Enable Performance Advisor to show the real Login Name and Host Name of sessions instead of the masked data currently available

velico · ‎Jul 27, 2015

Idea

Enable Performance Advisor to show the real Login Name and Host Name of sessions instead of the masked data currently available.

This should be configured for users with proper privileges, assigned through the eSupport Account Privileges for Performance Advisor for PTC Creo, and if this data have been willingly sent in unencoded form for that purpose by configuring the "PTC Diagnostic Tools" data filters:

Background

There is no easy way to find out the correlation between the masked data "User_ID" and "UUID" and their counterpart like User Name and Host Name even if this data have been willingly sent in unencoded form for that purpose by configuring the "PTC Diagnostic Tools" data filters.

Therefore the Performance Advisor, a tool that would be really useful, loses a great part of its effectiveness because of difficulties needed to identify quickly in the dashboard the failing sessions using masked data instead of actual User Name/Host Name and the work needed to maintain those mappings up to date.

In a company with a lot of users and workstations those difficulties, and the overload required, make this tool useless.

TomU · ‎Jul 27, 2015

Totally agree. If we're willing to allow the data to be uploaded, we should be able to access it from the dashboard!!!

velico · ‎Jul 27, 2015

Moreover, in this case I believe that there should be no need of submitting and voting a Product Idea.

In my opinion, it is obvious that this is a basic missing functionality and the PTC Product Manager should tell us just when it will become available!

JamesAvis · ‎Jul 27, 2015

See Re: How to identify a user in Performance Advisor for a workaround.

PTC told me they are working on a site hosted version that would allow this.

velico · ‎Jul 27, 2015

OK - Thanks

Marco_Tosin · ‎Sep 02, 2015

Waiting for the implementation of this idea, you can use what @STEVEG suggested in this discussion.

I use it and it works.

How to identify a user in Performance Advisor

velico · ‎Sep 02, 2015

Thank you, I'm going to implement in our startup script

JimTVancouverCa · ‎Oct 26, 2015

I think the data is anonymized on purpose. Post Edward Snowden revelations there has been in increased focus on security and privacy. I think it's anonymized by design so PTC isn't on the hook for holding customer data. I think it's pretty easy to imagine a scenario where a customer is very upset to learn of their user ID's on PTC's servers without their knowledge.

Steve Galayda's suggestion will work great in organizations with a lot of users. If you have just a few users you can just ask users to run the PTC Diagnostic Tools and have them send you this data:

Marco_Tosin · ‎Oct 26, 2015

Jim,

as I wrote in the past, I'm using Steve Galayda suggestion and it works, but I think MARIANO VELICOGNA idea should also be implemented for PA administrator (in my company I am the only PTC supervisor).

I spent dozens of hour in matching UID, UUID, username, computer name, sessions (which are shown with 8/9 hours of delay).

I'm not the only one who is not happy to manage data in this way (see Tom Uminn‌ comment in this discussion Dashboard)

JimTVancouverCa · ‎Oct 26, 2015

Hello Marco,

Yes I see your point, it's another case of needing to be capable in script writing to work around a deficiency in Creo administration. A simple option to select 'share my company's users ID's with PTC' would solve the problem. The technology to encrypt that data at rest at each end, and in transit is well known.

At least there are a couple of options for a solution that can be implemented today.

On point of being happy with a solution..

I have a very long startup script courtesy other very helpful users in the community to which I have modified and added to over the years. I also have a very long installation script to properly configure a PTC creo installation to use said startup scripts and more. I've always looked at this type of thing as a scale from one end to the other where one end is: I have to customize a lot of stuff for my site. To the other end of: There is an OOTB solution that is intelligent and flexible enough to give me a wide range of options that meets my company's needs. I don't know if it's possible to always offer a solution that is at the OOTB perfection end all the time. Some will surely say the solution is always at the other end, the 'I have too much admin wrapper work to do to make this solution work'. But it seems to be the nature of software that the provider of the software has only so many resources and you have to imagine that each chuck of functionality provided has a cost to it and that must be matched against a value for which a customer is willing to pay.

So what do we do? We raise support tickets, and make product suggestions and do what we can.

Best Regards,

- Jim

TomU · ‎Oct 26, 2015

A simple option to select 'share my company's users ID's with PTC' would solve the problem.

This already exists, but PTC has chosen to prevent it's upload even though we have manually turned it on. That's the whole point of this idea.

JimTVancouverCa · ‎Oct 26, 2015

Ah yes, I missed that. I think by the time I read the incorrect statements about there being no easy way to find match the User ID and UUID my mind had moved on. Perhaps it is a matter of what each person describes as 'easy'. I would disagree with the statement that the lack of immediately visible user id's makes the tool 'totally useless'. I would agree that the information about the PTC Diagnostic Tools should be included in the FAQ - Performance Advisor for PTC Creo.

I agree in the screen capture Tom shows that it would appear they can be checked to be sent, and it would be confusing to still see hashed (encoded) user id's and UUID's in the dashboard.

Perhaps software development put it in, but once the lawyers reviewed it it was pulled out? I notice by default it's off with our installation of Creo 2 M180, but User ID's and UUID's are still visible in hashed form on our Dashboard.

Aside: I think I'm becoming a bit sensitive to all the negativity put forth as product ideas or included in product ideas when people just need to do their homework and dig a little. Sure we don't want to have to dig, but when was the last time any of us communicated something deep and complicated and it was understood by our users on the first time they read it?

- Jim

TomU · ‎Oct 26, 2015

Just to clarify, the user and machine unique identifiers (UID/UUID) are always sent to PTC. If you've agreed to allow diagnostic logging, then there is no way to prevent this. Fundamentally it's the "key" - the thing that allows the data to be uniquely identified and categorized. What PTC is currently blocking is the ability to upload the associated user and computer identifying information. Having this information visible in the dashboard (along with geographical information) will make the tool much more useful.

Marco_Tosin · ‎Feb 19, 2016

I've thought that a possible workaround to identify user/machine could be the use of MAC Address.

We have a DB where users, computers name and MAC Address are joined (this is possible following ITIL rules and using a dedicated SW)

Dan Nowitz‌ could this information be added to xml files sent to PTC, and to System Information properties on the dashboard, waiting for the implementation of this idea?

Thanks

TomU · ‎Mar 09, 2016

Quick update. PTC is now acknowledging that if these boxes are checked, the data IS sent to PTC, but they currently don't use it for anything.

See updated article CS223534 for more info.

Marco_Tosin · ‎Apr 01, 2016

In the help center of Performance Advisor for Windchill you can find this phrase:

Server Name––The server GUID can be quite long. You can provide a name for the GUIDs for easy identification. Type a name in the Server Name field and press ENTER or click outside the field. The server name is updated and reflects on all pages and Windchill Server list. Each server should have a unique name.

Why PTC gives us the choice to change server name and doesn't do the same for workstations?

P.S. at the moment it's only written in the help center because it doesn't work.

TomU · ‎Apr 01, 2016

I just verified with support. This extra, nameable field will be live on Monday. (The documentation got ahead of the release.)

Marco_Tosin · ‎Apr 01, 2016

Thanks for your info Tom.

TomU · ‎Apr 01, 2016

I also asked if there were planning to add the same capability to user and host GUIDs on the Creo side. They said it's a good idea, but not currently planned. Maybe someone should create a separate product idea. Still not quite as nice as this idea, but better than nothing.

JimBarrettSmith · ‎May 18, 2016

All

the requirement to display user and machine name is fully understood. My hands are tied with European, US and Asian laws and the only way around the legal minefield is to provide an on site collector which will allow companies to internally display the user information. It will then be the responsibility of each company to comply with the law in their respected country. I hope to be able to provide an onsite collector in late 2017

thanks, Jim

Marco_Tosin · ‎May 18, 2016

Jim,

thanks for your update, but I'd like to inform you that PA for Creo behavior it's steadily and strongly worsening from several weeks.

I have, at the moment, 7 opened cases awaiting SPR resolution.

For example it's since two weeks that all my sessions were duplicated in my dashboard and I'm sure at least a couple of other companies have same issue.

https://support.ptc.com/apps/case_logger_viewer/auth/ssl/case=13026788

Another case is opened since last November, because not all sent sessions are loaded in the dashboard

https://support.ptc.com/apps/case_logger_viewer/auth/ssl/case=12837883

https://support.ptc.com/apps/case_logger_viewer/auth/ssl/case=12799022

This case is also from last November and it drives me crazy because of case sensitive creation of UID.

This behavior causes the creation of different UID for the same user depending on how he enter his name.

https://support.ptc.com/apps/case_logger_viewer/auth/ssl/case=12828038

TomU · ‎May 18, 2016

Jim Barrett-Smith‌,

What about simply providing the same functionality on the Creo side that exists on the Windchill side where we can manually assign a name to each GUID? This would at least let us identify each system with a friendly name of our own choosing while alleviating the legal concerns for you.

JimBarrettSmith · ‎May 18, 2016

Tom

I will investigate, thanks, Jim

JimBarrettSmith · ‎May 18, 2016

Marco

A very timely comment as I had a discussion with development about quality only this morning. I am sorry to hear that you have so many the issues, but I am most certainly aware of them and we will be addressing them very soon. Can i please ask for a little more patience? (subject to change) we will release feature tracking second week of June, once we have released feature tracking I have agreed with development that the number 1 priority for the following 8 weeks is solving open SPR's.

Performance advisor has been developed an incredible 2 releases per year and now that we have over 57,000 machines sending us data it is now the right time to stop developing and resolve some customer issues.

All being well you will start to see some significant improvements.

Thanks, Jim

Marco_Tosin · ‎May 18, 2016

Jim,

thanks for your quick reply.

I'm glad to hear that PTC will start to resolve customer issues very soon.

If I can take advantage of this discussion, however, I would like to say that not all the issues have the same urgency for a resolution.

The delay of the sessions of 3 hours in some tables (or 9 hours in other) can be bearable, even if it involves an additional work for the management of this information, but having the number of sessions duplicated makes the tool useless, as it false the results in the dashboard.

The same is true if not all sent sessions are loaded in the dashboard.

The change of UID instead forces me to keep an Excel spreadsheet dedicated to bring back sessions of the same user with multiple UIDs to a single person.

Anyway, can we have some more details about feature tracking?

Thanks, Marco

LawrenceS · ‎May 18, 2016

I was really surprised that even after finding out the user, there is no way to tag that ID with a text (such as a user name) that could only be seen by the end user company, and NOT by PTC. I get the privacy, but the lack of ability for us to tag that ID with useful comments or note is very odd to me.