Questions?

They are answered by the XTRF community and our experts

+5
Under review

agile workflows on the Customer Portal

Hi all,

We have a client who would like to use the XTRF Customer Portal, but they have one type of project that doesn't seem to really fit into the XTRF-mold. I'll explain the situation briefly, I would be grateful if any of you had any insight for me.

Amongst other projects, this client has an agile batches-type project (small batches, short deadlines, several languages)

Until now we tracked the details of each batch outside XTRF, since each had a separate deadline and language group.
However, now that they would like to use the Customer Portal, this solution is not ideal anymore, since they would like if they could track all this data on the portal, without having to open another tracker - understandable.

Adding a new project for each is not feasible unfortunately, because we can only close them at the end of the month, and having 50+ open projects will not work for our PMs.
Adding every new batch as a new task is not really feasible either, I think - even with just 5 languages, it takes way too much time unfortunately, especially with more (which happens often). Moreover, I don't think the way XTRF displays this information is particularly useful here, since it doesn't group tasks together.

I have created a test project, where there were two hypothetical tasks:

1) deadline of the 28th, for Spanish and German

2) deadline of the 31st, for Spanish and French

https://i.imgur.com/dQRQahg.png

This is how it looks on XTRF - so basically, if my client wanted to quickly check the ongoing tasks and the corresponding deadlines, they wouldn't really get the information about the tasks they have sent, because they are scattered on the list.


Do you have any idea about how to treat these? The goal would be that these sub-projects should be easy to add, and also easy to track on the portal, in a way that they can see one "task" as one unit.

Thank you in advance!

Answer

Hello Julis, 
When it comes to Client Portal, it works in a specific way. It is mainly an input device to trigger a process and output device to pick up ready documents, but not much in between. 

Adding files to an existing project sounds exciting, but there would be tons of questions to consider. Most of them dealing with Workflow architecture - if a Workflow passed a certain moment and is finished to a degree - you cannot add more files to a job that is done. There is no automation to restart a job, or redo a step. 

If there are CAT tools in question, it gets even more difficult. 

You may say that the Client Portal simply isn't suitable for agile projects as described in your question. 

Post an idea in this part of the forum and suggest a discussion about where to take the Portal in future versions. 

https://xtrf.userecho.com/communities/1-product-development-ideas/categories/4-client-portal/topics

+4

Client portal usage

MindyK 5 years ago in Client Portal updated by Krijn 5 years ago 5

I'm curious how many XTRF users are using the Client Portal? We are having a very hard time making this work for us, without having to re-create the quotes from the start. I'm curious to find out if anyone has any suggestions. Note, we are using Classic Projects.

A few of our current 'issues':

*Clients want to add files after the quote has already been created - User A starts the project, but needs User B to upload the files (InDesign package, including art files)

*Client believes the deadline field is for the deadline for either the quote or the project (training issue), but this then populates all of the job deadlines, which are not accurate. The deadlines being populated in each job creates a LOT of wasted time for us, as the client may need 2 weeks to get approval for the quote, and we now have to reschedule everything. With 26 languages, that is a lot of time. I do not believe you can 'Clear' dates using Multiple Change, someone please tell me if this is wrong.

*Client has a project template (would prefer a quote template, but this feature is not available) and the CP does not link to the Project Templates.

*Client wants to start as a project, but they have to go thru the Quote phase - note, this is only for one client/division and a specific project type, so we have said yes, this is ok, but they are not able to start anything as a project, it has to start as a quote.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would love to hear them. 

Best, Mindy

+4
Answered

Where can I add my terms of service for the clients?

SBWC 6 years ago in Client Portal updated by Sancho Leath 5 years ago 4

Hi,


I would like to add the Terms of Service to XTRF, so that my client can access it at any moment if need be.


Right now we added these to our quote templates, but this is getting quite heavy on the quotes.

Maybe you already have a solution for this?


I know you can put a SLA in the Vendor Portal, so maybe there is an equivalent for Clients?

Thanks in advance

+4
Answered

Client Portal: After submitting a quote, be able to change it

Angelo 6 years ago in Client Portal updated by mark 6 years ago 7

This is a suggestion for improvement.  Clients, and their bosses, need to be able to modify a quote after submitting it.  

+3

How to get a list of clients with portal access

Thijs Senten 5 years ago in Client Portal updated by mark 4 years ago 12

Is there a way to filter to a list of clients that have portal access enabled? I may be looking wrong, but I didn't find a filter for this in the client view.

Ultimately, what I want is to get a list of services per client portal - any idea how to do this easily (or at all)?

+3

Message in client portal for specific project

Leena 5 years ago in Client Portal updated by Tatiana - Intonation 5 years ago 3

My client would like to send messages in a specific project in the client portal rather than using the standard contact form in the portal. Is there any way to do it?

+2

PDF page counter

Thomas Mosley 10 months ago in Client Portal updated by Bartosz Gumula 10 months ago 1

Has anyone discovered a way to detect the number of pages in a PDF submitted through the client portal and apply that number as the amount of pages in the quote receivables?

+2

Is it possible to create quote request templates for customer portal?

Pelin 12 months ago in Client Portal updated by Meghan Cooper 10 months ago 1

We have clients who regularly request certain language pairs for example FIGS.

So we were wondering if it's possible to create templates which the client can use when requesting quotes in the customer portal.

Thanks!

+2

CLIENT PORTAL - preselected languages

Myriam Garcia 3 years ago in Client Portal updated by Mateusz Szymański 3 years ago 3

We have user from a specific client that requests projects through the client's portal always from and into the same language and the would like to know if there is a feature that would allow clients to have a set of preselected, default languages when requesting a project. 

+2
Answered

How does client offices affect invoicing (creating offices/sub accounts from existing clients)?

Meghan Cooper 6 years ago in Client Portal updated by Christiane Lueke 1 year ago 16

What happens regarding invoicing if we make it so that a current separate client in XTRF now becomes an office (which is a sub-account from what I understand) or a parent client? (We had treated what are technically just branches of the same company as separate clients in XTRF). Is there only one invoicing data section (and contact to be assigned) which would apply to the overall client, or can this be tweaked on a per-branch basis? 


We are trying to clean up to more closely reflect how our clients are structured, but this may mean adjusting their structure in our accounting system as well.