Overdue Job Tickets

Overdue Tickets are issued automatically by the system so that SpeakWrite Management can keep an eye on jobs that are taking longer than estimated to complete. They may seem alarming, but the goal is just to help us keep track of the large number of jobs in progress at any given time. Unless you get an inordinate number of overdue tickets, do not worry if you get one every now and then. We know some jobs are more difficult than others and may take longer than the estimated time.

A good rule of thumb to avoid most overdue tickets is 2.5x the audio length. For example, a 20-minute audio should take around 50 minutes for a typist to transcribe. A 5-minute audio should take around 13 minutes to complete. Overdue tickets populate when it's been considerably longer than this. The overdue job alerts allows Management to keep track of the progress on a job so that it does not get sent back late to the client.

If a job is requeued because you do not answer an Overdue Ticket in the required time, you work will be lost. Please pay attention to these tickets.

Ticket Verbiage

Overdue tickets are automatically created and all include the following text:

Please respond to this ticket immediately. Your current job is overdue, and we need to know in detail why the job is overdue, whether the problem is on-going, what you are doing about it, how much more audio you have left to type, and how long you estimate before completion. PLEASE DO NOT CLOSE THIS TICKET. If this ticket is not responded to within 5 minutes, this job will be requeued and the typist supervisor will be notified.

Make sure that you DO NOT ignore the ticket. As soon as you hear the ticket alert go off in TypeEasy, you should pause the audio, stop typing and take a minute to respond back to the ticket.

If the job has already been submitted before receiving the notice, you still need to respond to the ticket that the job has been completed. The Help Desk will then give you permission to close the ticket.

Do not close Overdue Job tickets until the job has been submitted.

Overdue Ticket Response Guidelines:

Explain anything making the job take longer than expected. (e.g. This client is speaking very quickly and is dictating difficult terminology.)
If technical issues caused the job to become overdue, tell the Help Desk whether you will be able to finish the job and when.
Provide an estimated time to completion and how much more audio you have left to transcribe. (e.g. I have 1 minute of audio left to complete and then I need to proofread, so I should be done in about 5 minutes.)

Example of an ideal response to an OVERDUE Ticket:

Overdue job tickets are not issued because a typist is in trouble for taking too long on a job, but rather it is a useful tool to allow management to make sure the job is on track to meet our turnaround time. As long as you respond to the overdue ticket with an appropriate explanation, we will most often not need to take any further action. If the job does become overdue to the client and we do not receive appropriate responses to overdue tickets, the job may be requeued, but please note that we do not requeue jobs lightly. When we do have to make the decision to requeue, we have reached the point where it is absolutely necessary to do so. You will have fair warning ahead of time when an overdue job will be requeued.

Overdue tickets are a measurable statistic for performance reviews. While it's normal to receive an overdue ticket occasionally, we do get concerned when a large portion of your jobs become overdue. Management understands that new typists will have a higher percentage of overdue tickets while you're still getting familiar with rules. Experienced typists should receive them much less frequently.

Technical Issues that may cause a Job to Become Overdue

If you have technical issues that cause a delay for the job you are working to complete, a Help Ticket should be opened for that job before an overdue ticket populates. The first time you inform us of an issue should not be on the overdue ticket. If the issue cannot be resolved in a timely manner, the job should be requeued. Waiting until an overdue ticket populates to inform us of technical issues could cause a severe delay in getting the job to the client within turnaround time.

An Overdue ticket on a Group Conversation (GC)

Overdue job tickets are created automatically by the system, so they don't always take into consideration things that might take a job to naturally take longer, such as group conversation jobs. If you get an overdue ticket on a GC, please just reply with the same information as you would on a non-GC job. Give us an idea of how much audio you have left and/or how much longer you expect to work on the job. Let us know it's a group conversation, and if there's anything about it that's making it take longer.

Sometimes an overdue ticket might not populate on a GC even if you've had it a long time, but that doesn't mean it's not overdue. Keep in mind that these jobs should not take more than 5 to 6 times the length of the audio (ex. a 10-minute GC should not take more than 50 to 60 minutes to complete). If you surpass this length of time (even if no overdue ticket has been sent), the job is late.