Windchill Solutions offers a highly collaborative, fully customized environment in which to get your product to market faster and more efficiently. Because customization is a key element of Windchill Solutions, you need guidelines on how to design and implement your customization more effectively.
Another important aspect of Windchill Solutions is their interoperability with several third-party products. PTC Technical Support supports the use of these products to a limited extent when providing support for Windchill Solutions.
PTC contractual support obligations, if any, are solely as set forth in the applicable license agreement between PTC and its customer.
PTC Technical Support provides only discretionary support for customized implementations of Windchill Solutions. Although the guidelines in this chapter set forth current practices, nothing in these guidelines shall be construed or deemed to impose any contractual or other legal obligation on PTC.
You can customize your deployment of a Windchill Solution to best suit your needs. You can create an infinite number of customizations for Windchill Solutions, but Technical Support cannot support each unique customization. By following the guidelines in this chapter, you can help ensure that PTC Technical Support can support your customization.
Windchill Solutions are shipped with a large customization toolkit. This toolkit consists of a Java Application Programming Interface (API) and associated tools, which include the following items:
Not all customizations, even if technically possible using these resources, can be supported. Other Windchill Solutions offer lighter customization capabilities. Many of the customization guidelines described in this chapter also apply to lightweight customization.
Individuals or groups customizing Windchill Solutions receive support only if they follow the guidelines described in this chapter. In particular, customizations employing the following practices are not supported, and Technical Support reserves the right to deny assistance under the following circumstances:
Support for production systems is given only to the designated contacts who are listed in the support contract with PTC (See the PTC Customer Agreement for License Products.). These contacts must technically understand the customization thoroughly enough to work with Technical Support to ensure successful and timely resolution of customization issues.
PTC will not provide support to end users for any system in production. Therefore, end users of Windchill Solutions must contact their local Windchill Solution Administrator. The Windchill Solution Administrator can then contact Technical Support for assistance in resolving any issues related to the core Windchill Solution software.
Each designated contact is responsible for dealing with end-user issues, as well as with software errors. If you suspect that an issue or software error is related not to the customization but to the Windchill Solution product itself, you can contact Technical Support. Whenever contacting Technical Support, you must be able to clearly demonstrate why the issue is related only to your Windchill Solution, and not to the customization. You must be able to demonstrate the issue using an out-of-the-box Windchill Solution installation whenever possible. If this is not feasible, Technical Support may deploy your customization within PTC to confirm that the issue is Windchill Solution related. If it is, Technical Support takes the appropriate action, such as providing assistance in finding a workaround, filing a software performance report (SPR), and so forth.
PTC Technical Support can track those software errors found in the core Windchill Solution software. If you choose to customize a Windchill Solution independently, then you are responsible for the maintenance support of that customization. However, Technical Support is available if assistance is required on a specific customization topic, or if an error is identified in the core product and must be submitted to PTC Research and Development.