This year seems to be the time our voices can be heard. There’s been some pretty big decisions on the table already this year that have produced some very surprising results. Brexit… who knew the majority of people in the United Kingdom would vote to leave the European Union. Who knew it would be called Brexit… guess UKexit was too hard to pronounce! Who knew Donald Trump would become the Republican Presidential nominee; who knew Bernie Sanders would not fare so well for the Democrats? If you live in these countries then these were all big decisions that you may have had a hand in even if you didn’t vote. If you’re unhappy with the result, you should have voted; if you think now they were bad decisions then perhaps more could have been done to help ensure you were better informed?
Well the year isn’t over and there are going to be more to come, so I’m taking this opportunity to make sure you know about a voting opportunity that brings only opportunity as all the choices are positive! Since May, SDL had been asking for ideas from their users for an app that could be developed for use in SDL Trados Studio. The app could be anything at all that you thought you’d like to see. There were over 200 ideas which really brings home the need for something like the SDL AppStore… it’s not just phones that benefit from this kind of flexibility!
The collection of ideas was over earlier this month and now everyone gets to vote for the idea they like the best. But 200 ideas is too many to ask people to vote for so a panel from SDL went through them all removing any that were already a work in progress by a developer somewhere and destined for the AppStore in the near future; removing any that are in the core product already; removing any that were simply impossible to do; removing a few “interesting ones” that seemed to have nothing to do with the tools at all… and then finally picked 13 that were the most asked for by you. I believe the intention was to pick 10, but it was just too hard as some of the ideas were really good and it seemed unfair to not expose them to a wider audience. You now have until the 18th August to make your vote count. You can only vote for one idea from the list of 13 but can change your mind as much as like between now and then.
The winning app, the one with the most votes, will be developed by SDL and made available for free through the app store. So if you haven’t voted then do it now before you forget. Click on the big green button below to find all the ideas and make your choice!
Just a quick note on getting to the vote. The poll is actually in the SDL Community and if you’ve been there before then it holds no fears for you… if you haven’t then you’ll probably see this message:
Don’t be put off by this. If you have a licence for any of the SDL products then you already have an account. It’s the same credentials that you use for logging into your account to get your licenses, so you are taken to the login page (if you are not already logged into your account) where you add your details, and you’ll be taken straight to the community. You’ll never be asked for membership again unless you join one of the other communities SDL have to offer. Having to do this is good because it stops you seeing an endless stream of activity in the community if you use it regularly for help because you only see the stuff related to the groups you joined.
So now vote… we’re stronger together… take back control… make translation great again… or just vote to support development of the feature you like the best!
Don’t forget, voting is allowed until the 18th August 2016. After that date it’s too late. So if you’re a Studio user, take a few minutes to review the ideas and vote for the one you want today! And just as important, share the news. If you have colleagues who use Studio and have been known to say “I wish Studio could ….” then have them take a look too, if the final choice isn’t the one you would have voted for… well, what can I say!
And a final word… there’ll be no wikileaks scandal when SDL do the final count!! Your votes will determine the winner!
A bit disappointed with the choice of apps/tools to vote for. I submitted several ideas, none of them qualified. For example am I the only one frequently moving projects between computers? I resent having to change settings manually the first time I open a project on a different computer. It slows me down and could be automated.
Hi Piotr, you had five very good ideas but unfortunately none of them did make the final list. The one you mention is something I personally would like to see too, but it wouldn’t have been fair to base them on what I wanted when there were others that were clearly desired by many. If we’d had 20 to vote on you would have made it with a couple, but we really had to keep the choice down to low numbers as it’s very hard for people to decide when there are too many options. Maybe we’ll run this idea again next year if there is enough interest… or maybe you can find enough people yourself and encourage a developer to create one?
I guess I’ll have to study the project file structure very closely and knock together a script in Python or Perl (cause these are the two languages I know something about, but I don’t think they can work with the Studio API).
Hi Piotr, I asked Romulus Crisan about this and he suggested this might be worth a look.
“There is a project called IronPython that enables consuming .net dll’s from python. If he is looking to do some project automation (nothing around Studio UI) this might work but I have to say this is an unexplored path.”