The Nitty Gritty

I've been working on this React Native application for just over a week now, and I'm surprised at how much we've accomplished already. If I were to put a percentage on the first version's completion, I would say we are a little over a quarter, maybe a third of the way there. That doesn't seem like much, but this is a massive application that serves a lot of purposes. We are basically creating our own version of Salesforce for the representatives, but on a micro level. A lot of the work will be out of my hands, as in the backend work, but hopefully that can keep progressing so I can keep working on my part. In fact, today I hit a bit of a roadblock because of this. I've been working on the layout for 2 of the pages, primarily one of the pages because the first one only took a few hours to lay out. The first page is a search screen, where the representative can search through their leads with different filters associated with it. When they click on a lead, it takes them to the other page I have been working on, which is much more extensive. For the search page, the layout is pretty much a header area with a search bar and then a colored list of leads that is populated below this. It's fairly simple and there really isn't that much that goes into the layout and styling of this page. The functionality, on the other hand, is going to be a beast.

The page I've been primarily working on is the page for the individual lead. When they click on a lead from the search page, they are given this screen with all of the lead's details. There are different layouts for different screen sizes, but the primary screen layout has a left bar with a list of reminders associated with this lead, along with a container that will hold their next appointment with the lead. On the right is a section that could be one of 4 mini-pages. The first one is the lead information, like name, email, address, and phone number. There are 4 sections on the lead information screen, and the representative can press an edit button on each section and the information is exchanged with a mini form where they can edit that information. The next screen is an appointment history with that lead. This way, the lead can look back to see when any appointments were scheduled in the past or when they have upcoming appointments with that lead. On this screen, there is a way for them to add an appointment, as well. The last 2 screens are mainly set aside for notes and reminders about that lead, and they would have the option to add things on to this section as well. The only section I have left to do is the one of the notes section, the one about reminders, but I don't have a mock up for this, yet, so I can't really proceed.

The next thing I'm going to be working on in this project, I think, is the search functionality. I don't know for sure if that's where I'm headed next, but that's my best guess. I asked my cohort to get me an endpoint for this query today, but he wasn't able to get to it. I pretty much finished up refactoring my two screens in the afternoon, which left me at a dead stop. This is what I was referring to earlier. If the work on the backend isn't complete, there's not much else I can do. And, as I'm kind of a guest on this project, I can't really forge my own way. If it were my project solely or I was the one that started it, I would feel totally comfortable just starting work on something else in the project. However, it's not, so I'm at the whim of my team for the moment. There are some things I can do to kind of get set up for the API call, but I can't do that much until I know what I'm working with. At this point, I don't even really know what data is coming back to me, so I'm feeling around in the dark. The majority of what I can do while I wait involves routing, and even then I feel like I'm starting to pave my own way, which I think encroaches on his work. I hate not having anything to do, and I loved having a full plate of work for the last week with plenty of structure about what I was supposed to be doing. I knew exactly what I was supposed to build and exactly how it was supposed to look. Until I get the information I need, I'll have to keep myself busy, but I hope it doesn't take too long.

Until tomorrow!