Absences and Not available days

Jul 30, 2018

Whooshing Deadlines allows temporary adjustments to your daily or weekly working hours without having to constantly modify default settings in the Setup window. Long or permanent changes, however, are best to be made through the basic settings. There are two ways to flexibly modify your hours: weekly grid (1) and yellow figure (2).

  1. The weekly grid located at the top of the Calendar view, to the right of the clock, allows you to disable or enable entire working days on a week-by-week basis. By default, each week contains either 5 or 7 working days, i.e. Monday-Friday or Monday-Sunday depending on your basic settings. Other, non-working days are highlighted with a background colour and labelled “Not available.” To delete working days or add them to the week displayed in the Calendar view, simply check or uncheck the corresponding box in the weekly grid. Box with a checkmark means that the day is available for working, while an empty box signifies a day off.

If you want to change all the days of the week to working days, select the black checkmark icon next to the ‘Working days this week’ text. The 5-day grid is now replaced with a 7-day grid.

If you want to set all days of the week as non-available, check the red cross icon next to the ‘Working days this week’ text. The entire grid becomes highlighted with a background colour. This is a convenient way to mark whole holiday weeks and other longer absences.

To change a non-available day to a working day, check its box in the weekly grid or click on it in the Calendar view.

Tip:
You can change the status on individual days of the week after selecting the black checkmark icon or the red cross icon. If, for example, your only working day in a given week is Tuesday, you can first select the red cross icon (sets all days ‘Not available’) and then check Tuesday’s box. Tuesday changes back to a working day while all other days remain non-available.
  1. The Calendar view features a running yellow figure next to each day. Click on it, and the absence entry window appears. In the window, you can create either a full-day absence or a part-day absence and enter a short explanation. For part-day absences, you can set the duration of the absence in half-hour increments. The duration of the absence is then deducted from that day’s working hours.

In addition, you can select whether the absence is a one-off (only today) or a recurring event. If recurring absence is selected, the system saves it as a weekly recurring event until the set end date (end date selection). Both the full-day and the part-day absences can be recurring and cover the next 12 months. PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR TECHNICAL REASONS, RECURRING ABSENCES CAN ONLY BE MODIFIED OR DELETED ONE BY ONE. If, for example, you have created a two-hour absence for Wednesdays, but later want to change it to three hours, you need to open the absence separately in each week’s view and make the change. The same applies to deleting absences. Therefore, we recommend using recurring absences with care and creating them only for a few weeks or months at a time.

To modify or delete a part-day absence, click on it in the Calendar view. A new window appears (bottom image). Make the changes and confirm them by clicking on Done or delete the absence by pressing Delete note. If you want to exit the window without making any changes, press Cancel.

Customers

Jul 30, 2018

With Whooshing Deadlines, you are able to create customers and save language pair- and specialization-specific prices for each. To create customers, click on the Add new customer button located on the right side of the Setup window. A new window opens for entering customer data. All fields are optional and the extent of information provided totally up to you. You can edit the existing data at any time by clicking on Modify customer. Clicking on the Delete customer button removes all data, including the customer’s name. Up and down arrows allow you to organize your customer list: select a customer by clicking on the name and move them up or down in the list with the arrows.
Each customer can be uniquely identified by entering a name of your choice in the data input window. You can select the correct invoice currency from a list of the 20 most traded currencies and create a customer-specific minimum price. Time zone selection facilitates the management and scheduling of jobs for customers in different continents. If a customer is assigned a time zone other than the default one (zone displayed by your computer), deadlines are automatically displayed in both the zones, yours and the customer’s. Clicking on the New price button (bottom right image) allows you to enter customer-specific prices.
Language pairs and specializations are displayed in drop-down menus. Please note that you can only enter prices if you have saved language pairs and/or specializations in the Setup window! Check one or both boxes to the left of the drop-down menus to define prices for language pairs, specializations or their combinations. You can use any pricing units, that is, fill in the price boxes or leave them blank, as you please. In the adjacent example, the customer has been defined a price per page, word and hour in en-fi language pair.

When done, click on Save. You can continue entering prices in the Customer data window by selecting New price, modify previously entered data by clicking on Edit price or omit price data by selecting Delete price. Once finished, click on Done to exit the Customer data window. Remember to save the changes by pressing the Save button at the bottom of the Setup window, or click on Cancel to ignore them.

Tip:

If you and a translation agency, for instance, have agreed on a special price for specific specializations or end customers, start by saving the translation agency’s basic data and then the necessary specializations/end customers in Setup under Specializations. (End customer = ‘Specialization’!) Then, return to customer data by clicking on the customer’s name in Setup window and select Modify customer. In Customer data input window, click on New price and then check the Language pair and Specialization boxes on the left. From the displayed drop-down menus, select the correct language pair and specialization/end customer and enter the agreed price for the combination. All subsequent jobs created under this customer, language pair and specialization will automatically use the special pricing.

Specializations and topics

Jul 30, 2018

Specializations help you track how your work is divided by thematic area. By consistently defining the specializations of your assignments, you are able to gain valuable information for competitive bidding, grant applications or simply marketing your work (see Reports and tips below for more information).
Specializations are added and named similarly to the Language pairs. Click on the Add new specialization button center right of the Setup window. The view shown on the right appears. Enter a name of your choise for the specialization. You can also specify a level of difficulty or time factor (0.1–3.0) if your working speed in this particular specialization differs from the average in either direction. Texts belonging to a specialization that is easier and therefore faster to translate than an average text are assigned a time factor less than 1. If the specialization is more time consuming than your regular work, the factor is set to 1.1 or more. Whooshing Deadlines takes the time factor into account when calculating the time needed for the job, i.e. the bigger the factor, the longer the time. Thanks to the flexibility of the app, the time factor can be readjusted at any point when creating a job or even during the translation process by modifying the job data.

Save the specialization by clicking on Done or press Cancel to return to settings without saving the changes. Remember to save any changes by clicking on Save at the bottom of the Setup window before exiting.

Tip:
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Tip:
Specializations provide a handy tool for topic- or customer-specific pricing. If you have agreed on a higher or lower rate for translations falling under a particular topic or assigned by a specific end customer, create a corresponding specialization and set a unique price in Customer data.

Language pairs

Jul 30, 2018

Language pairs are created in the top right corner of the Setup window. The number of pairs is not limited and they can be named freely using abbreviations such as ES-EN or any other strings. Click Add new language pair to open the language pair view (displayed below). Name the pair and set your standard working speed. The speed can be set in all or any of the available invoicing units. (‘Minutes’ refers to program minutes in audiovisual translation. The unit ‘hour’ is not included here as an hour always lasts an hour!)

Enter your language pairs and click Save. The topmost (see below) view reappears. You can add additional language pairs, edit previously saved pairs, or continue to create other settings. After edits, always exit the Setup window by clicking Save at the bottom of the page or press Cancel to ignore the changes.

If you want to make changes to a language pair you have created or delete it altogether, select the appropriate pair from the list and click the corresponding button on the right side of the window. To change the order of the language pairs on the list, use the up and down arrows displayed below the buttons. To confirm all changes, exit the Setup window by clicking Save.

Please note that day in working speed settings refers to the number of hours entered in Whooshing Deadlines as the length of your working day. For example, if your working day is six hours and you translate from English into Finnish at an average rate of 400 words per hour, enter 6 * 400 = 2400 words in the Working speed field. Working speed is a mandatory data element the app needs to calculate the time required to complete a particular assignment. If you have not specified your working speed in language pair settings, you must enter it whenever a new job is created. If you are unsure of your working speed, use your best estimate when configuring your settings and then map the actual speed with Job tracker.

Tip:

You can create your own ‘language pairs’ for proofreading, editing and text creation, and assign them their own hourly working speeds. This way you can easily see the time estimate for each job and create unit prices in customer data.

Setup window functions

Jul 30, 2018

This document describes basic settings displayed on the left side of the Setup window that apply to the entire application. Instructions related to language pairs, specializations and customers as well as to entering and managing related data are provided in separate articles.

1. Define default length of your working week by simply checking or unchecking day-specific boxes. The default working week suggested by the app is from Monday to Friday, but you are free to choose whichever days you want. Set the length of your working day to the nearest 30 minutes.

Whooshing Deadlines allocates assignments to the available time period based on their scale and the indicated working speed. The number of weekly working hours can be freely defined from 0 to 7 * 24 hours of work. Both the number and length of workdays are easy to adjust ‘on the fly’ directly from the Calendar view. The values should be realistic regarding both the number and length of days and the estimated pace of work (see Language pairs). For job scheduling purposes, it is probably very useful to calculate the standard working day by counting the hours you usually have for performing billable work, excluding the time dedicated to ‘paperwork’, marketing and similar. For instructions on how to adjust the length of the working week and day without going to Setup, please see Absences.

2. Next, select the default invoicing unit, that is, the ‘unit of measure’ you use most often to invoice or outline your work. When a new job is created, the app automatically adds this invoicing unit to the assignment data. The unit can always be changed and replaced with one of the other available units. These include page, word, row, hour and minute (for subtitling and other similar projects). Thanks to the hour unit, Whooshing Deadlines can also be used to manage interpreting and other hour-based jobs.

3. The App language drop-down menu lets you select the preferred language of use: Finnish or English. ‘Default language’ means the language selection that is compatible with your computer’s operating system (Finnish = Finnish, other languages = English).

4. The free trial version always runs in offline mode and in trial mode. Once you have purchased a license, click the Insert activation code button, type or copy the 20-digit code that you received from us and continue using the app either in online or offline mode.

When the 30-day trial period has expired and you start the application, a pop-up window will appear indicating the end of the free trial period. If you choose not to uninstall the application, this window can be used for entering the activation code you receive after purchasing Whooshing Deadlines.

5. If you want to ‘clean up’ your calendar at regular intervals, you can select the desired period of up to two years. Jobs completed before that time are automatically removed from the application database. This tidying up is not necessitated by any space-related constraints — the database is large enough to accommodate all past and future assignments. You can also choose to delete all saved works at once or reset app to initial settings. Reset to initial settings will not only erase any personalized settings but also the language pairs and customers you have set up. Think twice before hitting that button! We also advise you to occasionally save the data on finished jobs as a report in table format to make sure you can go back to them, if needed.

6. Whooshing Deadlines theme colour options include grey (default), green, orange, gold, white and brown. To change the colour, open the menu located at the bottom of the Setup window. You can opt to use different colours on different devices or change them to match your mood.

7. By creating a backup, you ensure that your data will not be lost during application updates or transfers from an old computer to a new one. If you use Whooshing Deadlines in offline mode, occasional backups on an external drive or service are particularly recommendable. Simply click Create backup and select a location to save the file. To download a copy of the backup to your new computer, click Open backup.

If you use the registered app in online mode, your local data is automatically synchronized to the database, i.e. the cloud. All files stored in the cloud will stay intact and are backed up automatically, but of course you are also free to play it 100% safe by making your own backups prior to updates and device replacements.

8. Remember to apply any new settings or changes by clicking Save. To ignore them, press Cancel. Any setting changes will highlight the Save button to make it easier to remember to click it.

Home View

Jul 30, 2018

The User guide articles describe Whooshing Deadlines and its operating principle, functions and settings and provide helpful tips for users.

Once you have downloaded Whooshing Deadlines from the download page and installed it on your computer, opening the app for the first time brings up the view shown below. Unlike the example, the app will be in trial mode and can be activated by purchasing Whooshing Deadlines from our online store and entering the license code in the Setup window.

To get started with Whooshing Deadlines, read the Quick Guide which opens by clicking the Help button in the top right corner of the Calendar view. In addition, all Whooshing Deadlines buttons and most function and input fields feature tooltips which appear when the cursor hovers over the element. This means that the app discreetly guides its user step by step.

Whooshing Deadlines has been designed to promote ease of use and intuitiveness. The only Home view elements which may be less than obvious to the first-time user are the weekly grid to the right of the clock and the yellow figures next to each day of the week. Both relate to altering the available working hours with respect to basic settings: the weekly grid provides a handy tool to add or delete working days displayed on a particular week, while clicking the yellow figure allows you to enter recurring or non-recurring hourly or daily absences. For more information about these features, see Setup window functions and Absences.

To start using Whooshing Deadlines, read the Help section and then click Setup in the upper-right corner of the screen to read instructions related to Setup window functions.