One of the powerful new features in Paratext 8 is the ability to track your progress and to automate checks through the Assignments and Progress window. Progress tracking requires that a project has been assigned a project plan.  If you are the project administrator, you can learn how to do this from our Project Plan video tutorials. If a project plan is in place, this blue icon will appear in the upper right-hand corner of the project window.

Clicking the blue icon will open the Assignments and Progress window for the current book, and depending on whether you are a translator or an administrator, you will see either My Tasks or All Tasks. Tasks are marked complete here one at a time.  Below is an example for the book of Genesis. …  read more

Paratext is well known for its ability to synchronize data among multiple team members both online and offline. It was designed for use in areas with low bandwidth or no Internet, and so most teams are aware of its ability to synchronize data on a flashdrive. Very few people, however, know about another very useful collaboration option, even though it appears prominently in the Send/Receive dialog box each time you use it.

That option is Chorus Hub. It makes it possible to do Send/Receive over a local network, without using the Internet. Chorus Hub is a small program that you install on one (and only one) of the computers in your team. After you download and install it, it runs in the background and makes itself visible to the other Paratext computers on the network. …  read more

Paratext 8 has a built-in system for tracking your translation team’s progress that can give an estimate of how much time it will take to accomplish your project’s goal.  This can be useful for the team during yearly planning sessions when tasks are assigned to various team members. It can also allow administrators to track their team’s progress and be notified of potential issues long before the next planning and review session.  But if you are going to take advantage of these features, you need to do a bit of configuring. …  read more

Paratext 8 is slowly but surely getting new resources added.  Not as fast as everyone would like, of course, but negotiating new licenses for the texts we have used in the past has proven challenging. Not only that, but in a number of cases, the texts we want to use are not yet uploaded to the Digital Bible Library.  Yet progress is being made because almost every time you open Paratext 8 and go to the Download/Install Resources dialog box, you will see certain items marked as new  or updated .  Paratext checks to see which resources have been added since you last looked, and it also checks for newer versions of the resources that you have installed. …  read more