Studies - cæstudy

no. 2303-01

Payment Processor to CRM Integration

Completed

During a CRM platform migration, a Canadian charity discovered that recurring donations were not flowing properly from PayPal and CanadaHelps to their new NationBuilder platform.

We delivered a purpose-built CLI tool that restored the flow of thousands of recurring donations, eliminating manual data entry and enabling complete constituent relationship management.

The tool evolved into cæstudy dflow. With its ability to address client/tenant specific business rules through a plugin architecture, it is easily deployable to any organization requiring NationBuilder integration with their external payment processor(s).

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Payments CRM Integration NationBuilder Paypal CanadaHelps Source Available

no. 2406-01

Strategic Ecosystem Positioning in Product Development

PUBLISHED

It's now become a matter of course for developers of productivity tools and utilities to have their products, with ecosystem-first design guidelines, at risk of being "sherlocked" by the ecosystem proprietor's own products.

This is a story of Apple's WWDC2024 announcement about their AI integration strategy and how I thought it was an inevitability that it would, going forward, render entire categories of third-party products "obsolete".

So I thought. Today's reality may be slightly divergent. But I digress. Read on.

Read Blog Post

Product Dev AI Product LLMS Ecosystem Strategy Medium

no. 2501-01

Front-end for CRM workflow extensions

BETA

The introduction of cæstudy dflow revealed a broader need to enhance staff productivity, provide well-defined but extensible processes, and develop more sophisticated engagement tools.

Built on the principle of modular configuration, cæstudy cflow provides a platform to extend CRM workflows and making sure that the focus remains on seamless operation of your organization.

Inquire about beta access.

Request Beta Access

Web Dev Fullstack NationBuilder Oauth Component Reuse Source Available

no. 2501-02

Product Extension - Tax Receipting

PLANNING

A cflow module that provides Nationbuilder customers with a front-end for branded, easily configurable, tax-receipt generation.

Through a browser-based interface users can:

- configure branding and layout
- define and configure criteria for tax-receiptable donation/donor list(s)
- integrate with preferred e-mailer
- track and audit sending and receipt

no. 2503-01

When Poor Predictions Meet Unexpected Reality: A Better CLI?!

In Progress

A retrospective on how the evolution of initial AI products, like chatgpt, have followed and/or diverged from my initial take. While Apple's ecosystem approach seemed inevitable, the real innovation came from developer-focused CLI tools that delivered the "always there, in context" AI assistant vision more effectively. (Even if not currently used that way)

This is the followup to my Medium post about experimenting with the development of an LLM-powered AI product.

It examines the role of products like Claude Code and Gemini CLI; how they, as agents, currently address the issue of AI access to OS core functionality; and the differences between them and MCPs.

Draft in Review

Product Dev AI Product Product Strategy Early Adopter Tax 25Q4

no. 2510-01

Product Extension - Business Intelligence

POC

Have you ever wanted to "Ask Your Data" questions about how your organization or business is performing? If it had any insights?

This is a cflow module originally designed to simply analyze and report on customer/constituent engagement and donations. It has evolved into product that more flexibly and dynamically queries the entire CRM datastore for more sophisticated insights. It includes configurable analysis and reports but users can also create complex structured queries using natural language. And while it is common to see these services powered by AI LLMs in the cloud, this one aims to be light-weight and self-hosted.

Enables strategy, informs strategic planning process:
- identifies constituent engagement trends
- identifies key constituent segments
- provides insights and highlights potential opportunities

Private Repo Access

Business Intelligence AI Product Product Dev 26Q1