Going for a SwYm: Creating Communities and Conversations with 3DEXPERIENCE

At the North point of the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform Compass is where social and collaborative apps are located. At the core of these apps is 3DSwYm.

“3DSwYm reveals the power of communities and conversations to share and innovate throughout internal and/or external ecosystems. It leads your company to be more agile and innovative by providing intuitive content creation tools and social interaction,” per Dassault Systèmes.

Before we jump into the 3DSwYm deep end (see what we did there?), let’s go through some terminology. Dassault Systèmes uses “SwYm” to refer to sites built using 3DSwYm technology, and “SwYmers” (pronounced “swimmers”) to refer to the people who use those sites. SwYm itself stands for Say What You Mean.

So join us, fellow SwYmers, in exploring the 3DSwYm community.

Communities, found in the top bar.

The first concept to understand is that 3DSwYm is available as a web app that can be accessed from the North point of 3DEXPERIENCE platform Compass, a widget that is part of a dashboard, then through the top bar of a dashboard by selecting Communities.

The next concept is that of Roles. 3DSwym Roles define your rights to create, read, update and delete content that is located on the communities you belong to. For those who want to have a better understanding of the permissions associated with various Roles, I have included below the Roles and access rights as defined within 3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance. User Assistance is online help for the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, and can be accessed by clicking on the question mark on the 3DEXPERIENCE top bar.

3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance can be accessed by clicking on the question mark on the 3DEXPERIENCE top bar.

Legend for 3DEXPERIENCE User Assistance.

The explanation of the User Assistance acronyms and footnotes are:

• Y/N: Bold is the default behavior.
• CRUD: Create, Read, Update and Delete any content. An underscore (_) is used instead if the given right is not available.
• *: Update and delete their own content.
• R or CRUD*: Read any content and depending on the owner’s choice, Create, Update and Delete their own content.
• A platform administrator can: Edit or delete any content if the moderation mode has been activated, and edit or delete any comment.
• ⁽¹⁾ A contributor can create a media only in the context of a rich text message and cannot change the display on the “What’s New” option of this media.
• ⁽²⁾ The status of an idea can only be changed by an owner.
• ⁽³⁾ If an answer has been validated, only community owners can update it. Everyone can rate an answer except the member that answered the question.

Wiki commands specific rights.

The specific rights acronyms and footnotes are:

• ⁽¹⁾ Community owners always have access to private pages.
• ⁽²⁾ Wiki page privacy can be switched only if the parent page is public.
• ⁽³⁾ Lock applies only to the page title and content, not to the tree structure: The “Lock this page and all sub-pages” command will be effective at the time of the action so any newly created page will not be locked. A locked page can be moved within the tree.
• ⁽⁴⁾ MM stands for Moderation Mode.
• ⁽⁵⁾ When working on a private page, it applies only to contributors and authors declared as authorized users on this private page.

WeDo (like “to do”) specific rights.

For the WeDo specific rights, explanation as follows:

• ^* Update and delete their own content only if a member of the community.
• ^** Assignee can read/assign/change status only if a member of the community.

Additionally, as an administrator, you have access to the Communities Control Center, where you manage your communities.

My Communities.

The 3DSwym interface can consist of up to three panels. This can vary depending on what is selected and how you have the panels configured. The left panel gives you access to Communities and Conversations, each with its own tab. With the Communities tab selected, the communities you belong to are displayed under My Communities. You can define your favorite communities by dragging a community from My Communities to Favorite Communities.

My Communities.

Just below the Communities tab you can:

Search from your list of communities (My Communities).

Filter for only new content.

List My Communities, which will list the communities you belong to as well as public communities. You can also discover private communities, which you can join.

Selecting What’s New will launch the What’s New feed, where you can view the posts added by members of your communities. You can also post to your communities from this location.

Posts can be viewed chronologically for each community by selecting that community. While a community is selected, any post you add will be posted only to that community.

Community Posts.

Selecting a Community will provide you with several tools to access community information. This information is displayed on the far-right panel and includes community details, community members and a timeline of your communities’ posts.

The far right of the Community Panel.

Tools

Referring to the above image, along the top of the far-right panel, the following tools are available:

Filters your posts by their contents.

Filter your content by media.

Filter your content by WeDos.

Filter your content by ideas.

Filter your content by questions.

Filter your content by wiki pages.

Filter your content by surveys.

Community Features

To the right of the above tools is the Community Features pull-down. The pull-down allows you to:

Unfollow a community.

Leave a community.

Subscribe to new content.

View and edit your contributions to the selected community.

Subscribe to an RSS feed related to your communities.

Share with your communities.

On the left panel, the Conversations tab offers similar tools to the Communities tab. The Conversations tab contains conversations between two or more individuals, while the Communities tab contains content relating to the communities you belong to.

Similar to communities, you can search and filter conversations. By pressing “+” you can start a new conversation. Also, like communities, you can add conversations to your favorites.

The middle panel will display the conversations you had with the selected user. The two icons on the right change the way your conversations are displayed.

Content displays your conversation as a list of messages, posts, media or WeDos, while Timeline displays your conversations  chronologically. In both, you can add messages.

Note: Displaying as content or timeline is also available in communities

Adding a message to conversation.

Filters for contents and timelines.

As with communities, while the conversations tab is selected, there is a toolbar on the far-right panel that gives you control of your content. Referring to the image above, from left to right, these tools filter by posts, media and WeDos.

Audio and video calls and community features

To the right of the previously mentioned toolbar, there are tools for audio and video conferencing.

After starting Audio call, you can:

• Maximize to maximize the audio call window.
• Mute microphone or unmute.
• Hide camera to stop broadcasting the video streaming.
• Show camera to restart the streaming.
• Hang up to end the audio call.

Similarly, after starting a video call, you can:

• Maximize to maximize the video call window.
• Mute microphone or unmute.
• Hide camera to stop broadcasting the video streaming.
• Show camera to restart the video streaming.
• Hang up to end the video call.

The pull-down to the right of this toolbar gives you access to community features.

Set a topic, lets you edit the current conversation topic.

Transform into community. If you are platform administrator, you to can transform the conversation into a private community.

Subscribe to new content. Sends you a notification when new content is added to the selected conversation.

My contributions allows you to view and edit your contributions.

Similarly, to contributions, selecting WeDos will allow to view and edit your WeDos

Below these two toolbars, you can view the members of the selected conversation and the contents/timeline of the conversation. Selecting contents/timeline in the right panel has the same effect as selecting either of the two icons situated at the top-right of the middle panel (where you view your conversations) and changes how the conversation is displayed.

Members and Contents.

This article is part of a series, and provides a brief overview of the 3DSwym platform that intends to provide a basic understanding of the functionality found in the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

To learn more about SOLIDWORKS, check out the whitepaper Developing Better Products in the Cloud.

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About the Author

Joe Medeiros is a Senior Applications Engineer at Javelin Technologies, a premier SOLIDWORKS reseller, servicing customers throughout Canada and offering SOLIDWORKS customers expertise in implementing and using SOLIDWORKS solutions.

Joe has been involved in many aspects of the SOLIDWORKS product family since 1996. As an award-winning blogger, he regularly writes about SOLIDWORKS.