Welcome to our FAQ article! Here, we have compiled a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions to address any queries or concerns you may have. Whether you are a new user exploring our platform or a current user seeking further guidance, this FAQ article is designed to provide you with the information you need.
1. What is the difference between Organizations and Organizational Units?
2. How to create an Organization and Organization Unit?
3. What is the Prices section for?
4. How do I create a price list?
5. How do I create a new user in Bureau Works?
6. How does the platform count users for pricing?
7. What are permissions, permission groups, and how do you use them?
8. How does Translation Memory (TM) work?
9. How do I manage a Translation Memory?
10. What is the difference between Full Text Search and Fuzzy Search?
11. What provider does Machine Translation Bureau Works use?
12. Can I include my own Machine Translation (MT)?
13. What is the Glossary and what is it for?
14. How can I create a glossary in Bureau Works?
15. How can I add new terms to my Glossary?
16. Which AI powers Bureau Works?
17. Does AI use my data to relearn?
18. What's the difference between asking AI to translate and asking it to proofread?
20. How much the connectors costs?
22. What is Autopilot and how does it work?
23. Why doesn't Bureau Works have the option to join/merge segments?
24. How does the TMS function?
25. Can it assist in generating Purchase Orders (POs) for our linguists based on our database?
27. Can we import the database using either our own template or yours?
29. Does it require a Work Server to maintain online accessibility 24/7?
30. What are the steps involved in creating Purchase Orders within the system?
32. How does the TMS calculate costs, revenue, and profit?
33. How does the system deal with client information? Is it safe?
1. What is the difference between Organizations and Organizational Units?
A: Bureau Works offers a hierarchical structure that enables you to categorize your projects, clients, and users. This layer system aims to enhance the efficiency and organization of your environment while providing you with flexibility in terms of information security, access control, and permissions. Our goal is to ensure that your experience on the platform is both streamlined and secure.
Let’s begin with your account. Everything that you will manage, see, and work on will be inside it.
That is where our Account_Admin will rule.
This user will be the one who has access to everything and will also be able to perform all actions, as the name already says.
An Account has two hierarchical sub-layers:
The first is the Organization and the second is the Organizational Unit. In your account, you can use as many organizations and organizational units as you need.
Organizational units are used to organize projects.
An Organizational Unit can be created to separate different Departments, Products, etc. so that each agency only has access to the Projects, data, and users belonging to each one of them.
In short, our customers have the flexibility to decide whether they want to use the concepts of "Organization" and "Organizational Unit" or have a single "Organization" with multiple "Organizational Units" (one for each customer).
The last option adds an additional layer to the structure. However, if a client has multiple types of projects, it might be more convenient for you to have an "Organization" with multiple "Organizational Units" underneath it. This approach reduces the complexity of setting the configurations for each type of project. Ultimately, the choice depends on the specific needs of the customer.
Related article: Accounts, Organizations and Organizational Units
2. How to create an Organization and Organizational Unit?
A:
- Organization:
On the Bureau Works home screen, click on the left-hand corner of Organizations and then on Add Organization.
Enter the requested information and click Create to finish creating the Organization (all fields are required). Any new organization must be associated with an account.
Only Bureau Works SysAdmins can create accounts. An account is created when a new customer is onboarded to Bureau Works.
An organization can only be created and modified by users with the following roles: SysAdmin or Account_Admin
- Organizational Unit:
On the Bureau Works home screen, click in the left corner below Organizations on Organizational Units and then on Add Organizational Unit.
Enter the requested information and click Create to finish creating the Organizational Unit (all fields are required).
Any new organizational unit you create must be associated with an organization.
You can select an existing Organization if you have already created one, or create a new one from this screen by clicking on the Organization drop-down menu and then Add Organization.
Related article: Creating an Organization and Organizational Unit
3. What is the Prices section for?
A: The Prices section in the Organization, is for creating and managing prices that will be charged for each language pair. You can create as many Price Lists as needed.
Price lists are required to be linked to an Organization and subsequently associated with specific Organizational Units, that way, they can be applied to your projects. You have the flexibility to establish a default price list that encompasses all Associations, while also having the option to create distinct price lists for different project types and/or individual clients. This allows for customized pricing structures based on specific projects or client requirements.
4. How do I create a price list?
A: On the Bureau Works Index Screen (left side of the screen), click on Settings and then on Prices. A Add Prices button must appear at the top of the page. Click on Add Prices and fill out the required information.
Related article: How to create a Price List in Bureau Works
5. How do I create a new user in Bureau Works?
A: In the Bureau Works Index screen, click on the People menu, and then click on Add User.
Insert the requested information (Name, Email, Organization, Country, State, City, Postal Code, Status, User Role and Account) and then click Save to complete the User creation.
Please note that fields Name, Email, Organization and Role are mandatory.
Only Account-Admin and Project Manager (PM) have permission to create users.
The Project Manager (PM) has permission to create users with the following roles only: Project_Manager and Vendor.
If you receive the warning message “A system error occurred” after you click on the Save button, this must have been caused by the fact that the email used is already registered on the platform. Please double-check your user list, ask the user to reset their password, or try to register the user using a different email.
Related Article: Creating a User in Bureau Works
6. How does the platform count users for pricing?
A: Our platform currently takes into account the number of active users.
For example, when you sign up for the Boutique Plan, you will have ten users already included. If one of those users becomes disabled and you create a new user, you will have a total of 11 registered users, with 10 being active and 1 disabled. However, you will only be charged for the 10 active users.
Related Page: Our plans
7. What are permissions, permission groups, and how do you use them?
A: Permissions are assignments granted to each user on our platform. These permissions are used to establish user roles. By default, our platform have 4 different roles: Account_Admin, Project_manager, Client and Vendor. If a non-default permission is needed, it can be granted directly in the user permission tab.
Permission Groups are a way to grant new permissions to users in bulk. By creating a Permission Group and adding users to it, any new permission will affect all the users in that group.
All enabled permissions (inherited or individually granted) that are active regardless of Permission Groups will not be modified through them. Note that Permission Groups grant permissions and never remove them.
When a user is removed from a Permission Group, they will no longer have these modified permissions granted.
Related article: How-to-manage-Permission-Groups
8. How does Translation Memory (TM) work?
A: The TM source is considered a database that stores segments, which can be words, sentences, or paragraphs previously translated. The translation memory stores the source text and its corresponding translation in language pairs called translation units.
When a new file is loaded into the platform to be translated, the TM will scan the current segments and look for matches in the translation units already stored. Based on the percentage of matches, the cost of the translation of that segment may vary. The more translations are made, the more segments will be saved in the TM (Translation Memory). With more segments, the chances of matches increase. The more matches, the greater the savings in the translation of repeated segments.
9. How do I manage a Translation Memory?
A: After being created, a TM has the following structure:
- The Organization to which the TM belongs
- The Organizational Unit where the TM is linked
- Total Segments
- The last imported file
- Source language and target languages
A TM can be leveraged by confirming a segment in the editor, manually, or by uploading .tmx files.
Translation memories can have only one source language but multiple target languages.
Related article: How-to-handle-Translation-Memory
10. What is the difference between Full Text Search and Fuzzy Search?
A: When using TM's search tool, Full Text Search will show all segments in which the searched content appears, regardless of the position and the content that comes before or after it.
Fuzzy Search, on the other hand, is more specific, returning only the segments in which the searched content meets a minimum percentage of the correspondence defined in the search.
For example: if there is a single segment in which the content "I love dancing" appears, the Full Text will display it, even if the segment stored in the TM is the phrase "Sometimes when I'm feeling blue, I love dancing, it makes me few better". The same search on Fuzzy Search would only return results where the content "I love dancing" matched the given percentage. If this minimum match percentage is set to 49%, for example, the aforementioned thread would not appear because "I love dancing" doesn't correspond to 49% of the content saved in the TM.
11. What provider does Machine Translation Bureau Works use?
A: Microsoft Azure.
12. Can I include my own Machine Translation (MT)?
A: Yes, we can support others software as long as the person has their own signature and enters their own MT login on the platform.
Related article: Bureau Works Machine Translation integration
13. What is the Glossary and what is it for?
A: Glossary, or Term Base (TB), is a database that stores key terms in two or more languages. The purpose of a glossary is to ensure standardization and consistency in translations, even when different linguists work on the same project.
14. How can I create a glossary in Bureau Works?
A: A glossary can be created directly in Bureau Works by entering the glossary tab and manually adding terms. It can also be created by uploading a .TBX file.
Related article: How to create a Glossary in Bureau Works
15. How can I add new terms to my Glossary?
A: You can manage your glossary by adding new terms manually into the glossary tab, by importing a .tbx file, or even by selecting a term on the source segment in the Editor.
Note: By clicking on Actions at the Glossary tab (right side), you can edit, export, clear, or delete the Glossary information.
Related article: Managing a Glossary
16. Which AI powers Bureau Works?
A: Bureau Works is powered by Chat GPT, by OpenAI.
17. Does AI use my data to relearn?
A: According to OpenAI and Microsoft Azure your data will not be used for training purposes. It will be stored for 30 days with encryption at rest and then permanently deleted.
Their full privacy policies are here for your reference:
18. What's the difference between asking AI to translate and asking it to proofread?
A: When we ask the AI to translate, it will take into account the glossary and the TM. So it would be a translation based on your choices, tastes, and preferences.
When we ask it to review, it will take into account only the content in the source segment, not your glossary and TM. It will be a more direct review, more raw, and with less context.
19. What are Smells?
A: They are warnings when something may go wrong in the translation.
It is a tool intended to support linguists. Its warnings can indicate discrepancies or improvements, taking into account commonly used terms and expressions in the target language. Since it doesn't have access to Glossary and TM, the final translation must always be done by the linguist. The linguists may even disregard those warnings. The absence of a warning does not guarantee a free of errors translation.
20. How much do the connectors cost?
A: It has an implementation + maintenance fee, but we don't have a fixed price; it depends on the connector and the complexity of the use case.
If you need to use one of our connectors, please schedule a call with our team so we can understand your use case. Based on that, the price will be defined.
21. What are ICRs?
A: ICR is short for In-Country Review. The ICRs are the people responsible for reviewing the translation in each country's language; they are mainly native speakers of the language they'll be reviewing, taking the context, the culture, and the grammar of each country into account.
22. What is Auto Task Placement and how does it work?
A: Auto Task Placement is an automatic way of offering tasks to linguists.
It can be set on or off as default by Organizational Unit, but it can also be turned on and off directly in each project.
The Auto Task Placement uses statistics to calculate which vendor can receive the tasks offered based on their eligibility. The language pair, the pricing of the project, the vendor fee, and the vendor metrics are some of the data used to select the vendors able to define whether they are eligible or not to receive the offers and accept each task.
23. Why doesn't Bureau Works have the option to join/merge segments?
A: When the platform was built, we took into consideration the main aspects of a CAT Tool that are needed for a translator to perform a job with ease and accuracy.
Recently, we deliberated on implementing this feature in the future and it was added to our roadmap for 2025.
24. How does the TMS function?
A: Bureau Works is a cloud-based translation management system (TMS) that simplifies and streamlines translation and localization management tasks. It allows you to manage projects, keep track of your costs, assign tasks, handle payables and receivables, create and update translation memories and glossaries, enable automation, have full visibility over your translation quality, seamless integration with AI, and other features in one centralized location. You can find more detailed information about its functionalities on our website: link to the page with further details.
25. Can it assist in generating Purchase Orders (POs) for our linguists based on our database?
A: Certainly! You’re referring to Purchase Orders (POs) for linguists as their Payable Amount generated for each completed task. With Bureau Works, once the tasks have been delivered, POs will be created automatically. The payable amount for tasks is automatically created, taking into account the linguist word rate registered on Bureau Works x the edit distance/effort made on that task. Alternatively, a project manager can manually insert the total amount for each task completed by a linguist.
For tasks conducted outside the platform, such as DTP work, interpretation, and offline QA, among others, the project manager will need to manually insert the payable amount/PO.
26. Is it capable of automatically sending the POs to our linguists, or do we need to handle this ourselves?
A: When linguists are registered on Bureau Works with the Vendor role, they will have access to the Vendor Portal. Within the portal, they can view the assigned tasks and delivered tasks. As soon as the payable amount has been added to a task (automatically or manually), the linguist responsible for that task will have full visibility of the amount in the Bureau Works portal.
27. Can we import the database using either our own template or yours?
A: It depends on what you mean by database. Let me provide you with different options based on what you mean by “database”:
- If you’re referring to Translation Memories, you can export them from your current system in TMX format and import them into Bureau Works.
- If you’re referring to Glossaries, you can export them from your current system in TBX format and import them into Bureau Works.
- If you’re referring to user or client information, you can create it directly on Bureau Works. If you have an extensive list, our implementation team can assist you by requesting the necessary information to ensure a smooth setup process.
28. What is the cost for a single account, and can we use one account for all PCs or should they be used separately?
A: Our monthly plan starts at USD 9 per month per user. For detailed pricing information, please visit our website: Pricing. Since Bureau Works is a cloud-based platform, you only need a browser and internet access to utilize our technology. However, each user must have their own account. This is because our system follows SOC 2 Type 2 standards, and individual accounts may be required to comply with certain policies and security measures.
For instance, if you have 5 people on your team who require access to the platform to translate content (vendors) and 1 person who will be responsible for project management, each of them will need to have their own account, so 6 accounts in total in this example. With that, we will have: 6 accounts * USD 9/user = USD 54/month
29. Does it require a Work Server to maintain online accessibility 24/7?
A: No, it doesn’t. Our platform is a cloud-based system hosted on AWS server clusters, ensuring online accessibility 24/7. You can enjoy seamless access to our system without the need for a separate Work Server to maintain constant availability.
30. What are the steps involved in creating Purchase Orders within the system? Can you provide me with a step-by-step guide or any relevant training materials that could help me understand this process?
A: If you're referring to linguists' payments when you mention purchase orders, they will be created automatically once the tasks have been delivered.
The workflow would be:
Creating a translation project > Quoting your translation project (which can be done automatically) > Approving the translation project > Assigning linguists to tasks (either manually or automatically) > Invoicing their payments (which can be calculated automatically by taking their word rate and edit distance into account or manually inserted).
After the project is completed, you can mark it as "delivered" and then invoice it through the Ready to Invoice tab (Accounting Section). This is the moment when you can send the invoices to your customers.
31. How does the system manage all the work, including assigning tasks to translators, monitoring progress, and ensuring quality control?
The Autopilot feature allows the vendors to see the tasks on their dashboard as long as they are eligible for them. As a result, they can choose to assign themselves and get to work. This feature will save some time when touching the PM attributions, seeing that they will not need to assign the vendors for each task.
The project progress can be viewed from your home page (multiple projects at once), the project main view (project progress), and the work units' progress, where you can see how each task is progressing. It is also possible to see the task progress from within the editor, which means the assigned linguist will have this information as well, which should help them better deal with deadlines.
Regarding quality control, we have our Quality Module and reports will be automatically generated.
The Review portion (Quality Report) is a record of data generated by Bureau Works where all the review modifications done by the vendors in a key position (reviewers, In-Country reviewers, Regional Approvers) are stored on the vendor profile.
While vendors can only have access to the quality report of tasks they participated in (translating or reviewing), project managers have full access to the reports for Organizations or Organizational units they are associated with since they have full visibility of the entire project and workflow steps, as opposed to vendors that can only access tasks assigned to them.
The Reports tab will have our reports, which will synthesize all changes in all workflows made to a file for the same target language, providing a full-quality report with detailed information. While the vendor will be able to check the final result for the jobs they worked on, giving them the chance to improve their work's quality, it will also summarize all important points about the work made on a determined file, helping the project managers make important decisions.
When a linguist reviews translations from a previous workflow step and makes changes to any segments in the file, Bureau Works prompts the reviewer to categorize the change that is being made to the translations based on a list of 6 categories, of which 5 will affect the translator metric. This is another crucial component of our quality control.
32. How does the TMS calculate costs, revenue, and profit?
The project costs will be automatically calculated based on the logfile generated, which will contain net rate information based on how much non-translatable content, repetitions, and translation memory percentages match, as well as your price list, which is completely customizable and can have multiple ones. The linguist's payment will be determined by the post-analysis logfile, and it will vary depending on how much the segments were edited; we use the Levenshtein distance to calculate this.
You will also be able to see your project's profit, which is the project's cost less the linguists' payments.
33. How does the system deal with client information? Is it safe?
Bureau Works has SOC2 Type 2 certification, and we follow well-documented best practices to ensure data privacy, safety, and access controls. Client data may be stored in the system, like billing contacts or POs for projects, but it is up to you how you want to configure these features.
All data is encrypted at rest. All access to Bureau Works is logged, and we enforce multi-factor authentication. Finally, we provide a fine-grained permission module that allows you to assign responsibilities in the form of user roles (RBAC) and even groups of individual permissions.
To learn more, visit https://www.bureauworks.com/security.
If you have any other questions that were not answered here, please don't hesitate to contact us at help@bureauworks.com.
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