Update on Citizenship

Hey, Now I am an US Citizen! Preparing for the test,little more than a day; the questions were just a basic test on your knowledge on US Civics and history.

However, many things at the USCIS center, left me thinking, that it should be organized better. Like when you are waiting after submitting your documents, there no knowledge how much it will take for your time for interview or when they will call you for Oath Taking ceremony.
While the appointment mentions clearly not to come early, however, it appears more like a first-come, first-served basis. We should have a system of tokens/sign boards, to tell which case is being considered, the expected wait time.

Although, there is no mention about NOT bringing children, however, it various from Officer to Officer. The person who interviewed my wife, was pretty rude and obnoxious; there should be a clear policy on this. If infants and children are not allowed, either these should be communicated in the Appointment letter or they should ensure a Child-care is available.

When I was called for Interview, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the officer who interviewed me, was very friendly. It was altogether a different experience. Anyway, time to celebrate!

1-800-GOOG-411

Awesome. Google has come up with a free service to find /call business.
Thanks google :-)

US Citizenship Exam

I was initially under the impression that I need to go to the Library and read about US History or take a Civcs lesson something like that. It was heartening to note that in US Citizenship exam we will be asked only 96 questions that are found in the Book. Ah, both the questions and the answers are known. Do people still flunk this? I am really not sure. Most probably they do not have time to prepare (hmm... I do not intend to take more than a day to prepare.... I will find out whether this is sufficient).

There are certain questions, I do not know - why did the Pilgrims came to America? basic beliefs of the Declaration of Independence?; but most of them, are just very basic. Like...Who was the First President of United States? Who is the President of United States - come on, how many can live in a country and still not know who the chief executive is :-) ?

I also saw an interesting movie at USCIS.gov - A promise of Freedom - An introduction US History and Civics for Immigrants. There are other material available like Flash cards on the Exam.


Will update on the status later.

Designing adhoc roles

I recently came across a code which creates adhoc roles for sending Missing Timecard notifications to Supervisors.
Requirement: Every timecard has to approved by the Project Manager of the Project. If a timecard is not submitted then a notification has to be sent to the Employee and to the PM of that Project.
Issue: The code I saw created one role for every timecard submitted.
Problem is an Employee will work in various projects, may be even during the same time. There is only one approver for each project. So how can you get this resolved?
The Code I saw, creates an adhoc role for every Timecard submitted. Obviously, this will create millions of rows in wf_local_user_roles, since each role created will have at least 2 persons to notify.
My preferred solution: What I would do is either create one role for every project the Employee works for and append the Project Managers to this; or, create a PLSQL table of persons to whom the notifications has to be sent and in the approval workflow, loop till this list is exhausted.

How to disable reversal button in OIT timecard entry screen?

Requirement: To show Historical OIT timecards, but disallow Copy and Reverse Buttons.
Synopsis:
We are doing an Upgrade OTL and one of the requirement was to prevent users from Copying and/or Reversing any of the historical OIT timecards.

Steps:
1. Ensure the profile option - at responsibility level - "PA Time: Allow Reversals" in self service time is set to Yes.
2. Goto to AK Developer Responsibility
3. select Define Regions and search for PA_WEB_TIMECARD_HISTORY Region ID
4. Click the Region Items Buttions
5.a) For preventing Reversal: Uncheck Node Display checkbox for the attributes PA_WEB_REVERSE and PA_WEB_REVERSE_URL
5. b) For preventing Copying: Uncheck Node Display checkbox for the attributes PA_WEB_COPY and PA_WEB_COPY_URL
Save and Close.
This will remove the Copy and Reverse Buttons from OIT Screens.