For those involved in either a new deployment or in the process of going through a large upgrade, it may be challenging to know for sure what environment is being used. In this article, we’ll share how the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform can be configured to remove this ambiguity.

For most companies, mission-critical systems, like PLM, are made up of multiple environments. Some companies only operate two environments, like TEST and PRODUCTION, while others operate several, sometimes 3 to 7 environments. This makes life for the personnel involved in configuring, testing, deploying, etc. particularly challenging because many of these systems have login screens that don’t indicate specifically what environment the user is logging into.

Below is the login screen for Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE Platform. There is no indication whether this environment is TEST, PRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT, etc.

Before customization – no indication of where the user is entering.

This ambiguity can lead to failure of a test procedure, configuration or re-configuration of the wrong environment, and other bad experiences with an enterprise system. Using the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform as an example, we’ll describe how this ambiguity challenge can be overcome.

What we’ll describe is a simple configuration change that can clarify, with certainty, what environment a user is about to login to. The image below shows the result of the configuration and how it is now clear the user is about to login to the MIGRATION environment.

To make the change, copy or backup the file 3DEXLoginCompassTxt.png. The file is located in the following folder:

..R2017x3DPassportwin_b64codetomcatcurrentwebapps3DPassportresourcesimg3dexperience

After the change, indicating what environment the user is in.

Modify the file by adding whatever embellishment makes the environment clearer to the user logging into the platform. Make the change on each of environment’s 3DSpace servers, for example, the DEV, TEST, QA, Sandbox, PROD environments.

In addition to clarifying the environment in which a user is about to enter, the compass image modification can help in reminding a user what environment they are currently using as shown in the image below.

If you’d like help making this change or have questions, contact us and someone will be in touch very soon.

Michael Craffey of Razorleaf co-authored this post.