ThingWorx 8.5.0 Is Available for Download! What's new?

Yes

ThingWorx Foundation

Flow
- Enable customers using Azure to take advantage of Azure services
- Access hundreds of Azure system connectors by invoking Azure Logic Apps from within ThingWorx Flow
- Execute Azure functions to leverage Azure dynamic, serverless scaling and pay just for processing power needed
- Access Azure Cognitive AI services for image recognition, text to voice/voice to text, OCR and more
- Easily integrate with homegrown and commercial solutions based on SQL databases where explicit APIs or REST services are not exposed
- Automatically trigger business process flows by subscribing to Windchill object class and instance events
- Provide visibility to mature PLM content (such as when a part is released) to downstream manufacturing and supply chain roles and systems
- Easily add new actions by extending functionality from existing connectors to create new actions to facilitate common tasks
- Inherit or copy functionality from existing actions and change only what is necessary to support new custom action

Composer: Horizontal tab navigation is back! Also new Scheduler editor.
Security: TLS 1.2 support by default, new services for handling expired device connections
New support for InFlux 1.7 and MSSQL 2017

* New* Solution Central
- Package, publish and upload your app with version info and metadata to your tenancy of Solution Central in the PTC cloud
- Identify missing dependencies via automatic dependency management to ensure your application is packaged with everything required for it to run on the target environments
- Garner enterprise-wide visibility of your ThingWorx apps deployed across the enterprise via a cloud portal showcasing your company’s available apps, their versions and target environments to foster a holistic view of your entire IIoT footprint across all of your servers, sites and use cases

Solution Central is a brand-new cloud-based service to help enterprises package, store, deploy and manage their ThingWorx apps
Accelerate your application deployment
Initially targeted at developers and admins in its first release, Solution Central enables you to:

9 new widgets, 5 new functions.
Theme Editor with swappable Mashup Preview
Responsive Layout enhancements including new settings for fixed and range sizes
New Builder for custom screen sizes, new Widget and Style editors, Canvas Zoom
Migration utility available for legacy applications to help move to latest features

Security
- 3 new built-in services for WebSocket Communications Subsystem: QueryEndpointSessions, GetBoundThingsForEndpoint, and CloseEndpointSessions
- Provide greater awareness of Things bound to the platform
- Allow for mass termination of connections, if necessary
- Can be configured to automatically disconnect devices with expired authentication methods
- Encrypting data-in-motion (using TLS 1.2) is a best practice for securely using ThingWorx
- For previous versions, the installer defaulted to not configuring TLS; ThingWorx 8.5 and later installers will default to configuring TLS
- ThingWorx will still allow customers to decline to do so, if desired

ThingWorx Analytics

Deepens functionality by enabling training and scoring of confidence models to provide information about the uncertainty in a prediction to facilitate human and automated decision making

Improves ease of implementation of data transformations required for common statistical process control visualizations

Improves cost of ownership by reducing the number of microservices required by Analytics Server to reduce deployment complexity
Simplified installation process enables system administrators to integrate ThingWorx Analytics Server with either (or both) ThingWorx Foundation 8.5 and FactoryTalk Analytics DataFlowML 3.0.

ThingWorx Manufacturing and Service Apps & Operator Advisor

Manufacturing common layer extension - now bundling all apps as one extension (Operator Advisor, Asset Advisor, Production KPIs, Controls Advisor)
Operator Advisor user interface for work instruction delivery
Shift and Crew data model & user interface
Enhancements to Operator Advisor MPMLink connector
Flexible KPI calculations
Multiple context support for assets

ThingWorx Navigate

New Change Management App, first in the Contribute series, allows a user to participate in change request reviews delivered through a task list called “My Tasks”
BETA Release of intelligent, reusable components that will dramatically increase the speed of custom App development
Improvements to existing View Apps

ThingWorx Azure IOT Hub Connector

Seamless compatibility of Azure devices with ThingWorx accelerators like Asset Advisor and custom applications developed using Mashup Builder.
Ability to update software and firmware remotely using ready-built Software Content Management via “ThingWorx Azure Software Content Management” Module on Azure IoT Edge.
Quick installation and configuration of ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector, Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Edge SCM module.

Documentation