Lead's guide

The productions dashboard

The Productions dashboard lists the productions you can access. Its layout depends on your assignments and administrator access.

As a team administrator

Your teams' productions are grouped by team, then under Queue (not started), Ongoing (in progress), or Completed (done). Unanswered invitations appear under Incoming. Invitations you declined remain under Declined, where you can accept them later. Each card shows details and progress; click it to open the Studio.

As a lead on particular productions

If you are assigned as lead without administering the team, My productions shows productions you own or are assigned to. Your cards display Lead beside the production status. Expand a card to see its chapters. Each chapter's ⋯ menu offers Change stage, Import, Export, Delete recordings, and Unimport. Use All articles ⋯ to apply an action to all eligible chapters.

The card's ⋯ menu includes production controls such as Edit production details and Production roles. Your lead assignment provides the same controls in personal and team views.

As a teammate

Editors, narrators and reviewers use the personal view with controls for their assigned work. Production roles in the card's ⋯ menu shows the crew without assignment-editing controls. Progress bars for Content → Recording → Review show completed phases, progress in the current phase, and phases still to come.

Importing a manuscript

To create a production, choose Import production, select a Product, find an Issue, and select Import. SpokenWords uses the issue's manuscript in webarch, so you do not upload or paste text. An issue already in production cannot be imported again.

Anyone with access to a product can start an import. Importing does not grant management permissions; those come from a lead assignment or administrator access. Arrange the production's assignments, including your own, after import.

Import saves a copy of the issue and prepares its articles for recording. The dialog closes when processing starts, and the status bar shows progress. When preparation finishes, Production roles opens so you can assign the work before opening the Studio. Keep the page open while importing; navigating away stops the import.

The production's sections follow the issue's existing articles. Its content type—Document, Book, Magazine, or Newspaper—determines whether the app calls them sections, chapters, features or articles. The content type comes from the product the issue was imported from, so it is shown but cannot be changed here; a production that carries the wrong one is repaired by changing the product. Use Edit production details in the card's ⋯ menu to change the title, author or language.

Putting people on the production

Open Production roles from the card's ⋯ menu to view assignments and add people. You can assign five roles:

Each chapter moves through Editor → Narrator → Reviewer. The person working at its current stage hands it to the next role when ready. Chapters progress independently, so narration can begin on chapter 3 while editing continues on chapter 8. Leads and producers oversee this work throughout.

Choose each invitee by email from the list of people with access to the production's Product, and optionally set a deadline. You must select an existing entry. The list can include freelancers with product access who belong to no team. Several people can hold the same role, whether splitting chapters or sharing them. Assignments show these statuses:

These statuses describe the invitation, not progress on the work. Expand the production card to see each chapter's current stage. Remind is hidden once all assigned chapters have passed that person's stage. Older assignments may also show Completed; like Pending, this is a legacy assignment status and does not establish that a chapter is finished.

Use Remind to follow up on an assignment, Remove to remove it, or edit its deadline. If someone declines, reassign their chapters so another person can take over.

An assignment covers the chapters present when it is created. Even if you choose The whole book, chapters imported later need a new assignment before that person can open them. The crew panel lists uncovered chapters under Nobody assigned, separately for narration and review, grouping consecutive chapters together. This is an inventory, not a warning: front matter, indexes, and colophons may be intentionally unassigned.

Hiring an organization

You can also assign a Supplier organization, such as a narration studio. Choose its role and chapters; its Administrator then assigns people from that organization's roster within the roles you granted. Your crew list shows the organization's assignment. Its administrator also sees the individual staff assignments and a count of people assigned.

An organization assigned as Lead manages the production for you. Its administrators have all the production controls described in this guide.

What a producer manages

A producer manages assigned chapters: their stages, imports, exports, review decisions and staffing. A lead also manages the production's metadata, supplier organizations, delivery settings and deletion. Assigning a producer every chapter does not grant those production-level controls.

Overseeing a production in the Studio

Preview any role

Use the role switcher to preview All roles, Editor, Narrator, or Reviewer. Editor view shows annotation tools; narrator and reviewer views show the waveform overview and their respective controls. Leads and producers use these views to oversee the work. See the editor, narrator, and reviewer guides.

Export readiness

The export indicator shows the last check's result: green when ready, or a warning/blocker count. Opening a production does not run a new check. Click the indicator or choose Export check from ⋯ to open the export checklist, then select Run check. It checks recording coverage, unresolved reviews, audio integrity, clipping, loudness, processing, transcript matches and durations. Results are OK, Deviation, or Not measured. You can override a failed check with a reason. Once blocking checks pass or are overridden, choose Mark as ready to publish to make Export all available in the checklist footer.

Post-processing

Open Post-processing with the wand icon in the rail at the right edge of the studio to reduce noise and sibilance, adjust EQ, trim silence, normalize loudness and limit peaks. Compare settings with the original on one take using A/B preview, then apply them to the open section or whole production. Processing creates separate copies. Use Restore to original to return to the original recordings.

Handing a finished article back

Finished audio is exported to webarch for publication. Importing an article locks its source in webarch; Export merges the recorded takes and writes them back to that article. In the Studio's ⋯ menu, use Article for the open article or Whole production for all articles. You can also export from a chapter row on the production card or use Export all in the export checklist.

An article must reach Done before you can export it. Marking a review complete can move it to Done, but does not export it. To change its stage manually, use Change stage in the same menus.

Export runs in webarch and may take a while. The status bar reports progress and confirms each completed article. If an article cannot be exported, it explains why: the article has not reached Done, a rejection is unresolved, it has already been exported, or a required recording is missing. Other articles continue exporting.

After export, an article's recordings and reviews are locked because its audio is already in the webarch issue. To release an article without exporting audio, use Unimport. This unlocks it in webarch and deletes its SpokenWords recordings, reviews, and bookmarks. You can import it again later, but the deleted recordings cannot be reused.

"Not yet assigned" warning

If you open a production that has no one assigned, the notifications bell shows a warning with a shortcut to Production roles. It clears once someone is assigned.