Quick Update - November 2020

Hey all!

Sorry for the radio silence the past week or so in the community – @Brianna_Inovelli and I have been working a ton on some really labor intensive projects that will hopefully make things much easier from a user experience for you all (and future customers).

Why I’ve been MIA:
We are (still) switching over to a new ERP system (Zoho) and one of the databases that transferred over from our old one got corrupted during the transfer so we had close to 30k orders that had the wrong information in it so I am having to manually go through and re-upload the correct data. The “fun” part is that it only allows me to update 1k orders at a time and it takes about 20min per upload + the time it takes to organize the .csv file.

In addition, we are transitioning from Quickbooks to Zoho Books which has been another real treat as I have no background in accounting lol. Luckily we’re going to outsource it, but I have to at least get the correct data in there which has also been a disaster.

I plan to be back in the community to answer questions/comment/have fun next week and maybe this weekend if I’m bored.


As for Brianna – she gets to have all the fun! I want to give her a shout-out as she’s been working really hard on bringing some of her marketing ideas to life. Some really good ideas from a user experience too, which I think many will appreciate. Especially newer users.

Email Automations
All of these will be based on your customer profile you filled out when you register (ie: name, email, hub of choice, etc). So, imagine purchasing a Red Series Dimmer switch, and a Fan/Light switch and you have a Hubitat hub. We’ll send you relevant (helpful) emails based on what you’ve purchased – more on that below:

  • Abandoned Cart: We’ll get ya one way or another – don’t abandon that poor cart of yours, we’ll send you an email letting you know lol!
  • Purchase Email: Using the example above (ie: purchased a Red Series Dimmer, Fan/Light switch and you have Hubitat) we’ll send you a confirmation email that shows what you’ve ordered, and in addition to that, we’ll show you use cases on what you can do with those products
  • Shipped Email: This will let you know when your order has shipped as well as give you setup instructions and any other resources you’ll need to setup your products (not generic instructions, but instructions for your specific hub)
  • Delivered Email: This will let you know when your order is delivered and will also have instructions and any other relevant information for the products and your hub

Here is an example:

Out/In Stock & Low Inventory Notifications
Another cool thing she’s been working on is an easy way to sign up to, “follow” a product (ie: when it’s running low on inventory, is out of stock, is back in stock, etc). We have kind of a broken way of doing it now and we understand that, so she’s making it more automated.

There will be a clickable button on any out of stock page that you can click to sign up to be notified when that product is back in stock (below are two examples – the first one is the button on the page, and the second one is the form you’ll fill out – I know they’re separate products right now lol).

Then, using our fancy new ERP system, once product is scanned in to one of our warehouses, it will send out an email to you (rather than us having to remember to activate this email).

Rewards Program
If that’s not enough, Brianna is also taking on the Rewards Program. This has been a challenge and we had to switch companies halfway through (no comment). But this will be launched mid-late December.


So, thanks for your patience as I’ve been MIA in the forums over the past week or so and I plan on getting back in and answering as much as I can early next week.

Now back to Excel and Zoho.

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I will agree that I’ve gotten to manage the fun projects… that’s for sure. That being said I am really excited to make finding relevant information not only easy for you but in a way where you don’t need to go searching around for install information when you get a product delivered, instead you’ll have everything you need right in your inbox!

The automated emails should begin testing sometime next week and I’m very excited to see what you all think! I always get the best ideas from this community so if you have any suggestions that you think would benefit our customers during their shopping and purchasing timelines I’d love to know.

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as someone who’s in the middle of doing a SAP go-live remotely for a time zone 8 hours away, I feel your pain. keep up the good fight!

It’s brutal lol – you to brotha!

NOTE: Especially when your background is in Marketing and not Operations or Coding haha

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Fun times all around it seems! Best of luck on everything.

I too feel your pain… Not sure how I went from a sparky and validation automation engineer to managing lab finances… Must have been those nifty Excel spreadsheets as an engineer that did me in… Darn Microsoft!

All said and done though, as a customer, I’ve really seen a huge amount of growth from your team this year! So keep doin’ what you’re doing…

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