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Color Code: Yellow
Assigned To: Brandon Moore
Created By: Brandon Moore
Created Date/Time: 5/7/2018 12:22 pm
 
Action Status: Blank (new)
Show On The Web: Yes - (public)
Priority: 0
 
Time Id: 3734
Template/Type: Brandon Time
Title/Caption: Adilas Time
Start Date/Time: 5/8/2018 9:00 am
End Date/Time: 5/8/2018 12:00 pm
Main Status: Active

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Notes:

On the morning meeting with Steve and Russell. They were talking about how Bridgerland could help with outside development and doing smaller projects. Part of the puzzle is how we empower our users. It is so important to empower our users at the level that they need (go to the source). That is a huge core concept.

Taking the email options out to the bulk level and also allowing users to make the email come from their own servers.

As the guys were talking, I was doing some research on the old adilas website. Lots of good PDF files, help files, graphics, and flyers. Here is the old website link: https://data0.adilas.biz/old_index.cfm

Eric wants to talk about coupons and loyalty points. We talked about a guy named Chris Johnnie and some prior planning that may have been done by Russell and Chris. We are trying to pull things together and make everything happen.

From Eric - It is so expensive to keep stopping and starting - we lose tons in the transitions. We need to focus and stay on track.

Eric was expressing some concerns about sub inventory on the production side of things. Steve chimed in and was talking about how some people don't even know what else is possible and already built. The trail is faint and many people have been gone in different directions. We need to define the best path and then help educate others to play the game.

Manufacturing is a whole new level - You have raw goods being made into finished goods. Lots of internal flipping and tweaking. You need bill of materials, sub assemblies, recipes, other tracking needs, etc. We talked briefly about parent inventory and sub or child inventory. Some of the big needs come when they have sub assemblies and use semi raw goods and then push it into another finished good or product. You have to be at the sub level in order to really track that information. It gets into sub locations and sub phases and all kinds of other subs. In the background, we are seeing the _Z coordinate (depth and stacking) coming more in to play.

We are having a number of clients that are fighting against change. Some of the subjects are the way the one-to-many relationships are setup and what the individual people think should be the best option. Some of the questions are things like - one PO with multiple line items or one PO per one line item. Which one holds the location and how do you move things around. They want to group things but also be able to move things independently. They need both... basically, I'm part of this group but I also play over here and here. Very interesting.

This is a side note, but we end up spending so much time managing our customers because they all want to chime in and say what they feel is the best. Custom is awesome but it can also get us in trouble. Custom is really easy on existing and established pieces. One of the main problems is when we get into uncharted territory, people have all kinds of ideas and what things would work best. Once the trail is set and people are using it, they tend to go with what is already there unless we make it too hard. When the trail is not fully established, it turns into the wild west (anything goes) really quickly.

Once people get what they want, they tend to want to get to it quicker. They also want more. This could be more options, more control, more access, more of almost everything. They basically get addicted to data and ease of use.

Steve was doing a demo on sub phases, sub groups, and sub locations. Lots of using elements of time and special flags and tags to track all of the details.

One thing that will help people is showing them how to get back to their details and data. We (developers and power users) know things well enough that we pop through screens, skip steps, and go really fast. A new user is watching and they just get lost. So many moving pieces. It hasn't been smoothed out and/or standardized yet to really make it manageable and easy to understand. We either need to slow down and/or make the path more direct and discernible. Make it obvious and straight forward.

A note for us... We can use these subs to hold the sub details and sub data. We need to show things in very general levels and make it look simple unless the user wants to get clear down to the lower detail level. Think of the world building graphics that have universe level, world level, location level, group level, individual level, and the underlying data level. We need to allow the users to navigate at whatever level they feel most comfortable. We need all of the deep, deep, sub data, but that may be too much detail for some people and/or users.

There will be a greater and greater needs for mini conversions and how that effects things. Steve has already done quite a bit of work on the custom/build_complex_labels.cfm page. We need to use that as a great starting place. Lots of moving pieces. It goes like this... You have to have a parent item. Parents have subs or children. Those children then get broken down into smaller pieces and sub packaged. That is mini conversions.

We keep pioneering small little projects and getting some testers and people who keep pushing on things. Adilas is literally a giant testing environment and a virtual idea farm. We keep planting and harvesting ideas. They just keep coming.

Going back to manufacturing - there are tons of batches, sub batches, lots, and even reprocessing and repackaging pieces. We need to keep defining the road and helping the people who will be coming down the road later on. Kinda like Eric was saying... We need to focus and get pieces done and standardized - we get pulled in so many different directions. We lose a ton in the transition and switchover between projects. It gets very expensive and takes a ton of time and energy. In manufacturing, they often will set up an assembly line for a certain run... They then run that product until it is done. If they had to switch lines (assembly lines) every couple of hours, they would have tons of down time. Maybe we need to do similar type things. Make a plan and then work your plan.

The other gem is using the people who know it... get the reps and the clients together that know what is going on.

Flow - We can link all kinds of stuff together. That is a whole other level. If we can get the job done and get the person to the correct next step, we can help them keep moving forward. It comes down to flow and planning. Steve wants Dustin to help with some of that flow. Steve's words... "we need to train the system". That helps the whole thing go better. Dustin's words were... "the system almost needs rails". They then talked about wizards, steps, and showing a logic path and where they are on that legend or helping them know what is next and where things are at. Walk them through it. This could be crumb trails, legends, wizards, etc. Good stuff.