Team management

Facilitate team communication

Efficient team communication | Smartcat Help Center Team communication is one of the most time-consuming tasks for project managers and one that can lead to the most errors. It generally relies on many channels that are not necessarily designed for efficient group communication. Smartcat makes it very easy for project managers to communicate with other team members and for team members to communicate with each other bettering productivity and efficiency. What are the topics generally discussed between team members, and how are they improved with Smartcat? 1. Progress updates. Project managers need to get in contact with project participants to get progress updates on a regular basis. They need this information to keep clients informed and also to make sure that projects are on track to meet promised deadlines.Smartcat reduces greatly the need for this type of communication. As shown in the article about the Workspace, progress down to the document level is tracked in real-time so there is no need for project managers to get in touch with project participants for an update. There might be a scenario when progress is stuck over a certain period, in which case, the project manager would need to take action. Thus, the Smartcat real-time tracking system also allows the project manager to react more quickly to issues as opposed to having to collect the information manually. 2. Instructions. It's no secret that project managers generally provide instructions at the beginning of a project for the entire team. The challenge is to make sure that these instructions are accessible to the team at any moment. On a typical project, the PM might send the files to be translated along with instructions via email. But that information is not centralized, making the linguist team backtrack the email to clarify potential issues. With Smartcat, project managers can add instructions at the document level in the comment section: These instructions are permanent and easily accessible by the team at any moment. Besides, when working with multilingual projects, Smartcat will replicate any comments automatically to all languages. No need to worry that one language team has not received the instructions. The language team can also query the project manager regarding these instructions and receive answers in real-time, which distributed among the entire team. 3. Queries. From time to time, linguists might have questions related to a specific segment where the project manager needs to communicate with the client to clarify the context. These types of queries can be time-consuming as the PM needs to communicate the information to the entire team, generally via email with detailed information about the context. This can also lead to errors and missed details. Like instructions can be shared at the document level, queries can be posted at the segment level by a linguist: Comments to segments are also automatically replicated to the same segment in other languages. This means that once the PM has answered the query for one language, every team member for every language will be updated at the same time. This Comments to Segment feature can also be used for communication between team members. For example, editors and translators can discuss why a segment has been translated this way improving the productivity of both. Editors can be proactive with terminology use, while translators can get quick feedback. 4. Private conversations. It is sometimes necessary for the project manager to communicate directly with one team member only. Usually, the PM will email, call, or chat with the linguist in a chat app such as WhatsApp. The downside of some of these methods is that there might not be a permanent record of the conversation (phone), or it is not easy to connect conversations with translation work in progress — email and chat. Smartcat offers a solution to these problems. Once a team member has been added to a project team, the Send message button will be added to the Team tab of the project page, next to the team member information: By clicking on the Start chat button, the PM will be taken to the Smartcat chat page where the matter can be discussed with a linguist in private. Messages are cohesively recorded one after another, so there is a limited risk of miscommunication. The chat page can also be used by other team members to communicate with each other privately. It can be accessed from the bottom of the main left Workspace menu or the top right corner of the Editor: In any of these cases, Smartcat makes team communication much easier and with fewer risks of errors or miscommunication.

Set user roles and access rights

User roles management | Smartcat Help Center Learn about the different present roles and levels of access rights for account users When adding a user to your Smartcat corporate account, you can choose a preset role for them. Each role comes with a certain level of access rights. Smartcat preset user roles LinguistResource managerProject managerAdministratorLanguage Lead 1. LinguistLinguists can only view and work with projects and documents according to tasks assigned to them. A linguist cannot edit project resources. If a glossary is connected to the project, all terms added by the Linguist have to be confirmed. 2. Resource managerIn addition to the tasks assigned to them, resource managers can work directly with translation memories and glossaries – add and edit terms, or import or export them. Like linguists, resource managers can only view projects assigned to them, without the access right to delete them or add new projects. 3. Project ManagerProject managers have more rights than resource managers. They can add new projects and work with all of the projects within the account, regardless of who a project was created by. They can also edit project settings and resources and work with account resources, like resource managers. 4. AdministratorsAdministrators, or admins, have all available rights. Only an admin can create new user groups or manage paid services and vendors. 5. Language leadThe language lead is a dedicated manager on your team, who can freely alter content for given languages. You can also create your own access level and choose custom rights for each user on your Smartcat corporate account. Creating an access level for a user Follow these instructions to specify an access level for a current or new user. “Smartcat has helped us to achieve the consistency and scalability we were looking for. It’s been a game-changer for our team at expondo, and I would recommend it to any company looking to expand their global reach.” Julia Emge Head of Translations, Expondo Explore case study Go to your Workspace Settings and choose User Access Levels from the drop-down menu. Click the Add access level button. In the window that opens, enter the access level name and click Create. Editing an access level To define access rights, select an access level in the list, then click Edit. To click Add Access Right to define which rights this access level will have. Select a right from the list and click Next. In the next window, define the scope of this right. For example, if you want to allow this user group to manage glossary content, you can define specific glossaries, glossaries of a particular client or choose certain languages in glossaries. When done, press Add. The access rights you added will appear in the list. To remove a right from the access level, click the cross next to the right in the list. To confirm the changes, hit Save. Deleting an access level To delete an access level, select it in the list. Click the Delete button and confirm.

Add clients to your Smartcat account

Client management | Smartcat Help Center Most likely, you have multiple clients for your translation services — whether you are a localization vendor or a corporate translation department. Your clients can be another corporation or a division in your own company. Smartcat lets you set clients that can be used not only to categorize linguistic assets but also to facilitate your project management workflow. For example, marking linguistic resources and a project with a client's tag automatically connects the resources associated with the client to the project right after creation. The Clients section can be found right in the main menu of your account. The first tab is where the client list is located in Smartcat. On this screenshot above, you can see two different types of clients — a record with the building icon is one that you create for storing information about a client that does not have an account in Smartcat while the other one (with the infinity symbol) indicated that a client has a corporate account and has added you as a vendor, which allows assigning projects and tasks to you right in Smartcat. To create a new client, click on Add client and fill in the form as much as you need. The only field that is obligatory is Name. The Industry field allows you to input and save an industry name that you have gotten used to. Of course, you may use it later for other clients. The Assigned manager field lets you select a teammate already added to your team via email as the manager or contact person for this particular client. The Net rate scheme field is used for specifying the scheme you set for a client that will be preset in the Statistics tab for every project of the client.You can also add contact information for each client and designate a Primary contact by clicking on Add contact. Project Tags In addition to Clients, Smartcat offers another label that can be used to organize your data — Project tags. Project tags is a simple label that can be used to tag linguistic assets and projects. Some good examples for the use of a project group label would be to tag data by office location or to tag the linguistic assets of small clients for which creating a client label might not be useful. If your company works with many law offices who send you work on an irregular basis, creating a Legal project group will let you store data related to all these clients in unique TM or terminology databases. Simply click on the Create project tag button to create a new label: Once you have added all of your current clients — and project tags where applicable — we can proceed with adding users to the account.

Add vendors

Adding vendors | Smartcat Help Center Most Smartcat corporate users are implementing a model where some projects are split between internal team members, freelancers, and other LSPs. Smartcat is making it easy to build projects around this model. Internal team members and freelancers can be added to the My Team section but now vendors can also be added to an account and assigned tasks to projects. Adding a vendor to a client’s account can be done in two different ways. If a potential vendor is already listed in the Smartcat vendor marketplace, the client can simply go to the Find a vendor tab and search for the vendor there. Once the vendor has been located, clicking on the Learn more option on the vendor card will open the profile page. There the user can click on Add as Vendor in the description section of the profile to add the vendor to the Smartcat account: The vendor will then be automatically added to the My vendor page. Once a vendor has been added, the option becomes Remove vendor allowing you to remove a vendor from the account if you don’t plan on working with that vendor again. Note: In order for a vendor to be added to the account, both accounts need to be hosted on the same server location. For example, if a client’s account is hosted on the USA server, it will not be possible to add a vendor which account is hosted on the European server. An easy solution would be for one of the parties to create another Smartcat account located on the appropriate server and link the accounts then. A vendor added to the vendor list of a client can get assigned to individual tasks in projects. See the article about Assigning tasks for more information. When a vendor is added to the My vendor list, it becomes possible to add additional information about the company: Depending on the relationship with the vendor, the client may grant greater access rights to linguistic assets. The client can also add contact information and if payments to the vendor will be made using Smartcat, the billing email is used for processing payments to the vendor corporate balance in Smartcat.

Automate project assignment to linguists

Automated linguist assignment | Smartcat Help Center Automated assignment of tasks such as editing of AI automatic translation significantly reduces the time it would usually take to search for and hire human linguists. Automate your search with Smartcat AI best matching. How does Automated Assignment work? Smartcat automatically searches for the most suitable linguists for your needs in seconds. The Smartcat Marketplace Delivery team handles any and all issues with human linguists. You can select types of linguists, including your own in-house translators, pinned freelancers, and Marketplace freelancers not saved in My Team. You can also organize them by priority. 5 simple steps to automatic task assignment At first, the feature will only be available to clients on Starter, Unite , and Enterprise Smartcat subscription plans. In the future, we'll roll it out to Free plan subscribers too. You can automate task assignment via a button called Run project. This is available for workspace admins, project managers, and users with custom roles who have access levels to create projects and hire freelancers. The Run project button is available if there is at least one task without linguist assignment. Step 1: Create a project Add your project workflow stages, source and target languages, upload files, adjust the linguistic assets, and pre-translation rules if needed. Smartcat automatically links the most suitable translation memory (TM) and sets up pre-translation rules when creating a new project. However, before activating the automated assignment feature, we recommend that the project manager verify that these settings are correct. Step 2: Activate automated assignment Once project settings are set up, you can activate automated assignment by clicking on the Run project button on the Overview page. As a reminder:The Run project button is available if there is at least one task without assignments. The button is not active when: - linguists are already invited to all tasks- project has a document where volume is not specified- project statistics are being calculated- project has one workflow stage – Automatic Translation – if translations are confirmed after pre-translation Step 3: Smartcat finds linguists in seconds Once you click the Run project button, Smartcat begins searching immediately for best-match linguists for your task at hand. When matching linguists are identified, Smartcat displays a pop-up with your project task details and a list of linguists for consideration. Target effective words : total words in all language pairs calculated after TMs are applied Estimated completion date: Smartcat automatically calculates date of task completion taking into account the word volume and the industry average per-word work completion rate. In the event that the estimated completion date exceeds your project deadline, Smartcat displays a message to inform you that the deadline will be updated in line with the estimated completion date. Total cost: total cost of all tasks. To invite identified linguists to work on your task, click Run project. Step 4: Linguists are invited and start working After clicking Run project, Smartcat sends an automatic invitation to work on your task to the top best-match linguist. If this linguist does not respond, declines, or is unavailable, Smartcat then invites up to ten other best-match linguists. Each linguist receives an email notification with the project details and the date when they can start working on it. Step 5: Manager tracks the project progress The new Overview page shows the project progress all in one place, helping you to keep track of how your translation is coming along. Once the translation is complete, you can finalize your project by clicking on the Done button in the editor. What if a linguist wasn’t found or declines the invitation? First of all, Smartcat invites one linguist per task - this is the best match linguist of all returned results. If this linguist declines the invitation or doesn’t respond, Smartcat sends a new invitation to up to 10 different linguists and the first who accepts is assigned the task. A quick recap of the AI Matching workflowSmartcat invites the top best-match linguist If the freelancer doesn’t accept the invitation within 24 hours, the invitation expires Smartcat then automatically sends another invitation to up to 10 other best-match linguists If no one accepts the invitation within 24 hours, Smartcat informs you via a message that no linguists agreed to your translation task and that the task remains unassigned Smartcat will then suggest two options: one, hire linguists by yourself or contact the Smartcat Marketplace delivery team for further assistance Additionally, a message will be sent to the Slack channel #service-delivery-team-events to inform the Smartcat team. Manage settings for suggestions on automatic project management Smartcat empowers you to manage suggestions both for automatic project management and all regular projects. You can choose from in-house linguists, pinned freelancers, and Smartcat Marketplace freelancers. To access your settings for suggestions, follow the steps below: 1. On the Home page, click Workspace settings 2. Select AI assignments in the menu dropdown list 3. Choose the type of linguists that you prefer to hire. You can also drag and drop the translator types to set a priority. Just find the best one: our default AI Matching algorithm (See more in Sourcing of linguists ) Translators invited to Team members only: * in-house translators saved in My Team in the workspace * (This option is only available on the paid plans) Favorite Marketplace translators only: pinned freelancers, i.e. Marketplace freelancers saved in My Team in the workspace Marketplace translators only: Marketplace freelancers not added to My Team Hire only unique translators: “Unique” translator refers to an individual professional human translator. With this option, you assign a different translator for each task in your project. This means that automatic assignment will not invite the same translator for different tasks belonging to the same overall translation project. Your Marketplace Delivery team is on hand to help Your Smartcat Marketplace Delivery team handles issues with automatic project management. The following events will be automatically sent to Slack channel # service-delivery-team-events:When Marketplace suppliers do not accept the invitation on timeWhen Marketplace suppliers do not start working on a task Marketplace Delivery team works on resolving issues with Marketplace linguists in order to prevent possible workflow bottlenecks and ensure the highest quality Smartcat Marketplace experience for you and your team. To ensure the highest-quality service, the Smartcat Marketplace Delivery team responds to client complaints on a case-by-case basis. How does automatic assignment work with prepayment? After clicking the Auto management button, Smartcat displays a pop-up with the project details and a list of suitable linguists. This pop-up also shows a Proceed to checkout button that will redirect you to the checkout page to close out the prepayment. If you have not yet added billing details, Smartcat will prompt you to do so before payment. Once prepayment is made, the Run project button will become available. With auto management, the prepayment logic for inviting linguists will be the same as when you invite linguists yourself. If Smartcat invites several linguists to a task – using the 🚀First who accepted mode – prepayment is calculated based on the rates of the most expensive linguist. If the total cost is less than the prepayment amount, the difference will be returned to your Smartcat balance.

How can I delete my Smartcat account?

How to delete a Smartcat account Learn how to safely and permanently delete your Smartcat account This brief article will guide you on how to go about the process of account deletion, including saving your translation assets beforehand and also ensuring that all outstanding supplier payments have been processed. To delete your account, simply contact our Support team indicating that you want to delete your account. They will answer you within one business day. Understanding the account deletion process There are two reasons why we need you to write to us first. When you delete your account, you also delete access to your balance record , as well as to your linguistic resources. As a result: Smartcat must ensure that all your suppliers have been paid before deleting your account in order to ensure fair compensation. This takes minutes, and you rest assured that your suppliers are paid fairly. Quick steps to speed up account deletion We ask that you check two things to speed up the account deletion process. 1. Download your glossaries and translation memories So you don't lose all the great work you've already done. After all, you own it.But, of course, you don't have to. It's entirely up to you, but we want to make sure that you make this decision with full awareness so you don't accidentally delete your work. 2. Make sure that you have paid all of your suppliers We can proceed with your account deletion once there are no outstanding payments due to your suppliers. Further information on deleting your account If you have more than one Smartcat account, let us know the correct email address for the one that you'd like to delete.

Organize with client and project groups in Smartcat

Client and project groups | Smartcat Help Center To streamline the project creation process, it's highly recommended using the Client and Project Group labels to tag linguistic assets and projects. Clients can be another corporation or a division in the company. The client labels can be created in the Clients tab. This will open a new page that will list clients that you have defined previously and the option to add new clients if needed. Clicking on the Add Client button opens the following page. It is possible to add many contacts for each client. Note: Your client list will display 2 different types of icons for your client: clients have been added automatically at the customer portal and clients added manually. For clients added via the portal, name and contacts cannot be edited because they were created by the customer themselves. Project Groups can also be added using one of the options in the Settings menu. The Project Groups label can be used in conjunction with client labels, for example to tag different division in a large company and keep language assets separate or to group linguistic assets of multiple companies in one single TM. For example, one LSP working for many small law firms might not create a separate TM for each client but could create a Legal project group, tag a TM and a glossary with that label and use these 2 databases for all their projects for law firms. These 2 labels are crucial for the organization of data that is so important in order to get the most of a tool like Smartcat.

Receive and evaluate tasks as a freelancer in Smartcat

Freelancer task evaluation | Smartcat Help Center When a translator receives an invitation to a project, they have the option to accept or decline the project, but in order to make that decision, they might need to get more information especially if it comes from an LSP that they have not work with before. When a task is assigned, an email will be sent to the assignees. The email will look like the following screenshot: The email contains some information like the number of words that could be used by the translators to decide. But in many cases, they might need more information. By clicking on the View Details button, it will take them to their Smartcat account where the task will appear for review. The task description includes the following elements: A. The name of the customer. Clicking on this link will display the corporate profile. B. Payment terms for the job and other related information. C. A Chat Now button to start a conversation with project manager if needed. No need to send emails or make calls to get answers quickly. D. If references files have been added to the project, they can be downloaded for review. This could give the translator some context about the job. E. Task and languages for the job F. The rate offered G. The option to Accept or Decline the job H. The deadline for each document as well as a link to preview the file in the Smartcat editor. Statistics will also be displayed, showing the number of words in the document as well as a detailed breakdown of the types of matches found. An estimation of the total payment for the task is also calculated: The option to preview the file will allow the translator to view the content in the Smartcat editor and also accept or decline the job: Before accepting the task, the translator can browse through the entire file, review matches from the translation memories and AI translation (if used). If the translator decides to accept the task, the editor will reload and work can start. If the translator declines the task, it will disappear from the My task page and will be assigned to another vendor.

Organize your Smartcat workspace

Workspace organization | Smartcat Help Center The more complicated your projects get, the bigger and more diverse your team needs to be. We created convenient and safe workspaces and virtual environments where you can share projects, linguistic assets, and other resources with your teammates. When creating your Smartcat account, we give you the option to request to join an existing workspace in your organisation or create a new one. However, you can invite colleagues or contractors, or anyone else, to work with you in Smartcat at any moment. You can easily do this by sharing a link as described in this article. Workspace users can:Create, view, and edit translations and projects,Create and manage translation memories and glossaries,Use the Smartwords in the workspace to get AI translations for freeApprove, download, and share translations,Find and assign language service providers to do the translations and post-editing,Test the translators and check translation quality manually or via Smartcat. Workspace administrators can (in addition to the user permissions):View all projects in the workspace and get information about their owners,Manage Smartcat subscription and top up Smartwords for the workspace,Invite new vendors and team members to projects. Apart from inviting just anyone: a member of your team, a colleague from a different department, a freelancer hired outside Smartcat you can hire vendors from the Smartcat Marketplace and add them to your team to collaborate on the regular basis. Benefits of using Smartcat workspacesSafety and security: you can change access permissins at any moment.Transparency and control: the workspace administrator can see all project details including task-by-task progress on one page.Flexibility: you can negotiate with freelancers and set discounted rates for you and your workspace users. 

Add team members to your Smartcat workspace

Workspace user management | Smartcat Help Center Learn the steps necessary to quickly and easily add members to your Smartcat team. On your Smartcat account, you can add as many team members as you like – Smartcat has unlimited seats meaning you have an unlimited amount of users you can add under one account or subscription plan. Members can be as followed, including information about their access rights: administrators - full access and administration, including projects, team member level of access, and payments project managers - team management, projects, linguistic resource/assets, suppliers, and payments resource managers - management of translation memories and glossarieslinguists - access to assigned tasks in the editor Adding new members From your Smartcat workspace, click on Team or on the Invite button directly that is found right on that Team shortcut. (Discover all the things you can do in the Smartcat Workspace ) Then, click Invite, which will bring you to the following screen, where you can send the invite via: email addressa link that you copy and then paste directly into your chat with that team member (perhaps on Slack, Teams, or whichever tool you use). The link remains active for 30 days.  Also, specify the role that this person should have, as mentioned earlier. As an administrator, you can change their access right at any time. Once you send it via email, you will know that it's been sent via a pop up. You can also send them an email right from Smartcat that comes pre-written for you. It explains that you want them to join to collaborate on translations with you. You can tweak this message. Managing your team members overview Once you have invited a new team member, you can manage them in your team overview, where you can see your team and linguists as well as see who has been invited and hasn't yet accepted your invite. There you can also see their activity, workload (their assigned tasks), availability based on their profile, ratings, and any notes that may have been left about the person in question. FAQ Can I invite my clients to my account to view progress? Using the User access levels features from the Settings menu, it is possible to create a new profile giving view access to a specific customer project. Simply add the client's contacts to My Team and assign them the custom profile created.

Hire a linguist at Smartcat Marketplace

How to hire a linguist at Smartcat Marketplace Find out how to easily hire a qualified linguist to assist with your translation needs. There will be times when you need a human professional to do the translation or editing for you. Smartcat hosts the industry's largest database of vetted linguists and translation agencies. There are two ways you can hire a freelancer for your task. Using Smartcat AI to hire a linguistClick the Invite in tasks button on the Overview tab. Smartcat will send the invitation to review your translation to the first linguist seleceted by the Smarcat AI based on your language pair. Our algorithm is capable of finding the best rated professional at the lowest cost for your language pair. 2. The selected linguist will accept the invitation and do the work. You'll be able to track the progress on the Translation overview page. 3. As soon as the translation is finished you'll find the invoice on the Payments page. For more information about paying freelancers via Smartcat, refer to this article. Hiring a professional from your project page 1. Go to Find Freelancers tab of the Team page and use different criteria (shown on the right side of the page) to screen freelancers. 2. Explore the list of freelancers. Use additional filters such as subject matter or pricing if needed. Click on a freelancer profile to get the detailed information such as the number of words and projects translated in Smartcat, productivity, availability, and so on. You can choose to post a job on the Smartcat board and wait for freelancers to offer their services to you or offer them a small test assignment to make sure they are competent enough for your project. 3. Invite the selected freelancer to a project by clicking the corresponding button, selecting the project and the files/segments to assign. You can also add freelancers to your team for long-term collaboration. FAQ If one of my translators is already in the Marketplace, do I have to pay them via Smartcat? If a company invites a freelancer to an account using the My Team email invitation, they can pay this freelancer outside the Smartcat system even if the freelancer is already registered on the marketplace. If tasks are completed in Smartcat and jobs are added to the Payment page, they can be deleted and payment made using previous methods.