Customer Portal Being Removed

[Frederick_Law]

Furthermore SRs get handled in another new place (3DSupport dashboard) which has another new interface to try and learn.

As if different car brand has steering wheel, gas, brake pedal at different spot.
One in the trunk, one on the roof.
You know, car is a very complex platform. The fuel control, electronic, hydraulic, air flow, controlled explosion.
The user need to adapt.

[dave.laban]

And I know it's only a small thing but they're the easiest things to get right and show that someone is paying attention to detail somewhere - is it an App or an APP?

[Frank_Oostendorp]

And I know it's only a small thing but they're the easiest things to get right and show that someone is paying attention to detail somewhere - is it an App or an APP?

image.png

I think you are way underestimating the difference between an App and an APP

[Frederick_Law]

Just like the tags, they are all different.
App, ApP, APP, APp, app, apP, aPP, aPp

[Frank_Oostendorp]

Just like the tags, they are all different.
App, ApP, APP, APp, app, apP, aPP, aPp

Well, APP is reserved for DS employees, Johhny d"APP

[jcapriotti]

When I last spoke to my VAR about this fiasco their feedback was that the SPRs / ERs "have not been fully migrated yet, so currently you will be unable to see these, but this should improve with the coming weeks" - that was December 5th, so we're firmly in to "months" territory with no progress.

Furthermore SRs get handled in another new place (3DSupport dashboard) which has another new interface to try and learn.

You know, its one thing to botch or half @$$ a forum migration or the customer portal and "fix it as they go" as the impact to customers is small. But it doesn't send a good signal to the customers that this kind of mentality is also being applied to a
platform where they expect all customers to keep their data.

This is why we test, and test, and test new versions of PDM and SolidWorks and all of the surrounding systems prior to rolling out changes and new versions. In the "platform", how do we do this? They just give us the new functions and if it breaks our production workflow, then what?

[Frederick_Law]

They've been updating the "platform" without notice and everyone can't work for half a day.
And another few days for a patch to fix the update.
Every SW customers have the option to pay their employees for doing nothing a few days every month.

Hmmm I should tell my boss to switch to the SWYM.

[Frank_Oostendorp]

When I last spoke to my VAR about this fiasco their feedback was that the SPRs / ERs "have not been fully migrated yet, so currently you will be unable to see these, but this should improve with the coming weeks" - that was December 5th, so we're firmly in to "months" territory with no progress.

Furthermore SRs get handled in another new place (3DSupport dashboard) which has another new interface to try and learn.

Just got my new SR about migration of existing SR and SPR data closed.

For the time being if a user has a list of SRs / SPRs before account migration to the platform then these can be tracked on Knowledge Base.

The 3DSupport App will only show SRs / SPRs being created after migration.

Ticket closed.

[AlexLachance]

Just got my new SR about migration of existing SR and SPR data closed.

For the time being if a user has a list of SRs / SPRs before account migration to the platform then these can be tracked on Knowledge Base.

The 3DSupport App will only show SRs / SPRs being created after migration.

Ticket closed.

lol, wonder what @Ry-guy will say of this one. "Things are a lot more complicated then they seem, this is a platform".

Really enjoy seeing him struggle to explain why things need to be complicated rather then simple.

[Frank_Oostendorp]

Re-opened the ticket about migration of existing SR and SPR data, on course. I need to know what happens with the old SRs and SPRs. They are in the Knowledge Base, fine, but are they still active? Or DS just dumped this history in the archive and starts working on new entries.
Well, probably have to re-create 40 SRs and 50 SPRs then.

[AlexLachance]

Re-opened the ticket about migration of existing SR and SPR data, on course. I need to know what happens with the old SRs and SPRs. They are in the Knowledge Base, fine, but are they still active? Or DS just dumped this history in the archive and starts working on new entries.
Well, probably have to re-create 40 SRs and 50 SPRs then.

I'll give you a hint, you answered your own question in your post

Those entries are of no use to them since they added another layer of complexity over SolidWorks with the platform

[dave.laban]

Just nudged my VAR again on this subject to see what they have to say about old SPRs / ERs moving to the new system. I've got about 200 I've submitted / voted on / been added to that I'd like to keep a track of.

[Frederick_Law]

Since SW is moved to the platform, all development will be on the platform.
So all ER, SPR on the old platform will be wipe out transferred.
All users, please proceed to platform 7 11/8724.

[dave.laban]

Satisfyingly quick response from SolidSolutions;

Hi Dave,

This is still the case across the board.

We do not have a time schedule on when this functionality will be confirmed.

SolidWorks have not migrated all of the resellers\customers over to the new system, so I would suggest that this is still their priority before being able to implement significant changes to the system.

Kind Regards,

They at least seem to be under the impression SPRs / ERs will get there eventually but if even resellers haven't got to the new place yet then this migration seems to be about as challenging as could be predicted for DS.

[SPerman]

[bnemec]

Maybe they plan a hard cutoff of the old portal on April Fools day, just like they did with the Forum. Seems fitting.

[Frank_Oostendorp]

I'll give you a hint, you answered your own question in your post

Those entries are of no use to them since they added another layer of complexity over SolidWorks with the platform

Last answer on re-opened and re-opened SR:
We apologize for this inconvenience.We are in the early days of transitioning to the platform and some things might take some time until they are finalized on how they work.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

So it takes some time to find out how a new programmed part of the platform works. Wow, we always started programming by setting the functionality that has to be available and how it should work. How old-fashioned.

[dave.laban]

If 3 months is still "early days" of the transition, what's the full (planned!) timeline?

[AlexLachance]

If 3 months is still "early days" of the transition, what's the full (planned!) timeline?

3 months is being kind. That platform has existed for a lot longer. The Forum alone were egregiously moved on it almost 2 years ago.

The way I see it, they'll ask all the VAR's to recreate everything on the new platform for their clients. VAR's might forget or be unable to migrate some information and then we will be back to VAR's pointing at Dassault being responsible and Dassault pointing at their VAR's as being the one needing to handle this.

Seems as if, whenever they try to streamline things, they make them worse.

[Glenn Schroeder]

3 months is being kind. That platform has existed for a lot longer. The Forum alone were egregiously moved on it almost 2 years ago.

The way I see it, they'll ask all the VAR's to recreate everything on the new platform for their clients. VAR's might forget or be unable to migrate some information and then we will be back to VAR's pointing at Dassault being responsible and Dassault pointing at their VAR's as being the one needing to handle this.

Seems as if, whenever they try to streamline things, they make them worse.

. . . and the FAQ section from the old forum still hasn't been brought back. I'm sure they're still working on that.

[JSculley]

. . . and the FAQ section from the old forum still hasn't been brought back. I'm sure they're still working on that.

All sorts of broken links, missing images and images applied to the wrong posts as well.

[Frederick_Law]

If 3 months is still "early days" of the transition, what's the full (planned!) timeline?

The SWYM exist for a few years before it went public.
So almost a decade now. May be more, over a decade.
I believe their plan is in century or millennia.

[Glenn Schroeder]

AS most of you know, I still go to the swamp. The frustration level hasn't exceeded my desire to help people solve problems there yet, but it's getting closer.

I was just there and got a notification of a new reply to a discussion I replied to years ago. In that post I had linked to my old FAQ post from before Jim Wilkinson set up the blog portion of the forum with individual blog posts for the FAQ's. Of course that link was lost, but since I started that discussion I can still get to it (which greatly surprised me).

So I found it, replied again, and included a new link to it. All good, right?

No. Like the software in that platform usually does (but not always), it put a pretty box at the bottom of the reply with the link, in addition to the text string I had posted. After clicking Okay to post it, I clicked on the text to make sure the link worked. It didn't. I next clicked on the box at bottom. That worked.

No problem. I'll just edit the post and tell people to click on the box at bottom instead of the text. Guess what? When I clicked the icon to edit the post the link that worked was gone (the one that didn't was still there, of course).

If the people programming Solidworks were as incompetent as the ones handling that platform I believe I'd have found a different modeling software years ago.

[AlexLachance]

AS most of you know, I still go to the swamp. The frustration level hasn't exceeded my desire to help people solve problems there yet, but it's getting closer.

I was just there and got a notification of a new reply to a discussion I replied to years ago. In that post I had linked to my old FAQ post from before Jim Wilkinson set up the blog portion of the forum with individual blog posts for the FAQ's. Of course that link was lost, but since I started that discussion I can still get to it (which greatly surprised me).

So I found it, replied again, and included a new link to it. All good, right?

No. Like the software in that platform usually does (but not always), it put a pretty box at the bottom of the reply with the link, in addition to the text string I had posted. After clicking Okay to post it, I clicked on the text to make sure the link worked. It didn't. I next clicked on the box at bottom. That worked.

No problem. I'll just edit the post and tell people to click on the box at bottom instead of the text. Guess what? When I clicked the icon to edit the post the link that worked was gone (the one that didn't was still there, of course).

If the people programming Solidworks were as incompetent as the ones handling that platform I believe I'd have found a different modeling software years ago.

But... But... But... The complexity!

[Bradfordzzz]

Last answer on re-opened and re-opened SR:
We apologize for this inconvenience.We are in the early days of transitioning to the platform and some things might take some time until they are finalized on how they work.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

So it takes some time to find out how a new programmed part of the platform works. Wow, we always started programming by setting the functionality that has to be available and how it should work. How old-fashioned.

Why do I feel like Dilbert was talking about Solidworks and the SWMP?
It does pretty much sum up Dassault's business model I guess.

How did we get here again? Like lining up for a punch in the face, and getting back in line over and over again.

[Frederick_Law]

Why do I feel like Dilbert was talking about Solidworks and the SWMP?
It does pretty much sum up Dassault's business model I guess.

How did we get here again? Like lining up for a punch in the face, and getting back in line over and over again.

I'm sorry to inform you that Dilbert had been canceled.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/d ... acism.html

[Frederick_Law]

If the people programming Solidworks were as incompetent as the ones handling that platform I believe I'd have found a different modeling software years ago.

You sure they're not the same?
Maybe SW developers promoted to the Innovative Complex Disruptive Platform.

[Bradfordzzz]

You sure they're not the same?
Maybe SW developers promoted to the Innovative Complex Disruptive Platform.

Garfield will have to come thru for us.

[Glenn Schroeder]

You sure they're not the same?
Maybe SW developers promoted to the Innovative Complex Disruptive Platform.

I'm pretty sure they aren't. I will be the first to admit that the desktop software has its issues, but that platform is orders of magnitude worse.

[Frederick_Law]

I believe they started in ATI.
Patch one problem and create five.
And the consistently inconsistent.

Innovative Complex Inconsistent Disruptive Platform

[Ry-guy]

Garfield will have to come thru for us.

Garfield likes Italian food (lasagna) not French!

[Ry-guy]

lol, wonder what @Ry-guy will say of this one. "Things are a lot more complicated then they seem, this is a platform".

Really enjoy seeing him struggle to explain why things need to be complicated rather then simple.

Sorry about the delay...I was on holiday with my college-aged kids.
Sometimes I wonder about people. Simple tools are usually not simple..or if they are simple they are pretty primitive in functionality and scalability (i.e. look at the tool you are using to post in this forum!- Sorry, Matt!). As much as I would love to argue the benefits of a collaborative business platform it becomes apparent that some people wish that no one ever, ever "moves their cheese."
Sorry guys..this little book review is actually quite good and probably more relevant than we want to accept. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atNpDg0dx4&t

[AlexLachance]

Sorry about the delay...I was on holiday with my college-aged kids.
Sometimes I wonder about people. Simple tools are usually not simple..or if they are simple they are pretty primitive in functionality and scalability (i.e. look at the tool you are using to post in this forum!- Sorry, Matt!). As much as I would love to argue the benefits of a collaborative business platform it becomes apparent that some people wish that no one ever, ever "moves their cheese."
Sorry guys..this little book review is actually quite good and probably more relevant than we want to accept. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atNpDg0dx4&t

Sometimes, I wonder if you ever concider the fact that you're speaking with people that most likely already had to transition from one thing(AutoCAD for instance) to another(SolidWorks).

Of course doing a transition isn't a simple task but there are ways to make things a lot more simple and a lot less frustrating. Communication for instance goes a long way. Being lenient is great unless there is no limit to the lenience, then it becomes an issue.

Touting something as modern is great advertisement but the truth is, if the functionalities do not function, what the heck is the point? If you're getting struck with constant issues or downtime because the functionality are so complex, then why over complexify it?

Heck, if you want to keep the complexity, why isn't there a more rigid testing made behind closed doors before releasing it to all users. So many things get promoted as being workable and aren't. 3DXWorld gave us a great example with all those vouchers that people wanted to become SolidWorks certified.

As much as this forum is 'primitive', it is entirely functional and very rarely down. Surprisingly, this seems to entice people into joining in, weird isn't it?

[Glenn Schroeder]

Sorry about the delay...I was on holiday with my college-aged kids.
Sometimes I wonder about people. Simple tools are usually not simple..or if they are simple they are pretty primitive in functionality and scalability (i.e. look at the tool you are using to post in this forum!- Sorry, Matt!). As much as I would love to argue the benefits of a collaborative business platform it becomes apparent that some people wish that no one ever, ever "moves their cheese."
Sorry guys..this little book review is actually quite good and probably more relevant than we want to accept. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1atNpDg0dx4&t

While I will be the first to admit that this forum is on a platform that's not as user friendly as others out there, at least it works.

[SPerman]

Real platforms have beer points.

[Ry-guy]

Sometimes, I wonder if you ever concider the fact that you're speaking with people that most likely already had to transition from one thing(AutoCAD for instance) to another(SolidWorks).....

Of course doing a transition isn't a simple task but there are ways to make things a lot more simple and a lot less frustrating. Communication for instance goes a long way. Being lenient is great unless there is no limit to the lenience, then it becomes an issue.

Hey, Alex. Yes, I know most of you have been down this transformation road before. I can agree with you that communication is key during times of flux. I won't bear the burden of no communication from the SW management. That is on them and possibly on the VARs as well. I don't want to bash the VARs but they are the first line of defense for the SW customers unless you are a direct SW account. Communication is key.

If you have been down the CAD conversion road then you can at least understand some of the issues. But what you are experiencing is more like a complete ERP system change out..not just swapping a CAD tool. I think we can both agree that is much more complicated, tedious, frustrating, and downright nasty at times.

I don't want to be anyone's bull's eye. I will try and help and correct things when I can!

[Uncle_Hairball]

3DXWorld gave us a great example with all those vouchers that people wanted to become SolidWorks certified.

What happened with the vouchers?

[Frederick_Law]

Tool can be complex.
Using it should be simple.
Tool make our life simple, not the other way around.

We all use complex tools to design complex tools to simplify our/other's life.

iPhone is very complex but 3 years old to 90 years old can use it.
While people using complex tools to design complex tools have trouble using the SWMP.

My cheese is good where they are.

[Frederick_Law]

What happened with the vouchers?

First time, they ran out of digital vouchers.
Second time, people not read the rules and some other problems.

[AlexLachance]

Hey, Alex. Yes, I know most of you have been down this transformation road before. I can agree with you that communication is key during times of flux. I won't bear the burden of no communication from the SW management. That is on them and possibly on the VARs as well. I don't want to bash the VARs but they are the first line of defense for the SW customers unless you are a direct SW account. Communication is key.

If you have been down the CAD conversion road then you can at least understand some of the issues. But what you are experiencing is more like a complete ERP system change out..not just swapping a CAD tool. I think we can both agree that is much more complicated, tedious, frustrating, and downright nasty at times.

I don't want to be anyone's bull's eye. I will try and help and correct things when I can!

Nothing against you Ryan, we've spoken a few times before and you know I have no harsh feelings towards you. My replies may be to you but they are more directly to SolidWorks, Dassault, Siebel, 3DXPerience or whoever the heck has commands of what is going on. I might as well adress them to you in the hopes that someone elses from SW reads it and perhaps you or someone else will be the message carrier one day.

I'm sorry if I've sounded condescending, that was not the intent.

[AlexLachance]

What happened with the vouchers?

Not really sure how the situation ended up but people couldn't claim their vouchers after 3DXPerienceWorld ended and there were a lot of posts made about the issue. Of course, they're lost in the swamp now so it's as if nothing happened!

[Uncle_Hairball]

Not really sure how the situation ended up but people couldn't claim their vouchers after 3DXPerienceWorld ended and there were a lot of posts made about the issue. Of course, they're lost in the swamp now so it's as if nothing happened!

I never got mine, but now I guess I don't care.

[AlexLachance]

I never got mine, but now I guess I don't care.

Honestly, it makes me feel kind of sad. As much as I give a lot of grief to Ryan or anyone linked to Dassault, I still am a big fan boy of SolidWorks. I love the program, know it's limitations and seeing the state that things are just kind of makes me feel ...nostalgic?

I really do hope that they resolve all the issues and that Cloud will be 'as simple' for the user as working on a network.

[Frederick_Law]

They should test it before they dump it on the user.

[tsmith]

Sorry to come off as condescending, but what you all are failing to recognize is that the whole *point* of Solidworks has changed.

It's new purpose is to keep you busy posting here while Dassault picks your companies pocket, taking ridiculous licensing and 'support' fees while simultaneously making it harder and take longer for you to do your job. It's a good thing we are all salaried.

On a related note, received a customer satisfaction survey today from survey@solidworksfeedback.com that asked a lot of opinion questions about the customer support portal.

I guess just softening me up for the upcoming transition to complete VAR dependency.

[Ryan-3DS]

Guys,
Here's a couple of quotes that I used when teaching CAx to people that are not familiar with software. These are all by Alvin Toffler a futurist who was born in 1928 and died in 2018.

"Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life."

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

We are living in the 21st century now...change is occurring at an even faster pace than ever..next I will quote the head of Siemens Software division.. "Embrace change."

[dave.laban]

Change in and of itself is fine.

Badly communicated, poorly implemented change of dubious need or merit is what we're generally complaining about here.

[Glenn Schroeder]

Guys,
Here's a couple of quotes that I used when teaching CAx to people that are not familiar with software. These are all by Alvin Toffler a futurist who was born in 1928 and died in 2018.

"Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life."

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

We are living in the 21st century now...change is occurring at an even faster pace than ever..next I will quote the head of Siemens Software division.. "Embrace change."

I will agree that change is inevitable, and I doubt you will find anyone here who doesn't agree. However, change for the sake of change is rarely a good thing, and not all change is an improvement on what came before.

[bnemec]

Guys,
Here's a couple of quotes that I used when teaching CAx to people that are not familiar with software. These are all by Alvin Toffler a futurist who was born in 1928 and died in 2018.

"Change is not merely necessary to life - it is life."

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”

We are living in the 21st century now...change is occurring at an even faster pace than ever..next I will quote the head of Siemens Software division.. "Embrace change."

It's funny how the old "Change is inevitable.", "Change is healthy sign of life.", "Status Quo is dying.", "If you're not moving forward you're dying." quotes come out to justify changes that are not mutually beneficial.

https://www.google.com/search?q=gasligh ... e&ie=UTF-8

[Bradfordzzz]

I wonder if everyone "Changed" to a different software .. how well they would "embrace that change"?