thingamy: screenshots

Kingsley reminded me that some screenshots of the thingamy could be appreciated...

I agree, so here goes in the form of a little demo-stab. Quirky and all, for you who'd like rounded corners, pretty reports and AJAXy outputs please read my last post :)

For now it's all about getting the basics to work, more features/functions and prettyness will follow with end-user input as we start up some skunkworks/pilots.

When preparing for a demo I try to get an idea of "what's their strategy?" - or basically what value are they supposed to focus on creating.

Having once dabbled in investment banking, M&A, here's a little off-the-top-of-my-head stab at that - in essence add knowledge about potential "targets" and their current "owners" and potential "acquirers". Then play around and match up and see if you get something that makes sense.

Then go out there with a well prepared pitch, try to get a mandate, capture costs, drive it forward etc. etc. Basically do the business.

Going for a ten minutes demo I restrict myself to a couple of flows and some simple reports just to give an idea - then show how it's done. Usually a demo like that takes me about one hour to dream up and plonk down.

First I go to the "builder" interface, the "root" of the system. Obviously a restricted area for the system users.

Here I start adding some "tags" that could add information to objects - like area, practice area, type of businesses, whatever. Not too many though as a start, more to "warm up" a slow brain in fact:

Then I pop over to the "Classes" to create the first few cookie-cutters for "objects" I'm going to use. The thinking is simple - a business is all about taking objects (parts, products, information snippets, human resources, etc.) and send them through a "sequence" (workflow) where value should be added or created - the essence of the business I think.

Here I have created a few:

The settings being like this for the "M&A idea" - here you can drag those "types" into the blue area for instant adding of properties, just change the title for it. That can be done at any time BTW, in essence changing the "database schema" at any time even when live.

Note also I'm using other classes as part of a class.

Then onto the "sequence" we'll put those "objects" through - the workflows. Here I have created a few, some of these can be used in other flows (map to and fro is easy) in order to save building time - I usually end up creating a small "library" of "operators", flows for reuse:

Here's "Create a M&A idea", including adding targets, owners and acquirers if needed. Again the colourful icons representing "instructions" can be dragged into the blue area, and/or around in it to build or change a workflow at any time.

Each instruction have quite a few settings to be set so the running of the workflow works like it was meant to do. The red hexagon is a "multiple choice" instructions with three different branches underneath, each with very different snippets of flows:

Then I "run" a few workflows to add some "data" so we can show how to "use" such:

I add a few reports-templates and give myself access to these in my Home area, like a display side-by-side of potential targets and acquirers as they exist in the system.

In this one I am using the Navigation tags to filter it down - highlighting "France" (multiple choices is allowed of course!) gave this (completely irrelevant data in here of course, just for illustration):

Also did a little "Accounting report" in the "builder" template-builder (mapping from report to actual events to give the right sums or whatever - completely opposite to usual accounting systems where account has to be chosen at data input) that looks like this:

Giving a report that looks like this:

Unless I apply some "historical browsing" onto it - note the bottom left setting.

Thingamy captures everything - changes - by whom, when, what, values, movements, absolutely everything and all from actual events. All with SOX, Basel II, Health systems requirements and whatever future regulations in mind, as well as thinking real-time + historical reports for whatever date and time might come in handy for all.

Combine some tags and historical browsing for instant display from same report of all "Unallocated costs at June 12 at 20:26 for French projects for Existing clients" - quite useful: