How to make custom workflow step names visible for subcontractors (LSPs)

Owned by Damian Rozmiarkowski (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jan 02, 2024
3 min read

Introduction

Creating workflow steps with customized names is a feature that clients use very frequently. In the case of the subcontracting module, contractors can make their custom names visible for external vendors easily, when assigning them to the workflow, but this requires administrative privileges and a couple of configuration steps.

Guidelines

On the Contractor side:

  1. Go to Configuration → Settings → Workflow → Workflow steps, and Add a new step.

  1. Create a new workflow step and specify a custom name for it. Make sure that it is set to Active and save the changes:

Defining a new workflow step

  1. Create a project with this step and assign an LSP to it;

  2. Save the changes and start the workflow;

On the LSP side:

In the project workflow, the LSP will see the name of the assigned step as Translate (in this example) because it is a default step name on the LSP side.

  1. Go to Configuration → Settings → Workflow → Workflow steps, and check the Show contractors online translation steps checkbox. You will see the workflow steps created by the Contractor.

  1. Find the relevant step and ensure that you rename to the name specified by the Contractor. Set the value for the Refer to option to Choose, make sure it is set to Active and then save the changes:

The Refer to option allows you to decide to which of your workflow steps this contractor’s workflow step should refer to. In general, if it is set up to Choose, the name of the step in the workflow will be the same as it is on the contractor side.

Those steps (the ones with a red asterisk) are not active because the contractor has not sent off any project that includes those steps yet.

In the project workflow, the LSP will see that nothing has changed. The step has still the original name.

On the Contractor side:

  1. Go to Project editor → Workflow, and edit it in some way (for example, update the due date).

Updating the project workflow on the LSP side does not have the same effect: it does not change the name.

  1. On the LSP side:

Go to Project editor → Workflow, and see the result: the workflow step is displayed with its new name.