Windchill 10 Desktop Integration (DTI) Installation woes

[JoePriest]

I'm looking for anyone who has had to install this in a multi-user environment. I'm seeing problems when you silently install DTI as user A and user B logs into the computer. The user A process could be an admin install in a large environment like ours. WC10 DTI needs to configure itself on first use. This first use can occur when a user downloads a file from Windchill. Our users are trained to get their documents from Windchill and not to locate their files from within the Office app using DTI. What happens is the "first use" configuration is happening at the same time that the document is trying to load from Windchill. A big fat error shows up on the screen while DTI continues to configure itself. This is what the user will see the first they come in Monday morning after our upgrade to Windchill 10. This thankfully only happens on first use and behaives normally thereafter but they shouldn't see this error when they are using Windchill 10 for the first time. This isn't a good way to start out the user experience.

To make matters worse, R&D told me that the specification for DTI is to have user A install their own software and that no other user can use that same machine and expect to use DTI. This really bothers me that PTC thinks that this is how companies deploy software.

I'm told by the Product Manager that he hasn't heard of any other company having this problem. I just can't believe that. Can anyone out there tell me if they have tried installing DTI in this scenario who has seen this problem?

Joe

[MikeLockwood]

We haven't yet dabbled in DTI, but it's on the list to investigate. Good to know that these issues / constraints exist - we may forego even looking at it any closer for another few releases because of exactly this.

[sm]

Mike, I hope Joe's comments won't keep you from considering Windchill Desktop Integration.

They have a unique situation that PTC TS and R&D cannot duplicate inhouse. The software is silently uninstalled and installed properly, but there is an issue regarding the user configuration with the new software. The result is a one-time error message for each unique user on a given machine.

After pressing OK to the one-time error, Windchill Desktop Integration works as expected.

What PTC and Joe would like to know is if there are any other customers using a silent installation technique and experiencing the same symptoms? I know other customers are doing this in conjuction with distribution techniques, but Joe's site is the only one experiencing this problem. Please reply if you have any feedback on the silent installation technique or have experienced an issue similar to the one shown in Joe's video.

[MikeLockwood]

Ah - that's very good to know. Our IT installs all sofware using various automated tools (not sure what the current one is), and we also have many computers used by multiple users - so it seems that at least a similar situation applies.

We're mostly interested in using DTI in order to fill in Windchill attributes inside Word documents, and be able to have them display like the title block of CAD Drawings, automatically updated.

Will re-visit in a big way once we're on 10.1 later this year.

,,,,,,,,

By the way, a somewhat related question: I have Windchill 10.1 F000 and also DTI from it on a test machine. We will bring the server up to 10.1 M010 soon. What needs to be done to the DTI install? This will be the situation in general it would seem on any upgrade MOR update.

thanks

[sm]

On your related question, we are in the process of creating a new installation tool for Windchilll DTI. The current plans are to build it for Windchill 10.2 and then investigate backporting it to 10.1 and 10.0. One of the primary acceptance criteria is automated updates for maintenance releases. The plan is to have a client that is more "server aware", which will prompt to update itself when it is not in sync with the server.

[dkessler]

I'm having related problems "restarting" Windchill. I have created a Linux box with VMWare, 15 VM Redhat Linux Windchill 10.0 installations with Apache and Oracle XE. With a lot of tweaking I mangaged to get 6 of them to start Windchill up at the end of the installation processs. Windchill appears to work fine. So I need to add data and config network and everytime I reboot Redhat, I can not get Windchill 10.0 to start. ALL we want to do is run Windchill PDMLink, nothing else.

Here's my order I bring each service up from command line prompt:

Start Apache # apachectl start

Start Tomcat # ./wttomcat_start

Start WindchillDS # ./start-ds

Start Windchill # ./windchill start

When I use Tomcat and start Windchill, the Method Server fails: Error attempting to start Tomcat on port 8010, probably cuz Tomcat is already running.

When I leave Tomcat out thinking WindchillDS might start the service, Windchill fails: Can not find Tomcat on port 8010. I added port 8010 to the firewall exceptions.

Am I starting Windchill in the correct order?

[JoePriest]

That's quite a bit off topic of the original thread. You might want to start a new discussion.

[MikeLockwood]

So, let's see if I understand.

1. If we had 1000 computers with DTI installed and working with 9.1, then upgraded to 10.1, what would need to be done to each computer? How would users know to request an update?

2. Same question going from 10.1 M010 to 10.1 M020.

thank you

[JoePriest]

Mike,

I'm curious to know if you expect the users to upgrade their own software or does your IT department deploy this to the users?

Joe

[MikeLockwood]

Strictly IT install - via automated methods. So, we don't use Windchill software downloads at all.

[JoePriest]

Just like us. I'd be curious to see how they are deploying via these "automated methods". We removed the software downloads from the UI for non-admins.