IoT Tips

In the evolving landscape of software development, ensuring support for the latest, most secure versions of programming languages is essential. At PTC, we continuously evaluate our technology stack, and Java is no exception. As part of our ongoing commitment to providing secure and high-performing products, we’re announcing some important updates to the Java support plans for ThingWorx.   Current Java Support in ThingWorx (Through Version v9.1.X - v9.6.X)   As of ThingWorx v9.6, Java 11 is the only supported version. This version has been a mainstay of our IoT platform, ensuring stability and performance across various use cases. However, Java 11 entered Extended Support in September 2023, meaning its standard support phase has ended. While this version will continue to receive security updates for a while, its lifecycle is winding down.   Introducing Java 21 Support in ThingWorx v9.7 (Planned Release: December 2024)   With ThingWorx 9.7, releasing in December 2024, we will introduce support for Java 21, the next Long-Term Support (LTS) version of Java. This upgrade brings key benefits, including improved performance, enhanced garbage collection, and increased security, ensuring that ThingWorx remains optimized for enterprise-scale IoT deployments. (More details: The Arrival Of JAVA 21) Given the diversity of our customer base, we know that some are still using Java 11, while others are ready to move to Java 21. ThingWorx 9.7 will support both versions, allowing customers the flexibility to upgrade to the latest ThingWorx version while preparing their environments for Java 21.   The Road to Java 21-Only: What to Expect in ThingWorx v10.0 (Planned Release: June 2025)   As we assess the adoption of Java 21 following the ThingWorx 9.7 release, our goal is to phase out support for Java 11 with ThingWorx 10.0, scheduled for release in June 2025. Starting with ThingWorx 10, Java 21 will be the only supported version, marking the end of Java 11 support for the core platform.   This is driven by the need to stay aligned with modern standards and best practices, including support for third-party technologies such as Tomcat v10 and Spring Framework v6, which require latest Java versions. These updates will ensure that ThingWorx continues to benefit from the latest advancements in the Java ecosystem. Next steps for ThingWorx users   As we approach the release of ThingWorx 9.7, we encourage customers to begin planning for the move to Java 21. While ThingWorx 9.7 will support both Java 11 and Java 21, we recommend upgrading to Java 21 to take full advantage of the enhancements it offers. For more detailed information on overall third party support, do check Release Advisor Vineet Khokhar Principal Product Manager, IoT Security   Stay tuned for more updates as we approach the release of ThingWorx v9.7, and as always, in case of issues, feel free to reach out to <support.ptc.com>  This post on ThingWorxTM status & roadmap is a preliminary version and not subject to your license agreement or any other agreement with ThingWorx. This post contains intended strategies, developments, and functionalities of the ThingWorxTM product. The information is furnished for information use only and is not intended to be binding upon ThingWorx to any particular course of business, product strategy, and/or development. Please note that this document is subject to change and may be changed by ThingWorx at any time without notice; accordingly, you should not rely on this data for production or purchasing decisions. ThingWorx assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in this document.

Greetings, Community Members! PTC has launched ThingWorx 9.6.0 as of June, and it's now ready for your upgrade! Let's explore the key enhancements in this latest version of ThingWorx.   What are the top three areas of updates in ThingWorx 9.6?   Performance, Scalability, Reliability, and Security: There's a significant boost in file transfer performance between connected devices and the ThingWorx platform. A notable enhancement in server startup performance, with some instances showing an 84% reduction in startup time. Numerous logging improvements, including limitations on log verbosity, log filtration, and configurable log storage capabilities, contribute to the stabilization of the ThingWorx system. Additionally, ThingWorx now supports log extraction to third-party software like Sumologic, Datadog, Splunk, Grafana, etc., utilizing the industry-standard OpenTelemetry framework starting from TWX 9.6. Content Security Policy has been implemented, fortifying ThingWorx against script and data injection attacks, man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, and clickjacking. Several tech stack updates in 9.6; support now available for Azure B2C and TLS 1.3 (limited)   Developer Productivity: Introducing a new Collection widget with improved performance, enabling a transition away from the legacy Collection and Repeater widgets. Several other new widgets such as KPI dial widget, Tree selector widget, Progress Tracker widget and other critical enhancements for ThingWorx WebComponents are now available Support for viewing mashup configurations such as layouts, bindings, and widget properties in a read-only mode, helping improve user experience by allowing multiple users to review mashup designs simultaneously without making edits.   Solutions updates: Streamlined continuous improvement with the ability to View and Create Actions in One-Click from performance analysis screens for the Digital Performance Management (DPM) solution. Enhanced performance for the Asset Monitoring & Utilization (AMU) solution, with alarm events creation now handled asynchronously. Several fixes and improvements for Connected Work Cell (CWC), Real-Time Production Performance Monitoring (RTPPM), and DPM such as limits evaluation, messages not displayed, incorrectly calculated KPIs and issues with Running Time on the operator display and more, helping customers achieve continuous improvements in their manufacturing operations   View release notes here and be sure to upgrade to 9.6!   Dilanur Bayraktar ThingWorx Product Management

PTC was recognized an outright leader in the global IoT market.

As of May 24, 2023, ThingWorx 9.4.0 is available for download!  Here are some of the highlights from the recent ThingWorx release.   What’s new in ThingWorx 9.4? Composer and Mashup Builder  New Combo chart and Pie chart based on modern Web Components architecture along with several other widget enhancements such as Grid toolbar improvements for custom actions, highlighting newly added rows for Grid widget and others Ability to style the focus on each widget when they are selected to get specific styling for different components Absolute positioning option with a beta flag to use by default is available now Several other Mashup improvements, such as Export function support is made available; improved migration dialogue (backported to 9.3 as well) to allow customers to move to new widgets; and legacy widgets language changes   Foundation  Heavily subscribed events could now be distributed across the ThingWorx HA cluster nodes to be scaled horizontally for better performance and processing of ThingWorx subscriptions. Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flex Server GA support with ThingWorx 9.4.1 for customers deploying ThingWorx Foundation on their own Azure Cloud infrastructure Improved ThingWorx APIs for InfluxDB to avoid Data loss at a high scale with additional monitoring metrics in place for guardrails Several security fixes and key third-party stack updates   Remote Access and Control (RAC) Remote Service Edge Extension (RSEE) for C-SDK, currently under Preview and planned to be Generally Available (GA) by Sept 2023, would allow ThingWorx admins to use Remote Access and Control with the C-SDK based connected devices to use Global Access Server (GAS) for a stable, secure, and large number of remote sessions With 9.4, a self-signed certificate or certificate generated by the trusted certificate authority can be used for RAC with the ThingWorx platform Ability to use parameter substitution to update Auto Launch commands dynamically based on data from the ThingWorx platform is now available   Software Content Management  Support for 100k+ assets with redesigned and improved performance on Asset Search Better control over package deployment with redesigned package tracking, filtering, and management Improved overall SCM stability, performance, and scalability and a more user-friendly and intuitive experience   Analytics  Improvements to the scalability of property transforms to enable stream processing of the larger number of properties within a ThingWorx installation Refactoring of Analytics Builder UI to use updated widgets and align with the PTC design system Updates to underlying libraries to enable the creation and scoring of predictive models in the latest version of PMML (v4.4) End of Support for Analytics Manager .NET Agent SDK     View release notes here and be sure to upgrade to 9.4!     Cheers, Ayush Tiwari Director, Product Management, ThingWorx      

  ThingWorx Dev Portal users,    As you may have heard in prior communication, the ThingWorx Dev Portal  Developer Portal | Developer Portal : ThingWorx is being retired.         All ThingWorx Dev Portal content will remain accessible until September 28, 2022. Your favorite and the most useful ThingWorx Dev Portal content will be copied into the PTC Community  in our IoT Tips board.  The Community Team is in the process of making changes to all our “Community Tips” boards.        Subscribe and watch for an official announcement on our Community Announcements board about the change. The Community Tips Board changes go into effect on September 1st.  You can preview the ThingWorx Developer Portal content being migrated here.   Please let us know if you have any questions. 

As of Dec. 23, 2021, ThingWorx 9.3.0 is available for download and on Jan. 7, 2022, it will be available for Cloud Services.   What’s new in ThingWorx 9.3? Composer and Mashup Builder  Enhanced ability to find entities, code references, and project dependencies with a new Referenced by report feature. New Grid widget allows for improved visualization of row/columnar type data, with improved performance, styling, and configuration experiences.  Composer enhancements allow for faster configuration and application management in the areas of test execution and dynamic use of Master Mashups.    Analytics  New configuration parameters (binningStrategy and allowOverlap) available for profiles to tailor application of the algorithm to meet needs of domain use cases.  New option to utilize K-Fold cross validation to improve quality of predictive models created on limited data sets using industry standard technique.  Automate treatment of missing values to reduce data preparation before application of advanced analytics algorithms.    Foundation  Query performance improvements with indexing enables performance of quick “search” queries across thousands of connected assets and pre-filtering of query resultsets for better overall query performance.  Upgrade script improvements for logging, script execution and error handling which simplify the upgrade process.    Remote Access and Control  Improvements to Remote Access and Control includes Auto & Click to Launch capabilities that streamline the remote access startup process by starting the support application you need for you. New connectivity options enable user control and selection of local IP and Port addresses used in the session creation.    Software Content Management  Instructions can now be configured to execute either Synchronously or Asynchronously for a streamlined execution process. Added support for data migration of older, from the audit data table information into a format to the new audit database.    View release notes here and be sure to upgrade to 9.3!   Stay Connected, Rachel

Hey Community Members – I have exciting news to share! Last week, PTC announced that ThingWorx was recognized as a frontrunner IIOT Platform in four leading analyst research reports on the industrial software market.   In alphabetical order, the reports PTC/ThingWorx was named in were: ABI Research’s Smart Manufacturing Platforms Competitive Ranking The Forrester Wave™: Industrial IoT Software Platforms, Q3 2021 The Gartner® Magic QuadrantTM for Industrial IoT Platforms IDC MarketScape for Industrial IoT Platforms and Applications for Manufacturing Not only is PTC the only company included in all four reports, but it also placed as a leader in all four, which hopefully makes you feel confident in your choice to use ThingWorx. The research criteria the analyst firms use to make selections is unique to each firm, but to us, all of them measure the value ThingWorx can bring to an industrial business.   What value does ThingWorx bring to you?   Stay connected, Rachel               Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms, Alfonso Velosa, Ted Friedman, Katell Thielemann, Emil Berthelsen, Peter Havart-Simkin, Eric Goodness, Matthew Flatley, Lloyd Jones, Kevin Quinn, 18 October 2021 Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Gartner and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. (this will be soon updated in our Policy as well)  

The long-awaited manufacturing solution,  ThingWorx Digital Performance Management (DPM), has arrived! Announced at PTC’s  Manufacturing Live event, DPM provides key use cases around overall equipment effectiveness and real-time performance monitoring, while delivering insights with analytics and automated bottleneck identification tools. DPM gives customers clear insight into where and what to fix to drive efficiencies. Composed of modular building blocks with a foundation on the ThingWorx platform, DPM is easily configurable and customizable for closed-loop problem solving that drives productivity.   Let’s take a deeper look into what DPM is and how you can implement it to ensure your investment in the ThingWorx platform and digital transformation delivers business impact.   Monitor in real-time with Production Dashboard The Production Dashboard allows for automated or manual data entry of reason codes with a simple interface for limited disruption. Rather than providing front-line workers with the typical, difficult to understand, percentage based KPIs, Production Dashboard standardizes all losses, so operators can proactively resolve issues during production. You can configure this dashboard to collect granular data and allow opportunities for continuous improvement in process tracking.     Focus with Bottleneck Analysis Bottleneck analysis automatically identifies bottlenecks across the manufacturing process. Identifying bottlenecks can help you prioritize the highest-impact opportunities in the business process. This saves you having to manually identify and analyze potential issues and frees you up to work on other projects.   Prioritize with Time Loss Waterfall and Analyze with Loss Reason Pareto Monitor and analyze performance with data visualizations that help you pinpoint root causes and suggest improvements. Bring together your siloed data into one system and create a standard for how performance is measured and reported.   Improve with Action Tracker Action Tracker allows you to create continuous improvement actions tied to real production losses, to ensure your actions are having positive impact and return.  Create a digital workspace for teams to collaborate and learn from each other. Plus, you can track the improvements delivered through each individual action, so you can drill down and create transparency of work being done.   Confirm value delivered with Scorecard (Available in Later Versions) With the Scorecard feature, you can leverage a standard scorecard for enterprise wide KPIs to summarize factory health and compare similar factory operations. Use the scorecard to create trending and reporting that can be filtered based on the audience you are presenting data to. The scorecard gives you a consistent view that measures performance across the network and drives visibility and accountability across your business.   How do you plan to leverage DPM or the building blocks that make it up? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the first manufacturing solution from PTC.   Stay connected, Rachel   

ThingWorx community,   As part of a continuous re-evaluation of our third-party software requirements, we regularly add and remove support for versions of operating systems, persistence providers, and web browsers.   On this note, we are planning to end support for Ubuntu 18.04 beginning with the ThingWorx release targeted for mid-CY2022. Per its release cycle, Ubuntu will move version 18.04 into Extended Security Maintenance at this point, meaning it will no longer receive regular maintenance updates.   PTC will continue to support Ubuntu 20.04 for the immediate future and will consider supporting Ubuntu 22.04 once it becomes Generally Available (GA).   Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.   Regards,   Walter Haydock ThingWorx Product Management

ThingWorx community,   As part of a continuous re-evaluation of our third-party software requirements, we regularly add and remove support for versions of operating systems, persistence providers, and web browsers.   On this note, for the ThingWorx release after 9.2 (currently targeted for the end of CY 2021), we are planning to end support for Windows Server 2016. Already five years old, this product has generally been replaced by Windows Server 2019 in common usage.   As per Microsoft’s published lifecycle, this version will be going out of "Mainstream Support" approximately one year after the aforementioned ThingWorx release. PTC will continue to support Windows Server 2019 for the immediate future, and will consider supporting Windows Server 2022 once it becomes Generally Available (GA).   Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.   Regards,   Walter Haydock ThingWorx Product Management

Hello community,   I'm happy to announce that I released GitBackup Extension 4.1.0 with some nice help from the community (special thanks to Tanguy Parmentier who provided all the localization export functionality). Many thanks for the people who provided feedback allowing this features to be prioritized.   Version 4.1.0 brings several new features to the table: (Finally) Allows the user to specify a subset of Entities for Export Allows importing a single Entity from the Workspace, so it’s easier now to checkout a specific commit in the past and import that file version for testing. Adds the capability to Export localization tokens filtered by a specific prefix - overridable by you at export time. Adds a Log screen that contains log entries for some of the most used methods that caused silent fails. Closed remote branches are auto-pruned. Further cleans the ThingWorx XML source files, by removing the ModelPersistenceProviderPackage. The Main Mashup UI is slightly redesigned: there's a new Manage tab which holds the Settings, Delete Git Thing and more. The Export Mashup UX is improved: export buttons are no longer visible if you don't select a project. Supports ThingWorx 9.0 Two separate releases: one for 8.4&8.5 and one for 9.0 The documentation was updated and I suggest further reading the release notes and specifically the ones regarding the new Log and prune capabilities. In addition, the mechanism that cleans the source code is extensible, and most of the entities are editable, allowing you to tweak it to your own usecase.   The Extesion source code is available here: https://github.com/PTCInc/thingworx-gitbackup-extension The importable Extension zip files are available here: https://github.com/PTCInc/thingworx-gitbackup-extension/releases   Special note for people using ThingWorx 9.0: in this version some internal ThingWorx SDK Java methods changed their signature, and this required me to build a special releases for 9.0. The extension I built for 9.0 won't run correctly in 8.4/8.5 and also the reverse. As such, you will always see two releases for each GitBackup version: one for 9.0 and one for the 8.4/8.5. My ask for you is the following: don't click on the latest release Github shows - that will always send you to the latest release, which might not be compatible with the ThingWorx version you are using always use the link above to choose the Extension compatible with your ThingWorx version read carefully which release you download. The title contains the ThingWorx version compatible with that release.   This Extension is licensed under the MIT Licence and is provided as-is and without warranty or support. It is not part of the PTC product suite.   Taking into consideration the statement above: please read first the documentation if you encounter any problems, search first for closed issues, and if none is found for your problem, raise a new issue in GitHub's issue system: https://github.com/PTCInc/thingworx-gitbackup-extension/issues do not open PTC Tech Support tickets for this Extension   For OOTB Git support in the ThingWorx platform, please raise a ThingWorx Idea in the PTC Community here https://community.ptc.com/t5/ThingWorx-Ideas/idb-p/thingworxideas   Thank you!

We are bringing the Liveworx UX Lab to you this year! Contribute to the design and development of PTC’s IoT & AR products from the comfort of your home.   Participate in online 1:1 session with PTC Researchers and Designers to take our prototypes & conceptual designs for a spin, share your expertise to directly impact the experience of our future products.   For all Liveworx 2020 UX Lab sessions, click here   IoT & AR session links: SOLUTION CENTRAL: User Management SOLUTION CENTRAL: PTC Solution Deployment SERVICE: Remote Monitoring Solution THINGWORX: Managing Building Blocks in Composer THINGWORX KEPWARE EDGE: Container Based Software at Scale EDGE: Next Generation IoT Edge (Asset) Manager THINGWORX: Asset Modeling DIGITAL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION: Bottleneck ID & Balanced Scorecard MANUFACTURING: PTC Solution Strategy using Building Blocks IMPLEMENTING AR and IOT: Successes and Difficulties VUFORIA EDITOR: Authoring Work Instructions VUFORIA EDITOR: Authoring Work Containing Augmented Reality