WorldServer News

Important Announcement regarding the future of SDL Language Technologies

Ray Hopley — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 09:12:00 GMT

I wanted to make sure that you all saw the email that went out this week to existing SDL WorldServer customers. As you will see, we’ve announced the availability of a new translation management capability in SDL ...(read more)

Hosted Upgrade, Our Experience

Amy Ferguson — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 14:45:00 GMT

We managed to get some time with a Global Technology Program Manager working for a company which manufactures and markets equipment and services for the mining industry globally. Having been in the role for 3 years and taking responsibility for SDL WorldServer (hosted by SDL), this customer shares his thoughts and experiences around upgrading.

What are your initial thoughts when you receive new release notifications?

I check out the bullet points listed to see what’s changed, what new functionally is available and whether this could improve process/usability for our end users.

What is your decision making process when considering upgrade? For example scheduling/timing aspect, resources, existing projects, available resources etc.

There are multiple considerations to whether we decide to upgrade or not. A major factor is cost, it helps that SDL upgrades hosted systems at no cost. Next is understanding what issues upgrading will fix for our translators and end users. In addition, I have to factor in the best time to upgrade to avoid any major disruption to their work and my company. The final consideration is the ease with which we can upgrade. Our system is not heavily customized and SDL takes responsibility for the upgrade process and core product so it is fairly simple.

Typically what internal and external stakeholder(s) are involved during the upgrade process?

The chain of stakeholders in my organization is quite streamlined. After completing due diligence, I then only need to get approval from my line manager. Typically this involves confirming my decision to upgrade, and sharing the upgrade schedule.

Once the upgrade is scheduled what further preparation do you undertake?

There is not much further preparation required. I work with SDL to finalize the upgrade details, start and end times, and date. Following which, a notification is dispatched to the translators, my line manager, all system users, and the help desk for sharing details of when the system will be offline.

What are your biggest concerns whilst upgrading?

There are always concerns when upgrading a major system. First and foremost, regression, breaking something that was not broken before. Secondly, extended downtime… not being able the use the system due to an unforeseen issue that arises. In both instances, SDL assures me that the core product is tested for this and if a critical issue were to arise, the system would be rolled back. Thirdly, content loss. I put content loss last because while it’s huge concern, backups and snapshots are taken of the DB and VM prior to upgrade so there is a contingency plan for data retrieval, the rollback.

Have these concerns changed over time?

Not majorly - these three are pretty much consistent concerns.

What are your biggest internal challenges during upgrade? For example customers often tell us of users who attempt to access the systems during an upgrade …

We don’t have too many challenges. I hand over to SDL to perform the upgrade and to my knowledge they generally run fairly smoothly. Where a user tries to access WS, they will not be able to. Generally the user will then contact either me, or our help desk, who confirms that the system is offline for upgrade. Our users span globally, so it is unavoidable for some users not to be affected by downtime.

When do you consider the upgrade as being completed?

We do not consider the upgrade complete until we have performed our own internal validations and the system appears stable. This can take a couple of days.

What validations would you recommend undertaking post upgrade?

Post upgrade, we test everything. We validate daily tasks and those lesser tasks that may not seem as important. We try to navigate the entire system, run test projects to ensure all functionality is working. I would recommend this as a worthwhile activity to avoid missing any future issues.

Should you have experienced issues after an upgrade was completed, what were these?

Generally our upgrades go well, but we did have some issues following our last upgrade from WS10.4.5 to WS11.1.1. These related to a specific URL failing to redirect. As a consequence we had to have users update their browser bookmarks. While it was a nuisance no major issues affecting our Production work occurred. Keeping in mind that we only have one Production environment, we are unable to test the upgrade process or version prior to upgrading in the live environment. I also had an issue downloading the new Java file for the new Explorer but that ended up being specific to my own work station (other colleagues were able without issue) so we just left that as is.

What is your advice for those who are considering upgrading?

I would say it’s not as painful as you might think. The long-term benefits of the upgrade outweigh the negative aspects as it cuts away some of the bugs and issues you may be experiencing by working from an older version. Which is why, we will continue to upgrade to new releases as SDL recommends and as we feel ready.

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In WorldServer Explorer folders cannot be accessed

Lennert Fransen — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 11:33:00 GMT

Scope/Environment: WorldServer any environment

Symptoms/Context:

I cannot access my Explorer folders. The folder symbol now has an additional red symbol as displayed here and I cannot expand those folders to view my project folders and files or perform any action such as download/upload/project creation and similar:

Read More....

Worldserver Explorer folders

AIS Mounts

Asset Interface System

The timeline to replace the Java applets in SDL WorldServer

Ray Hopley — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 10:34:00 GMT

The timeline to replace the Java applets in SDL WorldServer(read more)

Deprecation of the Legacy Filters in SDL WorldServer

Claudia Popa (former member) — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 14:47:00 GMT

Symptoms

As SDL continues to deliver on our strategic goal of consolidating on a single technology stack for language processing, we are pleased to see continual adoption of the next generation of SDL File Types, producing SDLXLIFF files for translation and review in SDL Trados Studio. Going forward, we would like to make all our users - system owners, project managers, translators, reviewers - aware of our clear intent to deprecate the legacy filters.

The planned date for this deprecation, in line with SDL's end-of-life policy, will be 18 months after the release of SDL WS 11.1 (General Availability: December 2016).

Explanation

As we monitor the increasing adoption of the SDLXLIFF-based File Types, we need to focus our engineering efforts on these newer filters. For a better integration between WorldServer and Trados Studio we will use the same version of SDL File Types. Issues reported through the Support channel relating to legacy file filters will draw the following response:

SDL Support will test the file using the equivalent SDLXLIFF-based File Type.
If the issue is not evident here, the recommended resolution will be to switch to the newer File
If the issue is still exhibited by the SDLXLIFF-based File Type, this will be logged against this filter.
Engineering will resolve the issue only in this newer filter.

One important premise that all users should be aware of is that all defects reported against legacy filters will no longer be resolved after the release of WS 11.1. In reality, our user base should appreciate no difference in response, given that this is the current status quo.

For next WorldServer release the legacy filters will be marked as “Deprecated”. The default values for MIME-Types for new installations will be the newest SDL File Types. Existing file types based on legacy filters continue to work for new or ongoing jobs but SDL encourages you to migrate to using the new file types where possible.

This article is intended to formalize and publicize this state of affairs to provide unambiguous clarity.

Legacy Filter	New SDL Filter
DOC Filter	Microsoft Word 2000-2003 File Type Microsoft Word 2007-2013 File Type Microsoft Word 2007-2016 File Type
Excel Filter	Microsoft Excel 2000-2003 File Type Microsoft Excel 2007-2013 File Type Microsoft Excel 2007-2016 File Type
HTML (NT) Filter	HTML 4 File Type, HTML 5 File Type
InDesign Filter	Adobe InDesign CS4-CC IDML File Type
Java Properties Filter	Java Resources File Type
JavaScript Filter	JavaScript Filter
JSP/ASP Filter	HTML 4 File Type, HTML 5 File Type
MIF Filter	Adobe FrameMaker 8-13 MIF File Type
PPT Filter	Microsoft PowerPoint 2007-2013 File Type Microsoft PowerPoint XP-2003 File Type
Quark Filter	QuarkXPress Export File Type
RTF Filter	Rich Text Format (RTF) File Type
SGML Filter	HTML 5 File Type
Text Filter	Text File Type
XML (NT Filter)	Any XML File Type Custom XML (Embedded Content Processor) File Type
XLS Filter	Microsoft Excel 2000-2003 File Type

SDL WorldServer 11.1 Newsletter December 2016

Claudia Popa (former member) — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 08:48:00 GMT

Dear all,

The last month of 2016 brings to our customers a new version of SDL WorldServer, 11.1!
The public announcement of this release is available on SDL Community.
More details are available in the Release Notes, on the SDL Documentation Center.
The distribution package can be downloaded from FTP, as usual.
For a short description about this release, please watch the video of Andra Turc, our colleague from the development team at the end of the blog post.

To those who contributed to validating the WorldServer 11.1 release – the WorldServer Engineering team, Cloud Operations, Professional Services, Support and others...a BIG THANK YOU.

The development team started a new challenge, SDL WorldServer 11.1.1. Its scope is customer satisfaction (bugs reported by customers to be fixed) and improving the user assignments functionality. This project should be completed at the end of March 2017.

The detailed backlog can be seen in JIRA.

Claudia Popa
Product Owner – SDL WorldServer

sdl.dist.sdlmedia.com/.../

WorldServer 11.1 is coming!

Amy Ferguson — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 14:37:00 GMT

WorldServer 11.1 is targeted for release at the end of November.

WorldServer 11.1 will contain the following key updates:

Integrate WorldServer with Language Cloud - MT Adapter
Migrate Explorer from Java Applets to the Java - Network Launching Protocol
Export and Import Clients, ProjectTypes, Rules Objects
MultiSearch available for some Project Custom Attributes on the new UI
Display Project Custom Attributes on Tasks page
Display more tasks related info on Project Groups page
Transport – renew Create Project Wizard
Filters Update, including the latest version of SDL Filters
Add support for Microsoft SQL 2014
DB connectivity improvements (some deadlocks issue are solved)
A number of defect fixes

WorldServer Community Group Owner Introduction

Amy Ferguson — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 13:57:00 GMT

Hi WorldServer Group Members,

I am excited to announce that I have been recently appointed as your WorldServer Community Group Owner. Having worked with many of you in the past I look forward to reconnecting. For those of you who I have perhaps not had the pleasure of working with as yet, I look forward to getting to know you. In the meantime, I have noted a little of my background for you below.

I joined SDL 14 years ago and since then have worked very hard in various capacities across the organization. Most recently, as Customer Enablement Director, I facilitate the effective delivery of customer hosted operations and extensively work with the SDL WorldServer product.

I am very eager to support your efforts in community and to receive your feedback around how the WorldServer group works for you, what additional topics/content you would like covered in your WorldServer community.

This platform is to learn, meet and share both for customers and SDL folks alike – I believe we can learn a lot from our customers…

I look forward to working with you, in the meantime, should you have any questions regarding he SDL WorldServer Community group, please do contact me.

Amy Ferguson | Customer Enablement | SDL | aferguson@sdl.com

SDL WorldServer Roadmap Webcast

Dick Csaplar (former member) — Wed, 25 May 2016 13:39:00 GMT

For those that may have missed Ray Hopley's Webcast of May 19th, below is a link to a recording of the SDL WorldServer Roadmap presentation. Due to the nature of the content please do treat the recording as SDL Confidential.

http://www.sdl.com/ilp/language/sdl-worldserver-technology-roadmap-webinar-recording.html

On-premise or cloud-based? Where your language translation tools should be deployed today

Dick Csaplar (former member) — Wed, 18 May 2016 18:27:00 GMT

As a 20-year veteran of the IT industry – today as Director of Marketing for Enterprise Translation Products at SDL, and formerly as a Senior Industry Analyst for the Aberdeen Group covering Datacenters and the Cloud – the early part of my career made me well-versed in issues relating to servers, networks and storage in the datacenter.

Then along came this thing called Cloud, and my clients began asking for advice on how and when they should utilize this new form of computing over the traditional on-premise model.

→Download our eBook to learn how you can translate 150-200% more words for the same money using machine translation and post-editing

Evaluating your applications

After many months of study and conversation with industry experts I came to the conclusion that every IT VP needs to take an inventory of their applications and divide them into two buckets:

The first group – those applications that give the enterprise a competitive advantage or are mission critical to the performance of the organization. These applications should be deployed in an enterprise data center. These apps need to be controlled – nurtured, enhanced and protected – behind the enterprise firewall. For most enterprises these account for about one fourth to one third of all deployed applications.
The remaining software applications should be moved to the Cloud. These apps, for things like employee payroll, salesforce management, email, etc. provide no competitive differentiation and are fine to be used as a shared resource in the Cloud. In addition, Cloud providers have far larger budgets to provide superior services such as data backup and security than your average mid-sized enterprise can afford.

What about language translation tools? After working at SDL for a couple of years I believe the answer is that they can be deployed in either location, depending on the enterprises’ view of the value of their data.

Cloud vs on-premise translation

For many global enterprises translation is part of the content management process. You create, for example, your product specs in a content management system (CMS), send it to a translation management app, get it converted to a dozen languages or so and then get it into your content archive.

For organizations that view translation as just part of the content management process, SDL offers Cloud versions of our entire enterprise portfolio, including SDL Language Cloud, our machine translation (MT) engine. This is hosted in a Class 3 data center. Communications between the engines and the user is encrypted and a sophisticated password schema can be deployed. Moreover source and translated content is destroyed when the translation is completed.

However, there is another class of organizations for which their data is mission critical. If their product plans, technical specs, internal communications, financial information, or other types of content were ever to be made public they would suffer great damage. For these companies no data security promises by any application vendor is good enough; they want complete control of their data at all times, never letting it outside of their firewall.

Affordable and manageable while retaining control

These are the companies for which we provide SDL ETS, an on-premise version of our Cloud machine translation offering. This product allows companies to gain all the advantages of machine translation – much reduced cost, real-time speed, volume translations – without ever losing control of their data.

SDL’s new XMT technology makes the ETS footprint affordable and manageable, requiring a dual processor (physical or virtual) server with 4 GB for the base engine and an additional 4GB of memory for each deployed language pair. The MT engine can still be integrated with other parts of the translation and content management ecosystem whether in the enterprise datacenter or deployed in the Cloud.

When translation is part of a mission critical process companies should consider on-premise translation tools, including SDL ETS. While the Cloud is getting all the press, it is nice to have the option of a good-old, on-premise application buttoned up and locked down only to badged employees. Some companies are just not willing to offer any degree of trust to a Cloud provider as the consequences of failure would be just too high.

Two Reasons why SDL Translation Systems Matter

Dick Csaplar (former member) — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:37:00 GMT

I know you hear a lot of claims made by marketing people about the importance of their product. As consumers we generally ignore them and move on. But at the risk of losing you in the very first paragraph of this blog I am going to make a bold claim about the just released versions of SDL TMS and SDL WorldServer. Please give me the rest of the article to prove my point.....

blog.sdl.com/.../

SDL WorldServer’s Unique Approach to Translation Memory

Dick Csaplar (former member) — Thu, 11 Feb 2016 13:32:00 GMT

Introducing V11 of SDL WorldServer

Dick Csaplar (former member) — Fri, 20 Nov 2015 13:40:00 GMT

On November 10th Director of Product Management Ray Hopley presented a webcast demonstrating the features and functions of SDL WorldServer V11. To see a recording of that webcast please click on the link below:

- https://sdl.dist.sdlmedia.com/Distributions/?o=410af159-da23-4420-8c8d-dbae92a5680b

What it takes to get and keep ISO Certification

Dick Csaplar (former member) — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 13:34:00 GMT

Last month SDL was granted ISO27001:2013 certification for our SDL WorldServer translation management system. To understand why this is a fairly rare occurrence for translation software and services I wanted to document what it took for SDL to earn this prestigious certification. You will understand better why large enterprises that value their data security insist on utilizing only ISO certified products.

ISO certification requirements are published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and validates that best practices for information security are used to create and support certified applications. We already had ISO certification for SDL TMS so we were very familiar with the process. To support the TMS certification for example, SDL does a background check on new support employees to look for any potential security concerns. Even with this SDL TMS knowledge and procedures already in place it took almost a full year to add certification for SDL WorldServer.

For the software itself there are extensive technical assessments. The code is reviewed against a risk framework to highlight any weak points where hackers, ranging in capabilities from teenagers (also called script kiddie or skiddie – an unskilled individual who uses scripts or programs developed by others to attack computer systems and networks) to sophisticated, state-sponsored hackers could enter the software. This effort included SDL hiring outside “White Hat” hackers to see if and how they could access the software. As a result of these reviews a set of mitigation steps were defined, software amended and support policies implemented.

ISO verification also requires documenting processes for supporting and updating the software to keep humans from introducing new vulnerabilities. This work was actually the most time and effort intensive part of ISO certification. Not only were procedures documented, but actually implemented, tested to see if they were implemented correctly and then audited to ensure that all changes are traceable to the exact time and person who did the work.

The process of gaining ISO certification involved many SDL people. Dennis van der Veeke, our former CTO chairs a Steering Committee of about eight VPs and Directors to oversee all security related issues. SDL also has a team of dedicated information security specialists whose whole job is to ensure our applications are protected from unwanted access. In addition all operations people including Customer Support and Cloud Operations have been trained. SDL is currently training all software developers on the ISO procedures and the steps they need to write “secure code.”

Despite the operational and personnel challenges required for ISO certification, SDL is moving forward to add more systems. Both our translation management systems, SDL WorldServer and SDL TMS are now ISO certified. We are working to add SDL Knowledge Center, SDL Web and SDL Campaigns before the end of the year. Later next year we hope to add our machine translation tools and SDL eCommerce Optimization.

You can see from the effort we invested that we value ISO certifications. They demonstrate our strong commitment to achieve and maintain secure applications.

If you have any questions about SDL, ISO certification or applications mentioned above, please feel free to reach out to me (dcsaplar@sdl.com).