Free webinar: memoQ Server skills for teams!

 

Note: this webinar has already taken place. A download link for the presentation slides (with links to unlisted instructional videos) is available below, as is some Q&A from the live session... there will be an online course offered soon for teams and project managers using memoQ Servers, so watch this blog for the announcement.

This Friday (April 23rd, 2021 at 2 pm Central European Time), I'll be giving an English-language talk via Zoom discussing my approach to using the memoQ Server and teaching others to do so for workflows involving small teams. These might be groups of collaborating independent service providers, in-house and freelance staff supporting translation and editing services in corporations or at boutique translation agencies, or university and continuing education courses with instructors and a group of student PMs and translators. This talk is not designed to cover the perceived needs of behemoths inhabiting the bulk market bog. 

I will discuss the use of the memoQ Server and the hosted memoQ Cloud service with particular attention on user management, permissions, project workflows and resource availability. The last point also includes ideas for using a memoQ server as a platform to make some working "light resources" available which may be beyond the scope of a particular project.

There is no charge for the live webinar, though there will be a fee for those who wish to obtain a downloadable copy later. The recording will also be part of the reference resources provided in a professional continuing education course to be announced soon after some details on certified hour credits are worked out with the relevant Portuguese labor authorities and their representatives.

Register for the webinar here:

(registration now closed - see below for the presentation slides and Q&A)

I welcome all of you who are able to join me this week, and any others who may attend the online server skills course later or have particular training or problem-solving needs in this area.

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Lecture slides can be downloaded HERE.

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Questions & answers from the session:

What does "CAL" mean for licenses?

These are "floating" licenses, not attached to a specific user unless you assign them. 

(from Ellen Singer) : CAL (Concurrent Access Licensing)

Does a separate translator login also work when you want to work in your local client and only have a PM license and Webtrans licenses for a memoQ cloud subscription, No Translator Pro?

In that case you can assign a CAL license for some period of time (see the screenshot above), and this will make it available for offline use in a desktop edition of memoQ. For a basic memoQ Cloud subscription with just the PM license, it would be that PM license assigned (presumably) to you.

What are the advantages of a privately-run / hosted MemoQ server, over MemoQ cloud?

Several perhaps.

• You have full control over all file paths. You don't have access to all file paths in memoQ Cloud. The only place I can see where that makes a real difference is when changing default resources as I described in my old blog post on that subject, but I think that is an important option for many company teams.
• Maybe some economic advantage in the short or long run. A memoQ Server at your site represents a significant capital investment, and there are maintenance fees (about 20% of acquisition cost, isn't it?) incurred each year for support and upgrades. A memoQ Cloud subscription is a fairly manageable expense if it's small, but with a lot of licenses or added options like Qterm, customer portal, etc. it can be a pretty hefty monthly expense, though one which can be adjusted up or down as needed. And memoQ Cloud subscriptions can be suspended or reactivated as needed. Really, you would have to model the costs of each approach in a spreadsheet (or similar manner of calculation) to compare and determine definitively which approach gives you the greatest advantage.
  
  I do believe that even for owners/operators of private memoQ Servers, the memoQ Cloud subscription (trial or paid) offers a superb platform for testing new versions, other "sandbox" work including development which will not endanger your production server and arms-length special projects with outside partners.

Can you create an unlimited number of Users, regardless of the number of licenses you purchased?

Indeed you can. Configured user logins can be configured in any number and have nothing whatsoever to do with any number of licenses you may have available. But if your access maximum for licenses has been reached at any given time, a configured user may have to wait some time until a current active (logged-in) user logs off the server so somebody else can get in to work.

We’ve been using mQ Server for a while now, and you tackled a few very interesting points. (Esp. concerning access control in case of PM accounts.)

With regard to access, I think there are two very important things to do, remember, configure, etc.

• Use separate logins for your work as a PM or administrator and any work you may do as a translator/reviewer. These can have the same password for your convenience if you like. But for God's sake, use TWO SEPARATE LOG-INS. This will help you "stay in your lane" for a given role and prevent accidents. If you are logged in using an account that has project manager or administrative access privileges, you cannot easily tell sometimes (or may overlook) where you ought not to be working, and this can lead to difficulties.
• "Permissions" can be used to restrict or enable access to any memoQ resources available on the server. This is not an easy topic to get your head around if you are unfamiliar with how permissions and access work in general on computers, especially in server environments, and anything you configure should be tested to ensure that you got the configuration right. The memoQ Help is rather good on this point and should be read and re-read and re-read and re-read carefully, and if there are doubts remaining, ask memoQ Support or other experts for advice.
  
  A useful example of using "permissions" might be to assign an individual "Review" privileges to a specific TM or term base, enabling that person to do many maintenance operations on that resource which might otherwise be possible only with PM or general "terminologist" access. This approach would give a specialist for a rare language access to the specified resource(s) at a higher level, but that person's access would be more limited for other, similar resources (assuming there is no relevant group membership assigned that would provide such access.

Is it possible to do bulk changes to the permissions of more than one server resource at once?

Yes. Select the resources desired by control-clicking (for a discontinuous group) or shift-clicking (for a range in the list) and choose the "Set permissions" command. Changes made should apply to all the resources selected.

You mentioned a book on MemoQ. If so, can you let me have the title.

The book I mentioned in this talk is Marek Pawelec's excellent guide to the use of machine translation resources - including the extremely valuable pseudotranslation function. Information on that guide can be found here.

The challenge of light resource updates with many projects in memoQ

"Templates" take two forms in memoQ: the configuration option for equipping new projects with relevant resources in an automated way to save time and avoid forgetting important references or other information, which was introduced several years ago, and the older sort of "template" - a configured, existing project for a particular client or subject area - where new documents are simply added and old ones archived or deleted as time goes by. I use both approaches and still tend to rely more on the latter practice, as many do.

One colleague who is a frequent source of inspiration for new workflow approaches often mentions that her projects and support resources number in the hundreds, so many ideas I have for managing my own more limited set these days are not practical for her work. But recently someone mentioned casually that it was going to be difficult to update segmentation rules in the 1500 or so projects that her team maintains to support in-house translation needs in their firm. Oh, my God. Yes, that would take some time following the usual approach of going to Project home > Settings and selecting a new resource in even 10% of that number of projects.

There is a better way. In fact, this way will work with the desktop editions typically used by individuals as well as with memoQ server installations of any size, and a "mass update" of project light resources can be performed in very little time - less than it usually takes me to finish a cup of coffee in the morning. My recent article on memoQ light resource defaults and how to change them essentially points the way, but more details, now tested with a memoQ server as well, are given here.

Light resources in a desktop edition are typically stored in the paths

C:\ProgramData\MemoQ\Resources\Defaults for default resources and
C:\ProgramData\MemoQ\Resources\Local for customized (user-created) resources, unless that path was changed (as many do if they deal with a lot of files with long names and need to shorten paths to avoid errors when the file and path names together approach the 256 character limit imposed by Microsoft Windows).

Server installations follow more or less the same logic:

C:\ProgramData\MemoQ Server\Resources\Defaults for default resources and
C:\ProgramData\MemoQ Server\Resources\Local for custom ones, unless changed as noted above.

Note that the ProgramData folder is a hidden folder by default in Windows, so you may need to change your folder settings to view it.

Light resources stored in both the Defaults and custom (Local) folders are saved without the MemoQResource header one sees in an exported light resource file. Compare the following two screenshots of the same resource in the external editing and maintenance file (with XML comments to help me keep track of what things mean) and the stored file after importing it into memoQ:

My master resource file for German segmentation, maintained with comments in Notepad++

Imported custom resource file for German segmentation. All comments are stripped by memoQ.

So, what should you do if you have 200 projects for your personal work with a memoQ desktop edition or 1500 projects on your memoQ server, and you have a new segmentation rules file, for example, which you want to apply to all of your projects? Simply

1. Copy all the text beginning with the XML declaration
   
   all the way down to the end of the file.
2. Find the default or local resource to update in the paths described above (or in your own custom path) and open the file in a text editor.
3. Select all the text in the installed resource file, and paste the text of the new resource over it, replacing the content completely.
4. Save and close the file.

The changes to your default or custom resource will be active immediately. No need to restart memoQ or close and re-open any projects.

In my case, with the German segmentation file given as an example, I would paste that new content into the resource files for generic German (ger), as well as German from Germany (ger-DE), Austria (ger-AT) and Switzerland (ger-CH). No need to mess with the awful integrated resource editors in memoQ, because I keep a master resource file with explanatory comments to help me maintain it better outside of memoQ, and the segmentation I want will be the same for all language variants.

This method does nothing to disturb the content of existing projects nor does it affect their stability in any way. This should work with any memoQ light resources. Thus, for example, an IT department could plan bulk updates even of local resources like keyboard shortcut or web search settings given the necessary access to user drives on a network.

The approach that many follow of deleting old resources and importing new ones with the same names won't work; this can play Hell with project settings, because memoQ notices that a resource used in projects has been removed, and it does not replace the old assignment with a new one, even if that new one has the same name. I played that game with many variations to see if I could trick memoQ into substituting the same-named resource in my project and had no success at all. Don't go there. Use the process I described above.

memoQ Cloud subscriptions and credit card tribulations

Kilgray's memoQ Cloud service is a very convenient platform for learning and testing the latest features of the memoQ server and operating a server for small teams without the hassles of maintaining the server infrastructure and software in-house. For those considering a dedicated server for their company or institution, it offers an excellent opportunity for pilot testing at low or no cost depending on how long you use it. The first month is free; after that the monthly charges (to a credit card) currently start at EUR 160 or USD 175 for an account with one project manager license and 5 web access licenses (to which anyone with a licensed copy of memoQ can connect, without the need to include Translator Pro licenses in the subscription - these are needed only if users without a license will be connecting with the desktop editions of memoQ).

I use the memoQ Cloud server occasionally for shared projects, because it allows me to configure files and resources (of all kinds) more conveniently than file-swapping by e-mail or Dropbox folders and provide better support to my team members. For €160 per month in the months I need it I am on equal footing with any large agency with a memoQ server for the team sizes I want to work with. And I can even share the translation memory resources with colleagues who use SDL Trados Studio using the free Kilgray plug-in for that platform which enables access to any memoQ server online (with an access account created).

The only disadvantage of this service for me is Kilgray's annoying tendency to force upgrades much too soon in the release cycle. This won't matter at all to someone testing the memoQ Cloud server to evaluate the latest release; in fact, this is helpful to avoid the occasional server setup difficulties with new versions on which the paint has not yet dried so you can focus on evaluating features and general stability. But if you are in the middle of a big project, this can be a nuisance. More often now I assume, since Kilgray's current strategy involves more frequent minor version releases. If there is a compatibility problem between the latest release and a team member's memoQ software version, and that person isn't current with the annual maintenance and support plan (which includes free upgrades), they will be stranded for access from their memoQ desktop application until the missed annual fees are paid up.

But until today there was another mysterious hassle that I finally got sorted out. When I first started using memoQ Cloud, I paid the subscription with a US credit card from an old credit union account there. No problems. However, when I incorporated my business in my current country of residence and tried to use a card from my business account there, it never worked, and the explanation screen was displayed for only a brief time, with the text completely garbled due to an incorrect codepage specification for the web page. The first time this happened, I assumed the problem was Kilgray's, and after some back-and-forth with support, the company kindly made an inconvenient exception to their "credit card only" rule and sent me a normal invoice to pay by bank transfer. This isn't a usual thing as I have learned from some frustrated potential corporate customers who don't want to pay by credit card, so I am grateful that something was worked out in that case so I could get on with some urgent teamwork.

After a break of six months or so, the need for a cloud server arose again, and again I had the same trouble with my business credit card. After grumbling briefly to a friend at Kilgray who had sorted the mess out before, I decided to call my bank, because in the meantime my reading skills had improved enough that I was fairly sure that the trouble had nothing to do with Kilgray. Indeed.

The credit card verification and approval service used by Kilgray for web payment is 3-D Secure. In the case of my bank, this service is not available for credit card payments unless its activation is specifically requested. Such a thing never occurred to me, because I use the same card with Amazon and others to order dictionaries and other work materials. As the technician at my bank's help desk explained, there are several different payment approval systems for web transactions with a credit card, and it's merely a coincidence that the others I have dealt with haven't used 3-D Secure. He activated the service immediately (no cost), and five minutes later my memoQ Cloud subscription was renewed with the means of payment I preferred to use.

So it was in fact not Kilgray's problem at all, but it's probably a good idea for their support staff to take note of this scenario, because I am surely not the only one who got tripped up by 3-D Secure not being activated for my card. I am sort of embarrassed that I didn't think of this possibility earlier, but I don't do a lot of shopping online, and for minor stuff if one card fails for reasons unknown, I just shrug and use another. In fact, I think the same problem may have occurred with an airline ticket last spring, but I never associated that with my earlier troubles.

So now I'm up and running with the server version 8.2.5 on the memoQ Cloud, hoping I can finish my training project on that version before the impending release of memoQ 8.3 and the possibility of an upgrade before I get the work done. Tick, tick, tick....

memoQ Server Mystery: The 99% Solution

Several times in the past year when working on memoQ Server projects for clients, I completed my translation but found that strangely the progress bar was stuck at 99%:

It wasn't until I took another memoQ Cloud subscription for a collaborative project and encountered the same trouble that I realized what was going on.

If you are working on a server project, and graphics in the documents have been imported as well, these are assigned some default text noting that they need to be transcribed (as part of memoQ's interesting graphics translation and substitution workflow). If there is no text to transcribe and translate in these graphics, then nothing is usually done with the graphics. In a local project this does not matter.

But that little bit of default text is in fact a problem currently in server projects. It blocks the use of the "Deliver/Return" function, which may in fact mess up the schedule planning of the project manager who assigned the work. And it is not the translator's fault.

The translator might not even see the graphics if they are not assigned. But even if they can be seen, they cannot be deleted from a checked-out project copy. Not even by someone with administrative privileges for the server.

The solution is to delete the graphics in the Manage Projects window:

This changes the progress bar to 100% after the checked-out project is synchronized, and the translated files can be delivered for further processing and review. Problem solved.

Re-importing reviewed translations in memoQ server projects.

One of the unexpected benefits of testing the memoQ cloud server is that it gives me a good opportunity to reproduce and test some of the disaster scenarios encountered when working with project managers not fully aware of the implications of their choices when setting up server projects. Many of the problems that come to my attention relate to revision workflows that many experienced translators like to use.

For various reasons, exporting bilingual formats - XLIFF, Wordfast Classic-compatible DOC or RTF tables - is a popular review method. Sometimes these are checked by others who do not use memoQ, sometimes they are convenient for QA with third-party tools or have other perceived advantages. As far as I know, translators can always do bilingual exports from a local installation of memoQ connected to a server project. (I haven't looked for ways to block this, because I find the notion of doing so extremely counterproductive.)

The trouble comes when they want to re-import the corrected and/or commented bilingual file to update the translation. This is possible only by the project manager working in the management window. There's no way for the translator to import a bilingual reviewed document. I asked Kilgray Support about this and was told that this is intentional because of the difficulties which could result in the project. So basically if you edit a bilingual, someone with project manager privileges for that project has to re-import it for you.

Well, not always. Sometimes it works, just a bit differently than one might imagine.

If the project manager sets up the project to use "desktop documents" (as opposed to "server documents"), then it is possible to export bilingual files and re-import them. This cannot be done directly with documents in the Translation list. But it will work with Views of these documents. Or with the full bilingual exports of the documents themselves!

The screenshot above is from a server project with configure for desktop documents. For these two project types (with or without web translation enabled), when working from a memoQ desktop client you are able to import any bilingual to update a translation file from this interface.

But wait, that's not all!

or is it? That command says "Import" and so devious minds might wonder if it is possible to import something other than a bilingual export from one of your translation documents. Indeed, the dialog that appears for file selection tantalizingly offers all supported formats. So I grabbed a DOCX with a financial text and gave it a try:

SWEET SUCCESS! A mere translator, I've cracked the memoQ server and uploaded another document to my project. Visions of Caribbean beach vacations in the warm sun dance through my head as I contemplate all the extra work I can upload to certain client projects and bill because it is, well, right their on that server project they assigned to me.... then I get this message:

General error.
TYPE:
System.NullReferenceException

MESSAGE:
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

SOURCE:
MemoQ.Project

CALL STACK:
   at MemoQ.Project.ProjectDocument.TranslationDocumentProjectContext.UpdateDocumentDivisionInfos(TranslationDocumentCore doc)
   at MemoQ.Translation.Storage.SqlCeStorageService.SaveDocument(TranslationDocumentCore document, SavePreferences savePref)
   at MemoQ.Translation.Storage.SqlCeStorageService.SaveDocumentAndAllInfos(TranslationDocumentCore document, ICompactSerializable workflowInfo, ICompactSerializable tagDefinitions, ICompactSerializable lqaModel, SavePreferences savePref)
   at MemoQ.Project.TranslationDocImportExport.LocalImportController.doImportOrReimport(ImportTask importTask, String targetLangCode, String docStorageDir, Boolean reimport)
   at MemoQ.Project.TranslationDocImportExport.LocalImportController.DoJob()

That's Geek for "Nice try, buddy... an automated report has just been sent to the NSA and our agents will be at your door shortly." I click again, and that message self-destructs and I am given a second warning:

A knock on the door, then after a stern interview, I sink back into my desk chair and click Continue. Next time I'll stick to importing bilingual exports of documents or views from the project. That works beautifully from the View tab and allows me to work as I prefer, since by now most of my clients with memoQ servers know to use the desktop documents options for my projects. Perhaps in the future, Kilgray's programmers might tighten up the code to trap errors from fools like me who do the unexpected.



But of course, as of memoQ 2013 R2, when translating with the desktop client in server projects, one can usually update a translation with minor edits using the reviewed monolingual target document and the Import reviewed document command in the Translations menu of the project. This won't let you bring in comments, and it does have some (but increasingly fewer) quirks, but in many cases it works quite nicely. A video demonstration of this feature can be seen here.