Thank you for your excellent questions. I will be honest this is falls squarely into Project Management and File Management. Areas of which have no single perfect solution, as yet.

From your descriptions I acknowledge 2 key areas:

1. Workload Status Quo
2. Project Updates

1. Workload Status Quo

Firstly let me say that I find it fascinating that you preserver with the repetitive and detailed task of renaming folders for what I understand, is to have a single view by which you can glance over and assess your priorities/workload/current state.

Questions: Did I summaries this correctly? Does renaming of folders, cause extra effort opening the projects from within Studio?

I acknowledge you have a number of variables that you manage:

• End date
• Client
• PO
• Doc Type
• Word count

Most of which can be accessed within the single view of the projects UI, with the added benefit that some of the variables can be part of searchable field or/with filtering supported.

I am thinking about what features are there, in our other solution portfolios that aim to help drive user’s
priorities.

At a minimum I recall:

• Dashboards, heatmap
• Dedicated Task Lists
• Extended search functionality

Question: While you may still choose to manage your projects in your established manner, do you have any thoughts on how we can better support, your reasons for wanting to manage folder names as you do, using SDL Trados Studio?

2. Project Updates

The demand for flexibility has been on the rise ever since chunking projects or as you say tranches, became normalised. While users were always able to add new files to existing projects since SDL Trados Studio 2019 we welcomed the ability to update source file(s) mid project with the feature known as “Update File”.  

However this feature only works in the scenario where the client sends you adapted/additional native source files. With this in mind I am puzzled how you manage the following statement, “Clients will send you additional files in package form, but Studio usually manages to incorporate these to the project.”

A short falling I recognise is that by using only SDL Trados Studio (no other solution product) we are unable to support incremental project files to the degree that I think you would find most ideal.

Request: Perhaps if you can clarify the steps you and your client take when it comes to package sharing/adding new files we can see if there are any long term ideals.

This brings me to your 2 specific questions. Here are my unsophysitced explanations

1. What is the mechanism by which Studio tracks projects and additions to existing projects?

There is nothing complicated about the process. What I am sure about is the following:

• When your projects are established in SDL Trados Studio, they are recorded within:
  C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Studio 20xx\Projects\projects.xml

This file gives the project view in SDL Trados Studio the list of active projects you are working on.  Much like a short cut. It relies both on location and project name as seen under ProjectFilePath

• The *.sdlproj that you speak of, reflects all the settings that fell part of the project including source file names.
• 
  While it is possible to have 2 projects with the same name in SDL Trados Studio, it’s the unique locations that will keep them separated

 Whereas any additions/imports made to a project would be based on:

• File name, as it’s not possible to add the same source file twice into the same project
• Source of import, as there are rules about package workflows

 2. In cases such as this, is it possible to "persuade" Studio to accept a package as an update to an existing project?

I already touched on this under Project Updates. For now, all I would suggest is that if needs must: Take the package, give it a zip extension.
Then literally unzip it in order to see the actual files. From there be as creative as you need to get the job done.

Looking forwrad to see how far we can progress this for yourself and others

Lydia

Thank you for your excellent questions. I will be honest this is falls squarely into Project Management and File Management. Areas of which have no single perfect solution, as yet.

From your descriptions I acknowledge 2 key areas:

1. Workload Status Quo
2. Project Updates

1. Workload Status Quo

Firstly let me say that I find it fascinating that you preserver with the repetitive and detailed task of renaming folders for what I understand, is to have a single view by which you can glance over and assess your priorities/workload/current state.

Questions: Did I summaries this correctly? Does renaming of folders, cause extra effort opening the projects from within Studio?

I acknowledge you have a number of variables that you manage:

• End date
• Client
• PO
• Doc Type
• Word count

Most of which can be accessed within the single view of the projects UI, with the added benefit that some of the variables can be part of searchable field or/with filtering supported.

I am thinking about what features are there, in our other solution portfolios that aim to help drive user’s
priorities.

At a minimum I recall:

• Dashboards, heatmap
• Dedicated Task Lists
• Extended search functionality

Question: While you may still choose to manage your projects in your established manner, do you have any thoughts on how we can better support, your reasons for wanting to manage folder names as you do, using SDL Trados Studio?

2. Project Updates

The demand for flexibility has been on the rise ever since chunking projects or as you say tranches, became normalised. While users were always able to add new files to existing projects since SDL Trados Studio 2019 we welcomed the ability to update source file(s) mid project with the feature known as “Update File”.  

However this feature only works in the scenario where the client sends you adapted/additional native source files. With this in mind I am puzzled how you manage the following statement, “Clients will send you additional files in package form, but Studio usually manages to incorporate these to the project.”

A short falling I recognise is that by using only SDL Trados Studio (no other solution product) we are unable to support incremental project files to the degree that I think you would find most ideal.

Request: Perhaps if you can clarify the steps you and your client take when it comes to package sharing/adding new files we can see if there are any long term ideals.

This brings me to your 2 specific questions. Here are my unsophysitced explanations

1. What is the mechanism by which Studio tracks projects and additions to existing projects?

There is nothing complicated about the process. What I am sure about is the following:

• When your projects are established in SDL Trados Studio, they are recorded within:
  C:\Users\[username]\Documents\Studio 20xx\Projects\projects.xml

This file gives the project view in SDL Trados Studio the list of active projects you are working on.  Much like a short cut. It relies both on location and project name as seen under ProjectFilePath

• The *.sdlproj that you speak of, reflects all the settings that fell part of the project including source file names.
• 
  While it is possible to have 2 projects with the same name in SDL Trados Studio, it’s the unique locations that will keep them separated

 Whereas any additions/imports made to a project would be based on:

• File name, as it’s not possible to add the same source file twice into the same project
• Source of import, as there are rules about package workflows

 2. In cases such as this, is it possible to "persuade" Studio to accept a package as an update to an existing project?

I already touched on this under Project Updates. For now, all I would suggest is that if needs must: Take the package, give it a zip extension.
Then literally unzip it in order to see the actual files. From there be as creative as you need to get the job done.

Looking forwrad to see how far we can progress this for yourself and others

Lydia

Useful content, thank you.

Dan

Dan Lucas I was hoping we could either find better working practices or come up with ideas on how to improve directly from within SDL Trados Studio. Or is it a case of something I mentioned above actually helped (which I doubt) . Happy to continue digging till your fully satisfied