Anark 4.5.82 Release Announcement

February 13, 2024 - Anark announces that Release 4.5.82 of their technical content collaboration platform for manufacturers is now available and includes new features, enhancements, and updates based on customer feedback and industry demand. Additional information can be found in release documentation. Releases occur every 4-6 weeks and can be immediately applied to SaaS, on-premise and desktop installations. Anark's agile release process delivers continuous value improvement to their customers.

Anark Release 4.5.82

Anark Collaborate Enhancements

Enterprise-Grade Security with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

Secure technical content publishing and access has been been a critical aspect of the Anark content collaboration platform for customers like GE Gas Power, Cohu and Aerospace and Defense manufacturers with on-premise or SaaS deployments. 

Anark Collaborate has long provided options that allow organizations to fine tune access control and security across users, groups and collaboration activities.  Controls have existed for browser based viewing, markup and download of 3D MBD CAD, STEP, QIF, Drawings, PLM BOM and other structured data, documents and more as our customers have many types of technical data, not just 3D CAD.  Both web content and downloadable documents could be dynamically watermarked as required. 

Release 4.5.82 adds Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to modernize the control of data and conversations with flexible, enterprise-grade access controls and IP protection based on the many ways manufacturers publish and access data with Anark.  For existing customers, RBAC is the “Access and Permissions” system that is being introduced as an enhanced replacement for Access Control Lists.

RBAC introduces an incredibly powerful set of enhancements that bring enterprise-grade security to your internal and external technical content collaboration use cases:

Simple, Flexible Role Management:  Collaborating with your customers, suppliers, and internal teams requires the simple flexibility to manage access the way you need it.  RBAC brings simple creation of unlimited roles, configured to meet the unique needs of all internal and external collaboration use cases. 

Content Classifiers For Fine-Tuned Access Management:  Admin users will be able to create powerful access rules and apply them to roles that will allow organizations to fine tune access to content with matching content classifier attributes.  Enterprise manufacturing organizations classify their data in thousands of ways and RBAC can enable reuse of these classifications where needed to optimize technical content collaboration controls.

Identity Provider (IdP) Single Sign-On (SSO):  In organizations where it is required, unified login through existing identity providers is available via Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML). This is a standardized way to allow external applications and services to precisely confirm a user identity. SAML makes single sign-on (SSO) possible by providing a way to authenticate a user once, and then communicate that user authentication to multiple applications within their IT systems, including the Anark platform.  Anark's SAML integration supports Identity Management systems commonly used such as Okta, Active Directory, Ping Identity and more.

Identity Provider SCIM Provisioning:   The System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) is a set of application-level protocols that use several authentication methods to automate the task of data provisioning. When implemented, SCIM allows a wide variety of user accounts to be created, updated, or deactivated with minimal effort. It transfers just enough information from the identity provider so Anark Collaborate can identify the user to ensure they can sign in and out easily.  This provides synchronized provisioning of users, their role and group assignments through mapped Identity Provider attributes.

API-First for Secure Platform Extensibility:  Anark uses an API-first approach for Anark Collaborate.  Many modern engineering and manufacturing systems cannot be easily automated or integrated into existing IT systems.  With Anark, all access to content, controls, RBAC options and much more is available through REST APIs that are commonly used in web and mobile applications to retrieve or modify resources and data on remote systems.  An API-first approach is how successful enterprises are able to integrate and optimize legacy and modern systems while ensuring the security of their data. 

Figure 1 - RBAC with Optional External IdP or Access Authority Integration

Given the powerful nature of RBAC, Anark will provide customers with documents, tools and communications to ensure a seamless transition from legacy Access Control Lists (ACL’s) to Role-Based Access Controls including the following:

1. A script that will migrate any previously existing ACL’s into RBAC roles with their associated content item classifiers (metadata).  This will ensure that existing content and work items permissions are adhered to.
    
   • Anark will include logic within the script to handle configurations with and without External Access Controls as shown in Figure 1.
   • This script will log roles that were created and more.
     
     
2. A written guide will detail the differences and benefits of RBAC.
3. A video overview from Anark Product Management which will include:
   
   
   • An outline of differences and benefits of RBAC
   • Review of Script and functionality
   • What changes are needed going forward when publishing and best practices
     
     
4. Auto-update for SaaS customers - SaaS customers will be migrated to RBAC as part of the normal update process and the above mentioned script will be executed.

Many of the new concepts within RBAC were driven by customers with very detailed needs on data security, tied to systems that were already refined for Identity Management based on existing roles and content classifications.  RBAC is the result of months of conversations and planning on how enterprise-grade, modern technical content collaboration can be securely published, managed and optimized.

Low-Code Content Template API Beta - Additional Capabilities:

Anark Release 4.5.81 introduced the concept of low-code templates for technical content management and collaboration. Customers and partners are now able to develop specific user interface experiences while ensuring forward compatibility with a steady stream of new Anark Collaborate features, including additional low-code template capabilities added in this release including:

• Secondary Canvas
• CAD Controls
• Animation List
• Animation Playback
• Bookmark List
• Title Bar
• BOM widget - Updated to support BOM's from external integrations published as child components to a 3D model component within a single content item. This also supports cross highlighting between 3D model and the BOM widget.
  
  

Figure 2 - Low-Code Template Capabilities up to Release 4.5.82

While low-code template capabilities are in Beta, they are not intended as a replacement for existing legacy content templates which will continue to work for the foreseeable future. These new templates include interactive web-based documentation that allows you to perfect your unique template configuration and to construct and configure widgets using one or many “building blocks”. Advantages of the new template API’s include; reusable low code patterns, guaranteed forward version compatibility with built-in template validation, and insuring content templates display as designed.

For any questions how low-code templates work, please contact Anark Support. 

Anark Publish Enhancements

PLM Integrations Enhancements:

Several enhancements have been added to Anark Publish and specifically, the PLM integrations for Windchill and Teamcenter to improve time to value for complex PLM integration and data publishing.

Both Windchill and Teamcenter:

• Republishing with no change, either to part version or to structure information. This will address use cases where data is valid, but other configuration issues may result in partial publishing that can be overcome.
• Republishing with no change to the number of components, but data is modified, resulting in newer versions of the parts.

Windchill Only:

• Support for Windchill 13.0.0.0 has been added.
• Bulk translations via the RMI utility now supports WTPart, EPMDocument and WTDocument business objects independently.

• Beta : Business objects are now supported for republishing include WTPart and EPMDocument.

Teamcenter Only:

• Enhancements have been made to utilize user desired revision rules during exporting CAD data for publishing.
• Beta: Republishing with no change to the number of components, but data is modified, resulting in newer versions of the parts. This use case supports republishing of parts or sub-assemblies which are working revisions.

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Release 4.5.81 information

   (Measurement, Low-Code Templates, PLM Integrations)

Release 4.5.80 information

   (Rich Text Collaboration, MBD CAD Adaptors, Windchill Packages) 

For more information in this or any previous releases Contact us

Current customers can use our Support Portal