Our team had another week of great progress! After last week we had created the virtual column with all of the correct fields included. However, it required extra steps for the clerk to access it and had a lot of extra space at the end of the screen (the opposite of our original issue of not being able to fit all of the necessary fields!). This week we focused on optimizing this solution for both sets of stakeholders: Kokoa Kamili (specifically the clerks) and the cocoa sellers who will receive the receipt. First, we worked with the formatting of the virtual column, clearly demarcating sections on the receipt. This change in format was largely for the cocoa sellers who will be the ones actually reading the receipt - we’re hoping it will now be even easier to read and understand. Below you can see the screenshot that will be printed! The other major change we made this week was to the method of accessing the virtual column. To optimize efficiency we changed the app to include the receipt information on the last tab that the user accesses while inputting the transaction information. This tab is already part of the existing workflow for documenting each transaction; thus, the extra time and effort for printing the receipt is minimized, which is very important in order to not slow Kokoa Kamili’s cocoa transaction rate. Furthermore, we are very pleased because this will also minimize the number of new steps that the clerks will have to learn in order to implement the receipt printing.
Overall, we are nearing the completion of our project and we are all getting very excited to put it into motion with Kokoa Kamili! Our next steps will be stress testing the receipt printing process and working on the documentation of our solution so that Kokoa Kamili can have a smooth transition.
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This week, we’ve made a lot of headway in producing the screen display needed for printing a receipt using a screenshot. We met with Brian and Simran and Landan, and appsheet consultant, to get some advice on the best way to proceed. Though initially stumped as well by the exporting option, he did give us some useful advice. Landan recommended concatenating all the fields we are interested in, into 1 new column to save space and give us some control over whitespace and formatting. It’s not an ideal solution, but flexible enough to accommodate new fields in the future, and the removal of any fields that may not be needed as the company changes. Now, when we go to view recent transactions we can scroll to the bottom of a given receipt to see all the relevant information to be printed for the farmer. This virtual column will also allow us to make fields bold if the printer has visibility issues, and is easily editable if additional fields need to be added in the future. Details on this process are below. From here, we will refine how/when this virtual column is displayed based on feedback from Brian and Simran, stress test the printers, and make sure everything still works without an internet connection. This screenshot shows how we can configure this column, and what the result looks like in the app, via the “emulator” - which is simply the screen displayed on the right hand side. This is what the formula looks like:
The team has hit the ground running this quarter and is excited to apply the final touches to the screenshot solution in order to get it ready to ship. During the first week back, we met with our community partners in order to receive feedback on our current prototype and discuss expectations. We also met as a team a few times to debrief after our partner calls and give each other constructive feedback, which we found very helpful. During the second week, we had a call with our community partners and an appsheet developer to discuss improvements to our current solution and potential alternatives. Overall, the appsheet developer agreed that our solution was one of the only options available to us in an offline setting. He also gave us the idea of finding transaction information on the cache of the device we are using - an idea that we will research after completing the screenshot solution. This is a picture from an appsheet work session where we dedicated time to developing a
‘view’ containing all transaction information necessary on a receipt. We will continue to work on this with our community partners during the next week(s). Overall the team is very excited to continue working with our community partners and finish developing our solution! |
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April 2021
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