Workflows & Workflow Pools

 

In Lexacom, a workflow is the chain or web of steps through which a job passes. A workflow defines what media (such as audio dictation, reference text, attachments, etc.) can be added to a job, and describes the progression of work through the system, from creation to completion.

 

Each team using Lexacom must have at least one workflow, though may have any number of workflows according to their needs. Workflows will be available to Authors in the team according to their Pool.

 

Each step in a workflow determines which media (such as an audio recording, a transcribed document, attachments, or other data) are present, visible and/or editable. Some media types are mandatory to progress a job to a later workflow step. The configuration of the step also determines what Pools can see jobs on that step.

 

Simple workflows may be a linear chain of steps through which the job passes. A basic two-step workflow for a job might have a Dictate step, on which the author dictates, and a Transcribe step, on which typing users transcribe the dictation.

 

 

More complex workflows may be a web of steps with branching pathways through the workflow. Workflow steps may be set up to have buttons to progress the job to a number of different workflow steps, or to return the job to a previous step.

 

A simple example of this would be the Review step on the predefined medial workflows, where the job’s author may choose to return the job back to the transcribe step (if changes need to be made), or to progress the job to the Dispatch step if this has been transcribed correctly.

 

 

A pool is a group of users that perform the same work in a workflow, and has a category (e.g. authors, transcribers) that broadly describes the function of its members. A Team will have multiple pools – usually at least one for each category, though a team may have multiple pools of the same category (e.g. a team may have several pools with of the transcriber category, for groups of transcribers with different responsibilities).

 

All users of Lexacom must be a member of one of their team’s pools. Members of a pool may be changed in the Pools page in Lexacom Portal.

 

The workflow step defines which pools of users can see jobs that are on that workflow step. These jobs appear in their Review grid (as a pending item to work on). Multiple pools may have visibility of work on a particular workflow step. The pools that have visibility of a step may be changed in the Workflow Steps page in Lexacom Portal.

 

(Some workflow steps may be marked as ‘Author only’. The jobs on a step marked Author Only will be visible only to the original author of the job and not to other users in their pool.)

 

Because each team may have different available Pools and Workflows, this manual describes the common concepts that apply to using Lexacom, without assuming that the user has a particular workflow.