Client feedback raised concerns about extreme deviation percentages (e.g., 33,853%) and many exact 100% entries that made the daily margin anomaly report difficult to interpret. Investigation revealed three compounding issues: margin distortion when revenue is $0, small-baseline amplification, and zero-to-nonzero hardcoding.
Implemented all seven recommended enhancements from V2, now on V3:
1. Threshold should be relative to job size: Bob requested the $500 threshold be converted to a percentage of total job amount/budget rather than a flat dollar amount — “$500 might be a lot on a $1,000 job, but it won’t be anything on a $500,000 job.” Not yet implemented — current V3 uses flat $500.
Proposed approach: Instead of a flat $500 cutoff for all jobs, the system would calculate the threshold as a percentage of each job’s revenue. For example, a $10,000 job might need a $500 swing to trigger an alert, but a $500,000 job would need a $25,000 swing. Small jobs would still have a minimum floor (e.g., $200) so they don’t get lost. The revenue data is already stored — no database changes needed.
2. Show filtered items instead of hiding them: Bob asked to add a column showing sub-threshold amounts rather than filtering them out completely — “could we add a column that shows what it was or what it would have been rather than filtering it out totally?” Not yet implemented.
Proposed approach: Instead of hiding items that fall below the threshold, we’d add a “Below Threshold” section at the bottom of the email in gray. Same information, just visually separated so you can see what was filtered and why, without it cluttering the main alert sections.
3. Email recipient inventory: Bob requested the anomaly emails go to Bob, Jonathan, and Mal only — designers/salespeople should not receive them. Diego to take inventory of where emails are currently being sent.
Decision: Needs Changes
Managers needed a more interactive time tracking report with unified COB + client hours view, collapsible row groups for drill-down by department, most-recent-week-first ordering, and one tab per month. Jonathan also requested: (1) include all events worked on during each week (not just current month events), (2) separate COB usage tracking, and (3) event date column formatted as YYYYMMDD.
Built new standalone Lambda (time-entry-by-resource-v2) now on V3, replacing XLSX-based report with native Google Sheets:
Jonathan: Regarding your request to include events beyond the current month — the Sched vs Actual report will remain scoped to its core purpose (monthly comparison). However, we are proposing a separate trended view enhancement (see Discussion section below) to address the need for cross-month visibility.
Decision: Approved with Changes
Automated reminder sequence for leads stuck in the Nutshell “Inquiry” stage. Approved by Mal and Bob on Feb 12, 2026. Presented and re-confirmed in March 6 meeting.
Lambda (nutshell-leads-followup-automation) built and tested end-to-end against Nutshell Sandbox. Updated schedule:
Pending: Emails must be sent from analytics@hmrdesigns.com (not analytics@datastudios.ai). Need to enable this email address as a sender. Also need to notify designers before first production run, as all existing 30+ day Inquiry leads will be affected.
Bob: Confirm Diego has full admin rights in the HMR email system to enable analytics@hmrdesigns.com as a sender address. Also: approve go-live timing so we can notify designers before the first production run.
Decision: Approved — go-live unblocked
Mal’s team audited which Direct templates are actively used. Out of 71 templates, only 9 are actively used by the sales team. Need to remove unused templates, add 4 missing ones, and delete test events from Direct.
Impact analysis complete. Sent Mal a review spreadsheet showing:
Awaiting Mal’s decision on how to handle the 222 affected events. Haziq is taking over follow-up on this item.
Mal: Please review the impact spreadsheet and let us know how to handle events in the red section — map to a specific new template, leave blank, or another approach?
Nutshell is deprecating their current API protocol with an April deadline. All existing HMR Nutshell integrations (sync-events Lambda, inquiry auto-dead, and any other API calls) must be migrated to the new protocol before the cutoff. Diego committed to staying on top of this in the March 6 meeting.
Decision: Acknowledged — in progress
Team agreed in March 6 meeting to consider canceling Tableau subscriptions in favor of AI-driven reports leveraging AWS Lambda infrastructure. All previous Tableau reports have been replaced by Google Sheets and email-based reports.
Bob/Jonathan: Confirm final decision on canceling Tableau. Diego to identify renewal dates and stop auto-renewals.
Decision: Approved — moving forward
Nutshell’s automated email notifications only go to the Assignee (designer). Custom logic is needed so that both the Designer and their associated Producer(s) receive notification emails. Mal is requesting a call with designers to set up Gmail forwarding rules as an interim solution. Call being scheduled for next week (Mon/Tue morning). Dependency: start custom build after HD-83 is completed.
Mal: Confirm call time for next week (Mon or Tue morning) to walk designers through Gmail forwarding setup. Note: producers do not have access to designers’ Nutshell accounts.
The custom projects email report is displaying “Mari Noga” incorrectly due to a data issue in Redshift (source: iVerticle).
Haziq applied a temporary patch so the name displays correctly in the report. Diego has contacted iVerticle to fix the issue at the source in Redshift for a permanent resolution.
Bob asked in the March 6 meeting whether we had checked with Nutshell (Rachel) about adding a custom field. Diego committed to reaching out to Rachel to explore the feasibility. Status of this follow-up needs to be confirmed.
Diego: Confirm status of outreach to Rachel at Nutshell regarding custom field availability.
Decision: Closed — Not possible
Jonathan noted that the team works on events beyond the current month and requested a full population for each week across all events. After review, the core Sched vs Actual report will remain monthly to maintain its purpose. However, we are proposing a trended view enhancement — a separate report or view showing schedule vs actual trends over time, giving managers cross-month visibility into resource allocation patterns.
Jonathan/Bob: Diego will send a proposal for the trended view via email. Please review and provide feedback on whether this addresses the cross-month visibility need.