As Sure Start Success Manager at SalesTalk Technologies, my job is to plan, coordinate and execute the work required to ensure that onboarding a new customer is as quick and easy as possible. Our Success Plan includes receiving and tracking all of the customer’s data that must be incorporated into their SalesTalk™ instance, working with customer personnel to get the information required to configure their environment, design and create custom Talking Points and teaching customer personnel how to use the Rules Designer that drives the AI dynamic playbook and email generators. I am also responsible for creating complex forms, landing pages, and email templates to get them off to a running (Sure) Start.

As a member of the ContentLab.io team, I provide technical expertise and technical writing products for C/C++ and C# development on desktop, embedded and web environments.1) Making Your Library Work on Windows on ARM Devices, a tutorial on converting a C/C++ for Windows library, such as the famous open source library, libxml2, to run on Windows 10 on an ARM processor, with results published on GitHub as open source projects2) “PDF Integration for Enterprise Apps”, a white paper commissioned by GrapeCity, which sells a PDF generation control for C# developers

Until another full time engagement occupies my time, I continue to support clients of my old consulting company, Simple Soft Services, Inc., a. k. a., P6 Consulting. These include Nolan Bros. of Texas (since 1989), and Foam Fabricators, Inc. (since 2016), among others, and find other outlets to keep my mind and my skills sharp. They don't need much, because before I quit actively supporting them, I saw to it that all of them were as self-sufficient as possible, and all are aware that I expect to support them, on a best efforts basis, for as long as I can and they want it.

Building a data warehouse for this fantastic family-run energy supplier to homes and businesses in deregulated markets in the Northeastern US

To significantly reduce customer support burden by eliminating most requests for help with logging on, designed and created an external Web application to manage authenticating through the Salesforce OAUTH 2.0 Single Sign-on interface. The application was implemented in PHP, using the Laravel Framework for Web Artisans, with a MySQL data base for session and data storage. Total cost to client was about $50,000, and didn't require or use an LDAP directory.Technologies Used: Standard LAMP stack, Laravel Framework for Web Artisans, React/JS, Node Package Manager, Gulp, SubVersion Source Code Control, JIRA for user story maintenance, Amazon AWS for deployment

This was a short term contract for designing the next generation of the software that powers over 8,000 7-11 Stores in North America. To learn the application for which I was expected to design a more modern replacement, I maintained the existing application, working active support tickets.*Used UL Collis tool to simplify testing on EMV Card Processing systems, reducing testing time and increasing the number of border cases detected.*Simplified documentation using a camera to record PIN PAD transaction entry – saving the company time and money during the motion study portion of the assignment.Technologies Used: Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2013, and Visual C++ targeting the Windows Embedded operating system for Point of Sale hardware, VeriFone MX-915 EMV capable PIN Pad Terminal, UL Collis Tool for validating EMV card transactions.

Global Information Security Division - As part of a close-knit three-person team, developing the Trident application for capturing surveys required to meet a wide variety of regulatory and other technical requirements.Accompishments:* Using a RESTful API, Windows Forms and C# eliminated several manual steps in the loading of survey questionnaires for extremely complex surveys with many options and sub-options into the SQL server data base behind the Web application that processes the surveys. This significantly decreased the labor and error risk involved in accurately populating the data base of surveys, and was completed in two one-week sprints, costing about $10,000, and allowed the data base to be fully loaded six months before the user interface was expected to be ready for use, making the application usable that much sooner.* Using SQL Server, MSSQL and stored procedures created a change management system for software development. This system feeds an automated survey scheduler to ensure compliance, and was completed in a single sprint, costing about $5,000.* Implemented new programming practices involving Postman to shorten the time required to move from prototype to working C# code. This reduced coding time by about 25% and significantly decreased the bug count, saving the company many thousands of dollars a year in development costs, and was completed in a single sprint, costing about $5,000.Technologies Used: RESTful Web Services, Microsoft SQL Server 2012, Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2015 and 2017, and Visual C# targeting the Microsoft .NET Framework, version 4.5.2, Agile development methodologies, including daily stand-up meetings and weekly sprints.

Direct Sales Applications Group - To support classic ASP applications running against Microsoft SQL Server data bases. http://www.dataparadigm.com/#servicesAccomplishments:* Identified and corrected weaknesses in input validation routines that process credit card expiration dates, applying corrections in the form of JavaScript routines that run when the form is submitted and the SQL Server stored procedures that process the submitted forms, eliminating silent loss of critical customer data and the extra cost of supporting the affected customers, and was completed in one week (cost about $5,000).* Improved application of Bootstrap CSS styles to responsive data entry forms, yielding more consistent, polished forms that were easier for customers to read, which was completed in under one week (cost < $5,000).* Designed, then wrote new, reusable JavaScript routines to store values that correspond to the boxes in in a designated group that are checked into a hidden field before a form is submitted, expediting processing on the server end, and returning the results without reference to the values of those check boxes, making the routines easier to reuse, decreasing the cost of adding new features to meet customer requests, at a cost of less than a week’s worth of effort (cost < $5,000).* Modified SQL Server stored procedures to process the lists populated by the check box parsing JavaScript mentioned above, employing user defined functions where they made sense to make the scripts easier and cheaper to extend to cover future requirements, at a cost of less than one week of effort (cost < $5,000).Technologies Used: Classic ASP, JavaScript (lots of it, and I wrote even more), JQuery, JSON, AJAX, SQL Server Stored Procedures, of which I wrote several from scratch, and modified others

During a series of engagements that spanned over 25 years, my work afforded this privately-owned multi-location self-storage company many benefits, most of which flowed through to their tenants.* Support EMV chip card tags for cards that have them, maintaining backwards compatibility for magnetic stripe cards* Seamlessly integrated event driven payment processing application around a data base that lacks native support for events or a message pump, so that it behaves as though it has both* Support signature capture and generation of signed documents for archiving and printing, using a robust mail merge engine implemented as a VBA macro that runs when a new document is created, eliminating paper document storage requirements* Generic interface for a physical access control system which, with virtually no changes, supports access control systems from two additional vendors. Key customer benefits for about a month’s worth of work, at a cost of about $20,000: eliminate data entry errors, shorter move-in time* Data driven algorithm to implement an endless array of move-in promotion programs including free months, discounts, and other incentives to support lease-up of new properties. Key customer benefits, for about a month of architecture and development work, at a cost of about $20,000: reduced lease-up from 3 years to 1* Automated mechanism for transferring transaction files in whole, as ZIP archives, over a network. Key customer benefits, for about a week of effort, costing about $5,000: no partial batches to roll back* Designed and implemented a custom CI/CD pipeline that delivers virtually all new and upgraded software to distributed offices fully automatically. Key customer benefits, in exchange for about two weeks of effort, at a cost of about $10,000: error-free setup as part of daily operationsTechnologies Used: EMV Card Processing Specification, VB.NET, C#, C++, C, DOS Basic WIL, CASLSee Summary of Significant Accomplishments for more details.

Online recertification training for first responders.Multiple engagements of a few days eachAccomplishments: * Replaced hard coded prices with a data driven tiered pricing model. Key customer benefits of this two-day project, costing about $2,000:o Replacing the hard-coded flat pricing added tiers, not supported by the original implementation, made price changes a matter of adding or updating rows in the SQL Server table that defined the pricing tiers.o The tiered pricing scheme encouraged customers to pay for more hours up front, significantly improving cash flow.* Significantly improved stability of operations and decreased downtime by eliminating unhandled exceptions, implementing exception logging in the system event log, daily email reports of exceptions logged, and immediate email reporting of serious exceptions. These improvements were largely implemented as part of corrective action arising from reported exceptions and other incidents.* Designed and created a robust scheduled task to replace the unstable online reporting of courses completed to CECBEMS, pulling new completions to report from a queue maintained by the online training and testing application. Key customer benefits, for less than a week of work (less than $5,000):o The CECBEMS Web service replaced a manually run quarterly report with a fully automated reporting mechanism.o Customers got credit for CE hours earned that could be immediately verified with a third party, simplifying their license renewals and audits by the issuing regulatory agencies.Technologies Used: VB.NET, ASP.NET, T-SQL, SQL Server, SOAP

In addition to my computer consulting business, I oversee daily operations at My Place Massage, a clinic that was the vision of my wife Janet Taylor Gray, and me. My responsibilities included, among other things, developing and maintaining the Web site, and creating all sorts of printed material (forms, flyers, business cards, and more) for the clinic.

Central office equipment installation http://www.goodmannetworks.com/Accomplishments: * Designed and implemented a document post office that used a hosted FTP server as the post office where 70 survey teams traveling around the US submitted their reports daily. Key customer benefits of this one-month project, costing about $20,000:o The FTP store and forward system relieved the survey teams of needing to submit by a set time each day, allowing each team to submit its reports when they were ready, and permitting reports to be submitted at any time. For example, if a team covered two or more central offices in a day, each could be submitted as it was completed.o Since the FTP server was hosted by a service, we weren’t accepting FTP connections behind our firewall, or even in our DMZ.o Everyone was liberated from adhering to a strict cutoff time; reports could be collected and processed as often as needed, so that, for example, if one team was late submitting their reports, another batch could be run to import and process its report.* Designed and implemented a Sarbanes-Oxley Act inventory auditing survey collection application that ran on laptop computers used by the 70 survey teams, and the central data base that archived and summarized the surveys. Key customer benefits of this three-month project, costing about $60,000: o The laptop application accepted inputs from Symbol bar code scanners that eliminated most manual inputs of long part numbers that identified the equipment, which significantly decreased the time required to complete a survey and all but eliminated input errors.o The Microsoft Access forms and reports helped the teams to quickly, accurately verify that the inventory was complete.Technologies Used: MS Access, SQL Server, Active Directory, VBA, FTP, WIL