Super light use without account?

S1mon · February 2023

I totally understand that Onshape is trying to get more and more people to sign up (and ideally pay), in an almost viral manner, but the current behavior of sharing a public link is frustrating at best. If I send someone a public link and they don't have an account (or can't remember their login), they get this:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/y0/6shznws5857f.png

There's zero incentive to create an account for a casual share. There's no preview of the document being shared, and no indication of what Onshape even is. If I don't make a big effort in my sharing of the link with screenshots and a description of why the recipient might want to create an account and open the document, this will go into a "maybe get to it later" pile, only to be lost/ignored.

If, instead, there were a super light mode that wouldn't allow much more than spinning the object around without an account, that would be excellent. Ideally this would be something that I could embed in a web page or Slack discussion etc.

eric_pesty · February 2023

If you turn on "link sharing" instead of making a doc public it goes straight to the "view only" mode.

But it's true it would be nice to get the same behavior with "public" documents (if you are sending a link to something you are not the author off).

S1mon · February 2023

Ok. I’ll have to go back and look at the sharing dialogue. Somehow I’ve never used “link sharing”.

It still seems weird that this landing page is so devoid of any indication of what it is.

Evan_Reese · February 2023

I use link sharing for this sometimes, and made this video to help people get oriented to as much as their curiosity affords. I still wish there were better ways to manage links though:

I want to have multiple links that I can turn on and off, which are for different people. For example, I'd like to use a publication to cull down what we show, then have a separate link for our client, and for each vendor we want to send it to, so when we choose one, we can lock the others.
I want ways to password protect each link. They are currently just an obscure URL, which is super long with sections like this "08cccdb6cef7f378b40bb455". I guess the odds of someone just finding this are something like 36! to 1, which is plenty, but I (and my clients) want to know that it's secure. I want it locked down, not just secure through obscurity.

S1mon · February 2023

Argh. I don't know how I missed this, but it never occurred to me that "link sharing" is more public than public. It kinda does what it says on the tin, but "public" is really only public to Onshape account holders, whereas "link sharing" is really a "general public" mode.

I guess because I'm so conditioned by the Forum use of public documents, I've never really bothered with link sharing.

After playing with it a bit, I get why both things exist, but it is a bit confusing. The fact that a document can have "public" turned off, but is available to anyone with a link through "link sharing" is a little confusing, because at some level that's still "public" in the common definition of the word.

In another way it's kinda like many computer file systems (e.g. Unix, MacOS, Windows) which have User/Group/World permissions (of read/write/execute), and also the orthogonal attribute of being visible or not.

"Public" turns on the ability for the Group (of Onshape account holders) to "read" and copy and search for a document.
"Link Sharing" without "Public" being on keeps the document invisible to search, but turns on the "read" attribute on (for anyone with the link - security through obscurity). Without an account, someone looking at a document through "link share" can't copy it.

romeograham · February 2023

Another way I think about "link sharing" is that the link (and linked info) becomes just like a regular email attachment: available to anyone that gets the link, no way to prevent forwarding, but not "discoverable" in a relevant sense of the word. If you trust your email provider and your recipient - it's about as secure as sharing a file by email - and a similar level of "frictionless" usability for folks without Onshape accounts.

eric_pesty · February 2023

The biggest difference is that anyone can create a copy of any public document whereas you have a real "read only" sharing with link sharing.

@Evan_Reese
It would be nice to be able to share a link specifically with a single person, or as you say have multiple links you can turn on and off, At that point that's pretty close to doing an "actual share" though, the only gotcha being that the person needs an account, so it's a nice to way for Onshape to try to strongarm people into creating an account but you need a pretty close relation with a vendor to convince them to do that!

Evan_Reese · February 2023

eric_pesty said:
@Evan_Reese
It would be nice to be able to share a link specifically with a single person, or as you say have multiple links you can turn on and off, At that point that's pretty close to doing an "actual share" though, the only gotcha being that the person needs an account, so it's a nice to way for Onshape to try to strongarm people into creating an account but you need a pretty close relation with a vendor to convince them to do that!

I use some other apps that handle this much more elegantly, in my opinion. For example Pitch.com, which we use for slide decks. This is their share dialogue. I can:

make as many unique links as I want
toggle them on/off
add a password (optionally)
see view analytics for each one, like who has looked at it, when and how many times. This is esp handy with multiple links since you know who you sent each one.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/vy/grocn5akwzw5.png

S1mon · February 2023

I like @Evan_Reese 's comments about password protection, publications and separate links.

When someone gets a Public link and their browser doesn't have an account cookied (so we assume they haven't created an account), it should really tell them more about what the document is (e.g. a thumbnail image at the very least), and what Onshape is.

Looking at these forums, there's this tag line (absent from the Public document landing page):
"Onshape is the only product development platform that unites CAD, data management, collaboration tools and real-time analytics."

On the front page of Onshape.com there's this:
"Agile Product Design with Cloud-Native CAD & PDM

Design better products faster, eliminate bottlenecks earlier, streamline collaboration, and work from any device, while saving time and money."

S1mon · February 2023

Toshimichi_Oda · February 2023

I think we need documentation for helping users to understanding what type of shares allow what is permitted.

I make a documentation privately in Japanese. Using Google Transe, you can see what I say.

https://onshape.jp/doc/%E3%82%88%E3%81%8F%E3%81%82%E3%82%8B%E8%B3%AA%E5%95%8F_faq#q_%E5%85%B1%E6%9C%89%E3%81%A8%E3%81%AF

shawn_crocker · February 2023

Evan_Reese said:

I use link sharing for this sometimes, and made this video to help people get oriented to as much as their curiosity affords. I still wish there were better ways to manage links though:
I want to have multiple links that I can turn on and off, which are for different people. For example, I'd like to use a publication to cull down what we show, then have a separate link for our client, and for each vendor we want to send it to, so when we choose one, we can lock the others.
I want ways to password protect each link. They are currently just an obscure URL, which is super long with sections like this "08cccdb6cef7f378b40bb455". I guess the odds of someone just finding this are something like 36! to 1, which is plenty, but I (and my clients) want to know that it's secure. I want it locked down, not just secure through obscurity.

I wish we could see a list of all the shared links a user has produced. Right now, I don't know of anyway to see everything I or anyone else in the enterprise has shared and it makes link sharing feel a little uncomfortable. I know I am going to forget about having shared a link and will not ever think to turn off the share when appropriate.

bryan_lagrange · February 2023

I would also like to set permissions per branch.

See improvement request:

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/18918/set-permissions-edit-read-only-etc-for-a-particular-branch#latest

PeteYodis · February 2023

A quick question I hope you don't mind me asking... How many of you on this thread are using link sharing for people within your own company that don't have Onshape accounts, let alone Pro accounts? And perhaps more broadly, even not using link sharing (simon), how many are attempting to let others within their company see the company data?

S1mon · February 2023

@pete_yodis

Now that I understand Link Sharing better, I might be more inclined to share within my company that way, even with users who have accounts, just to take the friction out of getting them to look at it. I'd love to see some sort of embed version for Slack. There are certainly some users who we currently have as light, just in case they might look at something, but realistically they will most likely not go looking for anything. A link share which was only visible to company users might be interesting.

I find that there are many things (cross sections, simulations, etc) that I want to share, but screen shots end up being the easiest way. Ideally there would be an asynchronous way to send a link to things like that where the end user wouldn't need to understand how to open a saved view with a section, or wait for the simulation to re-run.

I also find that I need to do more checking to see what others will see when I send a URL to them. I have to remember how things will default (hide/show/isolate/make transparent, version vs workspace, releases, configuration variables, etc....). Part of this is a learning process on my part, but it's interesting how often I've been surprised by what others can see vs what I see and think I'm sharing. Even follow me is not the same as a screen share over Zoom. Each way of communicating requires some adjustments to how Onshape works.

eric_pesty · February 2023

PeteYodis said:

A quick question I hope you don't mind me asking... How many of you on this thread are using link sharing for people within your own company that don't have Onshape accounts, let alone Pro accounts? And perhaps more broadly, even not using link sharing (simon), how many are attempting to let others within their company see the company data?

Yes, we are using link sharing mostly internally at this point and a few times externally (for example to order 3D prints from a local vendor) but create a separate document with only the things we wanted in (haven't done it lately since publications exist so probably what we would do now).

We haven't actually done any "normal share" outside the company as requiring an account to view seems like too much of an ask...

eric_pesty · February 2023

@S1mon
I am assuming you are familiar with the link sharing icon? This gets you at least to right place, view, configuration, exploded view, etc directly and is much better than sharing just the general document URL when you want to show something specific (but it still doesn't capture "everything" like cross sections for example...).

We have also create a publication of just "top level" assemblies to share internally so that everyone can have a quick look at the product without having to navigate through a document.

S1mon · February 2023

@eric_pesty @pete_yodis

I've noticed the link sharing icon, but what I'm now noticing is that in Safari I get an error when I try to use it:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5022071/uploads/editor/pt/c9ae5sl84wm1.png

[edited a lot because I think I finally understand]

There's a bug in Onshape Safari (but not Chrome which I mostly use) which prevents the link from being copied to the clipboard, so to some degree I've been discounting/ignoring this button.
I always assumed the "copy document URL" button was the same as coping the URL in the browser toolbar - I never quite understood that it captures the state the way that it does. Looking back this seems more obvious but it really seemed like an unnecessary/not-working tool.
Copying the URL (either with the link button or the browser toolbar) without going and turning on Link sharing from the Share dialog doesn't allow non-users to just open the document. Perhaps these things should be more connected?

Hmmmm. I've been lightly using Onshape since 2015 and seriously using it for the past few years, I've been through most of the user training courses, watched the what's new videos all the time, and read/post/spend way too much time on these forums. Somehow the way that all of these things interact wasn't clear to me. In retrospect, I'm not quite sure why, but I suspect I'm not the only one.

Some recommendations:

When Link Sharing is turned on, there should be an icon in the top of the Onshape window in the same area that the Public globe icon is, telling the user that this has been turned on.
When I'm in the link sharing tab of the share dialog, there could be two links - the default document link, and the current one that you'd get from the link button which includes the state of the document. This would help re-iterate that there are two types of document URLs.

Urs_Egger_REACT · April 26

Hello There,
Today I sent a publication via linksharing to our patent attorney. We did this with ftp server and password protection in earlier days.
Despite I fully trust in our attorney, the e-mail could get hacked from 3rd party. In other words I don't think link sharing is a very secure way of sharing data. And a lot of our partners don't want to sign up for a (free) onshape account. Of course I know the option for sharing export formats like stp or pdf with password protected download link. But that's the old fashioned way. Don't want to go back there.

Therefore I completely agree with the initial request of @S1mon.
A superlight viewer account would be helpful. So our partners can create a password and access shared data in a quick and secure way.
I think it is not far from a free account, but needs a bit more "love" for easy access and user guidance.

On the other hand I see the same request for more protection on link sharing is very old. Most of the IR's are 2years+

@Onshape: When can we expect progress on this? Seems important to me for professional work "the onshape way".

NeilCooke · April 26

Urs_Egger_REACT said:

And a lot of our partners don't want to sign up for a (free) onshape account.

Never really understood this.

S1mon · April 26

@NeilCooke

Unfortunately completing a signup is a barrier to entry for a lot of things. People are tired of creating accounts and passwords and they are rightfully tired of getting more email spam from signing up for free accounts. I get that if someone signs up for a free Onshape account for themselves to do modeling, Onshape would love to convert them to a paying customer. PTC is a publicly traded company, and the ultimate goal is to make money. However, when I'm a paying customer and I send something to share with someone else, that isn't necessarily the best place to try to tack on an opportunity to spam more people. I love Onshape, and I take every opportunity through word-of-mouth to encourage more individuals and companies to adopt it, but making it harder for me to safely share stuff is not good.

Dropbox has a pretty good model where you can send stuff securely with minimal friction and hassle on the other end for people without accounts. If I were at Onshape, I would study this very very carefully. From my understanding, Google Drive, Dropbox, MS Onedrive, and Box all have sharing features which do not require an account.

Here's a ChatGPT link to a review of things like this https://chat.openai.com/share/4cdb9b65-a1b7-4b39-bce7-e82817e73f8b

Urs_Egger_REACT · April 26

NeilCooke said:

Urs_Egger_REACT said:

And a lot of our partners don't want to sign up for a (free) onshape account.

Never really understood this.

Hi Neil,
I understand your point and also our partners. It is probably not only because of signing-up but also because of the overwhelming environment they get when they sign in. Not everybody is a CAD user and familiar with Onshape. Many are even overwhelmed by the link access to a publication.
On the other hand registration with an e-mail offers a higher level of security compared to a public link. Even a public link with password protection is not so save because probably most would send the link including password in the same e-mail, which does not help at all.

So maybe as an idea a invitation could look like this:

User XY from company XY would like to transfer CAD Data to you. To ensure secure data transmission, please register with your e-mail address. To navigate the CAD Data please review following quick start guide.

After registration with the same e-mail adress as the invitation this user gets added to my company as "ultralight" user with read and export rights only on shared documents. In my company settings I can search users and kick them out of my company if I want to delete all access to ever given documents.

I could imagine this works well for publications. However I'd prefer to share single parts and drawings without need of publications.
What's your thoughts on this?

billy2 · April 26

It's a problem trying to invite people into a onshape project. I'm sharing with many via their company email addresses trying expose them to Onshape and it's not working very well.

If you're trying to sell Onshape, sharing doesn't appear to work.

I'm not sure what happens on the receiving end of a share email to someone, but half the engineers will click to access the project. No one else does. I've had issues with engineers who already have OS accounts and they use that email vs. the one I sent. That doesn't work and they have to create a new account based on the company email I sent them.

Shared link is a scary concept for a project that's getting a patent or you're under an NDA. Even with a password link manager, all someone needs to do is copy the url after viewing the shared document. That would break your password protection scheme if someone knew thats all you need to do. You could then post the URL on a forum and expose the project to the world.

The problem with the cloud is that you don't know who a user is when they arrive to your site. That's why we log in. Once logged in, the browser is authenticated and you're assigned permissions. There has to be a way to authenticate a user when they arrive to your site.

Two factor is a way to solve this.
1. I share to an email address or phone number who doesn't have an account
2. On entry, Onshape sends an email or message to that address with a link allowing them in
3. Onshape now knows who they are
4. After they click the sent link, they're allowed in

I think people get 2-factor stuff and more would click a 2-factor link.

Most people I speak with still talk about files, hard drives & metadata like its 20 years ago and the DOS operating system. They have no idea what the cloud means or how it works. I think with time, it'll get better. For now, this collaborative environment we enjoy, people aren't ready for it.

Yesterday I had lunch with a computer scientist who ran a major computer server farm and I asked what he thought of the cloud and it's future. He replied it was going to be a permissions hell.

Super light use without account?

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