Adios Alpha, Buenos Dias Beta! (Inventory Program)

[webmonk]

After a lot of great effort by my batch of Alpha testers, I feel the inventory tracking software is ready to move into open Beta.

What does that mean? Basically, it means that I think the program is stable enough and is to the point where it's ready to be used by the public. It also means that I'm aware there are still bugs in the system and features that aren't fully implemented, but am counting on you to report them back to me as you run into them!

Sign-up is easy. Just go to www.penventory.com and follow the instructions. Once you've created your account and logged in the main page will have more information on what to be on the lookout for.

And just in case you're wondering... It's free, and I intend on keeping it that way.

 

[PenWorks]

I must admit I have been very loosly following your threads. Not being a member of the Geek Squad [] ( JK ) There are many times I would rather draw down on my computer with my .45 than I can remember.

But I just went to your Beta site and was very impressed with the work of you and others have put into this in what seems like a very short time. Thank you Jon and your geeky friends who have puched this along. I see this program as a MUST have to any penturner that has any kind of inventory and wants to keep track. I know this is still in it's early stage and can only marvel as to what you or you guys ( not knowing) will come up with as the final product. Thanks ! []

 

[JimGo]

Jon, this looks GREAT! I can't believe how quickly it has come together!

 

[webmonk]

Thank you for the kind words! I've been very pleased with how much positive response and great input I've had from everyone. This project is turning out to be software for the community, by the community. A modern day Stone Soup if you will...

 

[JimGo]

While that may be the case, the chef behind the scenes is doing a great job!

 

[tcastel]

As one of the Geeks that been helping Jon beat this thing up, and as I do alot of this for a living my hats off to Jon. I've written and debugged alot of software and can recognize talent when I see it. Jon deserves alot of credit for what he's accomplished in such a short period of time. And to not only offer the program for free but to host it also says alot for Jon's character. I do believe it would be nice to show our thanks.

 

[Dario]

Hear! Hear!

Great job Jon and thanks!!!

 

[Jerryconn]

Jon, Very, very nice I played with it a little this is going to help us all! Thanks for the time a effort put into this and thanks to the alpha testers.[]

 

[Jim15]

Hello Jon,
Just registered at your site and it looks like a great program. Thank you for taking time to do this for all of us. Thanks to all the alfa testers also.

 

[Penmonkey]

Thanks! I really like it!

 

[huntersilver]

Hi Jon,

thanks for all of the work, I was wondering you were also basing
some of the code on a type of MRP program?

thanks

 

[webmonk]

Hmm... No, not that I'm aware of. I'm an e-commerce programmer during the day so most of the coding was based on solving the problems of implementing requested features in realtime with the standard bag of tricks.

Thanks for trying it out!

 

[Ligget]

Jon, thank you for the time you spent on this program, I am sure a lot of turners will benefit from this.[]

 

[thewishman]

I tried it last night - nice and easy to get started. Many thanks![]

 

[Bob A]

Jon, this looks great. As of now I won't use it as my inventory is not that large but I can see it as being a good tool in the future. Thanks for doing this.

 

[webmonk]

Welcome!

Thanks so much for taking a look and please don't ever be afraid to ask for features. The worst that could happen is I'll tell you I'm too busy.

 

[AJM]

Very nice, I have already started to inventory my kit's and such. Thanks

 

[AJM]

I would like to see a print feature also maybe you could have a line for totals of kits, blanks and completed pens. Thanks and keep up the good work.

 

[webmonk]

Sounds good to me. I could easily put together an inventory summary page that was printer friendly if that's what you mean you'd like to print. Can you tell me the specifics on what you'd like to have?

Thanks!

 

[chigdon]

I just started playing with it and I am impressed!

 

[AJM]

Jon, I was thinking that I could print out a summary of the inventory that I could take to the workshop when I'm away from the computer. Number of kits and blanks. I'm just trying to think of ways to use the info. Maybe there is a simple way of doing this that I'm missing. I like the way you have everything organized and easy to update.[]

 

[johncrane]

G'DAY Jon great stuff mate. you have done a great job. give your self a pat on the back.

 

[TexasJohn]

John - Great work. This sure will help me get organized - something I have been trying to do for over 60 years . Thanks for all the hard work that went into this. [] Texas John

 

[melogic]

Jon,
On the printing thing as someone mentioned, would it also be possible to allow us to print out our inventory of finished pens?
Also, should the alpa testers use their current logon and password you gave us or should we re-register?

 

[webmonk]

I've been working on the report/printouts for pens this morning. A little slower going today as there are some fires to put out at work today. If not today, that feature should definitely be available sometime this weekend. Any specifics on how/what it should include in the report?

It's fine to continue using your current login.

Thanks!

 

[webmonk]

I've added two things today (my apologies to anyone trying to use it while I had the system down).

a) You can now edit your finished pen by clicking the Edit link from the View Pens page or completely delete it with the Del link.
b) You can view a printer friendly list from the View Pens page by using the link beneath the title. This list includes Code3of9 barcodes based on the inventory number you've assigned to the pen.

Let me know if you guys find any problems or have ideas on how to make those things better!

 

[lwalden]

Slick! I'm loving this! I put in a few starting items on kits, blanks, and finished pens, then showed my wife. She's the business end of the partnership, and she was having a hard time not pushing me out of the chair so she could get started bringing some order and accountability to our inventory. Great Job!!

 

[webmonk]

Hehe! Great to hear!

BTW, I've added printer friendly inventory lists to kits and blanks and added a status to the completed pens. Let me know if you can think of anything else to make it better!

 

[cozee]

Went and registered. Checked out everything that could be clicked on. Still gotts do a little reading but as a newbie, all I got to say is awesome!! And thanks!!!

 

[dfurlano]

Jon, do you happen to know excel vba? I am having a little programming trouble on something I am trying to do for myself.

 

[webmonk]

I've done some VB, but it's been a while since I've done any windows programming. I'd be happy to look at it and see if it's something I can help with. At the very least I might be able to point you somewhere that has the answer. Feel free to email me with details: jon@centralridge.com

@cozee: Thanks and welcome!

 

[Daniel]

Jon,
Sent you an e-mail but wanted to add the highlights here for public consumption as well.
so far everything that is there worked for me. I entered a pen inventory, a blank inventory as well as created a pen, actually pencil.
found only one thing that does not get recorded for creating a pen and I mentioned that in my e-mail. not a big deal just one of those things that needs to get ferreted out by this process. actually there is no menu to ad material but the inventory page has a location for it once a pen has been made.
I would like to see a space for entering the cost of pen kits as well as cost of blanks. also a space to enter selling price.
also a supplier and order number for blanks like you have for pen kits.
I would also like to see an accessories catagory for things like custom clips, center bands etc.
those are the biggy additions I would like to see. I won't go into the detail and summery stuff here.
this program is simply amazing. and I can't belive how fast it has come together. thank you and all the testers for the hard work.
the interactive growth thing was a great Idea,(users can add items) just hope it doesn't become a nightmare. I didn't actually try to enter the same pen kit twice to see if it refused to, but if it doesn't already have that you may want to make it your next project.
again my wife says thanks you are a god send.

 

[webmonk]

Hi Daniel,

I'll dig around to see if I can figure out what's up with the missing material list.

I'm a big fan of the interactive growth (cool name you gave it by the way ) functionality as well! I knew going in it could turn into a huge list, so I built in the ability to make it so that you can see the global list (what you see now) or you can choose to see only the attributes you've personally added. I haven't turned it on yet because there's still a little more coding to do and I've been focusing on other things until it's actually an issue.

Also, adding attributes that are already on the list will have no visible effect (there are quite a few duplicates already). The only thing that adding a duplicate would do is create a situation where someone deletes one of their attributes, but it doesn't actually vanish from the list because someone else still has the one they created in the database. I probably didn't word that very clearly...

Now I'm off to the hobby store to grab some turning supplies myself. I'll be back on the system later to make some additions thanks to your input.

Tell your wife she's very welcome!

 

[OKLAHOMAN]

Oh my!!! Oh my!!!I just went to the Inventory site and after picking my jaw off the floor and wiping the tears from my eyes I ran out to my shop to take a inventory and will have my wife inventory completed pens so I can put them into this amazing inventory control. Just one addition I can think of might be a page for desk sets ie: pens with holders-letter openers- etc.

 

[webmonk]

Thanks for the kind words Roy! I really appreciate the encouragement.

I like the idea of creating sets and I think I've got a good way in mind to accomplish this. It's going to be dependent on another part of the system that's still being written, but it shouldn't be too long before you'll be able to combine any of your completed item into a set.

Good suggestion!

 

[webmonk]

Thanks to lots of input from Daniel (and a whole list of others) I've made quite a few additions today. Here are the highlights:

Cost Tracking - Lets you key in an average cost of kits and blanks and key in your pen cost. We then use those numbers to do some basic reporting (link is on the left).

Location - Keep up with where it is!

Comprehensive Editing - Pages added to let you edit just about anything.


Keep the suggestions coming!

 

[tipusnr]

I guess I haven't really been following along either as my computer was out of commission for awhile. As you have to log in to see anything, I assume the program is not downloadable for use off-line?

My reason for asking this is that as the program gets more popular and the database grows it will, necessarily, get slower and slower. Also it will get more expensive to operate as bandwidth and storage needs grow and will need fundraising (just as this site grew to that stage).

The fundraising issue is just my business degree talking as I'm sure you've considered this. The slowing down is what would concern me as I am drastically trying to wean myself from this computer and enjoy other hobbies.

 

[RonSchmitt]

AWSOME job on the program, Thanks for your time & talent.

As for <u>You folks need to give me some input on what would kind of reports would be useful to you. No promises, but I'll try. </u> <u></u>How about a spot to add a cost for general consumable supplies that are used, finishes, sandpaper, glue, bushings, etc. It wouldn't need to be broken down into categories, just a general "catch all" category for the other stuff that is used.

 

[webmonk]

Scalability isn't much of an issue for this project. The engine it's running on will handle around a million queries per second and at the moment we're averaging 26.57 per second. The server load average is down around 0.7. Once we get 100,000 or so users running you might start to see performance degradation.

You're right about bandwidth/storage though. For that reason I have not included any images (or image storage) in the system yet. Moving text data around is virtually free until you get into the millions of queries per day kind of thing and even then it's not daunting. Storage isn't too bad either. There are currently 119 users storing over 1000 kits/blanks/pens and the entire database footprint is only 89KB. So again, scalability won't be a problem.

Yes, it is a completely online application. It would be possible to install it on a server of your choosing and allow you to run it as your own system. Doing that should get you around all of the above concerns.

Thanks for taking an interest!

 

[webmonk]

Thanks Ron! Glad you like it!

I'm working on an advanced bushing tracking system so the bushing issue should be handled with that. When you're talking about a catch-all spot for general items, do you mean a tracking system for those as well (like kits and blanks are) or would it just be an input field along with the pen so you could guestimate that you spent 25 cents in extras there?

Thanks for using it!