Who's watching?

neobobkrause

While working on private documents in OnShape, every once in a while I'm seeing an indicator appear in the upper righthand corner of my document window signaling that an OnShape employee/consultant has opened the drawing I'm currently working in. The indicator quickly goes away, but not before I'm able to mouse over it to see the user's name. 

Can somebody help me understand why this is happening?

- Bob

_Ðave_

I notice a little flash in the upper right hand corner also, but is too fast for me.  I thought I might of had a bug/virus or something working in the back ground. Hmm, maybe not. I quite surprised to hear this, certainly doesn't help my ITAR concerns.

_Dave_

walter

bob_krause said:

While working on private documents in OnShape, every once in a while I'm seeing an indicator appear in the upper righthand corner of my document window signaling that an OnShape employee/consultant has opened the drawing I'm currently working in. The indicator quickly goes away, but not before I'm able to mouse over it to see the user's name. 

Can somebody help me understand why this is happening?

- Bob

who's the user's name?

neobobkrause

I think it would be inappropriate of me to say who without a better understanding of why.

kevin_quigley

Big Brother

_Ðave_

I don't have an issue personally but the fact (if true) that this is even possible is a real concern for IP and ITAR. I certainly feel someone should address this and confirm that it isn't actually possible and that there's a legitimate explanation for this apparent glitch.
_Dave_ 

cody_armstrong

@bob_krause  Is this Document shared with that person?  Is it shared with Onshape support?  They frequently open docs shared with them to troubleshoot issues.

You can remove share permissions from anyone (including support) from the Share dialog. 

neobobkrause

First of all, let's not make more of this with so little information.

but, no, I haven't explicitly shared the document with any one. I'll confirm sharing settings when I return to my next.

raj_Onshape

A user can open the same document in multiple tabs and he will appear as collaborating as himself.  Under bad connection if a user session disconnects and you reload the page you might see yourself as a collaborator for a brief period.

Are you sure it is not just you and somebody else ?  In any event you can just open a support ticket with the documentId in which you have this problem mentioning the time you had this issue and Onshape can see if there has been any unauthorized access

philip_thomas

Since no one has specifically stated this, an Onshape employee cannot see the contents or even the names of your documents without your explicit consent.
It is much more likely that you are 'collaborating with yourself'.

øyvind_kaurstad

I have also observed the collaboration icon, but in all cases it has been me collaborating with myself as a result of refreshing due to Onshape hanging in some operation. Doesn't happen very often, though (but when it does, it is really annoying).

john_rousseau

I looked at the logs for your document over the past 7 days. There are 2 user IDs that I see associated with activity on that document. Yours and an automated user ID that our support team uses. Since your document _is_ shared with support, we have an automated tool that checks that document periodically to see if it's still shared with support. It is possible this is what you have been seeing. We are changing this so that we only make a simple metadata check, but that has not been deployed to production. 

As Philip said, we take the privacy of your intellectual property very seriously. There really are no tools that will let an Onshape employee open a private document unless it has been shared with support.

neobobkrause

Thanks for the update. But I don't recall explicitly giving OnShape Support access to this document. Truth be told, I've never shared a document and as yet have no idea how to. How is it that the support team has access? If access is granted by default, then I'd suggest this be changed immediately for obvious reasons.

- Bob

_Ðave_

Thanks for the clarity guys, I assumed as much.

john_rousseau

The default is not shared with support. You (your user ID) shared the document with support at 2016-01-19T15:47:59.304Z.

matthew_menard

øyvind_kaurstad said:

I have also observed the collaboration icon, but in all cases it has been me collaborating with myself as a result of refreshing due to Onshape hanging in some operation. Doesn't happen very often, though (but when it does, it is really annoying).

I have noticed that if (for whatever reason) I end up opening my model on my phone at the same time as I have it open in a browser on my computer, I will get the icon saying that I'm looking at my own documents.  Just throwing that out there as a reason somebody might see the icon.

neobobkrause

John, does opening a support ticket implicitly result in the document being shared with support?

philip_thomas

Neo - NO, sharing with support is an option at the time the ticket is opened and the default is OFF.
Moreover, the screenshot is optional and there are even tools for blanking out specific areas of the screenshot.
Bottom line - your private document is exactly that - PRIVATE

neobobkrause

Wait! You're right. Now I remember checking that box as I opened the support ticket granting support access to the document. Sorry for the confusion.

I want to say to everybody reading this posting that I'm comfortable with the explanations I've received related to this issue and impressed with the team's workflow, support and response. I'm also glad to hear that the team's already developing an alternative means to check the status of user documents that protect confidentiality and mitigate users' confusion.

Thanks.

- Bob

tom_scarince

@john_rousseau you might want to consider implementing something that automatically unshares the document when a support ticket is closed. 

philip_thomas

I just checked with Lou (head of support) - we do do this.
Once a week we run a script that automatically removes support from shared documents that no longer have an open ticket against them.

3dcad

It can be very annoying if Onshape hangs while creating new sketch, with refresh you will see yourself in state of creating something new but there is no way to go back to that unfinished sketch.

I have sometimes bumped into Onshape support (real person) working on my document (which I have shared to support and I'm glad they actually open these and try to help). They usually 'run away' really fast, I suppose that's the policy not to disturb me working.
Actually sometimes I would like them to stick around and maybe even follow to see if they can reproduce some anomaly I have reported.
But even more, I'd like to have simple chat to say hello and maybe say 'I'm only here to check one dimension, you can continue troubleshooting' - or 'I need to work, can you please come back later? '

dennis_20

Wow, really?  I can't imagine they would actually be working on your file directly.  If anything I'd think they'd make a copy to use for their trials before touching your file with any efforts.

john_rousseau

Hi Dennis. We often do make copies of a document (again, only when shared with support) if we want to make any changes. Many times we want to see a reported failure for ourselves and that just involves rolling forward and backward in history and maybe retrying an operation. We are careful to not make changes to a user's document.

What are these "file" things you speak of? :-) 

dennis_20

Okay, so I'm not fully indoctrinated into the cloud vernacular.  I'm only sipping the Kool-Aid at this point, full gulps are still down the road a bit.  My reference to file should have been part or document I guess.

3dcad

Sometimes copying might fix the problem if it's only with certain document. And I suppose also support will lose the history and other versions/branches if they make a copy? 
I think it's one of the great benefits that Onshape support can troubleshoot exactly the same situation where problems occur - I've always hated when sending copy of trad.cad file to support and get update after a week or so that everything was ok - no problems found on that file.

_Ðave_

john_rousseau said:

What are these "file" things you speak of? :-) 

_Dave_
 LOL