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Feature List

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Kevin McDonough:
Taken from a few posts that were made on the initial post that started this (before it got a little side tracked in programming methadologies and systems etc lol  ;D ) here was a list of some of the features that the potential program could have.

Feel free to add more suggestions, comment, and discuss as appropriate and we'll hopefully be able to come up with a fairly detailed and complete set of features that we would like to see.



Inventory Page

First thing we’d need would be a place to list all our equipment. This would be a large database of items and all the relevant information would be able to be entered.

* Pre-created and user/custom categories and sub categories for equipment: Lighting, Sound, Video, etc etc. and then drilled down to speakers, amplifier, desks etc etc.
* Fields to enter the basic information for each item (Name, manufacturer, serial number, quantity, etc etc)

* Fields for MSRP, purchase price, hire rates, and depreciation/resale value.
* Ability to do variable rates, i.e. weekend rates, week day, week and month blocks.
* Ability to input barcode or RF tag info. (Integration with common barcode and RF scanning systems so gear can be checked in and out directly into the program).
* Ability to attach files such as manuals, spec sheets, technical drawings. While it’d be handy if it could read basic files such as pdf and word documents, it wouldn’t need to be able to read unusual file formats, just store the file able to be downloaded and opened in the relevant program.
* Ability to group items together (amp/speaker packages, racks of equipment, cases of wires etc). Once items are grouped, they are show as unavailable individually, and they must be removed from the group item to be available to add individually to a quote again. 
* Ability for a date to be set for the item to be added or removed from group, so you can show it is in a group now until the end of this tour/job, but on such and such a date it needs removed for a few weeks for certain jobs, and then returned again.
* Ability to set these jobs as reminders in the calender.
* Ability for Pop-Up questions and addition of linked equipment. For example, add a speaker system to a job list, and a box pops up to asked ground stacked or flown. Based on answer, relevant linked equipment such as flying hardware or ground stacking brackets/poles, cable packages etc is suggested/added. Or if a desk is added it’ll pop up asking what stage box your using, and add appropriate multicore cables etc.
* Field for software versions and dates upgraded.
* Items able to be marked for maintenance, with fault tracking and progress tracking, and shown as unavailable when away for repair.
* Stock take function with history of results.
* Ability to view your inventory by purchase price, income generated, ROI etc etc. to see what hass been a good investment and where possible areas for growth could be, as well as items that it may be worth moving on while they’re second hand value is still high etc.
* Ability for user/custom categories and fields in addition to the main ones.

Contacts Database

An area to store contact details for venues, clients, staff, suppliers/manufacturers etc.
Fields for basic info

* Ability to tag items into multiple groups, for example a venue may also be a client.
* File attach again for venue specs, speaker prediction plots, venue drawings etc.
* Ability to call up a list of previous jobs that involved that venue/client/staff member etc. Easy way of re-triggering a new quote/invoice using a previous one.
* Notes section for any important info with Pop up ability, so for example if a venue has any especially restrictive vehicle access and you can only use certain trucks, or you need to take into account a specific requirement, you can set that to trigger a pop up reminder when you add it to a show/quote.
* Ability for staff to be marked as available or not available (either by being scheduled on other work/tours of if they’ve indicated they’re on holiday etc). Possibly even a log in system for freelance staff to access this small part of the system themselves, mark that kind of info in?
* Ability for user/custom categories and fields in addition to the main ones.

Job build page


* The main working page, for creating jobs and quotations
* Basic fields for the job info, linking to and pulling in info from your stored clients and venue database etc. Files that are attached to those venues/clients are also available for easy access from this screen once they’re added to a job item.
* Individual items or prebuilt groups/racks/packages can be added from the equipment list, and new one off packages can also be created on the fly for this single job.
* Based on the linked items and Pop Up questions set up with the equipment list, it would also makes suggestions of hardware, stands, the correct power or signal cables, flying accessories etc etc and add them to the quote to match.
* When the staff section is clicked on, your check boxes or tags will allow your overall staff list to be narrowed don to the the ones that are both available, and have the necessary skills/knowledge/experience for this job.
* As the quotation progresses, the job can be marked as initially created, sent to the client, amended (with version history) confirmed, needing action, advances and files received and attached etc etc. Possibly some sort of colour code to easily indicate this, and the job list can be ordered/sorted by this, so you can quickly see which ones are confirmed, which may need a follow up, which are awaiting action from the client, which need action from yourself etc.
* When equipment and staff are assigned to quotes they become marked as potentially unavailable, and when that job is conformed the are marked as confirmed unavailable in the database for other jobs.
* Various reports should then be able to be generated from this. A client facing quote, warehouse picklist, accounting details for office/accounts, return to warehouse checklist etc.
* Ability for user/custom categories and fields in addition to the main ones.

Calender View

As well as just lists of jobs, clients, venues etc etc, a calender can be called up and viewed by day, week, month etc.

* The various categories can all be made visible or invisible as needed, so you can show confirmed jobs, quoted/potential jobs, staff availability, equipment availability, equipment down for maintenance, etc,  or any combination of.

Scott Holtzman:

--- Quote from: Kevin McDonough on February 01, 2017, 01:14:36 PM ---Taken from a few posts that were made on the initial post that started this (before it got a little side tracked in programming methadologies and systems etc lol  ;D ) here was a list of some of the features that the potential program could have.

Feel free to add more suggestions, comment, and discuss as appropriate and we'll hopefully be able to come up with a fairly detailed and complete set of features that we would like to see.



Inventory Page

First thing we’d need would be a place to list all our equipment. This would be a large database of items and all the relevant information would be able to be entered.

* Pre-created and user/custom categories and sub categories for equipment: Lighting, Sound, Video, etc etc. and then drilled down to speakers, amplifier, desks etc etc.
* Fields to enter the basic information for each item (Name, manufacturer, serial number, quantity, etc etc)
* Fields for MSRP, purchase price, hire rates, and depreciation/resale value.
* Ability to do variable rates, i.e. weekend rates, week day, week and month blocks.
* Ability to input barcode or RF tag info. (Integration with common barcode and RF scanning systems so gear can be checked in and out directly into the program).
* Ability to attach files such as manuals, spec sheets, technical drawings. While it’d be handy if it could read basic files such as pdf and word documents, it wouldn’t need to be able to read unusual file formats, just store the file able to be downloaded and opened in the relevant program.
* Ability to group items together (amp/speaker packages, racks of equipment, cases of wires etc). Once items are grouped, they are show as unavailable individually, and they must be removed from the group item to be available to add individually to a quote again. 
* Ability for a date to be set for the item to be added or removed from group, so you can show it is in a group now until the end of this tour/job, but on such and such a date it needs removed for a few weeks for certain jobs, and then returned again.
* Ability to set these jobs as reminders in the calender.
* Ability for Pop-Up questions and addition of linked equipment. For example, add a speaker system to a job list, and a box pops up to asked ground stacked or flown. Based on answer, relevant linked equipment such as flying hardware or ground stacking brackets/poles, cable packages etc is suggested/added. Or if a desk is added it’ll pop up asking what stage box your using, and add appropriate multicore cables etc.
* Field for software versions and dates upgraded.
* Items able to be marked for maintenance, with fault tracking and progress tracking, and shown as unavailable when away for repair.
* Stock take function with history of results.
* Ability to view your inventory by purchase price, income generated, ROI etc etc. to see what hass been a good investment and where possible areas for growth could be, as well as items that it may be worth moving on while they’re second hand value is still high etc.
* Ability for user/custom categories and fields in addition to the main ones.
Contacts Database

An area to store contact details for venues, clients, staff, suppliers/manufacturers etc.
Fields for basic info

* Ability to tag items into multiple groups, for example a venue may also be a client.
* File attach again for venue specs, speaker prediction plots, venue drawings etc.
* Ability to call up a list of previous jobs that involved that venue/client/staff member etc. Easy way of re-triggering a new quote/invoice using a previous one.
* Notes section for any important info with Pop up ability, so for example if a venue has any especially restrictive vehicle access and you can only use certain trucks, or you need to take into account a specific requirement, you can set that to trigger a pop up reminder when you add it to a show/quote.
* Ability for staff to be marked as available or not available (either by being scheduled on other work/tours of if they’ve indicated they’re on holiday etc). Possibly even a log in system for freelance staff to access this small part of the system themselves, mark that kind of info in?
* Ability for user/custom categories and fields in addition to the main ones.
Job build page


* The main working page, for creating jobs and quotations
* Basic fields for the job info, linking to and pulling in info from your stored clients and venue database etc. Files that are attached to those venues/clients are also available for easy access from this screen once they’re added to a job item.
* Individual items or prebuilt groups/racks/packages can be added from the equipment list, and new one off packages can also be created on the fly for this single job.
* Based on the linked items and Pop Up questions set up with the equipment list, it would also makes suggestions of hardware, stands, the correct power or signal cables, flying accessories etc etc and add them to the quote to match.
* When the staff section is clicked on, your check boxes or tags will allow your overall staff list to be narrowed don to the the ones that are both available, and have the necessary skills/knowledge/experience for this job.
* As the quotation progresses, the job can be marked as initially created, sent to the client, amended (with version history) confirmed, needing action, advances and files received and attached etc etc. Possibly some sort of colour code to easily indicate this, and the job list can be ordered/sorted by this, so you can quickly see which ones are confirmed, which may need a follow up, which are awaiting action from the client, which need action from yourself etc.
* When equipment and staff are assigned to quotes they become marked as potentially unavailable, and when that job is conformed the are marked as confirmed unavailable in the database for other jobs.
* Various reports should then be able to be generated from this. A client facing quote, warehouse picklist, accounting details for office/accounts, return to warehouse checklist etc.
* Ability for user/custom categories and fields in addition to the main ones.
Calender View

As well as just lists of jobs, clients, venues etc etc, a calender can be called up and viewed by day, week, month etc.

* The various categories can all be made visible or invisible as needed, so you can show confirmed jobs, quoted/potential jobs, staff availability, equipment availability, equipment down for maintenance, etc,  or any combination of.
--- End quote ---


This is the best I have seen so far.


Two items.


1 - Calendar view...My current thoughts are to use an API and hook into WhenIwork.com and google calendar apps.  Shift scheduling is outside the initial scope


2 - "Fields" are a monolithic data construct and don't really exist anymore.  It's objects and containers.  Fields are far too limiting and the requests you ask for too granular.  A simple example is an item is added to item.  So item is a construct.  That item is added to a location and a job with a tag.  End users see tags as free form fields like an address bar on an email (have you used Office 365 ??) if you need a new field you can use the tag construct of #inventory:numperofinputs:8 then if you want all interfaces with more than 8 inputs you can simply ask the search pane for that data.  It's all indexed and fuzzy.


It sounds more complicated than it is in practice. 


I am traveling next week.  If I don't get slammed I may just mock up a couple of pages and we can have a kick off webinar.

Kevin McDonough:

--- Quote from: Scott Holtzman on February 01, 2017, 02:03:34 PM ---
This is the best I have seen so far.


Two items.


1 - Calendar view...My current thoughts are to use an API and hook into WhenIwork.com and google calendar apps.  Shift scheduling is outside the initial scope


2 - "Fields" are a monolithic data construct and don't really exist anymore.  It's objects and containers.  Fields are far too limiting and the requests you ask for too granular.  A simple example is an item is added to item.  So item is a construct.  That item is added to a location and a job with a tag.  End users see tags as free form fields like an address bar on an email (have you used Office 365 ??) if you need a new field you can use the tag construct of #inventory:numperofinputs:8 then if you want all interfaces with more than 8 inputs you can simply ask the search pane for that data.  It's all indexed and fuzzy.



--- End quote ---

When I say fields I just mean areas for input, not actually "fields" in the technical or programming sense. However that was handled on the back end would be up to your experience and recommendation of course.  ;D

In terms of staff scheduling, would it be especially hard to add in?  You're already maintaining lists of equipment, and dates and times when it's added to jobs and so unavailable. In my head staff members would just, in a broad way, be treated like a another item in the inventory that can be marked as available or not available on certain dates, and attached to jobs just like a piece of gear.

Of course, that big list above is a bit of a long term wish list, and with things like staff scheduling, barcode/RF tag reading etc would be best left to a future version and added after the main core functions of the Inventory Management are sorted.

K

Ray Aberle:
Scott, I *really* hope this is indeed more complicated on here than it will be in practice! Asking someone to type "#inventory:numberofinputs:8" to find consoles/interfaces with more than 8 inputs would be obscene.

I'm used to (like Riley) the Filemaker concept- here's a field, and if it's a category setup ("Consoles") you select a sub category in another field that has its choices populated based on your entry into the first field. So, after selecting "consoles," you then have console options in the second field.

I might be missing something here. I don't see the correlation of email address fields with this project. =-\

Ray

Lee Douglas:
Feature suggestion- Not returned alert.  Based on an expected return date field and could be set out by a fixed amount of time in a set up field or by a variable on the rental detail. 

Anecdotal:  This isn't so much for the complete system that goes out that you would miss if it didn't come back, but more the individual equipment that gets loaned out for a week to someone you may know and comes back a year later if you remember it.  It's just a "why isn't this back in inventory" reminder.

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