An important concept to understand before using Radio Workflow is what we call the Lifecycle; the stages and development of a project until it is completed. This section is devoted solely to describing this Lifecycle. Before we begin, it is important to understand that the Radio Workflow project management core was built in a way that prevents one department from interfering with another department. Each department has its own status inside of a project. There is a status for Traffic, Production, Creative and Dubbing. Let’s get started! The following is a basic example of how a project may progress from creation to completion.

Example #1: A project requiring creative and production

Aaron from sales sells some spots to a new Company, he wants the spots to go to air, but first, needs the spots to be written and produced. Aaron uses the new project wizard, to get things underway.

After submitting the Project he is redirected to the project page. It is important to note that, because Aaron added a Creative Order to his project, the Project will start in the Creative work queue.

Beatrice from Creative sees that the Project has appeared in the Creative work queue, she was also assigned as the writer, so she received an email notification about the Project and the Project now also appears under her Active Assignments tab on her dashboard. She opens the Project, reads the Creative Order Aaron submitted with the Project and gets to work writing the new scripts needed. She then uploads the scripts into the Project, updates the Status of each Spot, and then confirms the Creative Order status as "Pending Approval".

Aaron gets an email notification, informing him that Beatrice has been busy adding scripts to his Project. Aaron can see by looking at the Project that all scripts have been uploaded and he is now able to try and gain client approval.

In this instance, Beatrice has done an amazing job on the scripts and the client has approved the spots without any changes needing to be made. Aaron opens the Project, leaves a comment for Beatrice informing her that the scripts are approved and updates the Status for each spot to "Script Approved". Beatrice then sends the Project onto Traffic by updating the Status of the Project to "Traffic".

Shortly afterwards, when Claudio gets back from making himself an awesome tasting instant coffee in the office kitchen, he notices an email notification informing him that a new Project is in the Traffic work queue. He opens the Project and enters the appropriate scheduling information such as the Cart IDs. He then clicks on the traffic status and updates it to Scheduled and sends the Project to Production.

Duncan from Production sees that the project has appeared in the Production work queue. He prepares the talent, produces the spots based on the specifications entered by Beatrice in Creative and uploads the completed media files into the Project for review by the client.

Duncan sees that his audio was accepted so he then clicks on the status button and assigns the project to Dubbing.

Emilia from Dubbing sees that the project has appeared in the Dubbing work queue. She opens the Project and dubs the audio. She then clicks on the Status button and assigns the Project to Completed.

Example #2: A project, where all spots have already been produced

This example is actually pretty similar to the first example, the only difference is, we won't be creating a Creative Order as the spots have already been produced. Jack from sales has been working hard on an account with a large company that has a string of burger stores throughout America, Canada and Australia, they have agreed to run some ads on some of the stations within his organisation. The good news is, the spots have already been produced by their own marketing department. So Jack needs to do two things.

1. He has created and submitted a booking/contract, and now needs to inform traffic what spots he would like to run and when.
2. He needs to send the audio to the dubbing department so the audio can be dubbed onto the correct Cart ID's, so they can be played on air.
3. Jack logs into Radio Workflow and submits a new project using the new project wizard. Jack creates a Traffic Order but does not add a Creative Order because he already has the spots.

Fifi from Traffic gets an email notification informing her that Jacks new Project is waiting in the Traffic work queue. She opens the Project, then updates any systems that need updating (such as the traffic/scheduling system) and then enters the Cart IDs into the Project. Once she is done, she can see that Jack has already uploaded the audio to be dubbed and sends the Project onto Dubbing.

Emilia just started work, she opens up the Dubbing work queue and can see Jacks project has appeared, she then proceeds with dubbing the audio into the on-air system and marks the Project as complete.

Auto Dubbing

We presently support integration and auto dubbing into Nexgen & WideOrbit. If this is enabled in your subscription, then audio will be dubbed automatically once it is uploaded, the project is in the production or dubbing work queue and each spot has an appropriate Cart ID.