn't the intent. As long as we are talking about some ideals, we would love for our code to be more robust, less fragile, and easier to make global changes. There are a lot of intricate and moving pieces. As an idea, maybe we trim our team down and keep a smaller, highly talented, but nimble developer team. We are not sure where to go. It's always a balance.

Steve was asking Wayne some great questions. We are trying to figure out a plan for making the plan. It gets deep quickly. Steve was also asking about the datasource project and where that stands (looking for a progress report).

After the server meeting, just Wayne, Alan, and I stayed on to go more in-depth on the framework stuff that Wayne is testing, trying, and pitching. Wayne has been spending tons of time looking into the ColdBox framework and experimenting with things. He's really going for it.

We talked about files, folders, and structure of how the application could and would work. The whole thing is setup in a rest type interface with specific paths, pages, and URL's (web addresses) to make it work. REST API or RESTful API architecture stands for representational state transfer. Basically, that deals with logical paths, files, and folders to create organization. You then place special code at each end point to do a specific task. That is part of the way it is organized. Our old site has tons of pages, all bunched into a couple of folders (all mixed together). When I say a ton of files, I'm talking thousands of files. This newer site will have like or similar pieces and pages in specific spots or places. It's all part of how it gets organized and managed. Interesting.

Alan and Wayne were talking about object-oriented coding with options for extending, inheriting, and sub classing functions, variables, and conditions. They both fully get it. I haven't had any formal training on this, but I'm picking up some of the pieces and concepts.

Next, they got into talking about limiting the handlers (receiving pages or virtual doors and windows). We covered a number of other topics such as nesting, sub classes, pre and post level page handlers, and how all deeper business logic needs to be over in the service models. Once again, it was mostly Wayne and Alan talking shop and I was listening. To translate, our existing site and pages have a bunch of things that we do every time to make sure that the page gets valid information. They are talking about doing all of that pre validation and logic as a simple handler and thus making each page smaller and not duplicating code (hundreds of lines per page).

After talking for a while, Wayne was showing us what it takes to rewrite things and pages using the new architecture and structure. We kept jumping off on tangents as Wayne was explaining and we were asking questions and making comments. Fun little interchange. At one point, Wayne had to either jump off and/or deal with something at his home. Alan and I were talking about options for permissions and limiting things even before we show them. Keeping things skinny and lite.

Here are some of my other notes. They don't really flow into nice paragraphs.

- Currently, our main pages, inside of adilas are kinda like handlers. We just don't call them that. Sometimes we call them the wrapper pages and string together some black box and/or special page includes to make it all work.

- All business logic would need to be in the services.

- Lots of talk about separating logic and views (pages).

- Using fracture (potentially more complicated) to show less (looks more simple - based on show/hide settings and configuration stuff).

- Creating rule books and using the database to help drive the pages, logic, rules, and procedures. Basically, the code gets stored in the database, where it could be updated, shared, or tweaked as needed. The pages just process the rules and/or instructions.

- Migrating data, seeding things (pre work and adding things for setup), checking for pending actions, and processing different actions. Small data assembly line stuff, for our own setup and configuration. That could be pretty cool!

- Wayne was saying, not really rewriting our code, more of moving it...

- Alan would love to help with this restructure project.

- We talked about options of how to integrate these things together.

- There are still some core changes that are needed. The key word was "core".

- Lots of talk about scale - how fast, how many, etc.

- Too many includes (code pages pulled into other code pages). This gets hard to trace down dependencies and variations if different pages are mixed together.

- We have some master copy and paste coders and developers. If that is the case, let's help them out so that they can copy and paste what we want them to do and use. If you can't beat them (some of our team may never change), then join them type attitude (give them good stuff to copy and paste).

- Tiny servlets and micro services. Everything is based off of time or events.

- We talked about budgets for both time and money. How quick can we do this? Time, money, resources?

- How long do we have if we don't do this? Not sure... meaning making changes and/or moving things over towards fracture (future plans and making the changes listed). Just part of our discussion.

- Wayne will reach out to Ortus Solutions (maker of the ColdBox framework) and see what options we have. Is there any way to use some of what they have and still keep some of our older existing stuff? We are looking for a middle ground, if possible. Basically, just a quick check to see if an option exists - mixing old code and new code and old structure and new structure. We may have to just choose one or the other, they may not cross or mingle very well (water and oil).

- Small story of how the Utah pioneers had to stop building a temple so that they could finish up the railroad. Once the railroad was done (lines completed) they were able to build their temple faster using the railroad to haul rock from the quarry to the temple site. Fun story.

- We talked about a new possible name for fracture (current code name for our future build out) and/or something that has a nice ring to it. We were thinking about "adilas lite" or something along those lines.

- What about building out a mini version, creating small modules and then charging for those pieces? Everything could be broken down into modules and sub modules.

- Originally, we were going to leave the existing adilas code alone and build something new, using the same database. As we were talking, it became apparent that we needed to build new. Meaning new code, new data, new database, new, new, new. The whole thing. As we were talking, we kept referring to ship A (existing adilas platform) and ship B (new or future adilas platform - aka fracture or adilas lite).

- Our first prototype, that Wayne is already working on, will be for payees. This is for vendors and users and will include a single sign-on option. Once again, just a prototype and proof of concept.

- Lots of great conversation about the adilas cafe and community. This is dealing with a global or master level list and access to the whole platform and/or adilas application. Imagine a single global login and then you could choose if you wanted to work (only show corporations where you have permissions and access), play (demo sites), buy things (marketplace), sell things (marketplace for goods and services - professional services), participate (community and social media stuff), and/or get some training (adilas university). Here is a link to more info and research on the adilas cafe from the developer's notebook.

- After Alan left, I talked with Wayne about percentage ownership stuff in adilas. Wayne would like to get some more ownership. He's doing a great job! We have many on our team that are really pulling the load very well. That is awesome!

- For me - adilas lite - make a simple play or plan. It could be a rough sketch or simple layout plan. Keep it simple.

Working with Bryan on subs of time and showing things on the sub horizontal time view page. He had to jump off to help his wife. Short meeting.

Back on with Bryan. Merged in some code for showing the subs in the horizontal time view page. Pushed up some code to data 0 to do some testing.

Sean and I going over the adilas label builder. He was requesting a smaller grid layout, options to zoom in on the smaller labels, and better save options. He had lost some work because he wasn't pressing save enough. Maybe automate that. Anyways, we pulled up some code and were looking around for the variables to control the grid layout and grid sizes. We tweaked some things out and pushed up the new code. He was working behind the scenes to make sure that everything was working. Small little microburst on the label builder.

Small work session between John and I. We started out by pulling up a local code branch and doing a visual review of the changes. We were working on the add/edit location page. We then moved into talking about making plans (frontend, backend, and overarching architecture stuff) and carving out timeslots for finalizing those plans. We planned 2 days a week for 2 hours a piece, all through the month of June. Putting some placeholders into the mix.

Another topic of conversation was about IP (intellectual property) and gathering things up. This includes raw code, raw graphics, and other assets and resources. Currently, I have a bunch of this stuff on my local computer but nobody else can get to it and it's not super organized. Anyways, that will be a future project as we move forward.

I promised John that I would check on what it would take to be able to gift a percentage of ownership for some of the bigger framework projects that we have coming up. I'd like to help incentivize our guys/gals to help us work on those pieces.

We talked about themes (existing and possible themes) as well as coming up with our own themes and custom CSS (cascading style sheets and full application layouts). Along those lines, we also need to plan in progression and deprecation of those visual assets and themes. Our product needs to keep changing in order to keep up.

John really loves feedback, and he was asking if we could, on purpose, include some others on our feedback models, internal needs, external needs, and wants of our users and our clients. All of that would be some great information and great feedback. We don't mind changing things, we just need a plan in order to know where we are headed and what the priorities are at this point.

This is more for me, but I was listening to an audiobook - Dale Carnegie - "How to Win Friends and Influence People", and it was talking about avoiding the acute angels or tight spots (with people, projects, and such). You want to keep your options open (like an obtuse angel) vs creating a squeeze or super tight spot (acute angles). Not that you never get into those spots, but you don't try to force anybody into those tight spots. As John and I were talking, that thought came back to me about trying to avoid the acute (tight) angles or tight spots. I'd like to build so that there is room to turn, maneuver, and adjust as needed. Once again, this is more for me than for anyone else.

Emails, light tech support, and recording notes from the past few days. Also, on the phone with a client going over things. Recorded notes for 5/22/23, part of 5/23/23, and all of 5/24/23.

Sean and I going over labels and the adilas label builder. One of the topics that came up, once John popped on was dealing with raw assets and IP (intellectual property). We really want to work on gathering the info, assets, logos, drawings, original art work, text, copy, etc. all in one place. That would be awesome!

John and I then talked about some of the challenges of using pre-built themes and then being able to print things out nicely. There is different code to show things on the web and it changes when you try to print it. Anyways, just going over ideas and options. As we make changes, it requires some of our users and clients to redo their SOP's (standard operating procedures). These are their instructions and what not. If you start changing things, then all of the sudden, the instructions don't match what is being seen and/or displayed on the screen. It causes confusion and a disconnect.

We also spent some time talking about requirements that are pressed upon us and how sometimes we feel like the little red hen (story of a red hen who offers yummy bread to her friends, but no one wants to help plant the seeds, harvest it, grind it, and then bake it). Along the lines listed above, dealing with showing and printing web pages and mobile ready applications. Sometimes we build things for normal desktop applications and then people want to use them on mobile apps or mobile devices. It can be challenging.

The last conversation of the meeting was dealing with lite versions or light versions. Basically, talking about the concept of adilas lite or a scaled down version or versions. Good stuff!

Great internal training event. John was running the show today. We had Brandon, John, Danny, Eric, Alan, Dustin, and Bryan on the meeting with us. We were going over the adilas docs (online style guide and code snippets), light review, going over conventions, components, and other style guide stuff. John was encouraging the developers to use the docs and play around with things. As a side note, John has also started some adilas server docs (major backend stuff) as well.

Lots of good discussions. Topics ranged from docker stuff, older code, bootstrap versions, and sign-off guides for development and frontend GUI stuff (GUI is for graphical user interfaces or UI/UX user interfaces and user experiences). We had some good practice sessions and John had prepped some code with some flags where he wanted us to work and change things.

It was great for all of the guys to be on the meeting. I did snap a screenshot of some of the webcams (see attached). We talked about using data 0 as the starting point or standard for a number of things. Especially if we wanted to duplicate and/or use the same things over and over again. The conversation then led over to talking about the future and where we are heading. We spent some time talking about the new framework and being able to swap out dependencies and what not.

One of the last things for the normal training session was a discussion about requests for future training and crossover training. Here is the quick list, not in any specific order.

Future Training Session Ideas
- Cfscript
- Javascript/JQuery
- Back End (Models, Services, DAOs)
- API's - Internal API sockets and external API sockets
- Ajax
- Testing
- Custom CSS & Print CSS

After everybody else left, John and I did a small review of the training session. We were chatting about options and feedback. John and I may start with some CSS and theme stuff (planning for the future). See attached for 3 different videos that we did from the training session. Great event.

Recording notes and uploading videos. Quick phone call with Bryan. Other general to do list stuff.

Today is Memorial Day. Not many people on the morning meeting. Both Steve and Sean jumped on and were working on labels. Sean was prepping things for a demo and Steve was trying to be his cheerleader. The current label builder needs a little bit of loving, but it does work, and it does a good job. You just have to know what you are doing. We just need to tweak a few things to make it ready for the masses. Sean had a few ideas that he wanted to make sure got on the wish list for the adilas label builder. He's been putting in some good time there lately.

My opinion, but Steve is a great salesman. Even to us, internally, as part of his team. I can't tell you how many times I would have quit, walked away, or given up without his cheerleading and salesmanship charisma. It's pretty awesome. Sean came on the meeting with his tail between his legs (getting virtually beat-up by the label builder) and Steve sent him away ready to give the demo. That's pretty awesome!

One of the problems was that the adilas label builder uses a lot of JavaScript which is a client-side scripting language. That means, depending on which browser and which version, the code could act or react differently. That makes it tough. As part of this little exercise, Steve and Sean were popping in and out of a number of browsers to see where it worked the best. Most of us, me included, would have tested it in one browser and then passed a verdict - it's good or it's in need of some love.

Going over lots of requests for new and enhanced reports. Small errors and fixing a few things. Cory had a small list. Lots of talk about flex attributes and the need to build them out on all 12 main application player groups. Currently, we have them on customers and elements of time. It seems like the next one that is warming up is PO's. We have clients that are wanting to be able to add new and flexible data points to PO's (purchase orders). Of course, once they get added, they for sure want to be able to search by those new flex attributes. They also want them to show up on all the correct spots, forms, searches, reports, and exports. Not a problem, it just takes a goal and some time.

It seems that across the board, our users, on a global level, are wanting more and more control of their reports and exports. This inclues settings, preset and saved favorites, show/hide certain fields or columns, able to rename fields, set and remember the search criteria or filters, and be able to pull down any and all data (reports or exports).

Cory and I were talking about "visibility vs searchability". Our users want "visibility" first, then they want the "searchability". Basically, our users want to see the data and then be able to limit it and/or filter it down from the results that they got. From a coding side, it is easier to filter (control what will show) vs showing everything and then filtering after all of the data is shown and/or pushed out to the user (way more traffic, memory, and bandwidth). On the coding side, we would much rather have you know what you want, then we only have to serve up those records. Sort of a flip flop on who wants what and which way they approach their data and report results.

We have a report that the users want to control multiple parts of an object (say PO's or purchase orders) all from one export and/or report. Granted, the PO has multiple one-to-many relationships, table joins, and records that need to be matched up and presented. Imagine a report search page that has show/hide checkboxes for all of the main PO data (location, vendor, total amounts, PO types, dates, notes, ties to external invoices, etc. - 20 some fields). They then want all of the show/hide checkboxes to show/hide columns for all of the line item details (quantities, costs, prices, items, descriptions, etc. - tons of new fields - 60+ fields). Next, they want any sub inventory information (sub reference id numbers, barcodes, units of measure, special sub attributes, RFID tags, etc. - tons of other fields - another 15-20+ fields). Without going too crazy, they also want any new flex attributes (extra data points or in-line database extensions), parent attributes (inventory level controls for parent items), and other data. I didn't count, but it could be well over 100+ fields that they want to be able to pull, show/hide, filter, and organize. It gets into some advanced settings and big reports with lots of dynamic logic. Not that it is hard to do any of that, it just gets more difficult when you are mixing so many things or parts of the object together.

Cory wants us to start with the "visibility" of the data. As a side note, we may have to off load some of the processing for these bigger reports. I want to be careful about building on possible already tippy code or projects. We have to make sure that everything is stable. After this conversation, Cory and I lightly talked about budgets. We also looked over some code and did some quotes for clients. There are many challenges when trying to mix and bled and mix viewing with searching huge datasets.

Lastly, we talked about fair compensation. We are heavily underpaid and not showing our true value. That gets complicated as well. It's an interesting mix and an interesting game.

This didn't happen. Today was Memorial Day and everybody had family things going on.

Sean and I talking about dreams and plans. Where do we want it to go? I love those kinds of talks and conversations.

John and I were talking about budgets and hours. He is concerned. Shari O. joined and John and Shari O. were talking about layouts and interface stuff. We have a client that is requesting some custom navigation. They want to shortcut things by one click or put buttons and/or links where they want them to show up. This is more of a "controlling space" meaning what you work with and where things are located. Custom space - think of your desk or bedroom, you put certain things in strategic places in order to be efficient or effective.

Shari O. was asking questions about some of the new payroll settings for a client. We went in and looked, and it looked like the client was in there changing things around. Some of the changes that Shari O. had made were gone. We fixed it and will get ahold of the client and do some training.

Cory was asking about a deploy that had a bad file. Somehow one of the servers was showing that it was on the master branch but had a corrupted file or something happened. Light back and forth between her and Wayne. Cory was asking about emails and trying to get some answers. Our email servers are struggling right now. We then switched and were talking about the sales tax aggregates project. It is fully live but just needs that little bit of a push. We've got a couple of things really close, but they just haven't fully landed.

We started talking about Wayne's new framework stuff. He was showing us some of his dynamic add/edit pages using a database or a data dictionary stored in a database. He then created a smart page that uses dynamics, cascading code and populating it all from database records or dynamic objects. Pretty cool stuff. Light years ahead of what we've got right now.

Some time was spent looking at and making suggestions to the data dictionary idea and concept. The more that we can make this whole thing data driven vs hardcoded, the better. Think of all of the things that show up on a web page, what if we could turn that whole thing into data driven pages and be able to pull the data and dynamically render the pages. That would be awesome! We already do tons of that, but Wayne was showing us options on a whole new level.

Steve was asking some questions and Wayne was answering them. Good conversation between them. Steve was talking about percentages of ownership, deferred payments for hours worked, and other forms of investment. We all see the potential. Steve was saying, "I'm sold, how are we going to do this?" Tons of potential, we just need to figure out how to do it, fund it, and sell it. That takes a lot to make everything happen and work.

Next, we rolled into talking about stability of the code and servers. Steve put the words - "what about the ice down dates" - through chat. We talked about how all of that is possible, we just need to make a plan and get it included. Nothing is just going to happen. We have tons of awesome ideas, it just needs to go the next level. That lead into talking about the plan and making it airtight. We also talked about getting that good plan and then being able to pitch it to investors to get some or all of the funding. That seems to be what needs to happen. We need our plan to be almost at the blueprint level with details, requirements, flow charts, and all of the specifics. Basically, a full-on business plan and full technical plan as well. We need it all. That's the goal.

Original notes are from 5/30/23. This little note was added on 6/3/23 (only a few days later) - As a small side note, this was actually a turning point for Steve in deciding what needed to be done. Nobody knew it yet, but I think that he was seeing that we are having a hard time finishing up things that need to be done (close but not quite finished) and yet we are totally lost in what could be. We know we need it, no one denies that, but how do you stop, control, and/or manage that. Maybe you don't. You may have to let it flow.

This is mostly for me... but last night I couldn't sleep very well. I kept having the idea that I needed to include others and other business owners in the fracture project. This could be helping them build out their own systems and/or helping them get started on the white label journey. Anyways, meeting with them, helping them get things lined out, making plans, and getting their feedback, ideas, and suggestions. Group or community effort of sorts.

This is by no means official, but I was thinking about a six-month planning period, six months prototyping and getting funding, and then rolling things into a two-year build out. Once again, just putting things on paper. In reality, we'll need to check scope, project requirements, and who we have that can help. Lots of other variables. That's just what I was thinking.

I know some of the local business owners at the technical college, local ski resort, a bike shuttle company, a special race event, a high-tech manufacturing facility, and my dad (great resource to a number of other business owners). Anyways, just recording this as an idea for fracture.

This may not go here, but I was also thinking, if they commit to working on the white label projects (multiple versions) I could even cut them in on a small percentage of the main adilas system. Basically, a way to get them to help us push things forward. Once again, just thoughts and ideas.

Meeting with John and doing some planning. We were going over themes, ins and outs of how to make a new theme in our existing code, folders, paths, settings, and page level controllers. We talked about some of the new code and R&D that Jonathan Wells did. We are looking for feedback. We may end up offering options and pushing the choices over to the users. Tons of toggle on/off switches for the different features.

People don't want to scroll and they want a minimal number of clicks to make something happen. We talked about getting the information (all kinds) into the database. Minimal on the hardcoded pieces. The whole thing becomes data driven.

I was drawing and talking about different things. We would love to create a master plan. John and I started a small google doc to gather some the of the master plan info so we both could access it.

Shari O. jumped in and had some payroll questions. We did some quick research, pulled some records, and helped her make some changes. We got it all figured out.

Working with Aspen to go over our plan for making the plan. Light review and discussing expectations and where we are going. Started in on adding some research links to part of our plan. Pushed up the new stuff to the google doc that John and I had started.

Here is a light version of where we are heading... (just barely starting - for the record, it looks nicer in the google doc)

Master Adilas Plan or Adilas Master Plan

1. Company Structure - Adilas Jelly Fish Model
2. Product Development - Adilas Value Add-On Core Model
3. Education & Training - Adilas University
4. Community & Outside 3rd Party Solutions - Adilas Marketplace
5. Social & Efficiency Options - Adilas Cafe & Community
6. Deeper Product Development - Adilas Lite - Fracture Project
7. Budgets, Finances, Marketing, & Sales - Other Business Plans

New note added on 8/14/23 - For a pretty good breakdown of these projects - just at a high level, see this element of time 10377 and it's photo gallery.

________________

Table of Contents. To-do

All time id's are inside of adilas

2283 - Main Index

2284 - Jellyfish Model

- Research on the Jellyfish model - link

2285 - Value Add-On Core Model

- Research - link

2286 - Adilas University

- Research - link

2287 - Adilas Marketplace

- Research - link

2288 - Adilas Cafe & Community

- Research - link

2289 - Fracture - Future Project

- Research - link

- Adobe XD mock-ups with options

2290 - Budgets & Finances

2291 - Marketing & Sales

- Adobe XD mock-ups with options

- World Building Concepts and Concepts of the Data Assembly Line - Pitching the concepts

- Research on world building, research on data assembly line

- Presentation Gallery - great start for an outline of what adilas does

2292 - Other Timelines, Plans & Projects

Final sign-off for a promotional website done by Hamid. We looked at code and I printed him out a check. We chatted for a bit and he handed me over the code for the business zipper website that he was working on. I'll look over it a little bit better and then get it pushed up to a live server to be an actual site. This promotional site was going to be kinda like a billboard that talks about a certain topic and then points the users or visitors to the main adilas.biz website. We are calling them billboard sites, a form of light advertising.

Sean and I talking about the new pivot with adilas ship 1 (ship a) and ship 2 (ship b) - an email that we got from Steve this morning. Sean is going to be looking at some other business software packages and sending me ideas and screenshots (light research and getting ideas). We had a good little talk.

The rest of these notes were just thoughts, ideas, and notes after talking with Steve. My mind was just gushing with thoughts, emotions, ideas, worries, excitement, etc. The whole gamut or range of feelings.

- Operations has to lead the accounting. You can have operations without accounting, but you can't have good accounting without operations.

- Jumped on a call with Steve - Good chat - It felt like he was coaching me and giving me some great advice. Almost master to apprentice type talk.

- Keep heading north - that has been our general business plan - keep heading north!

- Steve was talking about a limited team (working on his house) and how effective that was - lessons learned

- This is an abundant model - we are not limited to just what we have and/or is right in front of us - tons of options

- Track everything - time, hours, plans, money, notes, etc. Track everything!

- Creating a super tight plan - almost a watertight level - As part of that, make sure and leave some flexibility into the mix. Things always keep changing.

- As of June 1st (6/1/23) no more adilas funding on ship B (adilas lite or fracture)

- Steve is going to be taking care of ship A (current adilas platform) and I'm going to be dreaming, building, and working on ship B (adilas lite and fracture).

- Going for dreams sometimes takes blood, sweat, and tears - be ready for that

- Lots of experimenting, playing, and messing around. It's all part of the game.

- Selling the sizzle - every restaurant that has steaks can sell the steaks. The one who really makes it sells the sizzle, not the steaks.

- Along with the blood, sweat, and tears - Steve was saying that there may be a lot of unpaid labor that needs to happen and go on before it really turns the corner. Keep tracking everything.

- So many pieces - we are in a complex industry - lots to do and coordinate

- You will always need customer service stuff. Customer care, support, deployment, etc. Remember the service piece.

- Steve has been a great salesperson - We are where we are because of him selling stuff - All kinds of stuff

- We would like to create a succession plan. Not necessarily an exit plan but more of a succession plan.

- We talked about ownership percentages and sub plans for distributing some of that equity and ownership percentages.

- Conflict of somebody spending money we didn't have - that causes stress

- Being mentally tough - easier said than done when it really comes down to it

- Suppressing things (good and bad) and letting the tiger out of the cage

- Removing a roadblock

- Being a participant - Get in there and play the game - Be there and participate

- "Icing" - That goes a long way - Easy, simple, pretty

- Not putting yourself in a box

- We need more than a business plan - Be willing to rewrite the business plan 3 or more times. That's ok!

- I gave Steve an analogy of him pushing me out of the train, at the same time, him saying good luck, and me saying thank you... Kinda funny!

- The plan will keep evolving

- Learning to fall down - That's part of many of the games we play - Get in there and learn to play!

Meeting with Bryan on the super sub invoice line item search page project. Lots of new form fields and filters. We were talking about flow and processes. What comes first and how do we pre-load and filter that data in an effective way?

My mind was going nuts all day. Literally a whirlwind. I didn't write down the start and end time on this one. But from about 12 noon until 11 pm ish I was brainstorming, thinking, recording notes, talking to people, phone calls, texts, etc. It was super fun. Once again, these notes don't have any specific order, they were just what I recorded on small little post-it notes. I should have used a bigger notebook... :)

- We need a matrix and the ability to monitor every choice and setting. Full data driven and choice driven billing for our clients. This needs to be baked into the beginning design for fracture and where we are heading.

- What about possible open-source code and/or having our clients pay for their own accounts? That would take some of the hardware and server pressure off of us. Just a thought. Along with this, we could set it up to use any domain name, any site/server or hosting company. Whatever. Keep it super open, if we want it to be.

- As far as hosting and packages, we could have our own options as well. Things like simple home use, shared servers, semi dedicated servers, full dedicated servers, clusters, etc. Make some options and then make them available.

- List out your services that you offer and/or have available.

- Packages and bundles - tiny, small, medium, large, extra large (xl), double X (xxl) or whatever. Maybe set some limits for the different sizes or limits withing a certain range (keep it kinda flexible). Allow for variable billing.

- Stripe seems to have some awesome automated merchant processing features. It may be fun to plug into this. We could also use something like Datacap and then have access to even more merchant processing options. Just thinking along these lines. This could be for our clients as well as for us, as a company. Currently, we are using USAePay for our internal merchant processing stuff. I'd like to expand and really open that avenue up a bit.

- You (meaning me) may need to fully jump off. Earlier today I was giving Steve an analogy of jumping off of a moving train. The best place is either on or off, not somewhere in the middle. If I'm going to jump, do it and get clear. You don't want to be too close to that moving train. Once again, just an analogy.

-  Some of this stuff is for me, but was part of the brainstorming session. Anyways, I'm going to list it anyways.

- I know some bankers. I'd like to meet up with them and just pick their brains. Thinking of Mike Hall, Brent Wallis, Kevin Moser.

- I could use some of my percentage ownership of adilas as collateral, if I needed to get a loan.

- I have a buddy that helped me out, back in the day with my Learn To Freeride (LTF) project. His name is Gene Spaulding. He currently does a lot of stuff with nursing homes, memory care, and retirement homes. Good resource. Maybe even checking with him if he needs a product to help manage all of his beds (rooms for his clients - elderly folks). Regardless, he's an awesome resource.

- I know a guy by the name of Jud Eades who is an entrepreneur, a friend, and a total stud. He does all kinds of fun stuff. I could see if he has ideas and/or is interested in helping me build a reoccurring revenue based product.

- I know lots of other business people who have ideas and different know how. I would love to tap into their minds. Just being silly, but started thinking about too many people and decided to stop (for now).

- Use eye candy to show what we have done

- Talk with my wife Heather

- I have a full business plan that I did for the LTF project (older personal project dealing with teaching snowboard freestyle tricks and moves - early to mid 2000's). Look at the LTF binder, just to get some ideas.

- Recruit help. Think about all kinds of avenues, people, places, things, etc. Be creative!

- Include the Lord

- Sufficient - That goes a long ways

- Apply It! - Whatever you learn, keep applying it. That seems to be one of the secrets.

- We (adilas) hired a business consultant a few years back. Get back with him and review of what you learned from Jonathan Johnson and Epic Enterprises Consulting.

- Check in with Aspen, my daughter and see if she wants to help. She has a great gift for organizing and such. I could use the help.

- Talk with my mom and dad. I would like to ask my father for a father's blessing as well. That would help me out.

- Planning things out and then funding that development.

- Strategic funding based on needs and plans.

- Willing to listen and record notes. I love sharing what I have learned. Writing things down helps my memory. The old saying - The faintest scratch is better than the sharpest mind.

- I'm willing to let others play a role and add to or even take away as needed.

- Freedom from the adilas grind - that's worth a lot.

- I may be able to do more and help more by not being tied down.

- Make a list of pros and cons

- Include some prayers (lots of them) and some fasting - ask hard questions of God and of yourself

- A couple of books came to mind - Who Moved My Cheese, The Go Giver, How To Win Friends And Influence People, Rocket Fuel, etc. Read those books.

- Be willing to help and give. I enjoy that.

- Follow a dream

- There is a level of excitement that I'm feeling. This is kinda fun!

- I have a book called "Differentiate or Die" - I'd like to read that. It was given to me years ago and it has been in my office but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

- Get some training

- Work on some funding

- Be a cheerleader

- Help fix the existing foundation. Make this part of the plan.

- Be open... to... whatever...

- Bridgerland - It's a local technical college here in my town. There are lots of options there. I know a number of people, they have training resources, and they have even asked for a demo (multiple times) of our products. I'd like to explore some options there including offering to help them build something that they could resell and/or pitch to other technical colleges. Almost a white label type option.

- I had a dream the other night about including other businesses in our planning and roll out. Keep exploring those ideas and avenues.

- Leverage your percentage of ownership.

- Ask... What do you need? How can we help? What do you want? Where is your pain?

- Go back and do it again. Trystorming and being willing to circle back again.

- Talking with Heather, my wife, and going over what I was making, what I could make, and how to keep a good balance. I'm not going to lie, there are parts of it that are just plain scary.

- We may need to get back to doing a family budget. We used to do that a long time ago. It's been pretty smooth sailing and we haven't done that in quite some time. We may need to circle back around.

- I'm kinda scared to dip into savings. Super grateful that we have some.

- During the day, we talked (Heather and I) about existing expenses, promises, and upcoming expenses dealing with raising a family (vehicles, wisdom teeth, other doctor bills, etc.). We listed a few things out.

- From Heather - We don't want to relive LTF! - Understood and I agree. Lots of lessons learned. If someone has time, some time in the future, I'd love to tell them about that project and product. Huge building blocks of my career, part of my life, and part of the journey. It wasn't all bad... :)

- Look at the risk/benefit trade offs

- From Heather - She'll let me do this - new venture - if we don't take out a personal loan and don't clear out our savings.

- We have been super blessed.

- We can't see the future. We don't know what is coming.

- Keep adding to savings as part of the plan.

- Light fun with numbers. We started adilas in 2008 from a project that started in 2001. The first adilas deposit was for $100. As of 5/31/23, adilas has made over $7 million and growing. That's kinda fun.

- The current goal is the business plan. That may end up being more than just one document. It may be better to say plans (plural).

- Need to call our accountant and check on taxes (for me personally)

- We have a number of projects planned for around the house that will still need to be completed this summer (paint back porch, cut down the dead tree, etc.). Heather wants to make sure that I don't get too busy and that I can still help out and do the planned projects around the house.

- From my daughter Amber - We were on the back porch talking - Here are some random thoughts that I wrote down from our conversation. From Amber - Do what makes you happy! Question - wouldn't having more be more stressful (meaning another whole adilas product)? I told Amber that I was trying to work myself out of a job. She had a few questions about that. Foreign concept to her. We talked about - if you are enjoying the job, it's not work. Good fun!

- More notes from Amber - You could always find another job. For example, snowboarding or whatever. Something that you enjoy! Maybe something part time or something like that. You could teach an art class, spend more time with your hobbies, actually get a job where you have a window (you work in a cave), get out and get outside, something. She was having fun giving me advice.

- AI (artificial intelligence) - this may replace certain jobs. Creativity and interpersonal skills - you can't replace that (currently).

- I like helping people - do something along those lines.

- Aber was being super kind - She said - You should draw stuff. I love the t-shirts, cards, your life jacket (kayaking PFD), and other things that you have drawn. Go have fun! You could totally use your drawing talents.

- Next I talked to Aspen for a bit - she was very logical and had some great questions. For example: I wrote down - Do you feel comfortable dropping all of your responsibility on other people? Who is going to do what you were doing? What about family timing (meaning with our family and who is doing what - in general)? What about retirement? Who is going to help with marketing? Etc. Very logical questions. It was great.

- I told her that I was playing a small game, similar to the old fable called "stone soup". Bring what you've got, throw it in the pot, we are making stone soup. She thought that "a community effort" was a better way to say it than calling it stone soup. She is probably right.

- A few more questions and comments from Aspen - If you have a passion about something, we'll trust you. Prove yourself! Different question, how will this look for taxes?

- Both grandmas and grandpas (Heather and I's parents) are a great resource. I'd like to let them know what we are doing.

- Talking to my son Tanner about what was going on - He said, it sounds like Legos (little building blocks).

- This is totally random, but also came from Tanner - We were talking about trying to skip things that we didn't like or couldn't do. Just being silly. All of the sudden, Tanner tells this story about one of his friends. His friend is in a wheelchair and has some disabilities. Tanner was really sore from doing something and said, I think that I'll skip leg day today (dealing with weight lifting and going to the gym). His little friend chimed in and said, I skip leg day everyday. Tanner and his friend had a good laugh at that. Anyways, it was super funny and broke the tension around the dinner table. Good stuff!

- Talk with Steve about some ideas

- Aspen recommended that I talk with Kelly (adilas power user)

- Called and spoke with my mom and dad over the phone. I then went over to their house and spent an hour with them talking about things. Great little visit. They recommended that I do some fasting and praying. My dad will be willing to give me a father's blessing this coming Sunday. Pay your tithing, server the Lord, and pray for help.

- My dad gave me a scripture to look up: 1 Nephi 4:6 - Led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.

- I told my mom and dad about a dream that I had on Monday night about including other business owners in this software re-write and that is exactly what my parents recommended for me to do. I thought that was very interesting and awesome!

Paying bills, emails, and brainstorming. It's been a super full day.