Managing Site-level Templates

A company may choose to define a number of document, life cycle, and workflow templates that they want all their business units and partners to use. For example, the site may want to define a document template and associated life cycle and workflow process for capturing enhancement requests for the Windchill system. Or a company may want to make a corporate presentation template available to all its business units.

Managing Site-level Object Initialization Rules

You can configure how attributes (such as number) are displayed and generated using the Object Initialization Rules Administration utility. This utility defines how the initial attribute values for the object are established, how the attributes are displayed, and can determine basic relationships, such as life cycle association, when an object is created. The rules established by the parent site are inherited by each organization by default, but they can be overridden at the organization level. The rules are defined in an XML format, which the site administrator can view and edit.

For more information, see the Object Initialization Rules chapter of the PTC Windchill Specialized Administration Guide.

Managing Workflow Security

Workflow authors are permitted to write workflow-embedded Java code to facilitate the execution of the workflow process. This embedded Java code is executed on the server, and there are no restrictions on the APIs available for use.

Considering this capability, a user with permissions to create workflow templates (for example, a project or program manager) could add malicious code in one of the workflow expressions, causing a possible security threat. For this reason, workflow templates that contain Java expressions must be written, reviewed, and thoroughly tested by individuals that are trusted by the organization. The site

administrator has an additional level of control to prevent a user who is not a member of at least one of three specific site context groups (Administrators, Workflow Administrators, or Workflow Authors) from embedding Java code in workflows.

For more information about workflow security, see Workflow on page 337

Auditing System Information

The auditing framework provides a mechanism to enable event-based logging that provides a historical record of who did what that caused changes in the Windchill database. The security auditing feature also provides a mechanism to retain historical records of security related events, such as privilege changes, team changes, and denial of access. Security audit reporting is helpful to customers in highly regulated industries that need to identify events that may have resulted in a potential security breach.

The only events that are enabled out-of-the-box are License Usage Reporting and Organization Usage. Any other specific events that you want recorded in the audit log must be enabled on an individual basis. For more information, see the Auditing Administration online help.

Creating and Managing Profiles

You can dynamically control which actions are visible to a user, group of users, or users in an organization by associating that information with a profile. Profiles are not an access control mechanism; they are a user interface control mechanism. A profile represents a typical category of user within a company and is based on the roles and privileges associated with that particular user category.

Profiles expose only the necessary functionality and information needed by a user. This creates a focused and simplified user interface, reducing confusion by eliminating areas of the user interface that could be distracting.

For more information about profiles, see Profile Management on page 290

Configuring External Vaults or Replication Sites to Optimize Performance

You can configure external file vaults so that document and part content is stored on a file system rather than in the database. This type of configuration can provide significant upload performance improvements and is appropriate when the site is frequently used to exchange large files (such as CAD model files).

By default, external storage rules are based on individual domains in each context. You can launch the External Storage Administrator client from the Utilities page in the context of a product, a library, or the site. (The client is not available from the context of a project, program, or organization.) When launched from a product or

library context, product and library managers can set only the vaulting rules. The additional functionality within the External Storage Administrator is available only to site administrators. The client allows you to create vaulting rules for the System and Default domains associated with the context in which the client is launched.

Note

The rules needed for setting up an external file vault for a product or library cannot be inherited from the site.

If the increased number of vaults and file vault rules becomes unmanageable, you can force vaulting to be accomplished through a single vault by setting the wt.fv. forceContentToVault property to true. For how to set external file vault rules or set up a single vault, see the External File Vaults chapter of thePTC Windchill Enterprise Administration Guide.

You can also configure replication sites so the document and part content files are replicated at a remote site where local users have only very low bandwidth connections to the Windchill server. You can launch the

client from the Utilities page in the context of a product, project or program, you can launch the

or program Utilities page.

Note

The File Server Administration is not available from the context of an organization.

As a site administrator, you would typically define only the replica site and the replication schedule. The product, library, project, or program managers would configure the replication rules for a particular context. The additional functionality within the File Server Administration is available only to site administrators.

For more information on content replication and how to set replication rules, see the External File Vaults chapter of the PTC Windchill Enterprise Administration Guide.

Configuring and Managing CAD Publishing Utilities

You can configure CAD workers that publish viewables for CAD models that can be accessed by participants that do not have native CAD authoring tools. The site includes utilities to configure the CAD workers and monitor and manage the publishing schedules and queues.

For more information, see PTC Windchill Visualization Services Guide.

Manage Package Configurations

Before your site begins working with packages, there are some optional configurations to consider. All of these features are available through the use of a type-based property. These properties are established in an XML file that is then loaded into Windchill and enabled through the Preference Management utility. You can enable any of these options for each package type available at your site.

For more information, see the PTC Windchill Customization Guide.