If you click the link because you want to learn the basics about XTRF and the rationale behind it, I guarantee that the next 5 minutes of reading this article will be worth your time.
Globalization has led to many new positions and provided these positions with new and fun contents. One answer that comes straight to my mind is — Localization! A good management system to help the workflow of a localization project is what everyone desires, and it can facilitate the communication among clients, vendors, and PMs. Luckily, I have had a chance to experience the translation management system XTRF on all three portals, and I think it is a fairly effective tool as long as each side is clear on what to do on their portal. So, here in this blog, I offered a simple guide on each portal hoping to provide a little help. (Note: this is not an exhaustive list of the functions, so there’s always more for you to explore. And welcome to provide comments and share your discoveries!!)
I RECOMMEND that you have XTRF portal on one window, and explore the functions while reading. It will be more EFFECTIVE!!!
DEFINITIONS
Starting with some definitions just in case this is the first thing you have ever read about localization. (If you are familiar enough with this industry, you can skip the definitions and jump directly to the content.)
Client = Companies that need to have their services/product localizes. For example, big corporations such as Apple.Inc, Google, Netflix, all require a large amount of localization work.
Vendor = the person/team/company that provides language services, including translation, editing, proofreading, desktop publishing(DTP), Quality Assurance(QA). Most of the time, a localization company has in-house translators, editors, proofreaders, engineers; it is also very likely that a localization company outsources the task to other freelancers when they need more manpower for a large project.
Project Managers (PM) = the person in a localization company that manages projects to organize the workflow of the project and to communicate between clients and vendors.
WHY ONE NEED XTRF?
No matter you are on the CLIENT side who desperately wants to promote a product or service to more audience with diverse cultural background, or you are a VENDOR, who desperately hopes to get more jobs or tasks to perform your wonderful master of translation/editing/proofreading skills, you want such a system that facilitate the communication, and that is XTRF. Oh, last but not the least, if you are working in a localization organization, you will 100% need something like XTRF since you are the vital pivot point between your Clients and the Vendors.
BASIC GUIDE
Project Manager Portal
On the project manager portal, you can view that on the right hand side, there are 8 tags on the right-hand side of the page, and their functions are quite straightforward. The main functions that I have used are, “quotes,” “clients,” and “vendors.”
“Quotes”: Clicking on this tab, the list of quotes that the company made will all show up; by clicking into any of them, you will see the details of the quote, including the quote itself, source and target languages, timeline of the process, assigned vendors (translators, editors, proofreaders, etc.) and contact person, as well as finance and files.
“Clients”: Clicking on this tab, the list of clients’ company names will show up; by clicking into any of them, you will see the company’s contact person, their main data and so on. One thing pretty cool about it is that the PM has the permission to edit the clients’ info, such as “potential/active”, and other features. With these features, the PM can mark on whether a client is recently in business with them or not.
“Vendors”: similar to “Clients,” the PM can browse the info of vendors and select specific person for specific job offer, and edit their status.
Generally, the features are very self-explanatory, and it provides the exact function that a PM needs.
Vendor Portal
Vendor portal has 5 tabs on the left-hand side, and each of them has pretty straight-forward function.
“Job Offer”: When a PM selected a vendor, the vendor will receive and can view the job offer by clicking this tab.
“Job”: This tab presents the jobs that has already been selected by the vendor and it shows the brief summary of the job — Job type, Language, quantity, contact person, and deadline.
“Invoice”: This function records the income of the vendor, including the paid and unpaid invoices separately.
“Profile”: The vendor can fill in his/her personal information in profile. Such as language pairs, currency, education, and working experience. *However, editing the profile needs to be approved by the system. So, changes don’t take place right away.
“Vacation”: This is a fairly cool function that records the vacation a vendor publishes. Clients will automatically know if a vendor is available when they are selected, and the timeline will record the vacation as well. It makes communication between vendors and clients/PMs much easier.
Client Portal
In the client portal, clients can customize the dashboard/home page according to their preference by clicking “Add Widget” on the upper right corner.
There are five tabs hanging on top of the page: “Dashboard”, “Quotes”, “Projects”, “Invoices” and “Reports”. Each of them takes you to the details of the function listed.
CONCLUSION
In a word, from my experience of using, the whole system is very straightforward and easy to get used to. I hope that after reading this post and hovering different tabs on XTRF pages, you have known the basics about XTRF. Again, there are still many things to explore. So please leave comments below if you have anything to share 🙂