+5
Under review

agile workflows on the Customer Portal

julis pándi 5 years ago in Client Portal updated by Maciej (XTRF Senior Deployment & Training Specialist) 5 years ago 2

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

Answer
Under review

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

Hi All,

One of our clients may have similar requirement. This is why we have not been able to offer the client portal to them...hence, any progress this end would be useful...

Thank you.

Tatiana

Answer
Under review

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