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BeLazy Basics

What is BeLazy and who uses it?​

BeLazy is used by translation companies and enterprises as "the portal of portals". It integrates and abstracts the data flow from various sources of work into a single representation. It offers ready-made connections to complex business management systems such as XTRF or Plunet with many customization options. It integrates with portals and even translation management systems that do not have an API that vendors could use through capturing the data flow between frontend and backend or even via web scraping.

The user interface of BeLazy​

Several companies have built similar integrations, however, usually without a graphical user interface. Clients often change the way they work, or make mistakes in project management, and changes need to be implemented by developers. Getting immediate access to developers is usually hard. BeLazy takes away this dependence on development capacity by offering production teams a comprehensive mapping, bundling and error handling interface.

Through the abstract definition of opportunity and project, the flexible mapping rules, and the exception-based configuration user interface, developers only need to develop an abstract integration, and BeLazy takes care of the rest. If the client changes something, a user interface-based configuration change is enough for the project to be successfully created and managed in the integrated system.

BeLazy's REST API also enables no-code/low-code solutions, using integrations built into iPaaS software such as Make.com, for which a BeLazy integration is available.

User roles​

Generally, BeLazy is usually operated by a small set of technology-savvy production people. They set up connections to source systems, configure the rules through which the client-specific "origin" representation of the project turns into a "destination" representation, and possibly also set up auto-approval rules. This is done using the user interface.

Project managers in companies generally only accept or reject opportunities or create opportunities from emails.

Software developers integrate their business management system to BeLazy by allowing BeLazy to use their system's system values (such as language codes, project managers, vendors, workflows, etc.) for mapping purposes, and implementing the necessary operations such as creating a project, appending to a project, downloading and uploading files, reassigning a job and delivering a job. Alternatively, software developers can also implement a way to create opportunities via the Project Ingestion API.

All of these users are part of the same organization. An organization can have one or more users, one business management system configured, and any number of connections or workspaces. Each connection is one instance of a type of integration with a single URL, a single set of user credentials (username, password, API key) and one set of configuration. For example, if you have two linguist users with two usernames and passwords to one system, you need two connections to the same system. Workspaces behave the same way as connections, with the main difference being that opportunities for workspaces are always created by the Project Ingestion API. Most users know workspaces because of the Email Assistant,

Prerequisites for development​

Before a developer can work on a system integration, a BeLazy account and some level of setup is needed. Login to the user interface always happens using Google or Microsoft authentication. The user of the system should create an organization preferably with at least one connection, and send the developer the secret that allows them to join the organization.

The structure of a BMS project​

In most business management systems, there are some similar concepts that BeLazy's workflow-related functionality builds heavily on:

  • Jobs: The lowest level of assignment. A job usually has a start and an end date, a person to be assigned (unless it's an automatic action), and status information (e.g. has anyone been assigned, has the person assigned confirmed or not whether they'll work on this job, has the job been started or completed, etc.). Translation is a job. Editing is another job. Quality check by the project manager is also a job. Each job has a single target language, thus two translation assignments into two different languages are represented by two jobs.

  • Tasks: Tasks are the unit of monitoring, and every task is a series of jobs. Normally when a translator is ready with the translation, the editor can start working without waiting for any external input or permission to start. Generally one task corresponds to a single language, and there can be more than one task per language: for example, if your client comes back with requests to implement regarding a set of file that was earlier delivered as translation and proofreading, one task will include the translation and proofreading jobs, and another task will include the review implementation job.

  • Projects: Projects are usually the unit of work that your client gives. Projects are arbitrary, and depend on the way clients and project managers work. Projects contain tasks and tasks contain jobs. Some project managers, for example, create monthly projects. Please note that a BMS project is not always the same as a BeLazy project which is explained later. One BMS project can contain one or more BeLazy projects.

  • Receivable: Normally related to tasks, receivables define how you get paid by your client. In the case of translation and editing, some clients pay a higher word price and include both steps. For example, you may charge 15 cents per translation and editing. Others tell you to charge 10 cents for translation, 5 cents for editing for each word. Many agreements include so-called fuzzy match discounts, where a different percentage of the word rate is applied for words that have been translated before, depending on whether they were in the exact same sentence and context or not. Certain other tasks are compensated per page or per hour. A task may have one or more receivables, and there are also free tasks (for example, clients usually do not pay for review implementation).

  • Payable: Payables are related to jobs, and define how you compensate the people performing the jobs. They can be similarly complex to receivables. Not all jobs have payables, especially those that are performed by project managers.

The following image explains these concepts and shows various options in project management conventions that translation project managers apply in certain cases.

Projects-tasks-jobs-receivables-payables

Basic concepts​

In order to work with BeLazy the following basic concepts specific to the system and the documentation need some level of understanding.

  • Vendor portal (or Translation Management System): A vendor portal serves as the source of work, offering translation projects to translation companies and linguists. BeLazy facilitates the transfer of these offered projects to your BMS. In the terminology of the API, all sources of work, including translation management systems are also referred to as vendor portals. The main difference is that translation management system (TMS) projects usually include multiple pricing items.

  • Business management system (BMS): Your BMS serves as the central hub for tracking translation work. You can assign work to linguists and monitor project progress within this system. One BeLazy organization can only have one business management system connected. You can see its details under the profile menu / Manage my business management system in the user interface.

  • Opportunity: An opportunity represents a work item offered to the organization through a vendor portal. You can choose to accept or reject an opportunity. BeLazy requires acceptance to initiate the transfer of the opportunity to your BMS. Each opportunity appears as one line in the Approvals pending list on the user interface.

  • Project: Once an opportunity is accepted, and BeLazy performed the necessary operations to allow creating it in your BMS, it becomes a project and is created in your BMS. The project reflects the work item as tracked in your BMS. Each project appears as one line in the Deliveries pending list on the user interface. Closed or delivered projects are shown in the Delivered within list, or the project list under the Connection card.

  • Pricing item: Translation projects often encompass multiple languages, steps, or files. Each vendor portal and BMS employs its own terminology for these components, such as "items," "jobs," or "tasks." BeLazy refers to these components of a project or an opportunity as pricing items. Pricing items are units that differ in one or more of four dimensions: languages, workflow steps, links/files, and sometimes you have two or more actual prices assigned to one job, such as a per-word fee and an hourly fee.

  • Mapping: Mapping is the process of changing the values offered by the vendor portal to the values supported by your business management system. For example, the language English (United States) may be represented in your system as a numeric system value or a language code, or you may want to combine several portal fields into one instruction field for your translator.

  • Bundling: different systems and configurations provide you with different units of acceptance, assignment and delivery. One system may require you to separately accept both a translation and a review task for each of the three languages you receive, resulting in six acceptances, whereas other may give you this as one task per language, or a single multilingual task for all languages and workflow steps. Bundling is the way of identifying which opportunities belong together, and appending them to the right BMS project.