My Trip To The Powerflash Testing Facility

Recently I was told that the Group Order features of Powerflash were being tested. Although I have heard about versions of Powerflash being tested before, I have always mistakenly thought that the testing was conducted by Scott himself.

Boy was I ever wrong!

I guess it was just coincidence that after a lengthy phone call with Scott** one day about Group Ordering, that I would come home to find a Visit Dallas tourism brochure.

To my amazement there is apparently much, much more to see in Dallas than just the Grassy Knoll, Book Depository and the Cheerleaders. There it was -- an entire page of the brochure devoted to the Powerflash Testing Campus! I just had to go there; I had to see it. I was booked and flying within 24 hours.

Incredibly the brochure's contention that the buildings of the Powerflash Testing Campus are laid out so that from the air it appears to be a GI-NORMOUS lightning bolt with the most recent build number next to it was absolutely correct. I could easily read the build number and was equally amazed to later find out that as new builds of powerflash are released, the buildings are actually MOVED into an arranged position of each released build number so that the skyward proclamation of the constant improvement of the software is always up to date.

When I arrived at the gates of the Powerflash Testing Campus (PTC) I could see that the largest building was being slid into place to form the bottom of the number 2 for build 5202. One of the front gate guards explained to me that all of the buildings were constructed on large slabs that were resting on immense rollers and bearings to facilitate the frequent building relocation needs that were required to keep up with the rapid Powerflash upgrades. (One time, I am told, on a day when three new Powerflash builds were released, the frequent moving of all the large buildings caused the ground to shake so much that Tony Romo actually fell and fumbled against the Giants in a home game on Monday Night Football!)

Once I passed through the gates and started toward the front doors of One Lightning Plaza, I began to feel an incredible excitement, not unlike the feeling I had visiting the Google Campus just months earlier. I was so excited that I was able to almost completely ignore the discomfort and restrictiveness of the white protective suit, helmet and booties I had been required to wear.

I can tell you a lot, but I can't tell you everything. This isn't because I won't tell you, but because there are certain areas of the PTC that are completely off limits. It is my understanding that some of the testing on the next Powerflash generation (the 6000 series) is so secret that even Scott is only allowed to look at one line of code at a time. The 6000 series, it is rumored, will integrate Powerflash, Google Maps and The State of Arizona's Illegal Immigrant Database, allowing RDS's to not only deliver food and charge by distance, but also to make random immigration arrests. This release may not be seen for a while by any of us, since apparently one of the early bugs looks like it may cause the restaurant kitchen staff to be arrested just after the fax is confirmed.

After touring One Lightning Plaza, we moved on to the MISS (Main Idea Super Structure) and then the Big Ubiquitous General Structure, which has no known acronym.

My tour group and I then walked into the Group Order testing room on the fourteenth floor of Two Lightning Plaza. This was the place! This was where the new feature to allow individuals to add a tip to an order was being tested! I was the luckiest Powerflash user in the world, I thought, to be right here, right now. There is no other place I'd rather be. Right here, right now, ...

So, now I had a visual. I had confirmation. Testing on this feature was actually happening! It was happening a lot. There was even a customer (actually an actor paid to act like a customer) standing right there in the middle of the Group Order testing room saying things to the dozens of developers and beta-testers like, "I'd like to add two dollars to that" and "Can I please add 15%, sir?" I knew, just knew, that the process was working. Each moment, and with every keystroke we were getting closer.

Testing happens.

It is thorough, it is expensive and it is gosh darn impressive. So, if you are waiting for a new feature or are waiting for a bug fix, even if it has been years of waiting, you know for sure that somewhere on 55 acres of techno heaven, there are talented debuggers, programmers and even PAID ACTORS testing every feature, report, modifier and "thsi" in our coveted software.

**Special Note: The mentioned return phone call is fictitious and is used here under artistic license only. I make no suggestion or false representation that such calls happen or are common.

Evolution vs Intelligent Design

I'm not really planning on debating the grand spectacle of all debates. I have no intention of putting science up against faith in my "Life in Powerflash" blog. Nope. Won't do it.

But today Scott fueled a new flame.

Group Ordering, he says, works as it was designed. My silly request for an individual participant to be able to add a tip, have their tax calculate correctly and for the administrator's food items ordered to not DISAPPEAR apparently all fall into the dreaded category of "Feature Requests."

"[The System] was not designed to have individuals add tips," he told me in an email this afternoon. He has explained to me, and I am trying to understand, that when he designed Group Ordering, despite that he allows for each individual to enter a credit card number, that it was never expected that each individual would be responsible for their own tip.

Run that past me again, brother?

Rather, I should see tipping as a "new" feature request. I need to evolve while he intelligently designs.

Right now, and Powerflash 5000 series users take notice, here is what a Group Order has got going on:

First, the ADMINISTRATOR (for lack of a better term -- this is the person that starts a group order and manages the invitation list) begins the order by logging in to their account and selecting a list to invite to the order or create a new list.

special note- the administrator must include themselves in the list or they will not see their name as a choice in the drop down list of "who is this for" when they are ordering their item. However the administrator should then ignore the email they get that invites them to their own order.

Then the Administrator selects a restaurant or restaurants, types any special message to send to the invitees, sets the delivery time and date and clicks "create group order invitation." This sends out emails to all their lunch buddies and advances the administrator to the menu area to select their item or items. Once the admin selects their items they will see a total with tax added in and can click "checkout" which sends them right to the confirmation page.

This confirmation page shows a summary of what they ordered, what it cost and how they paid as well as where it will be delivered to.

What this confirmation page DOES NOT tell them is that when the order closes out 55 minutes before delivery, the items they ordered will VANISH FROM THIS EARTH NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN. Yep, Powerflash will simply delete every item the admin ordered.

So, you'd think that at least the admin's card would not be charged for their order. Well, you'd be a little bit right and you'd be a little bit wrong. Read on and find out just what the admin gets to pay for...

Now, over in the cubicles, Layla, Chris, Debbie and Marcus have all gotten their group email invitations (if they remembered to put your domain on their safe senders list) or dug them out of their junk mailboxes. Each is placing their orders and each is entering their own credit cards.

But, what is this? Why is each total a couple of cents short of ITEM+TAX? It seems that each total is a couple of pennies short of a correctly calculated total after tax. In fact, for some reason powerflash seems to have simply shaved one to two cents off of everyone's tax.

Once all participants have ordered we can look at the parked order on our dispatch screen and see all the items and the affiliated names of the lunch buddies. However, now Powerflash has CHANGED their totals to the correctly calculated totals and.. at this point.. everything looks beautiful -- you've got a nice order pending and the sky is georgeous and blue --as blue as blood before before you get punctured and it gets exposed to air.

So, time expires and the order becomes a "placed order" on our dispatch screen. But things have changed. The admins items have gone away, the totals for the invitees have reverted to just shy of correct and the odd 12 cents or so that has been collectively undercharged to each individual is applied to the admins credit card.

Was it that time had passed? Was the ultimate insult to the administrator- the erasing of their lunch items and the charging of other peoples tax - a function of an evolving order over time that slowly morphs taxation and the existence of food or was it the result of a greater intelligent design?

At Least Powerflash Does Not Spill Into The Gulf

I woke up this morning thinking about how long its been since I've blogged about PFlash. I have not been without Powerflash issues, I have been without the fervor.

Oh, I've got the ferver again!

After weeks of absolutely no fixes, no posts on the RDS Control website, no release notes, and no timelines created, something happened. A new forum was created on rdscontrol.com, much like a forum that had once existed, and we Powerflash users have been invited to post bugs, issues, and feature requests in a public manner.

So, rather than continue creating lists and sending emails directly to Scott, I have redirected my energies to posting to the forum. And, if an equal amount of energy is expended responding to these posts and fixing the bugs, well, I will be happy. (And all users of Powerflash will be, too).

I began posting bugs after upgrading to release 5105, a release that, according to the release notes in the new forum about both 5104 and 5105, addresses a number of bugs and issues and contains a redesigned DRIVER CHECKOUT report.

One bug that was listed as fixed, and I refer to line (5) of notes on 5104:

5) Restaurant List on Order Entry screen was display "NOW" for availbility even after restaurant closed. Fixed.

So, since I considered this a significant fix I went ahead and downloaded. Fixed is a funny word. I would not call it fixed but rather changed. The new message next to every restaurant is now "CLOSED", even if it is open.

But there seems to be a related time of day, restaurant hours, timing issue that has now cropped up that was DEFINITELY not going on in any of the 5000 series builds. Now, despite the fact that all restaurants are apparently closed (and this may just be an energy saving measure) is that Powerflash no longer distinguishes between lunch and dinner items -- all items show as available at all times.

So, I posted this bug.

Now what? I've posted 20 bugs or issues. Two of them were dismissed with the "NOT A BUG" reply and two were replied to as fixed. I'll accept that the two issues dismissed may actually be non-issues and are things that were intentional, but why not reply to all the other posts? I am spending a considerable amount of time testing this PFlash thing-a-majig and a reasonable amount of time documenting what I find on the forum. Is it possible that I am more interested in Powerflash than Scott? Or is it that RDS Control is really a part time gig?

Following our initial "upgrade" to the 5000 (now 5100) series, we sent dozens and dozens of emails to "support" and saw a couple of rapid fixes to some glaring problems. But then there was a quiet period that lasted a week to ten days when there were no fixes, no builds and even no responses to emails. My wife even called "emergency support" on a couple of occasions without getting a voice or even a response.

The point is that there are days, weeks, (and I suspect sometimes months) that go by where there is little response and no fixes. That we still have not seen the MAJOR issues addressed in the 5000 (now 5100) series at this point is, quite honestly, offensive.

The MAJOR bugs are:

Powerflash does not filter the correct available restaurants for our customers

The entire REWARD POINTS area is riddled with bugs and error pages

Hotel Guests can order without identifying themselves

Gift Certificates, ONLINE and CALL CENTER, has multiple outstanding issues including the whole new "delivery" method selections, the balances displayed on reports, and payments not carrying through to all reports.

Besides all this, there are problems with Group Orders, Corporate Statements, Declined Credit Cards, etc...

All I want is a timeline. Seriously. What is the game plan? How long?

To my thinking the 3000 series never got to where it should have been, the 4000 series had dozens of unresolved bugs and issues and now I'm staring into the face of the 5000 series. The introduction of GOOGLE MAP INTEGRATION does not benefit my company since we have no intention of charging by the mile. AND, SINCE THERE IS NO ACTUAL MAP, what's the point? I can not truly believe that all this work went into integrating with GOOGLE for addressing, distance calculation and geocoding, but there was no effort into giving our dispatchers a MAP!

I'm not funny today. I should probably just go to bed. And am.

On The Twelfth Day of Powerflash

What's in a name? Nothing, I guess.

Today I was looking at the revamped aging report in the new 5000 series. Some accounts in the report are listed multiple times. Here, picture this: You have an account with ACME Products and they have an outstanding balance of $1,500. Ok, well that will show up on some "detail" report, but if you go to your aging summary to get a quick snapshot of what you've got hanging out there, you might see ACME Products listed two, three or even four times. And the aging amounts will be different on each line!

What is this all about? How come we list an account multiple times with a variety of balances? Well, that's a big deal! -- if you care about names. See, the balances are indeed correct. They are just correct for other account names that aren't listed on the summary report. So if you see that ACME owes $1,500 and then below it ACME owes $300 and then below that ACME owes $966, all you need to do is back out of the report and look at the detail report (which by default displays on your screen before you engage the summary feature).

On the detail report you can find the name of the company that owes $300 by doing a little math. You can find the name of the company that owes the $966 also by doing a little searching and adding.

What you should do is WRITE DOWN the names of each of these companies and their corresponding balances (which you have calculated from the detail report). Then when you SWITCH over to the SUMMARY Aging Report all you have to do is PRINT it out and then CROSS OUT the repeating ACME Products name and WRITE IN the names of the correct companies.

I don't mind doing it this way. Any other way would be, well, un-Powerflash-like.

The NO NAME or WRONG NAME theme runs rampant through the 5000 series:

-On the NEW COUPON REPORT every customer's name displays as "Test Customer"
-When running the marketing reports I see that there are customers that have registered without having to enter a name, or Powerflash just didn't retain the name.
-Hotel Customers can get orders through on our website that do not contain their name or even their room number.

It is our TWELFTH DAY since "upgrading" and I considered writing the entire Twelve Days of Powerflash Song, but decided it was even too juvenile for me.

No fixes or patches since the CONVENIENCE FEE patch over a week ago.

Quietly, A New Weekend Has Come

It's been a few days now and there have been no patches to the new 5000 series of Powerflash. The last communication I have is from Benjamin a couple of days ago promising us an update the next morning. Since then all has been quiet.

It is Friday and we are now heading into another weekend with this software installed and running. Our customers are frustrated and we are frustrated.

Now we are noticing that pending internet and pending call center orders are not necessarily displaying on our dispatch screen. Not really sure which build started this irregularity, but it's a new observation.

Our nerves are shot. The lack of information coming from RDS Control is absolute. There is no indication that fixes are coming. Last weekend we were told that there would be a major patch or fix release on Monday. Since this did not happen, nor has there even been a reference to such a fix since last weekend, I will assume that either the amount of programming time necessary to get things working properly is enormous, or that other priorities are moving in front of getting this software up to snuff.

The main issues relate to address verification, locations of restaurants, the entire restaurant zone control system and the inability to override the Verifier's changes.

The secondary issues all probably relate to the main issues. These are things like House Account names showing on the order sheet when we employ our fakeout work-arounds and the new customers often being shoved into the wrong areas.

The next group of problems deal with gift certificates, payments, marketing reports, the entire reward point system and some quirky stuff with the coupon/promotions area and related reports.

We get the chance to test the supposedly FIXED "company on vacation" settings with the upcoming July 4th weekend. We will be closing for lunch on the monday following the 4th and have no idea what this setting will actually do. I have asked what the customer experiences online during the hours or days that the service is set in vacation mode, but I have not gotten an answer.

Anyway, just an uninteresting Blog Entry today. I am not in a funny mood and am just a little sick to my stomach that we are continuing to not get any updates or fixes. I am not surprised, just sick of it. We'll probably have a difficult time assessing what in real dollars this whole upgrade has cost us, but I do plan on giving that assessment a shot.

Online Gift Certificates - YOU'RE WELCOME!

Wow, last night was amusing. First Powerflash couldn't cash out drivers, then came a patch which, once installed, apparently broke Convenience Fees, then came a patch to fix Convenience Fees.

If you've worked with this software before, you know the story. Every fix seems to break something else.

Today I have an appointment with Chili's and am meeting my sales rep there in a little while. It's a great location for us in our new Livingston, NJ service region and we are hopeful they will join our program. This will be the first time in 7 days that I have done anything other than make lists for Scott and Benjamin or trade emails, upgrade to new builds and run test orders.

"Upgrading" has trapped me in the office. The problem is, there is no end in sight. Either I have to just trust that Scott will continue working on the glaring BIG PROBLEMS and go about running my business, or I have to send emails and lists perpetually until things are working. I believe, unfortunately, that I have no choice but to "run point" on Powerflash Debugging.

Today I would like to give a brief tutorial to Powerflash Users on how a customer orders a Gift Certificate Online:

First, the customer clicks on the BLUE link (I made that blue like the link) at the bottom of your home page or any page that carries the footer. This will bring them to a screen where they have two sections to fill out. SECTION ONE is Purchaser Info. SECTION TWO is Recipient Info. After they fill out all fields they select a Gift Certificate value (Powerflash now calls them Gift Cards). The choices are set as $25, $50, $75, $100, $150 or $200. Oh, oops forgot to mention, the credit card entry info comes just before this. So, I meant to say that FIRST they decide how to pay, THEN they decide how much to spend.

Once this is all complete, they can choose one of THREE (that's a lot) delivery options. First is email, second is regular mail and last (third) is hand delivery. The last choice is there although maybe you don't see it right away. That's because it's just slightly below the border of the input screen. I wouldn't ask Scott to fix this since its not WAY WAY below the border, just a line or so below the border and doesn't look really bad. It only looks like a careless little error from the people you are about to buy your gift certificate from. I'm sure that most customers will just assume that you are probably pretty reliable and detail oriented and that you just kind of sometimes goof up on your website.

Anyway, now its time for the customer to click Purchase Gift Certificate (although for you PF users, remember it's gift CARD now almost everywhere else in the program -- just not everywhere). They should be able to see the Purchase Gift Certificate Button if they were able to see the third delivery option because it's also chilling out right there outside the data entry form with a fine little border around it and the background coming right through.

Once they click this Purchase button, they are all done. Unless they didn't log in first and have an email address registered in the system. If that's the case, then they get sent to the LOG IN page where they can input their log in info and then get sent BACK to the Gift Certificate screen where they will need to re-enter the recipient info, credit card info, and re-select the value of their gift.

Easy.

Click PURCHASE GIFT CERTIFICATE and you're DONE!!

WAIT... I have to tell you this-- this ends the process. I mean completely. The Gift Card Log will have an entry with NO GIFT CARD NUMBER, NO AMOUNT, NO PURCHASER INFO but will in fact list the RECIPIENT of the zero gift. Oh, there will be no gift certificate sale in the cash drawer, it will not show up on the summary report and you will collect no money and there will be no gift.

Think that going on line and purchasing a gift certificate that leads to nothing is frustrating to the customer?

I disagree.

This is a budgeting tool.

By keeping the sale at ZERO, we prevent do-gooders wanting to spend all their money on other peoples' food from living the frivolous and irresponsible lives that they are hopelessly wasting away. We care. We reject their careless spending.

My suggestion is to send these people YOUR'E WELCOME letters! Let them know what we've done for them. If only we had a record of the purchasers we could do exactly that. I guess we could call the recipient, but there is no record of that.

Actually, if you go to the GIFT CARD register and select ISSUED for the date of the transaction, you can see a bunch of blank data fields with an order number next to it... click on that and you can see the order with the purchaser's name and phone number and a record of the unapproved credit card. So, you could call the purchaser directily and tell them YOU'RE WELCOME!

In America We Believe In Freedom

Man. It is hot around here. Almost 90 degrees today, but way humid.

Yet outside was better than inside. That's mainly 'cause inside Powerflash was busy generating gastric distress, headaches, and these sort of miniature heart attack like feelings. I am pretty sure Robin's heart attack will come first. But I will be right behind her.

So, we sent off two lists today to Scott and Benjamin over at RDS Control and eventually got a new build and new web code that should fix about a dozen or so issues and bugs from the weekend "upgrade." We'll see. We're testing tonight.

In the meantime I want to send a BIG ALERT out to any Powerflash users about to, uh, "upgrade:" The VERIFIER will WIPE OUT all apartment numbers and suite numbers. Now, I realize this may seem upsetting to other, less interesting RDS's out there, but not to us. Unlike other RDS's who have been accumulating all these APT 2's and SUITE 401's and thinking, "the more info we have, the better we are," well, we just don't operate on your little simpleton levels.

I worked all afternoon on the posters that we will be putting in each dispatch center tomorrow. Each one depicts a delivery driver walking up to a building with the fax copy of their order clearly showing an address and apartment number while a smiling dispatch fairy with a Black SHARPIE marker flies in from the heavens and smudge marks out the number of the apartment. The large caption reads, "Complete Information is Socialism."

We truly believe this. Our newfound freedom from the chains of specifics allows us to wander unencumbered; to explore. We had become dependent, call it addicted, to exacting data that led us with tunnel vision to no place other than one particular part of a building or complex. It was an addiction that kept us from seeing the beauty of the whole while we had our noses pressed to its parts. Nasty, nasty parts.

Now, when our delivery drivers radio in and say, "I'm here, now what," we can say, "Fly free little bird, fly free."

By the way, no response yet on how we're gonna get back the apartment and suite numbers.

I Feel The Earth Move

I just lost my temper. I yelled at Benjamin and said really really bad words. And I did this for a while.

It's Saturday Night, day 2 of our Powerflash 5000 "upgrade" and it appears that the GOOGLE address verifier component ran through all our addresses overnight to, well, verify them.

If the only thing it had done was kind of indicate which addresses were suspect, then we'd have no complaints. BUT THAT IS NOT AT ALL WHAT that little verifier thing did! It actually CHANGED addresses to what it thought were BETTER addresses. Can you guess what we call these changed addresses? Come on, guess! No? Alright, we call them wrong addresses.

One of our Hotels got moved a town over. A customer, nice older gentleman in fact, who has spent his entire life living in Springfield, NJ, was moved to Massachusetts. The verifier moved another Hotel from Bridgewater to Raritan, NJ. Then the verifier moved what appears to be hundreds, possibly thousands of customers out of Bridgewater NJ and into neighboring communities.

This is perhaps the greatest human exodus since the Dustbowl in the 1930's.

Verifier is a very busy man. Verifier rules with an iron fist. Verifier's moves can not be undone. No Way! Can't change things back.

I check marked a box in SETUP>COMPANY SETUP that looked like it might limit Verifier's activities, but it appears that he did all his evil last night while we slept.

Now customers are reporting that when they log in to our website no restaurants are available. They can't place orders! And they don't even know that it is because Powerflash's evil inforcer, Verifier, has moved them OUT OF THE DELIVERY AREA!

If it weren't costing me money right now, I'd be laughing much harder.

Benjamin says Scott is working on a solution right now (7pm on a Saturday). Should be fixed right quick. Oh, and they're close to a Gift Certificate system solution, too.

Breathing is Important

Today we upgraded to the new 5000 series of Powerflash for the first time. Scott loaded files last night and we woke up today to see a variety of changes.

The first thing I looked at was the website. Everything looked pretty much the same except that now when you choose BROWSE RESTAURANTS and log in, the user sees the actual opening times of the restaurants! This is a huge improvement.

However, we needed Scott to revert this page to the OLD restaurant page when we noticed that under the address of each restaurant there was a distance (e.g. 1.8 miles) followed by the words Free Delivery. Some restaurants did not display distances. This is because we had not yet "verified the addresses" in Powerflash yet. This is a simple process that is accomplished by doing the following:

Go To RESTAURANTS>RESTAURANT SETUP. Then choose a restaurant with an asterisk -- these are the restaurants with unverified addresses.

Then, looking at the address for the restaurant in the GENERAL TAB, click on VERIFY ADDRESS. You will then receive an ERROR that says address can not be verified. Good, you are doing fine!! Now, open a browser and do a google search for that restaurant. Best bet here is to type the name of the restaurant and then the town or street. When GOOGLE returns its little map and address, copy the address as GOOGLE displays it and then copy that back into Powerflash. Then click VERIFY ADDRESS again. This time you will not see an error, although you will not see anything that tells you the address is confirmed. You also will not see the asterisk go away.

This next part is important so that the work you just did will "stick." Do not exit or leave the screen just yet. You MUST click on another restaurant in your restaurant list (not sure what you should do if you only deliver for one restaurant in that area). Then CLICK BACK on the name of the restaurant you just verified the address for. Now, it is possible that you may see the red 'verify this address" link there again. If so, go back and redo the paste from browser part. If not, then click on another restaurant in your list and close the window. I like to try to close the window using my mouse with LEFT HAND, just to keep things fun. Then, when you re-open the RESTAURANTS>RESTAURANT SETUP screen you should see that the asterisk has disappeared and you have successfully VERIFIED AN ADDRESS!!

At this point I think it is very important to check two things: your breathing and your pulse. Try to make sure that both are happening, then try to get both of these things back to normal rates. Close your eyes and concentrate on slow, deep breaths. Soon you will feel better.

Once we did the address verifications we were happy because now we knew that when we keyed in customers and were placing orders that Powerflash would know which restaurants were available.

We were wrong.

See, we still want to use the ZONE information that we have been using since 1992 (since 2002 in powerflash). So, since we are not using the GOOGLE DISTANCE FEATURE, no restaurants show up available for customers with unverified addresses, and ALL restaurants show as available for customers with verified addresses.

Ok, this isn't the end of the world. At least our ONLINE customers won't encounter this because Scott reverted our online restaurant page to the old system page that uses ZONES and ZIPS. It just means that we have to make sure our CSR have memorized which restaurants are actually available to which zones.

We are practicing memorization of our restaurants and their delivery areas tonight. Tomorrow we are going to have a memory contest and the CSR that gets the most right answers wins a bottle of Advil.

Breath. Check Pulse. Upgrade to build 5094 which fixes the convenience fee issues (wasn't charging convenience fees) and fixes the RUNTIME ERROR when running the aging report.

I plan on leaving work soon, maybe by 8:30 and going home where I Tivo'd the US OPEN GOLF. I should be asleep by 9.