Identifying Jobs That Are Checked Out

Summary

In this guide, you will learn why a transcriptionist may not be receiving jobs even though they should be able to because there is room in their queue.

Overview

Many platform features and settings contribute to whether a particular job is automatically routed to a particular transcriptionist at a particular time.  The overall description of that criteria is explained in KB Article 160 here.  This KB Article deals with the scenario in which a transcriptionist is not receiving jobs (or as many as the expect) due to the maximum number of jobs the transcriptionist is allowed to check out at a time.  

This setting is found on the Transcriptionist Settings page in the IMC.  Let's consider the example in which the platform is set to allow a transcriptionist to have a maximum of 2 jobs at a time, yet the transcriptionist has either 0 or 1 jobs displaying in the ITC and none are downloading.

Problem

• As stated earlier, the scenario in which an MT is not receiving jobs (or as many as they expect) due to the maximum number of jobs the MT is allowed to check out at a time is the problem. 

• The most common reason for this would be that there aren't any jobs available that meet the criteria outline in KB Article 160, but for this example, we will assume there are such jobs.  The MT might even try to search and download a job only to be told she has her maximum checked out.  How can an MT with only 0 or 1 jobs displaying in her ITC list be denied that next job?

Solution

• The answer is that the platform believes she has 2 jobs checked out already.  The first thing to understand is that the maximum number of jobs is tied to an MT, not to a computer.  When an MT uses more than one computer, if she leaves one computer with 1 job checked out, that will leave her with the ability to check out only one job (the max of 2 minus the 1 already checked out) on the second computer.  (As a best practice, an MT should avoid leaving a job checked out in an ITC on a computer she is turning off or leaving to prevent placing the turn-around time in jeopardy.) 

• The next potential reason is that the platform has a job checked out to an MT that she doesn't still see.  This is rare, but it can happen if the MT's Internet connection fails during a download or upload. 

The definitive way to identify how many jobs an MT has checked out (and to identify those specific jobs) is to check the MT Status sub-tab under the Queue tab in the IMC.  Find the MT and click the plus (+) sign to expand her information.  This will display all the jobs the platform has checked out to the MT.  If an adjustment needs to be made on the server side, use the Return to Server action in the IMC Queue tab to do so.