PTC Windchill Connector Deployment Overview

The following procedure outlines the steps needed to deploy the PTC Windchill connector. The steps indicate the order in which you must perform key PTC Windchill and CES configurations. When needed, the step refers to a detailed procedure.

1. Validate that your environment meets the requirements (see PTC Windchill Connector Requirements).

2. On your PTC Windchill server:

   1. Create a dedicated crawling account on the PTC Windchill server

      The connector needs an account that has read access to all the PTC Windchill content that you want to index. It is recommended to create a dedicated PTC Windchill account for this purpose.

   2. Copy PTC Windchill certificate files

      The Coveo connector needs to have access to a copy of the PTC Windchill client and server certificate files to be authorized to communicate with your PTC Windchill server (see Copying the PTC Windchill Certificates to the Coveo Master Server).

   3. Install (or update) the Coveo plugin

      You must install the Coveo plugin on your PTC Windchill server to allow the connector to communicate with PTC Windchill (see Installing or Updating the Coveo Plugin for PTC Windchill).

   4. When you want the incremental refresh to capture content items deletion, you must audit the delete events:

      Note: CES 7.0.7338+ (January 2015) The incremental refresh supports deleted items.

      1. With a text editor, open the XML PTC Windchill configAudit file located in the Windchill folder.

         Example: C:\Program Files\Windchill\conf\auditing\configAudit.xml

      2. Ensure that the first line of the configAudit file is the following:

         <EventConfiguration enabled="true">

         meaning that the auditing is enabled within your PTC Windchill site.

      3. Under the <ConfigEntry class="" enabled="true"> node, add the following line to audit the delete events:

         <KeyedEventEntry eventKey="*/wt.events.summary.DeleteSummaryEvent/" enabled="true" handler="wt.audit.configaudit.DefaultAuditEventRecorder"/>

      4. Under the <ConfigEntry class="" enabled="false"> node, remove the previous line.

         Note: By default, delete events are not audited.

      5. Save the file.

      6. Restart the method server to apply the new configuration.

3. On your Coveo server:

   1. Configure a user identity

      The Coveo connector needs to know the credentials of the PTC Windchill crawling account that you created (see Adding a User Identity).

   2. Optionally, but recommended, create a PTC Windchill field set from the default XML field set file to be able to leverage PTC Windchill metadata for example to create more useful facets.

      1. With a text editor, open the [CES_Path]\Bin\Coveo.CES.CustomCrawlers.Windchill.FieldSet.xml default XML PTC Windchill field set file and copy its content.

      2. Create a PTC Windchill field set by importing the XML file content (see Exporting and Importing a Field Set).

   3. Create a custom document type set

      Note: Some Windchill file types such as CAD and CAM files are big in size. By default, those large files are downloaded, but not converted by the connector, causing a serious crawling delay. It is thus strongly recommended to index only the metadata of those documents to significantly improve the crawling performance.

      1. Create a document type set (see Creating a Document Type Set) .

         The document type set is a copy of the Default one that you need to customize.

      2. In the Document Type Sets page, click the document type set that you just created.

      3. In the Document Type page, in the toolbar, click Add.

      4. In the configuration page, only three parameters are relevant to fulfill:

         1. In the first box, enter a descriptive Name for the this document type.

            Example: Windchill Files

         2. In the File Extensions box, enter the following list: .3dm; .acs; .asm; .CATPart; .CATProduct; .cgm; .cgr; .des; .dgm; .dwg; .ed; .edn; .edp; .edz; .emn; .emp; .evs; .exp; .frm; .g; .gbf; .hdr; .iam; .ibl; .icm; .idx; .igs; .imf; .ipt; .jt; .lay; .mdc; .mdf; .mem; .mfg; .model; .neu; .nwf; .obj; .pdt; .plt; .prt; .pts; .pvs; .pvt; .pvz; .rep; .rla; .sec; .session; .set; .shd; .sldasm; .sldprt; .step; .stl; .stp; .tsh; .tx1; .tx3; .tx4; .u3d; .vda; .wrl; .x_b; .x_n; .x_t; .xmt; .xmt_bin; .xmt_neu; .xmt_txt; .xpr

         3. Next to Indexing Failure Action, select the Index file information only radio button.

         4. Click Save.

   4. Configure a security provider

      The Coveo connector requires a PTC Windchill security provider to expand PTC Windchill groups and resolve mappings between users and groups from the PTC Windchill system and other systems like Microsoft Active Directory (see Configuring a PTC Windchill Security Provider).

   5. Configure and index a PTC Windchill source

      The Coveo connector needs to know details about the PTC Windchill site to be able to index its content (see Configuring and Indexing a PTC Windchill Source).

   6. Optionally, modify hidden source parameters

      If you encounter issues, review if modifying the default value of available hidden source parameters can resolve the issue you are facing (see Modifying Hidden PTC Windchill Source Parameters).

   7. In a Coveo search interface, validate that you and your end-users can see the allowed PTC Windchill documents in search results.

      Note: You may need to manually update the CES security cache to see PTC Windchill documents in the search results (see Refreshing Security Caches).