diff --git a/datashare-api/src/test/java/org/icij/datashare/PipelineHelperTest.java b/datashare-api/src/test/java/org/icij/datashare/PipelineHelperTest.java
index 59fa0cf51..bf4df7b91 100644
--- a/datashare-api/src/test/java/org/icij/datashare/PipelineHelperTest.java
+++ b/datashare-api/src/test/java/org/icij/datashare/PipelineHelperTest.java
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ public void test_get_queue_names_for_batch_nlp_pipeline() {
     @Test
     public void test_get_queue_names_for_batch_nlp_pipeline_from_index() {
         PipelineHelper pipelineHelper = new PipelineHelper(new PropertiesProvider(new HashMap<>() {{
-            put("stages", "BATCHENQUEUEIDX,BATCHNLP");
+            put("stages", "CREATENLPBATCHESFROMINDEX,BATCHNLP");
         }}));
         assertThat(pipelineHelper.getQueueNameFor(Stage.BATCHNLP)).isEqualTo("extract:queue:batchnlp");
     }
diff --git a/datashare-app/src/main/java/org/icij/datashare/tasks/BatchNlpTask.java b/datashare-app/src/main/java/org/icij/datashare/tasks/BatchNlpTask.java
index 6892bfd6c..77d44916c 100644
--- a/datashare-app/src/main/java/org/icij/datashare/tasks/BatchNlpTask.java
+++ b/datashare-app/src/main/java/org/icij/datashare/tasks/BatchNlpTask.java
@@ -6,6 +6,7 @@
 import com.google.inject.Inject;
 import com.google.inject.assistedinject.Assisted;
 import java.util.List;
+import java.util.Optional;
 import java.util.function.Function;
 import org.icij.datashare.asynctasks.CancellableTask;
 import org.icij.datashare.asynctasks.Task;
@@ -59,14 +60,14 @@ public Long call() throws Exception {
             return 0L;
         }
         int batchSize = this.docs.size();
-        int updateRate = batchSize / 10;
+        int updateRate = Integer.max(batchSize / 10, 1);
         Language language = this.docs.get(0).language();
         pipeline.initialize(language);
         logger.info("performing NER on {} docs in {}...", batchSize, language);
         // TODO: for now None of the Java NER seems to support batch processing, we just iterate docs one by one
         // TODO: we could improve perfs by fetching docs and processing them concurrently...
         int nProcessed = 0;
-        this.progress.apply(0.0);
+        Optional.ofNullable(this.progress).ifPresent(p -> p.apply(0.0));
         for (CreateNlpBatchesFromIndex.BatchDocument doc : this.docs) {
             String project = doc.project();
             Document indexDoc = indexer.get(doc.id(), doc.rootDocument(), EXCLUDED_SOURCES);
@@ -87,11 +88,12 @@ public Long call() throws Exception {
             }
             nProcessed += 1;
             if (nProcessed % updateRate == 0) {
-                this.progress.apply((double) nProcessed / (double) batchSize);
+                Double prog = (double) nProcessed / (double) batchSize;
+                Optional.ofNullable(this.progress).ifPresent(p -> p.apply(prog));
             }
         }
         pipeline.terminate(language);
-        this.progress.apply(1.0);
+        Optional.ofNullable(this.progress).ifPresent(p -> p.apply(1.0));
         return (long) batchSize;
     }