Assigning interpreters
Learn how to assign interpreters to appointments — from the candidate list and map to the three assignment modes.
At a glance
- The Assignment step of the appointment modal shows you a ranked list of candidates and a time-grid view of their availability.
- Three assignment modes: Assign (one interpreter), Auto Assign (a sequence that falls through on decline), and Broadcast (first to accept wins).
- Direct assignment works with anyone — interpreters and partner agencies, on Fluent or not. Auto Assign and Broadcast require active Fluent accounts.
- Candidates are filtered first, then ranked. Language, credentials, and customer onboarding narrow the pool; completion history, acceptance rate, and proximity rank what remains.
Where assignment fits in the appointment modal
Creating an appointment in Fluent is a three-step modal: Details, Assignment, and Review. This article covers the Assignment step. For the full walkthrough, see Creating an appointment.
By the time you reach the Assignment step, you’ve already entered the appointment’s start time, duration, language, service type, mode, team, customer, address, and the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) client name. The Assignment step uses all of that to surface the right candidates.
The candidate list
The left side of the Assignment step shows a list of candidates. What appears in that list depends on your account type:
- Agencies see their own interpreters and any partner agencies.
- Organizations see their staff interpreters (paid plan) and the vendors they work with.
For the rest of this article, the agency view is described first; org-side equivalents are noted inline.
Filters: who appears in the list
Before any ranking happens, candidates are filtered down to the ones who can actually do this appointment. Interpreters and partner agencies are excluded if they:
- Don’t speak the required language.
- Don’t have the credentials or certifications the appointment requires.
- Aren’t onboarded to this customer (when the customer requires it).
- Don’t offer the service type — for example, an interpreter who only does in-person won’t appear for a video appointment.
If a candidate doesn’t meet the hard requirements, they’re not in the pool. This is to prevent schedulers from assigning to someone who isn’t actually a match.
Ranking: who appears at the top
Once the pool is filtered, Fluent ranks candidates so the best fit for this appointment surfaces first. The ranking considers:
- Completion history with this customer. Interpreters who have done more work for this specific customer rank higher — they already know the workflow and the people.
- Acceptance rate. Interpreters who reliably accept the offers they receive rank higher than those who frequently decline.
- Proximity (for in-person appointments). Closer interpreters rank higher.
Each candidate row shows the inputs to the ranking — completion count, acceptance percentage, distance — so you can see why one candidate is ranked above another. You can also see how far each interpreter is from the appointment address, when their home address is on file.
The availability time grid
To the right of the candidate list is an availability time grid. Each row corresponds to a candidate in the list. The appointment window appears as a light blue band across the grid, and any blue bars in a row show when that interpreter has set themselves as available.
A few things to know about the grid:
- Only interpreters set availability. Partner agencies and vendors don’t have rows with availability bars — they manage availability inside their own teams, not in Fluent’s grid.
- Availability comes from recurring weekly templates. Interpreters set their availability once on a weekly template; that template projects forward across the calendar. So the bars you see on the grid reflect their typical pattern, not specific date-by-date entries.
- Overlap with the blue appointment band is what you’re looking for. If an interpreter’s availability bar overlaps the appointment window, they’re available for it.
The map view
You can switch the candidate panel to a map view, which is most useful for in-person appointments. The map shows the appointment location and the home locations of qualified interpreters within a default radius around it. Fluent picks a sensible radius based on how many interpreters are nearby, and you can adjust it if you want to widen or narrow the search.
For video and phone appointments, the map is less relevant — proximity doesn’t affect the assignment.
Assignment modes
Once you’ve identified one or more candidates, you choose how to assign the appointment. Fluent supports three modes:
Assign (direct assignment)
You assign the appointment to a single interpreter or partner agency.
- If they accept, the appointment is theirs.
- If they decline, the appointment becomes unassigned and a scheduler will need to manually reassign it.
- Direct assignment works with anyone. This includes interpreters who haven’t yet registered their Fluent account (invited users) and partner agencies that aren’t on Fluent at all. For partner agencies that aren’t on Fluent, the appointment is set directly to Assigned — the assumption is that you’ve already communicated and confirmed with them outside the platform.
Use this when you have a specific interpreter in mind, or when you’ve already coordinated coverage offline.
Auto Assign
You select two or more candidates in a specific order. The appointment goes to the first candidate; if they decline, it automatically rolls to the second; and so on through your list, until someone accepts.
This saves the scheduler from manually reassigning each time someone declines. It’s a sequenced fallback, not a race.
Auto Assign requires active Fluent accounts. Interpreters who haven’t registered yet, or partner agencies that aren’t on Fluent, won’t be selectable in this mode — they don’t have a way to accept or decline an offer in the platform.
Broadcast
You select two or more candidates and send the offer to all of them at once. First to accept wins. Everyone who didn’t accept in time sees the offer as no longer available.
For partner agencies, “accepting” isn’t a one-click confirmation — the partner agency has to run their own assignment workflow internally and assign one of their interpreters before the offer is considered accepted.
Broadcast also requires active Fluent accounts for the same reason as Auto Assign.
Use Broadcast when you want to fill an appointment quickly and don’t have a preferred order among qualified candidates.
The Review step
After Assignment, the Review step summarizes everything you’ve configured: the appointment details, who you assigned to (and in which mode), and what the candidates will see. It’s the last chance to confirm before the offer goes out.
After you assign
Once you complete the Review step, the offer goes out and the appointment enters the post-assignment lifecycle.
The interpreter is notified. They receive the offer by email and as a push notification on the mobile app. Both surfaces let them accept or decline directly — there’s an accept and decline button in the email itself, and the mobile notification opens the appointment in the app where they can review the details before responding.
If they accept, the appointment status changes from Pending to Assigned.
If they decline, what happens next depends on the assignment mode:
- Assign: the appointment becomes Unassigned, and a scheduler will need to reassign it.
- Auto Assign: the offer rolls automatically to the next interpreter in your sequence. The appointment stays in Pending until someone accepts or the sequence runs out.
- Broadcast: the decline simply removes that interpreter from the running. The appointment stays in Pending and continues to wait for any of the other broadcast recipients to accept.
For broadcast and auto assign, the appointment only becomes Unassigned if every candidate declines (or the broadcast offer expires with no acceptances).
Coming soon: messaging interpreters about offers
We’re working on a comment system that will let you send a direct message to an interpreter alongside an offer — for example, “Hey, wondering if you can take this one.” The goal is to keep Fluent from feeling like a purely automated system. Schedulers should still be able to develop rapport with their interpreter network and reach out personally when it matters, instead of every offer landing as a generic email.
This isn’t available yet, but it’s planned.