Windchill 10.3 (X-26)

[TomU]

Not sure if it will move, but the PTC Product Calendar now is listing a release target for the next version of Windchill.

I'm also starting to see support documents discussing Creo Parametric 4.0. I wonder if maybe that will be released around the same time...

In some ways it's kind of funny. We are finally getting ready to jump from Wildfire 5.0 to Creo 3.0. Maybe we should wait a little longer and just go from Wildfire 5.0 to Creo 5.0. Of course by then it will probably have it's name changed again.

[TomU]

Looks like we might be getting a "major" release instead of a "minor" one. X-26 now appears to be Windchill 11.0 instead of 10.3.

http://support.ptc.com/WCMS/files/165040/en/CreoViewFuturePlatformSupportMatrix42315.pdf

On the other hand, there are many support articles that say things will be fixed in 10.3, so maybe this is just a typo.

[GregoryPERASSO]

Yes

will be a 11.0 .... hearing some gossips from some different sources ...

and posponed at least to the end of 2015 ....

[STEVEG]

It now shows on the PTC Calendar December 2015. Is there any documentation of new features?

[TomU]

Steve Galayda‌, take a look at the video recording of the Windchill Roadmap from PTC Live Global 2015.

[STEVEG]

I wish I could watch them at work but our IT dept doesn't allow ANY video streaming.  Even if it is directly related to our work.  We can only watch it if we have the file.  Is there any chance these could be downloadable?  If not then the only way for me to view them is to watch them at home.

[TomU]

They're not currently available for direct download.  There are plenty of free utilities that will allow you to download them, but a single presentation is over 2 GB.

[Marco_Tosin]

Tom and Steve,

I downloaded all the 11 presentations in the way Tom "suggest".

The biggest is the 2nd (PTC Technology Vision) and is about 1,2 GB while others are quite smaller (2 GB you see when downloading is false).

[TomU]

Someone in PTC management really needs to tell tech support what they are supposed to call the next version of Windchill.

(These articles were both created in the last two days.)

CS211299

CS209487

I sure hope once it's "official" someone goes back and cleans up the knowledge base. 

[Heidi]

Hi, I'm Heidi Khetani, the Knowledge Manager at PTC Technical Support. I am responsible for our Knowledge Management road map and processes which includes the overall quality of our knowledge base.

In Technical Support, we are keen to promote "just-in-time" publishing of knowledge, aiming to publish information as early as possible to allow our customers to take advantage of it. The information contained within the articles in the knowledge base, can, and does evolve over time and our engineers will update articles as new information becomes available.

We take accuracy of our content extremely seriously; sorry for the naming confusion in the articles you cited.  We have already taken steps to correct the small number of articles referring to Windchill 10.3 to refer to the official release 11.0. We are also ensuring our engineers all refer to the 11.0 release going forwards to avoid any further confusion.

[TomU]

Thanks Heidi!  It's so nice to know it's officially 11.0.  It's also good to hear that the knowledge base will be updated to reflect this.

[TomU]

Heidi Khetani‌, one follow up question.  You said,

In Technical Support, we are keen to promote "just-in-time" publishing of knowledge, aiming to publish information as early as possible to allow our customers to take advantage of it. The information contained within the articles in the knowledge base, can, and does evolve over time and our engineers will update articles as new information becomes available.

I am subscribed to all tech support articles for several PTC products and daily receive notifications about updates to these.  The problem is, there's no way to see what changed.  Is there any type of DIFF function (similar to what Jive offers here on the community) to allow one to see what changed in a support article since the last time it was published?  Some articles are fairly long and detailed and unless I have previously made a copy of the article, it's virtually impossible to tell what changed.  Thanks!

[BenPerry]

Heidi Khetani‌,

I second what Tom said about seeing what changed.

I would also add that I see existing articles such as CS201714 which get updated.  However the Dated Created and Date Last Modified both get updated to the current date (albeit a slightly different timestamp a few minutes apart).  And then when the email digest comes through that Tom is talking about, the document is listed as New instead of Existing.

[Heidi]

Hello Tom and Ben, the article viewer will always show the most recent published version of an article but we currently don't have a way to identify what has changed in an article since it's last published version.

Regarding the Date Created in the article viewer, we are aware of a defect in the underlying system which is causing the created date to show the time stamp for when the current version was created, as opposed to the time stamp for when the original version was created. We are awaiting a fix for this issue from a third party vendor which should enable us to rectify this in the next couple of months.

Ben, Thank you for informing me about the issue with the email digest, aka PTC Technical Support Subscriptions email; sorry if this has caused confusion, I have reported the behaviour to the team that handle this functionality and they are looking into it.

[BenPerry]

Heidi Khetani‌,

Referring back to the inability to identify what has changed in an article since it was last published, I would like to provide an example.

CS134275 was created a while ago - I can't remember exactly when.  More recently, it was updated multiple times - 13-Aug and 17-Aug.  I looked at the article today, and it is showing as Created 18-Aug and Last Modified 19-Aug.

So what I'm curious about is if there can be revision notes added to the bottom of some high-visibility documents, such as CS134275?  On these large documents, it would be really nice to see what changed.  This principal is adopted for other PTC documents such as the Windchill 10.2 M030 software matrix‌, in the footnotes at the bottom of the document.

So what are your thoughts about adding these notes to the bottom of CS articles?

[TomU]

Totally agree!.  It's virtually impossible to track what changed on these frequently updated articles. 

[Heidi]

Hello Ben Perry‌, adding footnotes to longer, more complex articles to easily identify what changed since the last revision is a really interesting idea and I can see the potential benefits. I have made note of your suggestion so that we can consider it when we are next planning changes and enhancements to our articles.

[Marco_Tosin]

I endorse what has been said by Tom e Ben.