Thursday, August 5, 2010

Drop Dead and Gorgeous iPhone 4

With all the complains I'm about to do, the chance of me of changing to different phone is slim. It is simply the most entertaining phone I've had. On one hand, I cannot help but think that I'm inside the firm controlling grasp of Apple, on the other hand, it's been my best friend for all my waiting hours whether it's at a Dr's office or at an airport.

Today the worst experience I've had with iPhone happened. I've had iPhone 4 for about three weeks and it just dropped dead a day before my trip to New Orleans. I didn't even get a chance to drop the phone. There was no flickering, there was no warning. It just died. My parents would probably say "that's the best way to go". After fiddling with it for half an hour trying out different power sources, I made a reservation with the local Genius bar. Luckily it's not too far from my house and there is availability for today.

The guy at the Genius asks me, "so, what's wrong with it",  "I don't know. I just can't get it up", At the same time I'm thinking 'that's what she said'. He asked me if I use 3rd party power source. "Yes" I use this Brookstone iPhone 3 compatible speaker system which I had used with 3GS without any issue for more than 6 mos. Is that the problem? He says yes. Well, it worked just fine for my 3GS. Well, it probably use higher voltage than recommended. so Is iPhone 4 more sensitive to Voltage difference that iPhone 3? Could be. Just don't use any 3rd party charger. he said as he was setting me up with a new phone.

I mean they are just nice enough and polite enough for me to not lose it. But I'm quite disappointed that my $100 iPhone accessory is about to go obsolete. Is it so silly of me to expect all the accessories I've used for 3GS to work with 4. Some part of me wants to say "Screw you, Apple, I'm moving on". The other part of me is thinking "You're the best thing that ever happened to me even with your quirks"

Friday, July 30, 2010

SharePoint 2010 - Approval workflow displays items before they are approved.

Our company just recently installed SharePoint 2010. We had used SharePoint 2003 sporadically. I mean by that we had a calendar of people's vacation plan posted and had a bunch of documents uploaded. We've decided that things would be much better if we just can stop from people uploading bunch of documents. so the first order of business as I'm told is to implement approval workflow to a document library. This should be easy enough, I thought to myself.
1) From a document library, Click Library Tools > Library > Workflow settings > Add a Workflow





2) This took me to a workflow creation page with built-in templates. Theses are Disposition Approval, Three-state, Collect Signatures, Approval, Collect feedback. After skimming through the description given to each template, I chose Approval - SharePoint 2010. I've left every option as is except Start option. I checked







On the next step, I have assigned two approvers, then Save.





(I pondered for a sec about "Add a new stage" but I decided not to stray for the time being)

3) At this point, I went back to the document library and uploaded a document. It showed the document as In Progress of approval as I have expected. so far so good, I had exclaimed!



Next, I checked with the approvers to see if the document approval task shows up in their task list and it sure did.




As a long time "more often than should" disgruntled user of Microsoft technologies, I couldn't believe how well it was going.

4) As the final step of the testing, I logged in as an account that is neither the uploaded nor the approver expecting not to see the documents that I had just uploaded but yet to be approved. But to my dismay, it was there staring back at me.
I had searched the online high and mighty looking for clues and it all pointed me to what I had just done. It was supposed to work. No!!!!!!!

5) Days (wallowing in self pity) went by before I finally figured it out.
Library Tools> Library > Library Settings
From the Library Setting page, General Settings> Versioning settings
Content Approval > Require content approval for submitted items? Check Yes (It was no by default)





Now only the approvers and the user that uploaded can see the documents before they are approved.