Thursday, April 20, 2006

HR from hell...

My sister, a kindergarten teacher in Florida, just sent me this. I'm assuming it's a joke, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that some of these really are in effect in some workplaces.

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY- Company Policy Changes

Dress Code
It is advised that you come to work dressed according to your salary. If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise. If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise. If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days
We will no longer accept a doctor's statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Personal Days
Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturday & Sunday.

Bereavement Leave
This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for Dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend to the arrangements. In rare cases where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

Toilet Use
Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall door will open, and a picture will be taken. After your second offense, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the "Chronic Offenders category." Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sanctioned under the company's mental health policy.

Lunch Break
Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more, so that they can look healthy. Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure. Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that's all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience. Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, and input should be directed elsewhere.


Human Resources Manager

Show-n-Tell Thursday - Preferred views

Silly little technique that I use a lot, since we have many databases with lots of views. To allow users to set their own default view, create a shared action and add it to all views:
tmpText:="Do you want to set this as your default view?";

x:=@Prompt([YesNo]; "Set view"; tmpText);

@If(x=1; @Environment("newArtTrackDefaultView"; @Subset(@ViewTitle;-1)); @Return(""))


Then set your frame content to Computed and enter the following formula:
y:=@Environment("newArtTrackDefaultView");

@If(y="";"vwUsages";y)


Show-n-tell thursday
Show-n-tell Thursday

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Welcome back, Myron!

In a previous post I had mentioned that Harlan Coben stated he might not be writing any more Myron Bolitar books. I'm happy to report that he's changed his mind...

Promise Me sounds like it's not going to be the usual Myron, though - the descriptions make it sound like Myron has been plopped into one of Coben's standalone thrillers. Which are all very good, don't get me wrong. But Myron has a unique voice, and I hope that's carried over into this new release.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Show-n-Tell Thursday - updating folder design

Folders can be a really useful design element. The only problem is that if you allow users to create shared folders in a production database, they don't inherit design changes from the template's default folder. Here's a fairly simple way to selectively update the design of those folders, or even allow an end user to update the design (after a developer has made changes and refreshed the design of the default folder from the template.)

Create a form that contains two visible dialog list fields, folderChoices and templateFolder. Also create a hidden field called folderList and a SaveOptions field set to "0". The default value of folderList should be @Unique(folderList). folderChoices should be set up to use formula for choices, and the formula should just be the field name folderList. The default value of templateFolder could go two ways: if you have only one folder template, make the field a text field instead, and set the default value to the name of the template folder. If, as we do, you have more than one folder design that can be used as a template, leave the field as a dialog list using formula for choices, and set the default value to folderList : "(Default Folder)" where the appended value is the name of your default folder (hidden in our case.)

Add this code to your PostOpen event:


Sub Postopen(Source As Notesuidocument)
Dim s As New notessession
Dim db As notesdatabase
Dim fList As NotesItem
Dim doc As notesdocument

Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
Set doc = Source.Document
Set fList = doc.GetFirstItem("folderList")
Forall v In db.Views
If v.isfolder And v.name <> "Default Folder" And v.name <> "(Default Folder)" And Not fList.Contains(v.name) Then
Call fList.AppendToTextList(v.name)
End If
End Forall
End Sub


Create a button and put this code behind it:


Sub Click(Source As Button)
On Error Goto errhand

Dim w As New notesuiworkspace
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim folderTemplate As String
Dim doc As notesdocument
Dim fName As String

Set db = w.currentdatabase.database
Set doc = w.currentdocument.document
folderTemplate = doc.templateFolder(0)

Forall x In doc.folderChoices
fName = Replace(x, "\" , "\\") Evaluate(|@UpdateViewDesign("|& fName & |";"| & folderTemplate & |")|)
End Forall
Msgbox "Update complete"
Exit Sub
errhand:
Msgbox "error at line " & Erl & ": " & Error
Exit Sub
End Sub


Add a button or outline entry in your database navigation that creates a new document using this form. The user can then choose which folders to update, and which folder to use as the design template.

LotusScript was converted to HTML using the ls2html routine,
provided by Julian Robichaux at nsftools.com.


Show-n-Tell Thursday