I was intending on having a quiet weekend. Lots of binge watching ready for new seasons of my favourite shows to come out this summer. But that's not what happened, I ended up coding instead ...
I got a lot of coding done this weekend, but it was unexpected!
I had a whatsapp conversation with a really good prospect I've been chatting to for the last few weeks. They'd decided to dump their existing CRM and jump into YourPCM, but they needed a few extra fields in the database and could I accommodate them ready for a data import?
"Of course I could!"
To be honest, since they mentioned the extra fields a few weeks ago when we first started talking, I had been thinking about adding them, but what the hell, let's do it now. So, I got to work on Saturday and dived into the codebase.
They wanted a job title field, and some address fields. I already had a postcode field in there (linked to Google Maps) so that was no biggie. I did have to update the edit contact popup dialog box to accommodate the extra fields, and I also changed the import and export features to use them as well.
And the final flourish was to update the search page with the postcode and the job title too, so now someone can quickly and easily find all 'directors', or everyone with a postcode that starts with 'MK'. I also added the ability to search on Firstname and Surname together as a few people had said just searching on one or the other returned lots of records instead of just the one they wanted.
"So, I was very pleased with my efforts!"
It all took an afternoon to get it working correctly and at the same time, I took the opportunity to tweak a few other things so now we have field customisation options and contact date thresholds with all the on/off flags in one popup dialog box called SETTINGS and the section details are now called MY SECTIONS and they're on their own. I am planning to add another 32 sections in the near future (massive job!), so doing this now will save me some time later on.
I retired to my big, comfy recliner chair for the evening and caught up on Star Trek Strange New Worlds as the next series is out next week. It was a good day and I enjoyed making all those tweaks, changes and additions.
However, Sunday meant I needed to work on some data for my latest subscriber. She had jumped from Zoho to YourPCM and the data she needed was split across two tables ... one for companies and one for contacts. How was I going to combine them? I thought about writing a script on YourPCM for it, but didn't want to modify the database with temporary tables.
"I asked ChatGPT how to do it!"
My AI friend told me all about data queries in Excel and once I'd got those two separate sheets into a format I could use, I linked the company ID columns in a data query and hey presto ... it all merged together quite nicely.
I then copied everything out into a new worksheet, moved a few columns around, deleted some others and formatted some phone numbers and it's now ready for import. My new subscriber wanted the contacts split into a few different sections within YourPCM.
"I just need to use the filter options in Excel and then import the contacts from there!"
So, all in all, a surprisingly productive weekend of unexpected coding, and I learned something too. I did get plenty of sleep and ate a load of scrummy food, so I'm happy. Next weekend, I'll aim for a quiet one again, though I'm sure something will come up.
Oh, the joys of running a startup SaaS business, hey?
Love, light and logic ...
STEFFI LEWIS
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Foodie, sci-fi nut, cat lover, brain aneurysm & cancer survivor, countryside dweller, SaaS entrepreneur, developer and networker.
Published my first website in 1993 for the Open University and am highly experienced with Windows Servers, SQL Server, HTML, Classic ASP, JavaScript, and CSS.
I've also worked as a professional photographer in Los Angeles, USA and been a vision mixer and producer for live television in my time.
I live in a village north of Milton Keynes with my two cats, Baggins and Gimley, and a large planted aquarium full of unruly tropical fish.
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