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A
Anonymous
July 12, 2010
Question

Organization groups vs. Principals Groups

  • July 12, 2010
  • 6 replies
  • 1239 views

Is there a significant difference in functionality when defining groups under the Organization tab vs. Utilities > Principals?
Does either of these have functionality not found in the other?
It would seem that PTC added the Group sub-tab under Organization as a convenience, and is redundant.

I'm just getting started with PTC's eLearning for Wiindchill Intralink 9.1, and it does not answer the above questions.
Not does the documentation clarify this.

Gerry

6 replies

M
MikeLockwood22-Sapphire I
22-Sapphire I
July 12, 2010
I've never understood this either, and have never found the difference documented. Please post the answer for all if you find it.
H
HugoHermans12-Amethyst
12-Amethyst
July 12, 2010
Hi Gerry,

Apart from your specific question, are you satisfied with PTC's
eLearning for Windchill 9.1? I've several colleagues learning ProE
Wildfire 3 with eLearning, with success. But I've never considered this
option for Windchill.

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Kindest regards,

Hugo Hermans

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A
Anonymous
July 12, 2010
In short: I find that PTC's eLearning for Windchill is barely adequate.
However, for the price ($850for a perpetual license)I can't complain too much.

Itincludes every course (from admin to user)for all Windchill products, not just Intralink.
It would cost at least 10-20 times more to attend "real" classes, especially due to travel costs.
Windchill classes are not taught in the Detroit area.
Each course consists of:
    • Asimple presentation (like PowerPoint) with audio narration.
    • Recorded demonstrations of functionality. (No actual labs)
    • An assessment (test).
With few exceptions, I have found that only the demonstrations are useful.
The presentations only cover concepts and never include any actual instructions.
They are frequently ambiguous, and often use terms that were not previously (or adequately)defined.
Time is often wasted because some courses cover topics that are across the breadth-and-depth of Windchill, but are unavailable in Intralink.
The assessments are often ambiguous as well, and too often focus on terminology instead of real concepts and usage.
And sometimes PTC's right-answer is clearly incorrect, or there is more than one correct answer, but you can only select one.
I find that the courses are enough to get me started.
However, the real learning comes when you use the software yourself.
Any shortcoming are filled by submitting questions to the exploder.
When it comes time to train our users, I will definitely not use PTC's eLearning.
I will develop my own materials, or use a third-party.
R
RussPratt8-Gravel
8-Gravel
July 13, 2010

There is no significant difference in Group management based upon whether or not you use the Principal Admin UI or the Group Tab. However, the Group Tab is recommended in most cases for a variety of reasons.

  • It works only with Groups defined in the specific Organizational Context, so there is no confusion if you are using mulitple Org Contexts.
  • It automatically ignores all Groups defined at Site level, such as the various "admin" groups
  • I have seen, at least in 7.0 and 8.0, a few cases where groups defined in the PA UI did not appear to create properly; I could not find them in Policy Admin afterward, or other similar issues. This never occured with groups defined via Group Tab UI.

Russ

D
ddemay1-Visitor
1-Visitor
July 13, 2010
Just to chime in and add some additional thoughts to share:



Groups created at the site level are stored in the same place as users. If
the group is created under an organization, its distinguished name relative
path will be different. If you use the principal administrator OR groups
subtab to create a group, they are placed in the same place.



Based on where they are placed, you will notice the following:



If under an organization, you will not be able to search/find/use groups
from another organization

If under site -> utilities->principal administrator, you can NOT search for
groups created in a organization scoped context. You must switch to that
organization and go to organization->utilities or the org->groups subtab to
view these groups.



I personally always try to create my groups I want to use all over the place
at the site level and then include them in org specific groups as subgroups.



Also - Organizations, specifically those created as a WTOrganization (vs.
ldap organizations only) are a special type of group (WTGroup)





David DeMay




D
DavidR.Eberle5-Regular Member
5-Regular Member
July 14, 2010

I wanted to respond and provide information concerning planned changes to the Windchill Curriculum that will address many of the issues noted in this thread.

In preparation for Windchill 10.0, we are in the process of implementing the following:

  • We are converting/updating our Windchill training from a module-based authoring standard into a topic-based authoring standard. This will increase the flexibility of our training content and will allow for topic-level verses module- level course configurations.
  • Instead of courses, the Windchill training developers are authoring training for Windchill functions without the restriction of course durations. This allows the developers to author more substantive content.
  • Using Arbortext and XML, we are implementing a profiling technology that allows us to author each topic to cover all of the appropriate Windchill product lines. We will then publish all of our functional areas for all product lines, which will provide a broader base of training coverage.
  • We are planning to integrate more advanced training material from our internal training department, which will broaden our administration training coverage.

We still plan on providing standard courses, but the future of Windchill training (both eLearning and live classroom) centers on allowing our customers and learning architects to configure the training they need for their users and administrators based on their roles and on the functions implemented in their Windchill environment.

We have been working on these new standards for almost a year and we currently have a large amount of content available for PDMLink. In Precision LMS you can find this training in the following comprehensive set of “library” courses:

  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Application Orientation
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Pro/ENGINEER Data Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Product Structure Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Standard Document Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Visualization with ProductView Lite
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Change Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Common Windchill Tasks
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - ECAD Data Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - CATIA Data Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - Unigraphics Data Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - SolidWorks Data Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - AutoCAD Data Management
  • Windchill PDMLink 9.1 - ECAD Visualization

To see a sample role-based course configured from the above content view Using Windchill PDMLink 9.1 for Document Editors and Authors or any of the 9.1 WBTs that start with Using in the title.

If you have any issues, concern or feedback concerning Windchill training, feel free to contact me at -.

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