Final step in creating your Project is to pick the vendors for your project, and send them a nice little e-mail that there is a new task waiting for them.
Prerequisites, obviously:
- you have to have a Project Group created
- you have to have a Project created
- you most certainly want (no need to, but you will want) to have your Client Numbers and Dates set
Now it's time to unleash your Project Management skills and say, organize a translation and editing of the Project you created.
There are two ways to add vendors to your project:
1) click on the beautiful Add Vendor button under the "small icons" buttons in the "info box" (if you don't know what's the Info Box, check our previous article called: "Creating your first Project in miniTPMS")
2) click on the even more beautiful (and green) + sign on the Vendor table which you can find just under the Info Box
Lo and behold, a pop-up will be shown:
In this popup you will chose your Vendor, set the numbers (if you want to split the task between 11 people you can do so, just give something to everyone to work with), set the dates, set a Flat Rate if you really need to (usually you don't) and in worst case you can also change the Unit (when you get paid by words, but your Vendor want's to get paid in Characters, or Lines, or Pages, or Lollypops... )
Let's check a little the togglers here:
Filter by Services - if set to "off" (gray), all the vendors in this language pair will be shown. If set to "on" (green) then only vendors who do this task will be shown - vendors who are not translating but only reviewing will be filtered out
Filter by Industry - if set to "on" (green) and this task is in Cutlery, but your vendor only works in Mechanical Engineering and Thorium reactors, then this vendor won't be on the list. Those who work in Cutlery, on the other hand, will be displayd.
Show tags filter - opens the tags filter and gives you the opportunity to filter your vendors by tags. I know, it's bad to "tag" people, but sometimes you have to, for example, if you have people who only work on weekends. Or those who are willing to do the graveyard shift (after 8PM) etc, you can mark them with tags (go nuts, it's totally up to you whom you will tag with what)
Start / Due Date - stating the obvious here but put Start date to the date the vendor should (or already did) start the job, and Due Date is the one you will set up knowing that by that time you need this particular task back. If this is a part of a multi-step workflow, you will want to give some time to Editors as well, or Proofreaders, DTP people, etc. so have this in mind (again: working on automation, yes, will be announced later)
End Date/Task Complete - the date when your vendor finished the task, do NOT set this when you are first setting the project and before your colleguage really finished his, shes, its part.
Clickity click on them SAVE button.
Your colleague will appear on the table (and if you chose 5 more, all 6 of them will appear on the same table):
Finally, one step left only... send a notification that there is a task waiting for them.
See you in (the funny papers, and in) the next article