maherdeeb

The offline app is a better option than a web app since the internet can sometimes be a major problem. With this app, the workers can send the invoices to the server manually later if there was no internet at the moment of recording the invoice.

Thank you very much for your feedback. This will the first important point to consider in the next release.

you are right! I used try and error with the workers. I kept in touch with them from the beginning. Besides that, I worked there during the summer break when I was a bachelor student. I have an idea of how stuff works there.

Thanks! via Email or LinkedIn

The App can be adjusted very quickly to serve similar business fields. You need only to change the products and properties in the data classes and some calculations logic. Of course, our real data is not open-sourced. I could not find similar solutions in the market so I decided to take the initiative to build one.

Thanks for your feedback! All contributions are welcome. It will be nice if you can provide some specific ideas and resources for a better design.

That is a good point! Our workers have Android phones which are at least 6 years old. Later after the test period, I am planning to provide them with a tablet specifically for running this App.

Thanks for the suggestion! I started with the Udacity course: Developing Android Apps with Kotlin. However, that was not enough. I knew exactly what I want to solve. I was facing specific problems so it was easier to google those problems and find the answers than following a course. I am not a good designer. I tried to make the design as right and as simple as the solution needs.

Your illustration about activity vs fragment is awesome. I wish I knew this before. Thank you very much!

That is great feedback! It is really helpful and I am going to consider those points next time! Thank you very much for your time and effort.

Thanks a lot! it is Bruges-Belgium beer :) I recommend it.

The problem is that the workers are not sitting in front of the computer. They are moving around inside the warehouse with the customers. For them using a phone or tablet can be the best for them. Therefore, I chose to build an App that is simple but productive.

The App is used now by our workers in the wood warehouse to replace handwriting invoices. There is no online market place here. As a manager, if I want to know how the business does, I need to call the sales team at the warehouse and have a conversation for about 15 min, and I get no data to analyze. With this App, I am now getting near real-time info about the business without interrupting the workers and the sales team. The App is not for customers. The App is similar to the App that the waitress uses at the restaurant to take orders. The App can be adjusted to fit any other similar business field.

Thanks a lot for giving it a second chance.

I think there is a misunderstanding. The App is used now by our workers in the wood warehouse to replace handwriting invoices. There is no online market place here. As a manager, if I want to know how the business does, I need to call the sales team at the warehouse and have a conversation for about 15 min, and I get no data to analyze. With this App, I am now getting near real-time info about the business without interrupting the workers and the sales team. The App is not for customers.

Thanks for your feedback. I tried to use data classes in Kotlin to remove hardcoded data from the main code. In Python, this is easy and very useful. Splitting the classes was confusing. I am sure I am going to make it better in my next App.

Motivation:

My family owns a company that sells sawn wood and plywood products. Although I am currently not engaged in its business, I am very interested in finding out how the family business does. Moreover, I would like to put data-driven options on the table to improve the company in the future. The company is still following the 19th-century best practice. The workers handwrite all invoices, and technology has no role in making decisions. Besides that, there is no clear strategy about passing experience to the next generation. I want to change that by creating a pipeline that makes transferring data, experience, and insight happened near real-time.

Design:

I am very interested in the community's feedback regarding my App and code design:

I used activities instead of fragments. I had the feeling that the fragment was not the best option because the navigation plan can be too complex. am I right?

I used a class to initiate my data classes and share them between different activities instead of using the intent to share data. Do you think my option was correct and what could be the best practice for sharing data classes between activities?

When choosing the products, I used only a single activity and used code to change the design of the activity. I thought it that can be faster than using many activities and keep the download size smaller. Does it make sense?

For more info you can check the demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MdLv3h-j-o

My background:

I am a Data Scientist, and I come from Python World. My programming experience is good enough to tackle advanced challenges especially in the case of Machine Learning and Deep Learning. As a problem solver, I enjoy utilizing all possible resources to come up with a valuable solution. I believe that DS people can perform better when they have the right communication channels with developers and stockholders. That is why I am here.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback, I would be happy to answer.

Dear all,

I appreciate your effort and your time testing the website. It was a great help to me. Your feedback is the light in the darkness. There are a lot of ideas in the pipeline. Your feedback helps me to prioritize them. Big thanks for everyone who wrote feedback here or sent it to me via email or LinkedIn. Thanks for all 9k+ tester. This is my Sunday project. Each Sunday, I am going to release a new version with a new fix or feature.

Best regards

Maher Deeb

thanks a lot for your comment. I got the error from Google App Engine as well. I am going to investigate this and solve the problem.

Sure! After I get all the questions in place, there will be no duplicate questions.

Thanks a lot for your suggestion. I agree 100% with you. I am thinking to provide hints to the users either by giving a link to the source or showing a picture of the results or both.

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that it is not user-friendly for mobile users. I will improve the UI in the future to fit small devices as well.

there is also ls -lh -a, ls -l -a -h and so on. I am going to solve this by adding an option in the future to activate the regex if the user doesn't want to memorize a single pattern. Thanks a lot for mentioning it. Regards

When I started the project, I did not have a better idea than this short video to introduce the game. I agree that this is not the best way and it is misleading. I am going to change it in the future.

:) I am going to check the logs. I think I should be able to see the problem.

Thanks a lot for your comment. I think both answers are correct. I am not sure if cd works for all systems.

Thanks for your comment. I appreciate it a lot. I will try to figure out why this happened and solve the problem.

I really thank you for giving it a try and for your comments. I should say that the user's answer could be correct in many cases. I am working on a more advanced answer normalizing feature using some regex expressions which will NOT be a default option. From my point of view, it is better to memorize one pattern of the command that does the work instead of focusing on searching how to use the command.