Learn how to expertly use projects, tags, categories, discussions, and announcements to define tasks and deadlines for translators as well as to track progress.

This section will guide the user on allocating tasks by project, resources, or on a string level.

Common Setup

Regardless of how one chooses to allocate tasks, there is a basic setup that is common to all three methods (allocating tasks by project, resource, or string). The common setups are described below.

Setting up Teams, collaborators, and your security model.

Create a Team:
Create a Team from the Teams Page, by following the instructions indicated here. Note: A team represents a translation team or possibly a vendor. Therefore a team can be assigned to one or multiple projects. Regardless of whether you add tasks via project, resource, or string, your security model will revolve around teams and therefore projects.
Invite Team Managers:
Each team will have at least one Team Manager who will invite translators, reviewers, and language coordinators to specific translation team(s). To invite Team Managers to a team follow the instructions indicated here.
Invite Project Maintainers:
Each project will have at least one Project Maintainer (Localization Manager) who will update and add resources to be localized. To invite Project Maintainers please follow the instructions indicated here.

Defining Tasks on a Project Level

Let's say, for example, that your organization had 3 major applications; A front-end facing Web Application, a Help Desk Centre and Marketing Materials. If each one of these applications uses a different translation vendor (or internal vendor) or is maintained by a different individual(s) then you would want to segment each application into its own project.

Follow the instructions below to properly assign tasks based on projects.

Workflow when deadlines are set on a Project Level - File Based Projects

Adding new content:
When new content is added to the project, Transifex sends an e-mail notification to users like language coordinators, reviewers, and translators. To receive notifications when existing content is modified, each user needs to enable watch notifications.

Once such a notification is received, translators can log into Transifex and use the link included in the email notification they have received so that they can start working on the newly introduced content and deliver translations.
Conveying Deadlines:
Deadlines can be conveyed via an announcement that all translators that are members of that project can see.
What Happens When Translations are 100% Complete:
When the translation for any given resource-language pair is 100% complete, a notification is sent to the Project Maintainer. The Project Maintainer has the following options to notify the review staff:
- If the Project Maintainer is also configured as a Team Manager, he can notify reviewers for a particular language. To do this, create a discussion directed to collaborators of a particular language (a message can be sent on a team or language group level).
- Notify individual reviewers. To do this, send messages to one or multiple reviewers within Transifex.
- Notify all collaborators for a particular project. To do this, create an announcement.
These announcements, messages, or discussions are received via e-mail or can be seen in the Transifex notifications window.
What Happens When Translations are 100% Reviewed:
Automate the localization process as much as you can by creating a webhook. When all of your strings have been reviewed, Transifex will ping you back (using a webhook) to let you know that you are ready to download the translations and deploy.

You will need a webserver to listen for the webhook calls, and some kind of application to react to those. Your engineers will get notified about this and they can use the web hook's response to automatically pull the completed translations from Transifex and deploy them.

Workflow when deadlines are set on a Project Level - Live Projects

Adding new content:

When new content is detected by Transifex Live, Transifex sends an e-mail notification to the project maintainers. This notification is sent 8 hours after a string is detected. The project maintainer then approves the strings that are new and ignores the strings that are no longer in use (not on any page). Once the approval process is done then watchers are notified.

For notifications to be sent for resource updates, users need to enable watch notifications. Please note that in Live, notifications are sent via e-mail within an hour of the change.

The rest of the steps are the same as the ones described in the File-based projects above.

How to Ensure Deadlines are Met on a Project Level:

Multiple tools can be used to track Translation progress and to see if deadlines are being met.

1. Progress Reports. These reports display the completion rates of projects, resources, and languages. These reports can be downloaded in .csv format and displayed in a spreadsheet where they can be easily matched up to deadlines.

2. Translation Activity Reports. These reports track the progress of individual translators.

3. The Project Dashboard can also be used for tracking progress.

4. For users of Slack, a progress report can also be seen in Slack using the following slash command: /tx stats <project_name> as explained here.

Defining Tasks on a Resource Level

To assign work on a resource level, Transifex offers the concept of a category. A user can categorize resources and assign a particular category to a resource. A localization manager can then assign a translator to a particular category. Please note that categories can also be assigned for multiple resources simultaneously via the API.

Follow the instructions below to properly assign tasks based on resources and categories.

Workflow When Deadlines are set on a Resource Level - File Based Projects

Adding new content:
When new content is added to the project, Transifex sends an e-mail notification to users like language coordinators, reviewers, and translators. To receive notifications when existing content is modified, each user needs to enable watch notifications.

Once such a notification is received, translators can log into Transifex and use the link included in the email notification they have received so that they can check if there are resources assigned to them.

A new or existing resource can be tagged with a specific category which can be anything like a product name, a feature, a translator name, etc. More than one category can be assigned to a single resource so, for example, if you want some of your resources belonging to the category core-product to be translated by Translator A then you can use the following categories to help your translator easily find the resources they need to work on.

The categories are exposed on a resource level and can be filtered by the user.
Conveying Deadlines:

Deadlines can also be conveyed as category names. Resources with a higher priority can also be prioritized as described here.

Workflow When Deadlines are set on a Resource Level - Live Projects

Differences between Live and File-Based Projects:

The only difference is in the notification process. When new content is detected by Transifex Live, Transifex sends an e-mail notification to the project maintainers. As mentioned above, this notification is sent 8 hours after a string is detected. The project maintainer then approves the strings that are new and ignores the strings that are no longer in use (not on any page). Once the approval process is done then watchers are notified.

For notifications to be sent for resource updates, users need to enable watch notifications. Please note that in Live, notifications are sent via e-mail to collaborators within an hour of the change.

How to Ensure Deadlines are Met on a Resource Level

The easiest way to track progress on a resource level is through the Transifex resources interface. Select the project from the left-hand side menu and then select resources. From the category drop-down list select the category and track the progress directly from the application itself as can be seen below:
To see the progress by language, drill down by clicking on the resource name.
Progress Reports. These reports display the completion rates of projects, resources, and languages. These reports can be downloaded in .csv format and displayed in a spreadsheet where they can be easily matched up to deadlines.
For users of Slack a progress report can also be seen in Slack using the following slash command: /tx stats <project_name> <resource_name> as explained here.

Defining Tasks on a String Level

Allocating work on a string level requires that one tags strings.

Workflow When Deadlines are set on a String Level - File Based Projects

Assigning Tasks To Translators:
Translation jobs can be assigned via tag names through the editor or API.

Example A:
- Translator A is expected to translate the first 100 strings and Translator B is expected to work on the next 100 strings. To assign these tasks to them, follow the steps below:
- Enter the editor where the strings of a single resource or all resources (to add tags to multiple strings across resources in a given project then make sure to show all resources in the editor) of the project are displayed.
- Select the first string, scroll to the 100th string, and while pressing shift, select the 100th string too. As a result, the first 100 strings will be selected at once and then you can assign a tag such as TranslatorA to all of them via editor bulk actions. Do the same for the next 100 strings assigning the tag TranslatorB instead.
Example B:
- Translator A is expected to work on strings that were added to Transifex after Aug 1st, 2020 and their keys contain the word "homepage". To properly tag these strings, you need to first apply the filters: source_updated_after:2020-08-01 and key:homepage. Once results are returned, select them all and through editor bulk actions, assign the tag TranslatorA to all these strings at once.
- Translator B is expected to work on strings that include string instructions with the text "blog post text" and have open issues. To properly tag these strings, you need first to apply the filters: instructions:'blog post text' and issue:open. Once results are returned, select them all and through editor bulk actions, assign the tag TranslatorB to all these strings at once.
To inform collaborators about what their work assignments are, after filtering the strings based on the assigned tags, a dedicated URL is generated by Transifex which can be shared through an announcement or discussion (if these tasks are referring to a specific target language) - you just need to copy the URL from the browser address bar.
Conveying Deadlines:

Deadlines can be conveyed as tags as well. For example, if the deadline for a group of strings is June 30, 2020, then bulk select the desired strings and assign a tag such as 06-30-2020.
What Happens When Translations are 100% Complete:
When translations are completed the translator can send a message to the project maintainer.

The Project Maintainer has the following options to notify the review staff:
- Notify reviewers of a particular language. To do this create a discussion directed to collaborators of a particular language(a message sent on a language group level).
- Notify individual reviewers. To do this, send messages to one or multiple reviewers within Transifex.
- Notify all collaborators for a particular project. To do this, create an announcement.
These announcements, messages, or discussions are received via e-mail or can be seen in the Transifex notifications window.

In all cases, the instructions can contain a hyperlink that includes a link to the specific tags (to do this add the tag as a filter in the translation editor and copy the URL from the browser address bar).
What Happens When Translations are 100% Reviewed:
When the reviewer completes their work, they can send a message to the project maintainer.

Workflow When Deadlines are set on a string Level - Live Projects
Differences between Live and File-Based Projects:
In addition to tagging strings through the editor directly, by using Transifex Live, developers have the option to also assign tags to individual strings directly in their HTML by following the instructions here.

How to Ensure Deadlines are Met on a String Level

The easiest way to track translation progress is by using Filters in the translation area. One can inspect the progress by using the 'tags' filter along with the 'Status' filter to find all untranslated strings that belong to a certain order, deadline, etc.
To track progress on all resources in a given project simultaneously, then make sure to select all resources before entering the editor.
A report can be built that displays the progress by tag, by using the API with the following call.