Connecting to an Enterprise Environment

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Modified by Admin on Jun 19, 2014
Contents

Parent article: Centralized Environment Configuration Management

This page contains information regarding legacy Team Configuration Center technology, that was previously sold as a separate solution, and required setup of the Private License Server to provide access to the enterprise environment. The latest technology available, which is included as part of an Altium Vault installation, needs no interaction with a Private License Server to gain access to the Altium Vault and its associated services. For more information, see Accessing an Altium Vault from Altium Designer.

In order to facilitate environment configuration management, and to enforce environment configurations applicable to each and every user in an organization, based on their assigned role(s), each user needs to be signed in to the Altium DXP App Server. This is required to:

  • Provide access to the Team Configuration Center – responsible for serving the defined environment configurations.
  • Provide access to the Altium Vault Server (or dedicated internal vault for a standalone installation of the Team Configuration Center) – for working with company-ratified design Items, and the source of data Items used as constraints in defined environment configurations.
  • Enable the Identity Service to recognize who you are and what role(s) you have been assigned to. The correct environment configuration(s) can then be applied. This becomes especially important in working environments where shared computers are the norm.

While the act of signing-in is, technically speaking, signing-in to the Altium DXP App Server – responsible for providing these various services – at a higher conceptual level, this can be viewed as connecting to the Enterprise Environment. In other words, connecting into services provided at the organizational, or 'enterprise' level.

To ensure that designers' Altium Designer working environments are indeed brought under centralized control, each user is forced to connect to the Enterprise Environment BEFORE they can do any design work. This is done when they utilize an Altium Designer license, served from a Private License Server, and that server is given the location of the Altium DXP App Server platform and its services.

Configuring the Private License Server

Related article: Using a Private Server License

To enforce the use of environment configurations throughout your organization, each designer's instance of Altium Designer must be using a license for the software, served from an installed Private License Server. To be able to detect the environment configurations – served through the Team Configuration Center – the Private License Server must be made aware of the whereabouts of the Enterprise Environment, that is, the Altium DXP App Server and its enterprise-level services.

This is achieved as part of the initial setup of the Private License Server, by giving it the location of the ServiceDiscovery.asmx file, which for a default installation of the Altium DXP App Server is located at:

\Program Files (x86)\Altium\DXP Apps Server\ServiceDiscovery\ServiceDiscovery.asmx.

This is done by entering the address for this server in the Discovery Service dialog, accessed from the Private License Server's main Licensing dialog. Entry should be in the format:

http://<ComputerName>:<PortNumber>/ServiceDiscovery/ServiceDiscovery.asmx (e.g. http://jhowiehome:9780/ServiceDiscovery/ServiceDiscovery.asmx)

Making the Private License Server aware of the Enterprise Environment and its services.

Connecting to the Team Configuration Center

With the Private License Server configured – both in terms of applicable licenses and armed with the knowledge of the Enterprise Environment, a designer simply needs to use the applicable license dispensed from that server. Once licensed, restart Altium Designer (if it was previously running).

Once the application starts, the Connecting to TC2 dialog will appear. Simply enter your user credentials for accessing the Enterprise Environment (the Altium DXP App Server). Where the Team Configuration Center has been installed as an additional service on top of an existing Altium Vault Server installation, these are the same credentials you use to access/connect to your organization's Altium Vault Server.

By using a Private Server License of Altium Designer, you will be forced to connect to the Enterprise Environment - specifically the Team Configuration Center.

For a non-standalone installation of the Team Configuration Center, if you bypass login to the Enterprise Environment, and an environment configuration was available to you, you can still work with Altium Designer under your valid Private Server License, but you will not be able to access your organization's Altium Vault Server, or any other services provided by the Enterprise Environment.

Choosing an Applicable Environment Configuration

Once signed in to the Enterprise Environment, the Team Configuration Center will present all applicable environment configurations available to you, in relation to the roles for which you are a member, and to which those configurations are assigned. Simply choose the environment configuration required and click OK – Altium Designer will be configured in accordance with the data Items defined in the chosen configuration.

If only a single environment configuration is available to you, and you are not an administrator, that environment configuration will be applied automatically, with no further dialog or choices presented.

If you sign-in to the Enterprise Environment, but there is no environment configuration available to you, you will have connection to the services of the Enterprise Environment (for example access to your organization's Altium Vault Server if applicable), but you will not be constrained in your working environment.

Presenting all available environment configurations applicable to the roles of which the user is a member.

Click the Back button to return to the original login view of the Connecting to TC2 dialog, from where you can login to the Enterprise Environment with different credentials.

If the user signing in is part of the Administrators role, they will automatically have the choice of all defined environment configurations, irrespective of whether the Administrators role is specifically added to an environment configuration or not.

A user with administrative rights (i.e. a member of the Administrators role) has the ability to bypass environment configurations and work freely as an administrator. This is especially needed if wanting to release Altium Designer Preferences to a target Altium Vault Server (or dedicated internal vault for a standalone installation of the Team Configuration Center). To work as administrator, simply enable the Work as administrator option.

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