Did you know the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can greatly facilitate the collaboration between different companies by allowing invitation of external users without buying any additional licenses?

The collaboration mode described in this article is only applicable for the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud.

In your 3DEXPERIENCE platform usage, you may encounter one of these situations:

• Outsourcing of a Product Designer for the duration of your Project
• Hiring a training expert to help on-boarding your Team
• Sharing a Project Dashboard and exchange data using 3DDrive

Or you may even need to temporarily invite a technical expert from the 3DEXPERIENCE Support Team for a technical assistance.

All these situations are now made possible on your 3DEXPERIENCE platform with the Cross-Company Collaboration mode!

This mode allows you to invite one or more external users on your platform without consuming your own licenses.

Doing this, the invited external user will use his own 3DEXPERIENCE platform licenses instead. You are no more being restricted by the number of licenses purchased on your platform or by the 30-days lock period following the granting of a license. Of course, you can Remove Access or Remove User at any time.

Finally, activating this mode does not affect the level of security offered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, meaning that only external users you invite will have access to your platform. No one else!

To activate this mode, actions must be performed on both 3DEXPERIENCE platforms.

How to set up your 3DEXPERIENCE platform?

The very first step is to enable following global option on your Platform Management dashboard:

Once this option is enabled, the two Options Assign License and Restrict usage to this Platform are displayed.

Then you are in position to send invitations in which the granted Roles will have the Assign License option deactivated for the Roles you need to grant to the external user.

To extend Collaboration, you can add any available Roles either from  Available roles with licenses or from Available roles without any license drop-down list:

This works even if you are already using 100% of your Licenses.

If you forget to deactivate the Assign License option before you send the invitation, the external user might consume your invitation in the next minute and the license keys will be locked for 30 days. So I recommend you to double-check the Roles assignment before completing the invitation.

Once the invitation is sent you will see the Pending user with the key icon which identifies users who are in collaboration mode.

Once the external user will have accepted your invitation, the Pending status disappears and you will see his First Name and Last Name from his 3DEXPERIENCE ID login.

At this stage, you can decide to suspend this collaboration by Removing Access to this user.

How to set up the 3DEXPERIENCE platform of the external user?

The same global option must be enabled from the Platform Management dashboard:

This option enables to grant Roles with Assign License option activated and Restrict Usage to this platform option deactivated. This is this second option which enables to reuse this license key on any other platform for collaboration.

So the other administrator must ensure that his user has got necessary Roles and Licenses with Assign License option activated and Restrict Usage to this platform option deactivated. as depicted below

Congratulations, the Cross-Company Collaboration mode is now up and running.

To conclude, here are the key information from this article:

• This mode allows you to invite an unlimited amount of external users on your 3DEXPERIENCE platform without consuming your own licenses

• You maintain full control of your 3DEXPERIENCE platform during this collaboration
• You can Remove Access or Remove User at any time
• As well as any of your 3DEXPERIENCE platform members, you are able to manage access rights for each of the external users on all your applications
• Collaborative Business Innovator(IFW) is necessary for 3DSwym, 3DDashboard and 3DDrive collaboration. Collaborative Industry Innovator(CSV) is necessary to access Collaborative Spaces and review or author Content with the Native Apps Roles
• As of R2021x FD06, here are the Cross Company eligible roles:
  • IFW, CSV, CXD, WXD, SHP, XGG, XCD, XNB, XFO, XMB, XBT, XMO, XSU, UDR, UEC, UEG, UDA, UDI, UDN, UDO, UDT, UE5, UES, XMD, PGS
  • And any CATIA, DELMIA and SOLIDWORKS Roles
• If your Collaborative Business Innovator role license (IFW) expires, no one will be able to access your platform and its content anymore. This is also valid for external users who had access to your platform in collaboration mode.