Basic project workflow creation and management as a manager

In Smartcat, every project has at least one project manager. This user has access to project administration and can assign linguists, set deadlines, and manage project resources. You can see who has been assigned as the project manager on the Team tab of the project page.

Project participants can chat with a project manager by clicking on Send message. The person who has created a project in a corporate account automatically becomes a project manager and is included in the project manager list. Anyone who assigns linguists to the project is automatically added to the project manager list. This list can be edited at any time to add or remove project managers as needed. The managers on the list will get an assignment notification.

Project managers get other notifications about project events. Every change to the project status will generate an email notification. Notifications can be set up by selecting Notifications in the Settings option of the main menu. To eliminate irrelevant notifications, you can filter them by selecting the Projects managed by me option.

By selecting their name in the filter panel, managers or administrators can display only the projects that they are currently managing. A team manager can use this option to find projects that are unassigned and assign a manager if necessary. The team manager can also monitor projects assigned to a specific manager.

No two projects are the same, but here are the major steps most of them have in common:

Click + next to the Projects menu item and follow the wizard to create a project with the document(s) to translate. As a minimum, set a project deadline so that translators can schedule their time. If your project has several stages — e.g., translation, editing, proofreading, — you can set an individual deadline for each stage.

Choose the documents you want to assign translators to by clicking on the respective checkboxes and then click Assign tasks. If you don’t have enough specialists in your team, you can switch from the My team to the Find freelancers tab and find new translators right here in Smartcat. You can pick as many assignees as you need. After that, you’ll need to select the mode in which you want to invite them: manual or automatic, aka “Bike” or “Rocket”, respectively.

According to the manual (“Bike”) mode, assignees who have confirmed the invitation are placed on the “waiting list”. If you are ready to choose one or several of them, you drag them to the right-hand part. In the automatic (“Rocket”) mode, the first linguist who accepts the invitation will get the project.

If the document is small or the deadline is generous, it is always better to have a single linguist do the translation. In the real world, however, sometimes you need to have several people work on the same document. There are two ways to do this in Smartcat — with or without splitting the document. In the former case, you click the Split document and choose the segment ranges to assign to each translator. Each of them will only be able to edit segments in that range. The assignees will be able to see — but not edit — each other’s segments. Alternatively, you can click Save without splitting the document, so any assignee will be able to edit any segment — even if it’s already confirmed. Important! When calculating the price, Smartcat accrues the cost of segments for the first person who confirms it. In the non-split mode, an assignee can edit segments already confirmed by others, which may lead to confusion. That is why we do not recommend this approach unless you are 100% sure that all assignees understand said price calculation specifics.

As the work progresses, you can track the progress of each document on the project page. You can also see the progress of each assignee under the Team tab. If you have specified the participants’ rates in their profiles, you will also be able to see a transparent calculation of the cost of their work.

If you or assignees have any questions, you can communicate with each other via the chat feature. To do this, just click Send a message on their profile page. You can also access the chat via the main menu. You will get email notifications about all new chat messages

When the project is finished, it is important to review the result and accept it by moving the document to the "Completed" status. Once you do this, the jobs of all freelancers you found on the Smartcat Marketplace will appear in the Payments section. You can open it via the main menu. When the time to pay comes, you can mark all the payable jobs and create a single invoice for all of them. You will be able to pay it via a bank card, PayPal, or a wire transfer.