IoT Tips

Contents: Introduction Prerequisites Installing Java Installing PostgreSQL Running the Installer Post Installation Steps Troubleshooting tips   Introduction:   Starting with ThingWorx 8.4, PTC released a new way to install a fresh ThingWorx environment.  This installer takes care of all the permissions, database scripts, credential encryption, and tomcat options that previously needed to be done manually.  More information on the installer can be found in the ThingWorx Help Center   NOTE: This is different than the Docker installer we have available in earlier releases.   As of right now, the installation guide has very basic instructions for the installer.  The purpose of this post is to show you from start to finish what the process looks like.  For this example, I chose to deploy PostgreSQL 10 on the local system to keep things simple.   Prerequisites:   Download the latest Java 8 SE JDK RPM for RHEL Get your database ready: If you're accessing a remote PostgreSQL instance, make sure PSQL is installed and working on your ThingWorx Server Download the appropriate installer from support.ptc.com Ensure the RHEL user that will be executing the installer has SUDO privileges   NOTE: There are pieces of the manual installation guide that I had to reference in order to get JAVA and PostgreSQL properly configured.   Installing Java:   Per Page 83, I downloaded the latest Linux x64 RPM for Java 8 SE JDK (201) and followed steps 2-8 to configure Java. For step 5, I needed to use the -f parameter listed in the guide under NOTE Step 7 make sure you don't accidentally select OpenJDK if it was preinstalled   Installing PostgreSQL:   I'm following along with the Version 10 download instructions found on https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/redhat/ NOTE: this needs root access, so run all the commands with SUDO Install the client packages Postgresql10 I will Install the optional server packages postgresql10-server since this is a local PostgreSQL instance Complete step 7 to enable automatic start.  We need to set the postgres password so our ThingWorx installer is able to create our thingworx user and the database.  This can be done with the following command: NOTE: Since this is the master user for your database, it is highly recommended to use a password that has a combination of case, numbers, letters, and symbols Sudo passwd postgres Although, this may be redundant, I also run the following command to update the password used in PostgreSQL : sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER ROLE postgres WITH password '<password from above>'" Navigate to /var/lib/pgsql/10/data and open pg_hba.conf for editing Review page 91 of the Installation guide to determine which setting best applies to your business needs In the same directory open postgresql.conf Scroll down to "listen_addresses" line and un-comment it.  This would  be the place to make changes if you expect remote connections to access the database.  If it is local, then the default of localhost is fine Restart PostgreSQL to apply these changes: Sudo service postgresql-10 restart   Running the Installer:   Everything should be in place now to run our installer.  Extract the ThingWorxFoundationPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT.run file to the ~ (home) directory Execute the .run file: NOTE: If it doesn't let you execute the file, it may not have extracted as an executable.  Run the below command to make it executable then try again: Chmod -x ThingWorxFoundationPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT.run Sudo ./ThingWorxFoundationPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT.run   At this point you'll be going through text to setup your installation settings.  I'll briefly list out the order you'll see them below: Terms and conditions and whether you agree Where you want ThingWorx deployed (/opt by default) NOTE: this folder will contain ThingworxStorage/ ThingworxPlatform/ tomcat/ etc… Installation Configuration user (twxfoundation by default).  This step creates a user in RHEL that will have ownership of Tomcat, various ThingWorx directory's, etc ThingWorx Administrator Password.  Used to login to ThingWorx Composer. WRITE THIS DOWN SOMEWHERE!  You cannot retrieve this password, and most likely will require you to do a fresh installation if you forget it Tomcat Port http (8080) Tomcat SSL port (8443) Use SSL For simplicity, I chose not to use it for this exercise PostgreSQL information Host Name : mine is local, so localhost Port (5432) Administrator Username (Administrator) : use postgres here, since that's the DB user password we updated above Admin password : use the postgres password ThingWorx Database login username (twadmin).  This user will be created in PostgreSQL and be tied to our ThingWorx database ThingWorx database login password: NOTE There's no place to re-enter your password, so make sure you write this down.   Unexpected issue:   For this particular install, I kept running into a failure saying "Warning: Failed to validate the PostgreSQL connection.  Check the information you entered".  I opened another putty connection and, as root, navigated to /var/lib/pgsql/10/data/log and opened the postgresql log to find the following:   2019-02-28 17:10:30.678 UTC [93377] LOG:  could not connect to Ident server at address "::1", port 113: Connection refused 2019-02-28 17:10:30.678 UTC [93377] FATAL:  Ident authentication failed for user "postgres" 2019-02-28 17:10:30.678 UTC [93377] DETAIL:  Connection matched pg_hba.conf line 84: "host    all             all             ::1/128                 ident"     The solution for me was to go into the pg_hba.conf and change the IPv6 local connections from ident to md5.  Again, make sure you are reading through the PostgreSQL documentation and adjusting these properties in a way that meets both your security and business needs.   Once the change was made, I restarted postgresql, and switched back over to my Putty instance that had the installer going.     A summary pops up for a few items, and then it asks if you're ready to continue NOTE: The progress bar goes to 100% pretty quickly, and doesn't appear to move.  Just let it sit for a few minutes while it finishes up Copy the Thingworx Device ID for future reference To check if ThingWorx is running, run 'sudo service Thingworx-Foundation status' in your command line If it is active (running) try to access it with a remote browser: More information around the command Firewalld can be found here  http://<thingworxurl>:<tomcatport>/Thingworx NOTE: If it just hangs, check your firewall to make sure the port is open for external communication   Post Installation Steps:   Licensing: Navigate to /opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT/licensingconfigurator and run the twx-licensing-configurator.run as SUDO Choose whether or not you want PTC to store your credentials and download the license for you, or if you want to manually download the license yourself from http://support.ptc.com -> Manage Licenses (bottom right) For this example, I manually downloaded the license Move the license file over to the ThingWorx Server Since you're running the licensingconfigurator as SUDO, don't put this file into your user's home directory.  Instead, put it into /tmp NOTE: Change the downloaded filename to license_capability_response.bin.  Otherwise the file will not be recognized Then it will ask for your ThingWorx Administrator password This appears to be used for verification after the license is in place, and it sees if it can successfully log into your system Once it has completed, and assuming it says "Setup has finished configuration licensing for ThingWorx", open up a web browser and login as Administrator -> Monitor -> Subsystems -> Licensing Subsystem and verify that your licensing information looks correct on the system   Extensions: Extra security has been added as of 8.4 around importing Extensions.  More details can be found in the Help Center In short, adding extensions is disabled by default, and you need to add some lines into your /ThingworxPlatform/platform-settings.json under the "PlatformSettingsConfig" section. For example, here is what I added:    "PlatformSettingsConfig": {                 "BasicSettings": {                         "BackupStorage": "/opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT/ThingworxBackupStorage",                         "DatabaseLogRetentionPolicy": 7,                         "EnableBackup": true,                         "EnableHA": false,                         "EnableSystemLogging": true,                         "HTTPRequestHeaderMaxLength": 2000,                         "HTTPRequestParameterMaxLength": 2000,                         "InternalAesCryptographicKeyLength": 128,                         "Storage": "/opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT/ThingworxStorage"                 },                 "ExtensionPackageImportPolicy": {                        "importEnabled": true,                        "allowJarResources": true,                        "allowJavascriptResources": false,                        "allowCSSResources": false,                        "allowJSONResources": false,                        "allowWebAppResources": false,                        "allowEntities": true,                        "allowExtensibleEntities": false       }           }   Make sure you set the appropriate items above to true based on what your extensions require   Troubleshooting:   If things backfire, depending on where you are in the setup process, the following logs should be looked at for clues on the failure:   Installation: /tmp/bitrock_installer.logs I believe the installation directory (default /opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT) will contain a log file if the installer fails /opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT/ThingworxStorage/logs/ (need root access) /opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT/tomcat/apache-tomcat-<version>/logs PostgreSQL (requires root): /var/lib/pgsql/10/data/log LicensingConfigurator : /opt/ThingWorxPostgres-1.2.0-SNAPSHOT/licensingconfigurator

Why? Reduce or eliminate hardware costs Get database portability across on-premise and cloud compatible virtualization High speed and minimum downtime Optimize performance Three deployment options: Single: best for apps requiring resource guarantee at database level Elastic pool: SAAS apps with multiple databases achieving better cost efficiency Managed instance: best for modernization at scale MS SQL Improvements: Ingest millions of data items/day with imrpoved MS SQL 150% improvement  ingestion throughput with MS SQL persistence provider Optimized indexing to achieve better peformance for the same compute at the same price ThingWorx with Microsoft database solution: Azure SQL logical server (single instance and elastic pool) v12 Azure SQL managed server v12 MS SQL sever 2016 Azure PostgreSQL 9.6 and 10 Q: What is the rate as compared to PostgreSQL? A: We are in process launching new sizing guide that will be out in a few weeks. MS SQL is around 15-22K writes per sec. Comparable to Postgres.

We are excited to announce ThingWorx 8.4 is now available for download!    Key functional highlights ThingWorx 8.4 covers the following areas of the product portfolio: ThingWorx Analytics and ThingWorx Foundation which includes Connection Server and Edge capabilities.   ThingWorx Foundation Next Generation Composer: File Repository Editor added for application file management New entity Config Table Editor to enable application configurability and customization Localization support fornew languages: Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Russian, Chinese/Taiwan, Chinese/Simplified Mashup Builder: Responsive Layout with new Layout Editor 13 new and updated widgets (beta) Theming Editor (beta) New Functions Editor New Personalized Workspace Platform: Added support for AzureSQL, a relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS) as the new persistence provider A PaaS database that is always running on the latest stable version of SQL Server Database Engine and  patched OS with 99.99% availability.   Added support for InfluxData, a leading time series storage platform as the new ThingWorx persistence provider Supports ingesting large amounts of IoT data and offers high availability with clustering setup New extension for Remote Access and Control Supports VNC, RDP desktop sharing for any remote device HTTP and SSH connectivity supported An optional microservice to offload the ThingWorx server by allowing query execution to occur in a separate process on the same or on a different physical machine. Installers for Postgres versions of ThingWorx running on Windows or RHEL AzureSQL InfluxDB Thing Presence feature introduced which indicates whether the connection of a thing is “normal” based on the expected behavior of the device. Remote Access Extension Query Microservice: Click and Go Installers for Windows and Linux (RHEL) Security: Major investments include updating 3rd party libraries, handling of data to address cross-site scripting (XSS)  issues and enhancements to the password policy, including a password blacklist. A significant number of security issues have been fixed in this release. It is recommended that customers upgrade as soon as possible to take advantage of these important improvements. Docker Support  Added Dockerfile as a distribution media for ThingWorx Foundation and Analytics Allows building Docker container image that unlocks the potential of Dev and Ops Note:  Legacy Composer has been removed and replaced with the New Composer.   Documentation: ThingWorx 8.4 Reference Documents ThingWorx Platform 8.4 Release Notes ThingWorx Platform Help Center ThingWorx Analytics Help Center ThingWorx Connection Services Help Center  

In this post, I will use an instance of InfluxDB and Chronograf. See this post for installing both using Docker. InfluxDB - Time Series Databases   InfluxDB is a time series database. It allows users to work with and organize time series data. The advantage of such a database system is that it comes with built-in functionality to easily aggregate and operate on data based on time intervals. Other types of databases can do this as well - but time series databases are heavily optimized for this kind of data structures which will show in storage space and performance.   Data is stored in the database with its timestamp, its value and one or more tags.   Time Temperature Humidity Location 2019-01-24T00:00:00 23 42 Home 2019-01-24T00:01:00 22 43 Home 2019-01-24T00:02:00 21 44 Home 2019-01-24T00:03:00 23 45 Home 2019-01-24T00:04:00 24 42 Home 2019-01-24T00:05:00 25 43 Home 2019-01-24T00:06:00 23 44 Home   Values can be aggregated by intervalls, i.e. "give me the temperatur values within the last hour and take the average for 5 minutes". This would result in (60 / 5) = 12 results with a value that represents the average temperature within this 5 minute interval.   Example: Temperature Data averaged by 4 minutes   Time Temperature 2019-01-24T00:00:00 (23 + 22 + 21+ 23) / 4 = 22,25 2019-01-24T00:04:00 (24 + 25 + 23) / 3 = 24   To find out more about InfluxDB see also https://www.influxdata.com/time-series-database/ and https://www.influxdata.com/time-series-platform/   InfluxDB in ThingWorx   The new ThingWorx 8.4 release comes with an option to setup InfluxDB as additional Persistence Provider. Meta Data like Entity Definitons will still be stored in PostgreSQL. Streams, Value Streams and Data Tables however can be stored in InfluxDB.   The InfluxDB Persistence Provider setup is delivered with the PostgreSQL installation package for ThingWorx. Currently ThingWorx does not allow any aggregation of data with its built-in InfluxDB capabilities.   Prepare InfluxDB   InfluxDB will need a user and a database. Connect via Chronograf - the graphical UI to administer InfluxDB and create a new user via   InfluxDB Admin > Users Default username = twadmin Default password = password Permissions = ALL   Create a new database via   InfluxDB Admin > Databases Default database name = thingworx   Configure ThingWorx   Create a new Persistence Provider for InfluxDB in ThingWorx - but don't mark it as active yet!     Switch to the Configuration and change the username / password, database and hostname to match your installation.     Save the configuration, switch back to the General tab and mark the InfluxDB Persistence Provider as Active.   Save again and a "successful" message will be shown. If the save action failed, the connection settings are not correct - check for the correct ports and for any typos.   Creating Entities & Testing   Streams, Value Streams and Data Tables can now be created using the new InfluxDB Persistence Provider.   To test with a Value Stream   Create a new Thing with some NUMBER properties, e.g. 'a', 'b' and 'c' as properties - ensure they are marked as logged as well Name = InfluxValueStreamThing Create a new ValueStream based and change its Persistance Provider to the InfluxDB created above Name = InfluxValueStream Save both Entities Setting values for the properties will now automatically create the entries in InfluxDB - including the Entity name "InfluxValueStreamThing" Running the QueryPropertyHistory service on the Thing will return the results as an InfoTable In Chronograf this will display like this:   ThingWorx 8.4 will be released end of January 2019. Be sure to check out and test the new Persistence Provider features!

Installing an Open Source Time Series Platform For testing InfluxDB and its graphical user interface, Chronograf I'm using Docker images for easy deployment. For this post I assume you have worked with Docker before.   In this setup, InfluxDB and Chronograf will share an internal docker network to exchange data.   InfluxDB can be accessed e.g. by ThingWorx via its exposed port 8086. Chronograf can be accessed to administrative purposes via its port 8888. The following commands can be used to create a InfluxDB environment.   Pull images   sudo docker pull influxdb:latest sudo docker pull chronograf:latest   Create a virtual network   sudo docker network create influxdb   Start the containers   sudo docker run -d --name=influxdb -p 8086:8086 --net=influxdb --restart=always influxdb sudo docker run -d --name=chronograf -p 8888:8888 --net=influxdb --restart=always chronograf --influxdb-url=http://influxdb:8086     InfluxDB should now be reachable and will also restart automatically when Docker (or the Operating System) are restarted.

This post adds to my previous post: Deploying H2 Docker versions quickly   In addition to configuring the basic Docker Images and Containers, it's also possible to deploy them with a TLS / SSL certificate and access the instances via HTTPS protocol.   For this a valid certificate is required inside a .jks keystore. I'm using a self-signed certificate, but commercial ones are even better! The certificate must be in the name of the machine which runs Docker and which is accessed by the users via browser. In my case this is "mne-docker". The password for the keystore and the private key must be the same - this is a Tomcat limitation. In my case it's super secret and "Password123456".   I have the following directory structure on my Operating System   /home/ts/docker/ certificates mne-docker.jks twx.8.2.x.h2 Dockerfile settings platform-settings.json <license_file> storage Thingworx.war   The Recipe File   In the Recipe File I make sure that I create a new Connector on port 8443, removing the old one on port 8080. I do this by just replacing via the sed command - also introducing options for content compression. I'm only replacing the first line of the xml node as it holds all the information I need to change.   Changes to the original version I posted are in green   FROM tomcat:latest MAINTAINER mneumann@ptc.com LABEL version = "8.2.0" LABEL database = "H2" RUN mkdir -p /cert RUN mkdir -p /ThingworxPlatform RUN mkdir -p /ThingworxStorage RUN mkdir -p /ThingworxBackupStorage ENV LANG=C.UTF-8 ENV JAVA_OPTS="-server -d64 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Duser.timezone=GMT -XX:+UseNUMA -XX:+UseG1GC -Djava.library.path=/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/Thingworx/WEB-INF/extensions RUN sed -i 's/<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP\/1.1"/<Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol" maxThreads="150" SSLEnabled="true" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" enableLookups="false" keystoreFile="\/cert\/mne-docker.jks" keystorePass="Password123456" ciphers="TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA256, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_GCM_SHA256, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA384, TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA" compression="on" compressableMimeType="text\/html,text\/xml,text\/plain,text\/css,text\/javascript,application\/javascript,application\/json"/g' /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml COPY Thingworx.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps VOLUME ["/ThingworxPlatform", "/ThingworxStorage", "/cert"] EXPOSE 8443   Note that I also map the /cert directory to the outside, so all of my Containers can access the same certificate. I will access it read-only.   Deploying     sudo docker build -t twx.8.2.x.h2 . sudo docker run -d --name=twx.8.2.x.h2 -p 88:8443 -v /home/ts/docker/twx.8.2.x.h2/storage:/ThingworxStorage -v /home/ts/docker/twx.8.2.x.h2/settings:/ThingworxPlatform -v /home/ts/docker/certificates:/cert:ro twx.8.2.x.h2   Mapping to the 8443 port ensures to only allow HTTPS connections. The :ro in the directory mapping ensures read-only access.   What next   Go ahead! Only secure stuff is kind of secure 😉 For more information on how to import the certificate into a the Windows Certificate Manager so browsers recognize it, see also the Trusting the Root CA chapter in Trust & Encryption - Hands On

ThingWorx offers Docker based installations utilizing existing PostgreSQL databases. In newer releases ThingWorx Docker installers also offer using other databases.   Personally I'm using a certain method of deployment where I can just easily exchange some files, create new images and have a H2 based environment running for some quick tests.   As H2 is a built-in database, I will not dive into setting up the platform-settings.json for other connectivity. However other databases can be connected to by adjusting the platform-settings.json. This might also require an internal Docker Network structure which I will not elaborate on here.   Note: the following procedure is not fully supported as it's not using the deployment methods provided by the installers!   Create the Directory Structure   My Directory structure looks the following (expanded for the 8.2.x branch):   /home/ts/docker/ twx.8.0.x.h2 twx.8.1.x.h2 twx.8.2.x.h2 Dockerfile settings platform-settings.json <license_file> storage Thingworx.war twx.8.3.x.h2   I have a directory for every version I want to test with.   In each directory there's the Dockerfile - the recipe file I'm using. There's also the version specific Thingworx.war file as well as two directories: settings and storage which I will map to the ThingWorx directories inside the image later.   The Recipe File   FROM tomcat:latest MAINTAINER me@somewhere.com LABEL version = "8.2.0" LABEL database = "H2"  RUN mkdir -p /ThingworxPlatform RUN mkdir -p /ThingworxStorage RUN mkdir -p /ThingworxBackupStorage ENV LANG=C.UTF-8 ENV JAVA_OPTS="-server -d64 -Djava.awt.headless=true -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Duser.timezone=GMT -XX:+UseNUMA -XX:+UseG1GC -Djava.library.path=/usr/local/tomcat/webapps/Thingworx/WEB-INF/extensions COPY Thingworx.war /usr/local/tomcat/webapps VOLUME ["/ThingworxPlatform", "/ThingworxStorage"] EXPOSE 8080   I change the version label to keep track of the versions for each recipe.   Deploying   Build the Docker Image by navigating to the directory where the recipe file is based in   sudo docker build -t twx.8.2.x.h2 .   Create a Docker Container and start it   sudo docker run -d --name=twx.8.2.x.h2 -p 82:8080 -v /home/ts/docker/twx.8.2.x.h2/storage:/ThingworxStorage -v /home/ts/docker/twx.8.2.x.h2/settings:/ThingworxPlatform twx.8.2.x.h2   I change the name of the Image and the Container as well as the external port to distinguish all the different versions. The -v option maps the paths in my Operating System to the paths in the Docker Container, so I can browse the ThingworxStorage and ThingworxPlatform folder without connecting inside the Container. That's quite handy to check the logs, or place the license file.   Starting and Stopping   I can fire up and shut down Containers I need with the following commands:   sudo docker start twx.8.2.x.h2 sudo docker stop twx.8.2.x.h2   What next   That's just my basic setup. Usually I copy & paste a working directory for deploying another version and adjust what needs to be changed. You could use this as a basis for quick and easy deployment where even additional features could be added, i.e. HTTPS configuration or auto-deploying certain ThingWorx Extensions via a REST API call.   To ensure starting with a clean Image, for building new Images I delete the contents of the storage folder and only leave the platform-settings.json in the settings folder (I copy the license later after generating it with my new Device ID).

  If you’ve ever wished you could see into the future, you’ve come to the right place! Put your reflective suits and sunglasses on to prepare for a glimpse into the future of our upcoming ThingWorx 8.4 release! Here are sneak peeks of the top three features you may not have known are coming in ThingWorx 8.4.   1. Thing Presence While it sounds like something from an episode of Ghost Hunters, Thing Presence provides insight into the communication state of polling or duty cycle Things (those that check in and out on a periodic basis). We’re introducing a new IsReporting state, which would be set to true when polling assets check in on time and are considered “present in the network.” This helps to bridge the gap where the traditional ThingWorx IsConnected state reports offline and does not coincide with the actual network presence of the device.   Thing Presence: New "IsReporting" State2. Data Helpers You may not know what Data Helpers are, but if you’re a longstanding ThingWorx developer you likely know about Expression and Validator widgets. These widgets were handy because they allowed you to write conditional logic or input validation to drive behaviors in the UI, but were super frustrating to use. They took up lots of room on the visual layout canvas and only had a very little textbox to edit them. In the 8.4 release, we are happy to announce that these two widgets will no longer be placed on the layout canvas. Instead, they will have a dedicated editor to work from with plenty of room for code development, parameter configuration and event definition and binding. We’re wrapping all of this functionality into a nice little feature called…Data Helpers. Data Helpers: Expression and Validator Widgets No Longer in Layout Canvas3. ThingWorx Flow In case Thing Presence and Data Helpers aren’t exciting enough, we’re also introducing ThingWorx Flow, a neat new feature set that dramatically speeds development of connected applications through integrations with business systems like Salesforce and SAP. Imagine that, when a certain alert triggers, you want to automatically create a Salesforce service ticket and even send an emergency text to an operator to prevent damage to a device. A large set of out-of-the-box system connectors (PTC Windchill, Office 365, Google Docs, Slack, Jira and more) are included, which you can drag and drop onto a canvas to visually define a workflow. In the example below, a ThingWorx-connected device element, a Salesforce “create case” action and a Twilio text message connector were dropped into the canvas to create a visual workflow. Orchestration: Example Workflow that Creates Salesforce Cases and Alerts OperatorsThing Presence, Data Helpers & Flow—get ready for these and more in ThingWorx 8.4!   Stay tuned for future posts that go into greater depth about each of these features and comment your thoughts below!   Stay connected, Kaya

The use of the term “SSO” means different things to different people. Among Navigate Admins, it became shorthand for using PingFederate to provide both authentication with a single sign-on component, as well as authorization (checking permissions for access to files). In Navigate 1.5, this was the only option for configuring a production system, and many people were not ready for it. That was the origin of the “must have SSO” statement. Beginning with Navigate 1.6, PTC added a scenario called “Windchill Authentication”, that is suitable for Production and uses your Enterprise LDAP to authenticate users. It will issue a token so you get some of the benefits of single sign-on, but not all the bells and whistles that come with PingFederate. It’s also easier to configure. People have begun referring to Windchill Authentication as “non-SSO”, to distinguish it from PingFederate, even though Windchill Authentication has some SSO functions.   In the install manual, there are three scenarios: Fixed Authentication, Windchill Authentication, and Single Sign-On with PingFederate. People usually begin with Fixed Authentication (the easiest to configure, but not secure so it’s only good for Proof of Concept demonstrations), then do Windchill Authentication before tackling PingFederate. Windchill Authentication can take a couple of days while Webexing with us to get working, but for PingFederate we plan several Webexes over a period of 8 days for a typical install. During that time you will be coordinating with other administrators (such as the AD admin) and waiting for emails etc. to get remote admin tasks done as part of the install. Be prepared, timewise.

Continuing our series of Troubleshooting ThingWorx Analytics installations, in this IoT Tech Tip we will cover two items have been appearing for many users.   Error 1069 Encountered with Native Windows Installation of ThingWorx Analytics 8.2   In some instances, when a user successfully installs ThingWorx Analytics (TWAS) to a Windows Server operating system, they will encounter an error where TWAS will report an Error 1069: The Service did not start due to logon failure.   This can occur with any individual Service that is created by the installation, the following fix should work in addressing the issue.   Primary Reason This Happens:   This error can be encountered when the user provides incorrect credentials for associating the Services to an account during installation. In TWAS 8.2, there is a utility that will enable to the user to change the associated user on the Services. It is important the user provides the password for the User Account on Windows, and not the user/password combination for ThingWorx Foundation Platform Server.   Steps to Fix Issue   Solution 1:   Open a Command Prompt as Administrator, via Start Menu à Run à type CMD. Then right click on cmd.exe and Run As Administrator.   In the elevated command prompt, change your directory to the ThingWorxAnalyticsServer/bin directory, for example in the default installation path would be: cd C:\Program Files (x86)/ThingWorxAnalyticsServer/bin Then execute the changeServiceUserAccount.bat <username>, for example: changeServiceUserAccount.bat user1   You will be prompted to change the password for the user.   Solution 2:   If Solution 1 does not resolve the issue, alternately you can manually change the Log On properties for each of the services. The changeServiceUserAccount.bat would do this via script, but on occasion this may work. Open the Control Panel and navigate to Services, for example: Control Panel à All Control Panel Items à Administrative Tools   You will have to right click each individual service and go to Properties à Log On tab and enter the account name and password for the local account. Note: Local System account will not resolve this issue.   This issue was resolved in the ThingWorx Analytics Server 8.3 release, where all Services are associated with the Network Service account.     More information can be found in this Knowledge Article   Uploading of a Dataset hangs or does not complete in ThingWorx Analytics 8.3   On occasion, after a fresh installation of ThingWorx Analytics Server 8.3 on a Windows Server operating system, a dataset will not complete its upload. Typically no error message is displayed, and the upload wizard UI will just hang on the upload progress after:   Creating copy of Configuration File... Submitting Create Dataset request... Creating copy of Data File...   Primary Reason This Happens:   This is caused by twas-zookeeper service being stuck in a PAUSED state. This means that in the post installation, twas-zookeeper did not start.   Steps to Fix Issue   You will have to double check that the JAVA_HOME variable was defined as a System Variable. In the ThingWorx Analytics Installation guide, pages 12-14 outline the steps required as pre-requisites. You can change this in Control Panel > System > Advanced Settings > Environment Variables, and ass a new variable named JAVA_HOME under System Variables. The value location should be the location of your deployment of JAVA software.   Typically this is located in C:\Program Files\Java\<jre or jdk>_<version number>     More information can be found in this Knowledge Article

This video shows the steps to install ThingWorx Analytics release 8.3  

ThingWorx 8.3 covers the following areas of the product portfolio:  ThingWorx Analytics, ThingWorx Utilities, and ThingWorx Foundation which includes Connection Server and Edge capabilities.   Highlights of the release include:   ThingWorx Foundation Next Generation Composer: Now default admin and developer interface Full Feature parity with legacy Composer New capability for User and Group administration, Authorization and permissions, Export, Monitoring and Logging. More in Helpcenter Localization support for German and French Mashup Builder: JQuery 3 upgrade Grid Advanced Extension now supports Cell Editing and Footers Platform: Active Directory (AD) Integration enhancements for larger AD forests and user extension field mapping Upgrade in-place enhancements for Java SDK developers Developer Enablement Capture the usage statics such as time taken to execute a ThingWorx service, # of times a service runs in ThingWorx using Service Utilization Statistics functionality powered by all new and efficient Utilization Subsystem. Collect ThingWorx system data such as ESAPI configuration, ThingworxStorage logs, licensing, and JVM information to better diagnose system issues Service Utilization Statistics: ThingWorx Support Package tool Administrator Password and Password Length New installations of ThingWorx will be required to supply the initial Administrator password of the installer’s choice. That password must be supplied via a new entry in the platform-settings.json file. After the initial installation, the Administrator password should then be changed to a strong password to be used going forward. Additional information. As a step toward industry best practices, the Administrator password and all new passwords will need to be at least 10 characters.  When upgrading to 8.3, passwords from older versions of the platform will not need to be modified, but any new passwords being created will need to be at least 10 characters long. See the installation instructions for complete details.   ThingWorx Analytics New Descriptive Services  Core statistics (min, max, deviation, etc.), data distribution (binning), confidence intervals, and other useful calculations. Frequency analysis and transformation (via fast Fourier transform) for troubleshooting use cases and predictive analytics applications Improves users’ ability to apply logic and derive the following insights from streaming data without constructing complex models or accessing machine learning: Enables platform developers to easily process platform data in their applications and prepare the data for predictions. Statistical Process Control (SPC) Services Provides industry-standard calculations that allow IoT developers to implement SPC “control chart rules” in their applications.  Useful in manufacturing and in monitoring equipment and processes. Supports a wide assortment of rules, including number of points continuously above / below a range, in and out of range, increasing or decreasing trends, or alternating directions. Analytics Workbench Bundles the two Analytics interfaces (Analytics Builder and Manager) into a new Analytics section in Composer. Predictive Analytics Improvements Reduces overall install and administration complexity. Improves handling of time dseries data when used in predictive scoring. Includes a new learner, Support Vector Machines, enhancing the platform’s utility in building Boolean predictions. Includes a new ensemble method, Majority Vote, that improves generated model accuracy. Provides redundancy filtering which can optionally remove redundant information to improve explanatory analytics (Signals) and predictive model training. Now supports time series lookahead configuration, simplifying this type of prediction. Replaces ThingPredictor predictive scoring in Analytics Manager with native Analytics Server scoring: Improves scalability of concurrent jobs. Axeda Compatibility Package IDM Connector Support o   ACP v1.1.0 introduces the IDM Connector which enables Axeda customers to connect their Axeda IDM agents to the ThingWorx platform.  The IDM Connector provides support for registration requests, property updates, faults, events, file uploads and downloads.  Axeda ThingWorx Entity Exporter Update o   ACP v1.1.0 also includes an updated version of Axeda-ThingWorx Entity Exporter (ATEE) which now supports exporting Axeda IDM assets from the Axeda application into a format that can be imported in the ThingWorx Platform.  eMessage Connector Improvements o   Additionally, ACP v1.1.0 includes support for instruction based Software Content Management packages for the eMessage Connector which allows you to download file(s), execute instruction(s) and optionally restart the agent.  The Axeda Compatibility Extension (ACE) has new entities to support the IDM Connector and SCM for the eMesssage Connector.  o   Finally, updated versions of the Axeda Compatibility Extensions (ACE) and the Connection Services Extension (CSE) are included in ACP v1.1.0 and provide an improved workflow for granting permissions to the eMessage and IDM Connectors. ThingWorx Extension Updates Websocket Tunnel Extension Update The Websocket Tunnel Extension was updated for 8.3 to support the upgrade to jQuery3 Grid Advanced 4.0.0 comes with 2 key features: Editing - we now have cell editing support for all basetypes. The previous version had boolean editing; 4.0.0 now includes support for all basetypes. Footers - A footer section can now be added to the Grid to display rolled-up Grid totals. You can perform client-side calculations like count, min, max and average, and it includes support for custom functions. Note - Grid Advanced 4.0.0 only supports ThingWorx 8.3 and above. Custom Charts 3.0.1 12 Bug Fixes Google Maps 3.0.1 General Bug Fixes ThingWorx Utilities With the 8.3 Release, ThingWorx Utilities functionality are being repackaged into ThingWorx Foundation and ThingWorx Asset Advisor.  ThingWorx Workflow will now be available with Foundation.  The functionality from the Asset and Alert Management Utilities will be delivered in ThingWorx Asset Advisor.  ThingWorx Software Content Management capabilities will continue to be available for customer to manage the delivery of Software to their Connected Products.  The naming of “Utilities” is being phased out of the ThingWorx Platform packaging but the key functionality formerly described as ThingWorx Utilities continues to be delivered with version 8.3.   ThingWorx 8.3 Reference Documents ThingWorx Analytics 8.3 Reference Documents ThingWorx Platform 8.3 Release Notes ThingWorx Platform Help Center ThingWorx Edge SDKs and WebSocket-based Edge MicroServer Help Center ThingWorx Connection Services Help Center ThingWorx Analytics Help Center ThingWorx Industrial Connectivity Help Center ThingWorx Utilities Help Center ThingWorx Utilities Installation Guide     ThingWorx eSupport Portal ThingWorx Developer Portal PTC Marketplace   The following items will be available for download from the PTC Software Download site on June 8, 2018. ThingWorx Platform – Select Release 8.3 ThingWorx Utilities – Select Release 8.3 ThingWorx Analytics – Select Release 8.3 ThingWorx Extensions – Select Individual Extensions for download.  Will be available with the next Marketplace refresh

Presentation by Michael Anderson highlighting new capabilities and features in the ThingWorx Manufacturing and Service Apps 8.2

Connect and Monitor Industrial Plant Equipment Learning Path   Learn how to connect and monitor equipment that is used at a processing plant or on a factory floor.   NOTE: Complete the following guides in sequential order. The estimated time to complete this learning path is 180 minutes.   Create An Application Key  Install ThingWorx Kepware Server Connect Kepware Server to ThingWorx Foundation Part 1 Part 2 Create Industrial Equipment Model Build an Equipment Dashboard Part 1 Part 2