Site Administration Overview

Typical Duties of Site Administrators

Site administrators are responsible for the configuration and management of the Windchill system as a whole. They create organizations representing business units of a hosting company and organizations representing partners and suppliers. Site administrators control how authorized users are added to the system. They also define the information that is common across all organizations and their products, libraries, projects, and programs.

Typical duties of the site administrator include the following:

•Create and update organizations participating in the site.

•Determine if new organizations are subscribers (able to host product, library, project, or program contexts).

•Manage a group of users with site administration privileges.

•Manage site-level folders, documents, and links.

•Manage site-level types and type-specific attributes that are inherited by all contexts.

•Manage the rules governing object creation.

•Manage site-level templates that are inherited by child contexts.

•Manage site-level object initialization rules that are inherited by child contexts.

•Create and manage security auditing reports for audit records of who did what causing changes in the Windchill database.

•Manage site configuration (such as vaulting, replication, calendar, property options, and preferences).

•Create profiles to define which parts of the user interface (e.g., actions, tabs, and attributes) should be visible to users, groups, or organization members. Site administrators determine whether application context managers can override profiles that are created at the site context.

•Manage processes (such as workflow, life cycles, CAD viewable publishing, and replication).

•Manage package configuration

•Manage security access for workflow expressions.

•Export and import site-level information.

•Define and manage reports.

•Determine searchable object types.

•Manage saved searches.

•Manage site-level access policies and rules.

•View and manage access control rules for individual objects.

•Make program contexts visible and available for use in your Windchill solution.

•Add participants to applicable license groups. Currently, the View and Print Only license group is available.

•Creating public information page tabs visible to all users

Creating and Managing Organizations

When a Windchill solution is created, an organization participant is created and associated with the site context. The default data loading process creates an initial organization context, also associated with the organization participant. Both the site and this initial organization have the same name. If the data loading process was modified so that the organization context is not created, you must create an organization context before users access the solution.

Users who have an organization attribute (the "o" attribute, by default) on their directory service entry that matches the organization participant’s name automatically become members of that organization. If your site does not use the organization attribute in the directory service entry, users can be assigned to an organization using the usersOrganizationName property. For more information on using this property, see Configuring Additional Enterprise Directories in the PTC Windchill Installation and Configuration Guide.

Organization contexts are created by site administrators from Organizations . For more information, see Creating an Organization Context on page 157

Note

Site administrator users, such as wcadmin, should not be used to create contexts (products, libraries, projects, or programs) within organization contexts, nor should they create objects within those contexts.

The site administrator can review the list of organizations in the site and navigate to update each of the organizations from the Organizations page, accessed by

Adding and Editing Members

You control how users are added to the site to enable them to log on and view and author information in the site. You can add and edit users using the Participant Administration utility. You can also define the users who have site administration privileges so that several individuals in the company can perform this duty.

Creating and Managing Site Folders and

Documents

You can define documents, folders, and links within the site context. The site folders are intended to hold any documents that are important for administering the site.

Types of documents that administrators might define at the site include the following:

•Site configuration documentation.

•Site change log that captures a record of changes made to the site.

•Operation rules and procedures (such as shutdown, backup, and restart procedures).

•Site administrator responsibilities document.

•Key contact list for site administrators.

•Deployment schedule and plans (this might also be defined in a project but referenced by providing a link in the site folder).

•Documents describing site-level document, life cycle, and workflow templates.

Changing Default Configuration Options

You can use properties and preferences to change the configuration options that are set by default. Preferences are accessed using the Preference Management utility on the Utilities page for a context. Properties are contained in properties files in your codebase.

Managing Site-level Types and Type-specific Attributes

Using the Type and Attribute Management utility from Site Utilities, you can define object types and type-specific attributes to make available to all organizations in the system. For example, a company might define a change impact report document type with specific attributes for several categories, including replacement cost, production tooling cost, and so forth.

You can define types and attributes within a context of an organization. When subtypes and attributes are created within an organization context, they are kept separate from all other organizations and remain private to the organization they are created in. For more information about types and attributes, see the help available from the Type and Attribute Management utility.

You can associate document types with life cycles which identify the various states of maturity of the document. For more information about life cycles, see Life Cycles on page 299 .

Configuring Numbering and Versioning Schemes

and Units of Measure

You can configure the number and version schemes used to uniquely identify parts, documents, and other items in the system. The site-level schemes and units of measure are inherited by the organizations, but each organization can optionally define its own schemes or override the site-level schemes. In general, when a company is hosting Windchill for its use, the numbering, versioning, and units of measure should all be defined at the site context and should not be overridden by individual organizations. This approach ensures consistency of basic identification and units across the company.

For more information on numbering, see Administering the Numbering of Parts, Documents, CAD Documents, Managed Baselines, and Change Objects on page 104 .