ANC · Session Handoff

Everything we did, everything I learned, and what's left.

The job is to replace ANC's outsourced design vendor with an AI pipeline by late October. Everything here is either verified against a live system or flagged as unverified.

19 Aug 20263 calls5 things shipped21 open
Part 01

The reframe that matters most

There are three design programmes, not one. Conflating them is why the asks feel endless.

ProgrammeOwnerState
Services DesignAlexis + JoeBuilt, adoption collapsed
Sales-support DesignDaniel Croci via NataliaParked — political gate
AI DesignerCharlieThe actual goal

Wrike is not NocoDB

Two separate retirements bundled into one scope doc, which is why they blur. Wrike is the old project tracker → replaced by the Service Dashboard design module; all the notification and brief work lives there. Airtable is Nick's ops bases, the other half of that same doc. NocoDB is the operations dashboard — a separate product that was never the Wrike replacement.

Part 02

The number that governs everything

0 of 38

August design tickets created in the dashboard. All 38 were mirrors from the old tracker. Monthly dashboard-originated: 27 in April, then 1, 5, 18, and now zero.

AdoptedBuilt but dead
Designer time entries23,988Proof shares55
Content schedules3,036Print requests21
Design requests (mirrors)20,506Recurring-client templates1
CG requests633Ticket files / attachments9 / 0

Everything that helped someone do their existing job faster got adopted. Everything that asked them to change where they work did not. That is a switching-cost problem, and the switching cost was notifications — now fixed.

Part 03

What the meetings said

The design pipeline, as Charlie walked it

Client emails a request → account managers create the ticket and move assets to the storage server by hand → Alexis assigns a designer → a low-quality proof goes to the client → approve or deny with a reason → only then is the full-quality file rendered, which can run to hundreds of megabytes.

The risk sitting under all of it

The storage holding every proof and finished asset is about 55TB, under 10% free going into busy season, with no backup because the spend was declined — and leadership wants the data centre gone at roughly a quarter million a year. Anything built on top inherits that. Raise it in writing before the AI designer work starts.

The group call

Part 04

What shipped today

#WhatWhy it mattered
1Jireh's Microsoft sign-inRedirected to localhost, so he never landed. Hit every SSO user.
2Status changes by emailWas chat-only and silently skipped 99 of 189 staff.
3Notification reliabilityDelivery log, health page, daily watchdog. It can't fail quietly now.
4Brief gating at intakeKills the vague briefs that drive revision rounds.
5CRM search rankingExact-match opportunities were buried under weak-match accounts.

Also published: design.basheer.app (programme map) and requests.basheer.app (master tracker — bind-mounted, edit the file and it is live).

Two findings worth carrying forward

A fresh last_login_at does not prove someone got in — auth succeeded one line before the broken redirect, so Jireh's account looked perfectly healthy while he could not reach a page.

On the CRM search: inverting the account-first rule is wrong. Ranked purely by relevance the Rockets account falls to #14. The fix was a full-match tier above that rule, not a replacement for it.

Part 05

The checklist

Do next

01

The AI designer pipeline

The actual goal. Brief plus assets in, proof out, into the approval flow that already exists. The pieces are readier than they look — proof server connected, approval workflow live, image generation already wired. Needs to work by late October. Billed per credit.

02

Natalia — Word export comes out unbranded with a code for a filename

New and untouched. The renderer lives in the proposal engine, not the CRM. Two example files were attached to her message.

03

Alexis's four cutover items

Duplicate a request, templates per recurring client, venue-tree sidebar, day-before reminders. Templates already ship and hold exactly one record.

Open

04

Joe — link the CRM account to its venue page

A link, not copied data.

05

Joe — automated nudges + low-stock alerts

Takes the chasing off Nick and Gianni.

06

Joe — closed-won cost sheets on every win

Feeds the estimator. Wants a backfill from 2023.

07

Jireh — model comparison, side by side

Ahmad owes this. Use questions that reconcile to SQL so a wrong number is provable.

08

Jireh — recurring invite + requests channel

Ahmad owes both. Biweekly Wednesday, Natalia included.

09

Alexis — AI walkthrough call

Ahmad owes the invite. She is open to it and has not seen it.

10

Jireh — clean test items from CRM navigation

Ad Campaigns, Black Friday, Summer Sale. Some may be live — remove carefully.

11

Charlie — proof workflow upgrade, and the AWS move

His cadence, two to three months.

Blocked — needs a human decision, do not solo-build

12

LiveSync revenue convention

Jireh + Alexis + Kirsten have to agree it first.

13

The storage has no backup

Raise in writing before building on it.

14

Award dates render a day early

~6,700 records, a field-type change.

15

295 empty opportunities

242 created in one 20-minute run. Bulk destructive — needs a go-ahead.

Parked

16

Daniel's sales-support hub · marketing hub · CG, print and content parity

The first is gated by Natalia, the second paused by Jireh, the third sits behind design sign-off by Alexis's own sequencing.

Part 06

Gotchas that each cost real time