We have just released an update to RWS Language Cloud’s translation management capabilities and we are excited to announce the Visual Workflow Editor. 

In September 2019 we launched the Translation Management offering with five default, industry best-practice Workflow templates that enabled our users to streamline their localization processing using Language Cloud next-gen automation technology. Since then, we have been busy working on the next milestone for Workflow capabilities.

The Workflow Editor is the next major milestone for the Translation Management offering as it enables you to better model your localization processes in an easy to use, yet powerful Workflow Editor.

Key features include:

• Create Workflow templates using a Visual Workflow Editor
  • Custom task sequences
  • Looping workflows
  • Branching workflows
  • No-processing workflows
• Create Human Workflow tasks
• The ability to develop custom Automatic Workflow tasks
  
  

Visual Workflow Editor

The newly launched Workflow Editor enables you to build new Workflow Templates from scratch modelling your localization process based on Human and Automatic Tasks.
Depending on task types, Workflows can be branched or looped to support scenarios such as multiple rounds of review.
“No processing” Workflows are also now supported with the Workflow Editor, for example if you want to use a workflow to assign tasks to work on a native file, by using a sequence of Workflow tasks such as Engineering but naming them accordingly.

The user interface is very easy to use and supports drag and drop as well as the ability to flexibly Add and remove tasks from a workflow template without having to redo the whole Workflow.

Creating a new Workflow template:



Adding a task to an existing sequence:

Removing a task from a sequence:

Workflow configuration options:



Workflow Templates can be saved as draft and edited freely. Once you are happy with a workflow you can “Activate” it at which time it can be used to build Workflows to be used in live projects.


Custom Human Workflow Tasks

You can now create and name tasks freely to better reflect the naming used in your organization. The name you define is what will be visible in the User interfaces as well as Trados Studio.
When creating a new Workflow task, you can pick from a set of pre-defined Task types, which will define what is visible in the User interface and which actions can be performed.
These tasks can then be used in the Workflow Editor to build a Workflow Template.

For full support for projects with a Custom Workflow, it is recommended to upgrade to Trados Studio 2021 SR1 CU5 which was released earlier this week.
Earlier versions of Studio 2021 will not correctly display custom task names.
Studio 2019 will support the full roundtrip with Packages only.
https://gateway.sdl.com/apex/communityknowledge?articleName=Custom-workflows-task-names

Trados Studio 2021:

 

Custom Automatic Workflow Tasks

In addition to all of the above, this release also brings with it the ability to develop Custom Automatic Workflows tasks that can perform actions and processing not part of the standard Language Cloud functionality. These Workflow tasks can be developed by our Professional Services organization, Customers, or Third-Parties.
These custom developed tasks can then be deployed in your own tenant or, in the near future, be published to the Language Cloud Add-On Store for public Workflow tasks.

NOTE: The Workflow Editor is an optional Add-On to RWS Language Cloud – Translation Management, if you are interested in this functionality, please contact your RWS Account Manager for more information.

RWS rebrand

SDL Language Cloud – Translation Management has now been rebranded to RWS Language Cloud – Translation Management to reflect the integration of SDL into the RWS Group.

The main change for Language Cloud is the change of colors in the user interface which adopts a set of colors that is also more accessibility compliant than the previous set. Other than that, all the functionality you know and love has remained as before.

Remove Tracked Changes and Comments task

We have updated the "Translation & Customer Review" and "Translation & Customer Review & DTP" default Workflow Templates with a new Remove Tracked Changes and Comments task which is setup ahead of Customer Review (excluded by default):

This task when enabled will:

• Accept all tracked changes
• Accept all TQA information
• Remove all comments

The use case is providing a "clean" bilingual file for customer review without any internal information.

Public API enhancements

The Public API has been further enhanced with the following items:

• Bug fixing for export/download target files
• Ability to retrieve project tasks
• Ability to specify the target languages for individual source files when creating a project
• Get the Vendor order quote when retrieving a task
• List progress details for each task:
  • Progress total
  • Match type
  • Segments
  • Words
  • Characters
  • Tags
• Workflow phases are now sorted logically when retrieving workflows
• Ability to export a target file in BCM format
• Ability to cancel a file

The Public documentation can be found here: https://languagecloud.sdl.com/lc/api-docs/

Project files download improvement

The Project Details-> Files download buttons have now been consolidated into one, offering various download options for a nicer user experience.

Additional changes

Introduced a new file type to support MemSource XLIFF files
Multiple bug fixes and improvements around the Automated Connector functionality
Resolved project search by ID not working
Removed the % character in Characters/Words fields
Added more detail to e-mail notifications, such as Customer, Description, Languages and Task types
Resolved issues around incorrect links in e-mail notifications in some scenarios
Further improved TM performance including interactive searches
Improved the TM Maintenance module based on feedback
Improved the way project progress is being calculated and displayed
Various bug fixes and UX enhancements

We hope this post was informative and we look forward to continuing to provide you with updates to the product.

Luis Lopes
Senior Product Manager - RWS Language Cloud