A mom’s introduction to Knack and a volunteer app idea

My mom was kind of our adviser and actually introduced using Knack to us as she used it before for her, company and stuff.

Yeah. So one of the one of the ideas that they had was keeping track having an app for volunteer hours because every high school student needs that for whether that’s for college or for the NHS or whatever that might be And and church. Right?

But part of that is not just the hours that you’re recording, but also finding the volunteer opportunities.

Using Knack for our family business inventory

And at that point, my husband and I own our own business that’s, supply manufacturing equipment that, goes to dairy farmers. And I have used Knack as we move buildings. We’re moving all of our inventory. So we ended up I ended up building a database for in Knack for our inventory because not everybody had access to QuickBooks.

And as we’re moving buildings, we needed something that was really flexible that I could give access to anybody and everybody. It wasn’t connected to our actual financial numbers. And so I knew that that was going to be it was gonna solve one of our problems, which was the time. Right?

Helping students learn datasets and relationships

That that was going to help us make sure that they were able to develop an app. The other reason was, at that point, they haven’t really worked with datasets. So from, personal development for them as coders and just learning about software was to be able to work with a database and understand the relationships and figure that out, then I thought that that would be absolutely perfect for that.

Knack makes it easier than coding from scratch

I think it was just easy and wonderful to use that. These these, things were already created with programming languages in Python, JavaScript, and a whole bunch of other languages. You have to create it from scratch. Sure.

Some of them are already, like, implemented. Like, when you say print this, they go, oh, yeah. I know what print is. You just had to tell me what to do with that.

It’s kind of what the heck was, but it was still more advanced than that. I didn’t have to build exactly everything from scratch.

Calendar, colors, roles, and login—already there

So, actually, the first thing we ended up doing because we wanted a calendar. The main calendar was already set up. It was perfect. We didn’t have to work on it, like, ever.

All it was was just we have a calendar. Alright? When we create a service opportunity, that’s the calendar. Perfect.

We want this color. We want this color. We want this color. That was great.

Another thing is if, you know, if statements or something, there would also that within those pages as there would be rules. So you could say this account is not a volunteer. They can’t access this page. If this person doesn’t have an account, then they can’t access this page.

Yeah.

That would look nice too.

So it made the the calendar was a huge help. Oh, yeah. The criticizing or or the the ability to adjust the user roles. Right? Yeah.

And There was also the login and sign up page that was already set up. All you had to do is add some roles to it.

From garage startup to warehouse—and how Knack helped us move

Our company is like the typical, American dream story. We literally started in our garage and, moved into a slightly bigger facility. And then last year last year two years ago, we actually bought a big building. But at that point, we already had inventory.

We were keeping it in QuickBooks desktop, which is very limited in how many people can actually get into it. And we needed to move all of our inventory into the new facility that was a blank slate. So there were no bins. There there were no shelves.

Nothing. We were putting all of that together from scratch. So what we needed was and and then with the new facility, came a few new folks that were not familiar with the parts the way they look. And so what we ended up doing, was I built the database in Knack, based off of one of the prebuilt inventory management apps.

Customizing the inventory template and tagging images

I think you actually have a template for that as well. What is that? What is that? So we started with that, customized that to what we needed, and what we’re able to do was track which parts we moved over.

So it was a full import data then from QuickBooks through a CSV file, and then, adding the the bins that we had in the old facility to moving it into the new facility. But, actually, I think that was you and your sister ended up doing all the image tagging. So we’re able to add that field for the images, which, of course, doesn’t exist in QuickBooks. And that helped us transfer the the visual information from, the employees that were up north that were familiar with it, but then moving it to the new employees that were down south that didn’t have an idea of what the part even looked like.

Adding builds and assemblies for visual learning

And then the other bit that we ended up doing with it was certain parts needed to have built to them. And, again, with new people in the new facility, that was not knowledge that was just in their head, so we needed a way to explain them. And so we were able to add the build module to that particular database so that they could actually click on it and see which parts constituted the new assembly.

Using Knack for training and documentation

Is that, like, almost like an online training and documentation type use case or proceeding? In a way, that’s what it would be. Yeah. Because you could, you could say, okay. This customer just asked for part ADC, and they could look it up in Knack and go, okay. Tell me what is all the stuff that goes into part a b c.

Next up: Tracking production and operators on machines

What we’re looking for is being able to track the production in a better way. So how many hours the machines are operating, how many hours the operators are on them, how quickly they choose which operator is better on what machine. Yep. And that’s definitely my next case for Knack and being able to track that and make it really easier on the guys on the production floor because because they are paper and pencil people.

Right? I can tell you the the Knack. I get a note clipboard that’s just full of papers with, oh, I sat down at eight and I checked out at ten and and it’s a whole sheet for just one date. And that’s just enormous data entry.

The benefit of web-based apps for older laptops

So being able to bring that to an iPad or an older laptop even because it’s web based, and I don’t have to rely on super especially with Apples because that’s what we use.

Once the operating system is old, you can download new apps. Right? They just won’t work. And so having the database based online where we’re just interfacing with Google Chrome or something like that, It allows me to use my older laptops that I can’t use for the salespeople because it doesn’t work for daylight anymore, and I can make a use of those on the production floor.

Maintenance reminders and long-term productivity goals

What I can see it doing in the long term is really the the productivity assessment of the putting in the maintenance, timelines for the machines. Right? Because now I’m tracking how many hours the machine is running for my production purposes, but that could be sending me emails and notifications that it need oils and bearings and the preventative maintenance of the production floor itself.

Yeah.

Future goals: Career in software and building more apps

I would like to go into the career of a job being a software developer. Again, I’m not at this moment. I’m not for sure what I’ve used Mac for specifically in the future, but I think I would probably end up using Mac again as it was nice and easy, especially with a time limit.

We will obviously try and, incorporate, our Knack web based app with the, adding volunteer hours for Knack year. But besides that, I’m not for sure what kind of ideas we have for more apps and stuff.

A well-rounded learning experience for the student team

I think from my perspective, it, gives her a more rounded experience. Right? So not only I can program an app, but I can also work in an environment that was pretty fine by somebody else, and I can work within that. And, you know, managing data, period.

Like, that’s the name of the game, isn’t it? Yeah. I like understanding that, no. I didn’t just program a little thing in Python, but I’ve also worked with datasets, and I can organize them.

And I understand the relationships within the database and how you organize it. I think that that to me is the the huge value for the student team and what they were able to get out of this project.