What Are the Instances in crossTerm?
With the help of the instances in Across, you can maintain and administer multiple terminology sets separately within the same database. For example, you can manage your corporate terminology, the glossary of a supplier company, the terminology of your subsidiary, and a subject-specific term repository alongside each other and search them.
How and Where Can I Apply crossTerm Instances?
A new instance can be set up with a few mouse clicks under crossTerm Manager → Tools → Settings → Manage.
In this area, you can create new instances and edit existing ones. You can also change the name and the icon of the default instance (especially if it is still called "Default across Server" on your system). Use the description field to define the contents of the instance or to document changes to the instance.
Additionally, you can use the instance management
- to remove all entries from an instance and merely retain their data structure (e.g. to fill it anew) or
- to delete an instance created by yourself entirely (data structure and entries).
What Are the Benefits of Using crossTerm Instances?
Using instances is a smart way of maintaining multiple terminology sets separately.
System attributes: Within the instances, you can of course use your system attributes (e.g. subjects and relations) as usual.
Filters: One of the greatest benefits of using instances is that Across always starts a term search in and returns results from all instances to you or your terminology users. You only need to set filters if you want to prevent this and e.g. exclude certain instances from the search. For example, this might be relevant when building packages for your translation partners or when using additional components such as crossTerm Web or crossTerm Now.
Data structure: In the various instances, you can work with different structures. For example, while you may need data categories such as the grammatical number, gender and usage information for your detailed corporate terminology, a definition field at entry level may be sufficient for a supplier glossary. Initially, new instances are empty and do not have any data structure. Fill the respective instances with the data categories you need. Of course, you should always consider who will use this terminology in the future and what the requirements of the respective users are. For example, a native-language translator usually needs different information than an engineer in your company who accesses your terminology via an intranet page.
Rights administration: You can systematically configure the access rights (e.g. limited read access vs. comprehensive read and write access) for the individual instances according to your needs by means of the user group rights.
Icons: To show all users at a glance that the results come from different instances, different icons can be used. By looking at the icon on the right-hand side in the search pane, a translator can easily see which instance a term comes from.
What Do I Need to Pay Attention to When Using crossTerm Instances?
Some of the functions in crossTerm are instance-specific, while others span all instances. For example, you can export terminology from only one instance and import to only one instance.
By contrast, the summary (statistical overview of your terminology: crossTerm Manager → Tools → Summary) always delivers results across all instances.
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