Wednesday 11 January 2012

{Project -Open} : How to add Home Work Flow components in HomePage

We are using Project -open for managing our time-sheet and leave process. Recently we started Leave approval process. In 3.4 some part was not working in 3.5 version the Vacation Approval and Time-sheet approval process is working fine.

We wanted the home page to show the Work Flow components. Through Admin permission we were able to see it in home page but it was not visible in Team Lead, Manager, Senior Manager and Project Manager Home pages.

We need to go to Admin-> Portland Parameters and edit the permission for "Home Workflow component"
and "Home Workflow inbox" , its from last third and forth entry. Give "R" permission to Team Lead, Manager, Senior Manager and Project Manager.

Now Login from Team Lead account and on the top right hand menu you can see " Add Portlet"
 If you click on this you can see  those components, select and click "Add to Page". The selected component will be added to the Home Page.









Monday 9 January 2012

Common Run Command Shortcut Keys for Windows.

Below is the list of common Run commands used by me. It is good and it saves time.


Common Run Command Short cut Keys


Run Calculator                     calc

Run Command Prompt        cmd

Open Control Panel            control

Registry Editor                    regedit

Remote Desktop                mstsc

Telnet Client                       telnet

Networking related Run Command Short Cut Keys :

Network Connections        control netconnections, Ncpa.cpl

Internet Properties              inetcpl.cpl

Network Setup Wizard        netsetup.cpl

Computer Management        compmgmt.msc

Services                                services.msc

User Account Management        nusrmgr.cpl



Application related Run Command Short Cut Keys:

Run Firefox (if installed)        firefox

Run Internet Explorer            iexplore

Run Microsoft Word (if installed)    winword

Run Microsoft Excel (if installed)    excel

Run Microsoft Outlook (if installed)    outlook

Run Notepad                notepad

Run Wordpad                wordpad



Windows  application Specific Run Command Short Cut Keys:

Add Hardware Wizard    hdwwiz.cpl

Add/Remove Programs    appwiz.cpl

Administrative Tools    control admintools

Automatic Updates    wuaucpl.cpl

Date and Time    timedate.cpl

Display Properties    desk.cpl

Folders Properties    control folders

Shutdown Windows    shutdown

Restart Windows    shutdown -r

Log Off Windows    logoff

Task Manager    taskmgr

Windows Update Launches    wupdmgr

Keyboard Properties    control keyboard

Mouse Properties    control mouse

Windows Firewall        firewall.cpl

System Configuration Editor    sysedit

System Configuration Utility    msconfig


Folders related Run Command Short Cut Keys :

Shared Folders            fsmgmt.msc

Application Data Folder        %appdata%

Home Directory Drive        %homedrive%

Home Directory            %homepath%

Shared Home Directory        %homeshare%

Temporary Folder        %temp%

Windows Root Drive        %systemdrive%

Windows Root Directory        %windir%

Open Program Files folder    %programfiles%


Thursday 5 January 2012

What to explain to prospective employers if you were fired from your job?

Recently some employees were let go by the management because of some issues. One of them asked me "What reason should i tell when i go to the interviews" ?

 My answer was : It all depend on the interviewer and the location of the company.

You have below options :

 1) Tell them some personal reasons like your marriage, sister marriage , parents health, only son, maternity, small kid . So because of these reasons you wanted some 1-2 months of break and the company was not ready, so i resigned.

 This will be the case in which your company has given you enough time and not fired suddenly. And your relation is still good with old company.

 2) Change of Place : Lets say you were working in India. Hyderabad and searching job in India, Bangalore. Tell them something like I am planning to settle in Bangalore so resigned and now relocating/relocated to Bangalore.

 3) Change in Management: Whenever there is change in Management of the company Like XYZ bought ABC and you are employee of ABC, you can state this reason as New Management has taken decision to close your product line/ your group.

 4) Change in Company Policy/Strategy : As you company is restructuring the resources they have to let go few good individuals and you are one of them.


 5) Job Done/finished : You can tell them you were hired for some work to be done and its done.


 Its always good to be honest. You should be aware of the reason you are being fired. If it something related to above well and good no body minds that and it should be fine with new employers.

 As economy has its own dynamics it affects all.So everybody is aware of it.

 If you were fired because of low expectation/under performance , reevaluate yourself. Write your week points. Don't get frustrated. Don't quit and change profile. Don't panic. Learn from your failures and try to improve. Remember failures are only stepping stones for your goal. See any biography of any successful people, they were like you at some point of life. Just think positive and try to improve.
 For this reason you can say that, i was not good for the position so i left and i learnt this thing and if given chance i can prove myself. Even if first employer wont agree there are people who will not hesitate to give you another chance. Use it wisely and don't repeat your mistakes.

"Keep Learning , Keep sharing"

[Project-Open] : Error in Workflow

We are using Project open for quite sometime and it is useful for project management like task allocation and time sheet entries. We wanted to extend it for HR related like Leave approval process.  We were using 3.4 version and upgraded tp 3.5 version. We are using Windows XP 32 bit in Vmware.
There is one section known as Workflow which caters to these requirements. But when we upgraded the server we observed below error :

" Error executing 'dot' GraphViz: We have encountered an error executing the GraphViz external appliction to render your workflow graph. Here is the detailed error message: child process exited abnormally " 


To solve this as i got information in Project -open forum i did this:


1) The dot.bat file is present in openproject\bin folder . As per suggestion i changed below ===================================== 1. go to the <project-open install dir>/bin directory 2. edit the file dot.bat and change "w32oacs_dot.exe" into "dot.exe" ===================================== 2) Restarted server, rebooted the VMware and the actual machine.


It did not worked basically i tried changing acs-workflow path also to absolute path in c:\..


Somewhere in project-open tracker i came across one bug which mentioned installing dot net for VMware installation for 2003 server but the same error was still coming.


So thought of giving it a try and installed Dot net 3.5 SP1. And it worked !! At least the error was gone but still graph was not getting displayed. 


This time again I changed the Admin -> Parameters-> acs-workflow parameters to default one i.e. back to :


./bin/dot.bat ./servers/projop/tmp 


and everything just started working.  


I can edit/add workflow and see the graph too.


WoW !!! Relief !!!! 


But :-) This was the first step in using Workflow , now i need to see how it works and how we can make use of it.


"Keep Learning, Keep Sharing"