IoT Tips

  Whether you’re new to ThingWorx or you’re a seasoned user, understanding the Thing Model is key to accelerating your IoT development. Today, I’ll dive into what ThingShapes, ThingTemplates and Things are and how to use them to accelerate development.   Before I dive into the definitions of these concepts, let’s first consider the wide array of machines that exist out there in world. The variety is huge—there’s MRI machines, 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines, tractors, and so much more.   At their core, all MRI machines share similar properties and capabilities—they have a name, a physical location, a magnetic strength, a radio frequency current, and the ability to visually display what’s going on inside the human body. There are, however, different types of MRI machines, and, while they are fundamentally the same type of machine, there are notable differences as well. When creating our IoT app, it’s important that we have a way to model these differences so that we can cascade changes across entities and reduce development time.   Let’s walk through an example using MRI machines. Consider the various MRI machines that exist today; there’s the traditional closed MRI machine, the open MRI machine and the standing/sitting MRI machine.   To represent the fundamental properties (i.e., characteristics or readings) and services (i.e., functionality) of a generic MRI machine—name, location, magnetic strength, etc.—we’ll create a ThingTemplate. The ThingTemplate is the general definition/representation of the real-world physical thing (i.e. the MRI machine) that is being modeled. You can think of a ThingTemplate as a blueprint of what you’re modeling. A ThingTemplate defines what a Thing is; if you’re familiar with object-oriented programming, a ThingTemplate is similar to the concept of inheritance; it defines a “is a” relationship. Using our ThingTemplate, we’re able to create multiple instances of the template that inherit the properties and services from that template. If you have 100 MRI machines in a particular region, rather than updating each one separately, simply updating the template will allow you to propagate these changes.   Let’s say that, of our 100 MRI machines, 40 are traditional closed machines, 30 are open machines and 30 are standing/sitting machines. The traditional machines have a specific diameter of the opening where the patient goes in to lay down and the sitting/standing machine may have a particular height of the seat where the patient sits. Due to the nature of the machines having unique components/parts, the different types of machines have difference maintenance service.   To model each of these “add-on” properties, we’ll want to create a ThingShape. A ThingShape is a representation of particular properties or services that may optionally come in some versions of the machine but not others. The ThingShape is a single feature or piece of the physical thing that’s being modeled. You can think of a ThingShape as a reusable part, or a set of properties/services that comes with some versions, but not all. A ThingShape defines what a Thing has; if you’re familiar with object-oriented programming, a ThingShape is similar to the concept of composition; it defines a “has a” relationship. So, for our MRI example, we could create one ThingShape for the standing MRI and a second ThingShape for the closed MRI. The StandingMRIThingShape would have a property of “SeatHeight” and a service of “StandingMRIMaintenanceService.” The ClosedMRIThingShape would have a property of “opening diameter” and a service of “ClosedMRIMaintenanceService.” Just like a ThingTemplate, the properties and services that make up a ThingShape are also inherited by the instances that use that ThingShape.   Finally, Things. A Thing is simply an instance of a ThingTemplate with (optionally) ThingShapes added for additional unique properties/services.   Let’s say we want to model a single closed MRI machine. We’ll represent the machine as a Thing that inherits from Templates and Shapes. We’ll start with the MRIMachineThingTemplate so that we can create an MRI Machine Thing (i.e., instance).   Since this is a closed MRI machine and has the additional property of opening diameter, we’ll want to make sure we include that property. To do this, we’ll add the ClosedMRIThingShape.   Viola! We now have a digital twin of our closed MRI machine with all the base properties of an MRI machines from our MRIMachineThingTemplate and all the special add-ons of the closed version with our ClosedMRIMachineThingShape.   Here’s a visual recap of what we just modeled.   If you’re looking for even further guidance on how to model your data with the Thing Model, check out the Data Model Introduction guide on the Developer Portal to get started and the Design Your Data Model guide to learn even more.   Happy data modeling!   Stay connected, Kaya  

Meet Neal. When Neal joined PTC five years ago, he immediately hit the ground running on IoT initiatives, working in multiple areas ranging from pre-sales to partner relations. Today, he is a Worldwide ThingWorx Center of Excellence Principal Lead at PTC, and his biggest focus is supporting the go-to-market for the Microsoft partnership.   I sat down with Neal recently to hear the details on exactly how Azure and ThingWorx can be used to develop world-class IIoT applications.   Kaya: Can you explain how Azure and ThingWorx work together? Neal: Yes, so Azure provides the cloud infrastructure that our customers need in order to deploy ThingWorx.   By having Azure as our preferred cloud platform, we’re able to specialize our R&D efforts into utilizing functionality that is available in Azure, rather than having to reinvent the wheel ourselves for each cloud platform in the attempt to remain cloud-agnostic. By leveraging a single, already quite powerful, cloud platform through Azure, we’re able to maximize our development efforts.   Kaya: What was the major problem that led to us investigating cloud options? Neal: There were two issues that our users had. The first was we often had complicated installs and setup procedures because we were genericizing the whole process, so the initial setup and run was complicated and expensive. For example, we were requiring them to setup additional VMs and components, and we were giving them generic instructions because we were being very agnostic, when they had already chosen outside of us to use one of the cloud platforms. We knew our customers wanted to move fast, so we had to make it easier and faster for them to see results.   The other issue we ran into with customers was the confusion in the offerings. For ThingWorx, ingest is just one aspect of IoT. ThingWorx is particularly strong in areas like enabling mixed reality and augmented reality as well as application enablement. And, while we also have the ability to perform ingest capabilities, Microsoft is especially powerful when it comes to ingest capabilities and security. We decided that the smartest solution was to leverage Microsoft’s expertise in data ingestion to make ThingWorx even more powerful; so, we made the Azure IoT Hub Connector. By partnering with Microsoft, we have joint architecture where you can see how Microsoft provides key features and ThingWorx will run on top of those features and get you faster to the market to develop the application.   Below is an example of a high-availability deployment of ThingWorx on Azure that utilizes ThingWorx Azure IoT Connectors to access an Azure IoT Hub.  High-Availability Deployment of ThingWorx on Azure Kaya: Why did we partner with Azure? What specific benefits does Azure offer over other cloud services providers? Neal: When we started to look at what our customers were using for cloud services, we noticed that a lot were using Microsoft. When we join forces with Microsoft, we have a much more wholistic offering around digital transformation. With the partnership, PTC and Microsoft are able to leverage each partner’s respective strengths to provide even more powerful IIoT solutions. You have Windchill and Microsoft’s business application strategies; you have Vuforia and Microsoft’s mixed reality and augmented reality strategies; and, you have ThingWorx on the Microsoft Azure cloud. Overall, you have a much more complete and powerful offering together.   Kaya: What is your favorite aspect about working at PTC? Neal: The growth. There’s been a lot of changes over the last five years that I’ve been here. PTC has been able to leverage its strengths and long-time experience in the CAD and PLM markets to enter and ultimately become a leader in the IIoT market, according to reports by research firms like Gartner and Forrester. In short, the growing IIoT market and PTC’s leadership in the industry.   Note to Readers: You’ve likely heard about our major strategic partnership with Microsoft to leverage our respective IIoT and cloud technologies to optimize the creation, deployment, management and overall use of your IIoT applications. If you haven’t heard about the partnership, check out the press release here. If you’re curious about more aspects of PTC’s partnership with Microsoft, check out this site devoted to sharing how ThingWorx and Azure are better together.

This expert session focuses on overviewing the patch and upgrade process of the Thingworx platform. It provides information on how to perform a patch upgrade for the platform as well as extensions upgrade, and when an in-place upgrade is applicable. It can be viewed as a quick reference note for upgrading your system.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

This video builds upon the mashup created in the basic session, and strives to create a more polished, user-friendly interface that is ready for deployment. In part 1, we’ll take a look at advanced layout designs and include a more varied set of widgets to help draw attention to some of the more pertinent properties being captured within the mashup.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls. Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.  

Dive back into the mashup builder and learn about advanced widgets and layout options.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.5   Description:   Introduction to ThingWorx Extension Development, with the following topics: What is an Extension Why building an Extension Prerequisites Installing Eclipse plugin and features Creating entities with the plugin and including exported Entities in an Extension Project Upgrading or Updating and Existing extension in ThingWorx Building with Gradle and Ant       ThingWorx Extension Development Guide

This expert session goes over some basic backup and recovery principles, and provides details on how these principles can be applied to backing up a ThingWorx Server. Backup methods for the ThingWorx PostgreSQL, Neo4J and H2 releases are discussed.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Introduction to the mashup builder, mashup types, widget and how to add services to a mashup as well as connecting data from the services to widgets and how to use events in mashups.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

This is a basic troubleshooting guide for ThingWorx. It goes over the importance, types and levels of logs, getting started on troubleshooting the Composer, Mashup and Remote Connectivity.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Just like the perfect sandwich, we know that you have specific preferences and requirements for your ThingWorx deployment. Whether you like to keep things simple with a classic grilled cheese or you like to spice things up with a more elaborate chipotle mayo BLT, we’ve got you covered. Our ThingWorx Deployment Architecture Guide explains what you’ll need to deploy ThingWorx in three different scenarios: production, enterprise and high-availability (pictured below).   Deployment Architecture for ThingWorx on Azure in High-Availability We’ve recently published Version 1.1 of the ThingWorx Deployment Architecture Guide. In it, you can find updated deployment architecture diagrams to more distinctly show the data and application layers within a ThingWorx environment. Our team has also added a new section on what you’ll need to deploy ThingWorx on Microsoft Azure, PTC’s preferred cloud platform.   Check it out here or in the attachment section on the right.   Stay connected, Kaya

In this session, we pick up where we left off with the mashup which was worked on in part 1 of our Advanced Mashup Expert Session series. Specifically, we will explore the concepts of master mashups, session variables, and media entities, using each to further enhance the look and feel of our mashup.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls. Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

  Hello, IIoT Developers!   9.0 is out—let’s dive right into what’s new with Composer and Mashup Builder. (If you haven’t already checked out what’s new in 9.0 with active-active clustering, be sure to check out this tech tip.) We have a lot of new functionality that we can’t wait for you to start using, so without further ado, let’s begin!   Mashup Builder   In 9.0, we continue to make great advancements to our Mashup Builder and visualization toolset. We’re all about productive developers building the coolest IIoT apps! Mashup in 9.0 with new Line Chart widgets!   Undo/Redo   Ever spent a good half hour arranging a layout, making some data bindings, adding some styles, and once you view the Mashup, you decide you aren’t quite happy with your last few tweaks? The panic sets in when you forget exactly what you changed, and you don’t want to lose all of your edits. What is a developer to do? In older versions of ThingWorx, you might cancel without saving your edits or you might try to surgically get back to a good state. Either way, you were not a happy developer.   ThingWorx 9.0 will make you happy again. All actions in the Mashup are now tracked by an undo/redo buffer. Buttons are now available in the toolbar to help you revert actions. An action history drop-down is also available if you want to undo or redo a few jumps at once. Sometimes, it’s the little things!   Undo and Redo actions now available in the Mashup Builder.   Mobile Settings   For a few releases now, we’ve been upgrading our visualization toolset and examining ways we can be better for desktop and mobile experiences. It starts with our latest layout engine/editor introduced in 8.4 and with new Polymer-based, responsiveness “designed-in” web components introduced in 8.4, 8.5, and 9.0. For the more adventurous folks out there, you can also use Custom CSS to do media queries and influence your layouts based on the viewport settings. There are also custom resolutions and screen orientations available in the Mashup Builder toolbar itself so you can view your content in design mode with each of those targets in mind.   In 9.0, we now have introduced a new Mobile Settings configuration editor on the Mashup. This allows you to define for mobile browsers your scaling and width as well as your height and zoom settings. There are even iOS-specific settings for shortcuts and the status bar.  Mobile Settings Editor and iPhone view of a 9.0 Mashup.   New Configure Bindings Dialog   The heart of any application is the data, and how it is leveraged in the UI. For Mashups, there many good ways to do that with our drag-and-drop functionality or our Bindings panel. But in 9.0, we have completely revamped the Configure Bindings Dialog. You’ll quickly notice when you open the new dialog that it has a more usable interface with more screen real estate to explore services, properties, sources and targets. There is now a good separation between the Widgets, Data and Function sources, which makes things easier to locate and build. You’ll also see, if you’ve made bindings already, the complete map of bindings for your context. New search enhancements and target bindings chip-based filters are also now added.   New Configure Bindings Dialog Another cool feature is that the bindings graph in the dialog will also show you any circular references you may have inadvertently created. If you can see in the diagram below, the red circle icon with a number 1 inside of it—this is almost always a bug, so we may as well tell you about it! New Circular references checking! New Web Components   If you look at almost any IIoT application, you’re almost sure to see a chart. IIoT decisions are always centered around looking at telemetry and KPIs at specific moments of time, events, history, and future projections. ThingWorx has new charts in 9.0 for Line, Bar, and Schedule. They look sharp, they are powerful, and are a true upgrade over the former ThingWorx charts.   Here are some highlights. All are based on D3 framework and follow the PTC Design System. The Line chart also supports sub types of Run, Step, Area, Streamgraph and Scatter plot. The Bar chart also supports a column-based view. The Schedule chart is a great way to visualize downtime events, production orders, machine states, or device alarms. All charts feature responsive layout, advanced performance and data sampling, tooltips, multiple series support, multiple orientations for legends and axis labels, and plenty of styling and data configurations. They also all have great zooming capability for larger data sets including horizontal and vertical pan, drag/lasso zoom, interval controls, range zoom and zoom slider controls. Line Charts with filters, zoom sliders, and markers   Bar Charts with zoom sliders, horizontal and vertical orientations, and configurable legends   Schedule Chart with drilldown and hover tooltips Other Coolness   The team was busy with these highlighted features, but there is so much more in 9.0! For Mashup, we also added: Improved tooltip and icon hover support for all web component-based widgets Accessibility improvements for keyboard navigation and focus New category filters for widget property configuration editors New data tools panel New context menu options New theming options for layout containers Composer For application development outside of the Mashup area, you’ll also notice some new changes in the Composer tool. One of our favorites is the new navigation panels. If you’ve been with ThingWorx for a few releases, you’ve seen many redesigns and updates to the Composer interface. We are constantly evaluating and testing this interface’s design with users to make it a highly productive and intuitive environment. You’ll now see much more horizontal real estate in the Composer because we’ve moved the top header bar into a new left-hand navigation. We’ve also improved the grid resizing in the entity and other list views in the interface to work better with larger result sets. New Composer Layout with updated left-hand navigation One more bonus feature to highlight! We now have quick copy buttons in common places in the interface where you might want to copy entity names or application keys. Just click and that text is in your clipboard. Very handy for searching or making bindings!   Quick copy buttons on entity names     As you can see, plenty of awesome new features and upgrades in the ThingWorx 9.0 application development tools. We also have a brand-new visual SDK available in the 9.0 release so that you can make your own widgets with Polymer and import them into the Mashup Builder. Stay tuned for another Ask Kaya tech tip soon on the SDK.   Like what you see? Have a question? Drop us a line in the comments!   Stay Connected! Kaya  

  Meet Chris. Chris leads the ThingWorx Flow portfolio, which will be releasing in 8.4. Chris has “a long history with workflow and a lot of interest in it.” He was originally hired as a product manager by Jim Heppelmann [PTC’s CEO] about 20 years ago to build a workflow engine for Windchill, our PLM solution. As a matter of fact, this feature is still a part of Windchill today. Pretty neat, right? We were able to leverage Chris’ workflow expertise and experience to create ThingWorx Flow. Check out more below.   Kaya: Why did we create ThingWorx Flow? What challenge does it solve? Chris: In order for customers to realize the full business value for connected solutions, it typically isn’t enough to just surface an alert to show a dashboard of health. Customers want to automatically do things like create service tickets or automatically order consumables as they run low. To do that—to realize that automated value—you need a couple of things. First, you need to be able to easily connect to enterprise systems (like SAP, Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics) to create service cases. Second, you need to be able to define and execute your business process logic.   Kaya: Can you give me an example? Chris: Definitely. The business process may involve the need to replace a filter based on a contamination alert. After I receive the alert, I need to look up in the bill of materials to find out which filter is applicable to that particular device or product; if it’s not in stock onsite, I need to order it. When it arrives, I then need to schedule the service, knowing that it’s going to be there at a particular time, which entails working with another service system like Salesforce.   So, you have a number of these different enterprise systems that you need to connect to, and you need to support that orchestrated business process to realize the value of a fully automated flow. That’s what has really led us to do it—because, again, the compelling business value in these connected device solutions is often around an automated approach to service or maintenance issues. The value is compelling because automated processes minimize delays, support business growth and scale without hiring as many additional people and eliminate human errors and variability that lead to improved quality at lower costs or stronger margins. Sample ThingWorx Orchestrate Workflow: Send RFQ to Supplier and Add Part to List If State ChangesKaya: So, who ultimately benefits from Flow? Chris: The benefits are realized by an organization as a whole in terms of increased responsiveness, flexibility, reduced costs and higher availability. The ThingWorx solution is unique in that it allows an organization to quickly realize these benefits by optimizing the participation of several key roles. As a result, no role becomes a bottleneck to addressing an urgent business need.   In addition to developers, the many business analysts across the organization are now empowered to define and modify their business processes themselves through Flow. They do this by using the system connections (or subflows) created by their system experts and ThingWorx models that were defined by developers. All of this work is achieved using our visual modeling tool without the need for extensive training.   The system experts can define portions of flows or subflows that get, create or edit information in the systems they understand most within the Flow editor. This enables each role to focus on using their most valuable skills and ultimately eliminates the bottlenecks that cause reduction in business responsiveness when everything must be done by a few highly-specialized experts. Now, developers can leverage the outputs of flows to drive behavior in the application and visualize key KPIs and overall health.   Kaya: So, I see that we’re not only connecting business systems, but we’re also connecting people. We enable them to leverage each other’s different perspectives and areas of expertise. I know we gave developers a sneak peek of ThingWorx Flow in one of our latest posts. Do you have a more detailed demo that we could share this week? Chris: Sure thing. Check this out. (view in My Videos)   Kaya: Wow! I can definitely see how Flow saves immense time in workflow creation. Now, final question: what is your favorite aspect about working at PTC? Chris: The most interesting thing to me is that I get to work with so many different customers in so many different verticals that have such a diverse set of challenging and interesting problems. It’s fun to work together with these customers for us to understand their problems, their unique environments and then to, with them, build solutions using a combination of our products and their existing systems and tooling—that’s what I think is most fascinating.   I learn something new about the way things are made, manufactured, built and serviced every day, and it just makes my life much more interesting. I don’t feel like I’m doing the same thing every day. Working with customers to understand and address their challenges and help them realize their business goals is really rewarding and, again, the diversity of those requests is what makes the job particularly interesting and fascinating.

Introduction to the ThingWorx Composer and a demonstration of how you go about building out the design plan.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

  Hello, IIoT Developers!   Today, I’m going to provide you an overview of a new SDK we’re offering for developers to build custom web content. It’s called our Visual SDK. We released 9.0 in June, so it’s time to start getting excited! In case you missed it, check out these other 9.0 posts on active-active clustering, Composer and Mashup Builder, and the 9.0 release overall.   In 8.4, we introduced a new visualization architecture and set of web components based on Polymer. We’ve continually updated and added new widgets and features with this architecture each release, including new Chart Components in 9.0. This SDK was previously available mostly as a style guidance, informing designers and developers what elements and behaviors were available in the new PTC web component-based widgets. You could use this SDK to style in CSS custom elements of the web components in a mashup-based application. You weren’t, in 8.4, really able to use this SDK yet to actually create your own Polymer web components and have them be as robust in the Mashup Builder in ThingWorx.   In 9.0, this SDK has been expanded so you not only have style and behavioral descriptions of PTC components, but you also have tutorials and utilities that let you create your own components and import them into the Mashup Builder. The possibilities are endless here for custom content, so let’s look at what’s inside.   The SDK guide has a quick outline of some pre-requisites you should know about as you enter custom web development with ThingWorx. Things like knowledge of Polymer 3, downloading common tools like NPM and Gulp CLI, Aurelia, etc. Much of this info is also included in markdown documents within the SDK files, but the SDK web content makes it easier to follow and search.   From there, the guide walks you through more setup of your SDK directories, NPM install of PTC components, and basics around dependencies, styling, and demo pages. Each PTC-developed web component is also available in the SDK pages as well with more information on what they offer and their basic designs. This is useful if you would like to reference the PTC components as imports into your own web component. This technique is very useful for re-use and upgrade safety when developing custom components on top of ThingWorx. Sample overview pages in the SDK for ptcs-chart The SDK also includes a getting started tutorial and a sample Polymer component and a widget called simple-el , which are helpful as you want to reference during development and familiarizing yourself with concepts. The component is functional and offers a theme dropdown so you can see how the theming engine and events work. Sample Polymer component included in the SDK called simple-elOnce you have created your web component, there is also a new utility called mub, which scans your component project and wraps it in a shell for the Mashup Builder. If you run the mub utility on your component, you’ll find it produces a zip file with the relevant design and runtime wrappers for the mashup environment already mapped to your component. You can also use it to define properties for your new component in the mashup environment, include custom code for defining the widgets at design and runtime behaviors, and to add icons, categories and other standard platform features. Running the mub utility on a web component project Once you have run the utility, you just import the artifact into a ThingWorx platform and it will be available for your application developers to use in their mashups as a widget. Again, how it appears in the design experience, what properties are exposed, how it responds to platform binding and theming events are all customizable in the SDK. Sample Polymer Component wrapped as a widget for use in a Mashup Once you get the hang of things with the sample code and understand the ins and outs, you can then use those same patterns to develop your own content! These are the same techniques that the PTC R&D team uses when they make each of the new widgets that you see in our product, like the 9.0 charts! Uber cool stuff!   Like what you see? Have a question? Drop us a line in the comments!   Stay connected! Kaya    

Overview of prerequisites and components required to achieve a successful installation PTC Navigate View ALM App and a brief functionality demonstration of the product.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

We will host a live Expert Session: "Top 5 Thingworx environment monitoring best practices" on March 25th, 10h00 EST.   Please find below the description of the expert session and the registration link.   Expert Session: Top 5 Thingworx environment monitoring best practices Date and Time: March 25th, 10h00 EST Duration: 1 hour Host: Tori Firewind, Tim Atwood and Dave Bernbeck from Enterprise Deployment Center - Enterprise Deployment Center Registration Here: https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/iiot/webcast/top-5-thingworx-monitoring-best-practices    In this session, we will be reviewing the main monitoring practices to keep a heathy environment and discuss the main issues from the audience. Bring your questions!.   Existing Recorded sessions can be found on support portal using the keyword ‘Expert Sessions’. You can also suggest topics for upcoming sessions using this small form.   Here are some recorded sessions that might be of your interest. You can find recordings for the full library of webinars using the keyword ‘Expert Sessions’ in PTC support portal search   Thingworx Active Active Clustering This session will cover the main aspects of the High Availability Clustering feature launched with the ThingWorx 9.0 release.   Recoding Link Upgrade to Thingworx 9 – How to Plan / Evaluate Impacts This session highlights the key points you should evaluate to properly plan your upgrade to Thingworx 9. Recording Link Top 5 items to check for Thingworx Performance Troubleshooting How to troubleshoot performance issues in a Thingworx Environment? Here we cover the top 5 investigation steps that will help you understand the source of your environment issues and allow better communication with PTC Technical Support     Recording Link

    Raise your hand if you’re ready for seamless, rapid deployment of your ThingWorx applications with visibility into your various environments! It’s time to say goodbye to error-prone deployments with manual dependency tracking and hello to Solution Central!   Releasing this fall as part of 8.5, Solution Central is a brand-new cloud service coming to the ThingWorx platform to enable you to efficiently manage your ThingWorx applications across the enterprise.   With Solution Central, you’ll no longer be caught chasing missing dependencies (like ThingShapes, Mashups, templates or library extensions). Solution Central automatically identifies and packages up the dependencies required for your application. No more manual dependency madness!   Whether you’re managing many apps deployed to a few environments or a single app deployed to hundreds of environments, Solution Central allows you to accelerate your deployment through an intuitive UI or powerful APIs for automation.   Here’s how it works: Begin by creating your application in Composer with a project. Let Solution Central automatically package up all the artifacts and dependencies required for your application. Allow Solution Central to publish your solution package to the cloud. Deploy your application to your various environments (local servers, data centers, cloud systems) directly from Solution Central. It’s like your company has its own private app store. Here’s a sneak peek of the Solution Central UI! Keep an eye out for the release of ThingWorx 8.5 at the end of Sept 2019 and begin accelerating your app deployment! Check out the presentation and demo my fellow PM Chris Baldwin and I delivered at LiveWorx19—and be sure to attend LiveWorx20! To navigate to our session recording, search for “Introducing Solution Central: Your Gateway to Accelerated IIoT Value Across the Enterprise” here.   Sound interesting? Message me directly to discover how you can become part of the Solution Central Private Preview Program!   -Kaya  

Hi Community,   I've recently had a number of questions from colleagues around architectures involving MQTT and what our preferred approach was.  After some internal verification, I wanted to share an aggregate of my findings with the ThingWorx Architect and Developer Community.   PTC currently supports four methods for integrating with MQTT for IoT projects. ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector ThingWorx MQTT Extension ThingWorx Kepware Server Choice is nice, but it adds complexity and sometimes confusion.  The intent of this article is to clarify and provide direction on the subject to help others choose the path best suited for their situation.   ThingWorx MQTT Extension The ThingWorx MQTT extension has been available on the marketplace as an unsupported “PTC Labs” extension for a number of years.  Recently its status has been upgraded to “PTC Supported” and it has received some attention from R&D getting some bug fixes and security enhancements.  Most people who have used MQTT with ThingWorx are familiar with this extension.  As with anything, it has advantages and disadvantages.  You can easily import the extension without having administrative access to the machine, it’s easy to move around and store with projects, and can be up and running quite quickly.  However it is also quite limited when it comes to the flexibility required when building a production application, is tied directly to the core platform, and does not get feature/functionality updates.   The MQTT extension is a good choice for PoCs, demos, benchmarks, and prototypes as it provides MQTT integration relatively quickly and easily.  As an extension which runs with the core platform, it is not a good choice as a part of a client/enterprise application where MQTT communication reliability is critical.   ThingWorx Azure IoT Hub Connector Although Azure IoT Hub is not a fully functional MQTT broker, Azure IoT does support MQTT endpoints on both IoT Hub and IoT Edge.  This can be an interesting option to have MQTT devices publish to Azure IoT and be integrated to ThingWorx using the Azure IoT Hub Connector without actually requiring an MQTT broker to run and be maintained.  The Azure IoT Hub Connector works similarly to the PAT and is built on the Connection Server, but adds the notion of device management and security provided by Azure IoT.   When using Azure IoT Edge configured as a transparent gateway with buffering (store and forward) enabled, this approach has the added benefit of being able to buffer MQTT device messages at a remote site with the ability to handle Internet interruptions without losing data.   This approach has the added benefit of having far greater integrated security capabilities by leveraging certificates and tying into Azure KeyVault, as well as easily scaling up resources receiving the MQTT messages (IoT Hub and Azure IoT Hub Connector).  Considering that this approach is build on the Connection Server core, it also follows our deployment guidance for processing communications outside of the core platform (unlike the extension approach).   ThingWorx Kepware Server As some will note, KepWare has some pretty awesome MQTT capabilities: both as north and southbound interfaces.  The MQTT Client driver allows creating an MQTT channel to devices communicating via MQTT with auto-tag creation (from the MQTT payload).  Coupled with the native ThingWorx AlwaysOn connection, you can easily connect KepWare to an on-premise MQTT broker and connect these devices to ThingWorx over AlwaysOn.   The IoT Gateway plug-in has an MQTT agent which allows publishing data from all of your KepWare connected devices to an MQTT broker or endpoint.  The MQTT agent can also receive tag updates on a different topic and write back to the controllers.  We’ve used this MQTT agent to connect industrial control system data to ThingWorx through cloud platforms like Azure IoT, AWS, and communications providers.   ThingWorx Product Segment Direction A key factor in deciding how to design your solution should be aligned with our product development direction.  The ThingWorx Product Management and R&D teams have for years been putting their focus on scalable and enterprise-ready approaches that our partners and customers can build upon.  I mention this to make it clear that not all supported approaches carry the same weight.  Although we do support the MQTT extension, it is not in active development due to the fact that out-of-platform microservices-based communication interfaces are our direction forward.   The Azure IoT Hub Connector, being built on the Connection Server is currently the way forward for MQTT communications to the ThingWorx Foundation.   Regards,   Greg Eva

  After months of development, hours of user interviews and countless coffees, ThingWorx Solution Central is here!   I posted a few weeks ago introducing the new cloud solution management portal, but just as a reminder, ThingWorx Solution Central is a brand-new set of cloud services offered to help you more efficiently manage and deploy your solutions—ow ow!   ThingWorx Solution Central automatically identifies and packages up your dependencies so you can slash your time to deploy. Once you develop your solution in ThingWorx (using the Projects feature), ThingWorx Solution Central will then automatically package up all the artifacts and dependencies required for your solution to run, and then you can publish your “package” up to the cloud, where it will be ready to be deployed to your specified environment(s).     Ready to get started? Request access to ThingWorx Solution Central here and you’ll be on your way to easier solution deployments in no time.   And if you happen to run into any trouble, see the ThingWorx Solution Central Help Center.   Happy deploying!   Stay connected, Kaya

  Question: What are some best practices around building IIoT solutions with ThingWorx?   Meet Ward. Ward works on the product management team for our Manufacturing Apps (i.e. Asset Advisor, Operator Advisor, Production Advisor, etc.). He’s a super cool and smart guy, and he always has an answer to my ThingWorx questions. He has so many answers, in fact, that he worked closely with other ThingWorx experts like Sangeeta to create the ThingWorx Application Development Guide.   I sat down with him to hear his top few tips from the guide. And, just in case we don’t have enough fun around here on “Ask Kaya,” we decided to list his top tips not by “1”-“2”-“3”, but by “W”-“A”-“R”-“D”.   Without further to do, here are Ward’s top tips from the ThingWorx Application Development Guide.   Whitelist your IPs for application keys. (See page 67.) Auto Refresh widget vs. GetProperties service? How should I update live data to my mashup? (See page 25.) Reuse components to increase efficiency and improve your application design. (See page 69.) Don’t use a Thing Template when you really should use a Thing Shape. (See page 10.)   To see more, check out the full ThingWorx Application Development Guide here!   Look out for our next release of the App Development Guide in July! It’ll feature our Manufacturing Apps to share even more ThingWorx best practices!   Reach out with any questions and stay connected! - Kaya