Service organizations typically receive recurring revenue, less fixed capital, and higher margins than strictly product-centric businesses. Aftermarket services now account for almost 24% of manufacturers’ total revenue and 40% to 80% of their total profits (Pollack, B., PTC Video: Transforming Your Service Organization with SLM (part 3 of 3)). When executed properly, after-sales service and support can provide increased revenue and invaluable customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Customer relationships are both a huge benefit and a huge risk.  Companies without a comprehensive plan to ensure high customer satisfaction often jeopardize customer relationships and risk affecting their company brand. Businesses often suffer when they overlook their role in service performance. Why focus solely on putting your product into the hands of customers? Why not also focus on service, and manage the performance of your products to ensure high customer satisfaction?

Customer Satisfaction Matters

Consumers who are willing to pay a premium for a product are looking for a company that provides the best value. If your company cannot deliver the value that your customer is willing to pay for, then you are going to disappoint that customer.

To build and maintain high customer satisfaction, companies need to look beyond traditional approaches.  It is no longer sufficient to provide good customer service by staffing a call center for customer support.  Customers need more than a call center or email.  They need their product to provide that expected value and perform well.  Businesses need to figure out how to deliver that value, maintain high product performance, and keep a happy customer.

Service as the Main Course

Viewing service as an extension of the product can help companies deliver added value and improve customer satisfaction. So what, then, is the hesitation that executives face when delivering service as a strategy in their organization?

Making strategic decisions can be challenging when confronted with numerous variables. Employing an effective service strategy can be especially challenging when organizations are divided into separate silos, with each department concerned only with its own objectives but missing the main objective: the customer.

To execute a service strategy well, companies must look to transform their current approach to service. They must optimize service performance and service functions across all departments and ensure everyone is working collaboratively to deliver a unified service experience that joins parts, product and service information, remote service, and predictive analytics that maximizes the product value to each customer.

Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) is the solution to a service transformation within an organization. SLM provides a platform to deliver on-demand parts, accurate and relevant product and service information, global remote service, and predictive analytics for maximum product performance.

The Right-Sized Service Lifecycle Management Solutions

Service excellence prepares your organization for years of satisfied customers and service related revenue streams. Don’t miss out on revenue opportunities and the chance to provide your company with a competitive advantage. Apply service as a strategy within your organization.

We have an entire team that is dedicated to helping you manage service life cycle.

• optimizing performance with smart connected products
• minimizing downtime with predictive analytics
• provide access to accurate and relevant documentation, illustrations, and part lists
• improving service response time and first-time fix rates
• optimizing service parts availability and pricing
• paying for product performance with product-as-a-service (PaaS) models

Augmented Reality (AR) uses devices such as smart glasses and phone applications to overlay digital information on the real world. The resulting experiences provide a convergence of digital and physical worlds. Isn’t this what we’ve all been waiting for? For technology to catch up with us? How did we end up here? Where did it all begin?

If you think back to your earliest introduction to Augmented Reality, what do you think of? I tend to think back to Star Trek’s holodecks – augmented facilities that characters used for recreation and for work. But the idea of bringing together virtual and physical worlds has been around for longer than you think.

The first traces of an Augmented Reality device originated in the late 1960’s by computer scientist, Ivan Sutherland, at Harvard University when he was working on what he called “the ultimate display.” The device, called the Sword of Damocles, displayed a geometric grid of graphics over the user’s view of the room. The component parts to the device were so large and heavy that it had to be mounted from the ceiling and suspended with a mechanical arm that supported the head mounted display (HMD). It wouldn’t be until many years later that AR would be introduced to mainstream media as a device that could be used in the manufacturing world.

Not unlike Steve Jobs’ idea that the individual consumer may want his or her own personal computer – working designers and engineers are implementing the individual use of AR to improve workforce efficiencies. Why might manufacturers want Augmented Reality in their hands and in the workplace? What are the benefits?

Augmented Reality helps you work a lot faster.

For Designers and Engineers, a lot of time spent on the manufacturing floor is working with the design in one work space and moving to another space to test the product. With the aid of hands-free AR devices, you’ll be spending a lot less time writing down changes. You’ll be able to make a virtual change to a design with the swipe of a finger or by the nod of your head. You will no longer have messy notepads filled with your ingenious ideas with room for error, missing notepads, or frustration with file-keeping. Your AR glasses will be able to keep up with your fast-paced mind and you’ll be redirecting your energy towards developing new products and improving existing ones.

You can use AR to provide hands-on learning for employees.

Have you ever sat in class writing or typing down all the notes you could possibly think of to ensure that you would apply those rules later while you’re in the field? I know I have. How many times have you actually looked back at those notes? Augmented Reality in the workplace gives employees an opportunity to thrive in their learning environments. Hands-on learning can result in up to a 75% retention rate. AR devices produce real-time images of physical objects with virtual work instructions that guide you while you’re on the manufacturing floor. So yes, traditional training will still be relevant – but you’ll be able to supplement your learning with hands-on experience too.

Vuforia Studio allows you to access data easily.

Vuforia Studio, a PTC Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) tool, is used to improve service, operation, engineering, and manufacturing with AR capabilities. This app is a powerful solution for creating, deploying, and consuming AR experiences within your enterprise. Vuforia Studio has an easy-to-use ‘drag and drop’ interface so that users can quickly create and share scalable AR experiences.

Augmented Reality helps to refine and optimize design in early stages of product development. Smartphones, tablets, and smart glasses can retrieve product data such as sensor readings, locations, temperatures, sales history, warranty history, and other service information. Concepts, modifications, and new ideas can be reviewed and changed quickly. 3D parts observed using a wearable augmented reality device will give designers and engineers a better visualization of a finished product. What’s the result? Rapid repetitious design cycles and the optimization of product design and development.

Solve business problems and provide competitive differentiation with Vuforia Studio – download the product brief.

If you’re interested in talking to us today about Vuforia Studio, then email us at communications@eacpds.com or call us at 1-888-225-7579.

One of the great aspects of ThingWorx is the ability to connect disparate data silos to a central IoT hub. Many of these silos are made accessible through Web APIs. RESTful Web APIs enable developers to pull data from an inexhaustible number of sources around the web; often using nothing but a HTTP URI. Salesforce has an extensive REST API that can be accessed through ThingWorx. This blog will introduce you to creating a “Connected App” on Salesforce, authentication using username and password in ThingWorx, adding records to Salesforce, and finally modifying records. For a detailed description of Salesforce’s REST API, visit https://developer.salesforce.com/page/REST_API

Step 1 (Optional): Obtain a Developer Environment with Salesforce.com

If you do not already have a Salesforce account, navigate to https://developer.salesforce.com/platform/force.com and sign up for a free developer environment. It only takes a few minutes and you get a fully functioning Salesforce instance that you can freely develop in.

Step 2: Obtain a Security Token

You’ll need a security token to authenticate with a username and password. If you don’t already have one, or can’t dig it up from previous emails, you’ll need to reset the token.

Resetting the Token

1.    In the upper right-hand corner of your Salesforce page, click on your name and select “My Settings”

2.    On the left-hand menu, select “Personal”

3.    Under “Personal,” select “Reset My Security Token”

4.    Follow the directions on the page and you will receive a new security token via email

Step 3: Create a Connected App

To use the REST API, we’ll need to create a connected app that gives us a “Consumer Key” and a “Consumer Secret”.

Creating the Connected App

1.    Click on “Settings” in the upper right of your Salesforce screen

2.    On the left side, navigate to “Build” > “Create” > “Apps”

3.    Under the “Connected Apps” section, select “New”

4.    Fill out the fields as shown below. A callback URL is required but we won’t really be referencing it anywhere in ThingWorx. There is a great article on using Postman to test out REST calls with Salesforce at https://blog.mkorman.uk/using-postman-to-explore-salesforce-restful-web-services/ . The callback URL is used in the examples when authenticating in Postman.

5.    Click “Save.” You will get an alert that your connected app will take 2-10 minutes to take effect.

6.    After you click “Save,” you’ll see the “Consumer Key” and “Consumer Secret.” Copy those somewhere to use in ThingWorx.

Step 4: Authenticate Salesforce Session in ThingWorx

In this step, we’ll create a service in ThingWorx that returns a JSON for us to use in our other Salesforce requests.

1.    Create a service inside your Thing called AuthenticateSalesForce. I have a “TestThing” that I’ve created where I can try out new services without disrupting any of my live projects.

2.    Choose the “STRING” type for the result output, no inputs are needed unless you want to have the end user input their username and password. After we test functionality, we’ll change the output type to “JSON”

3.    Enter the following code, which is just the POST JSON function in the ContentLoaderFunction resource.

var params = {

                 proxyScheme: undefined /* STRING */,
                 headers: undefined /* JSON */,
                 ignoreSSLErrors: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 useNTLM: undefined /* BOOLEAN *
                 workstation: undefined /* STRING */,
                 useProxy: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 withCookies: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 proxyHost: undefined /* STRING */,

url: "https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token?grant_type=password&client_id=&client_secret=&username= &password=" /* STRING */,

                 content: undefined /* JSON */,
                 timeout: undefined /* NUMBER */,
                 proxyPort: undefined /* INTEGER */,
                 password: undefined /* STRING */,
                 domain: undefined /* STRING */,
                 username: undefined /* STRING */

};

// result: JSON
var j = Resources["ContentLoaderFunctions"].PostJSON(params);

var result = j.access_token;

4.    Enter the consumer key, consumer secret, username (use %40 for the ‘@’ symbol), and password plus security token (enter your password and security token with no spaces between the two)

5.    Select “Done” on your service, save your Thing, and test the service. You should receive a session token like the one seen below:

6.    If nothing shows up, either the Salesforce server hasn’t activated the app, or there may be an issue with the URL. If you copy and paste the URL into PostMan, you should get an error message that clarifies the issue.

7.    When you’re getting an access token as the result, edit your service, change the result type to “JSON,” delete the last line (the “var result = j.access_token” line”), and modify the end of the service to now read:

// result: JSON

var result = Resources[“ContentLoaderFunctions”].PostJSON(params);

Step 5: Create a record in Salesforce

In this step, we’ll create a new account within salesforce using our new authentication service and a REST call utilizing the ContentLoaderFunctions.

1.    Create another new service in your Thing and call it AddSalesForceAccount. 2.    Create an input and call it AccountName. The type is “STRING” 3.    Type in the following code:

var authJSON = me.AuthenticateSalesForce();

var token = authJSON.access_token;
var instance_url = authJSON.instance_url;

var url = instance_url + "/services/data/v20.0/sobjects/Account/";

var authString = "Bearer " + token;
var headers = {
   "authorization" : authString,
   "content-type" : "application/json"
};

var content = {
 "Name" : AccountName
};

var params = {
                 proxyScheme: undefined /* STRING */,
                 headers: headers /* JSON */,
                 ignoreSSLErrors: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 useNTLM: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 workstation: undefined /* STRING */,
                 useProxy: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 withCookies: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                 proxyHost: undefined /* STRING */,
   url: url /* STRING */,
                 content: content /* JSON */,
                 timeout: undefined /* NUMBER */,
                 proxyPort: undefined /* INTEGER */,
                 password: undefined /* STRING */,
                 domain: undefined /* STRING */,
                 username: undefined /* STRING */
};

// result: JSON
var result = Resources["ContentLoaderFunctions"].PostJSON(params);

4. Test the service. Enter a unique account name and verify that it shows up in Salesforce.

Step 6: Retrieve a Record ID

To modify a record, the record ID must be used to reference the object of interest. We can make a request to Salesforce to return relevant records using an SOQL query. This example will cover retrieving the record ID of the account we just created in the last step.

1.    Create a new service in your Thing

2.    Create an input and call it AccountName. The type is “STRING”

3.    Type in the following code:

var authJSON = me.AuthenticateSalesForce();


var token = authJSON.access_token;
var instance_url = authJSON.instance_url;

var url = instance_url + "/services/data/v20.0/query/?q=SELECT+name+FROM+Account+WHERE+name+=+'" + AccountName + "'";

var authString = "Bearer " + token;
var headers = {
   "authorization" : authString,
   "content-type" : "application/json"
};




var params = {
                  proxyScheme: undefined /* STRING */,
                  headers: headers /* JSON */,
                  ignoreSSLErrors: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  useNTLM: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  workstation: undefined /* STRING */,
                  useProxy: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  withCookies: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  proxyHost: undefined /* STRING */,
                  url: url /* STRING */,
                  timeout: undefined /* NUMBER */,
                  proxyPort: undefined /* INTEGER */,
                  password: undefined /* STRING */,
                  domain: undefined /* STRING */,
                  username: undefined /* STRING */

};




// result: JSON
var j = Resources["ContentLoaderFunctions"].GetJSON(params);

var result = j.records[0].attributes.url;

4. Give the service a name and test it. The output of this service is a url that can be appended to the instance_url that is returned in the response from the Authentication service.

Step 7: Modify a Record

Using the output from our last service, we can now easily modify the fields of the record ID that we just retrieved. Keep in mind, if you create a custom field and you want to modify its value, add a “__c” to the end of the field name (denotes custom field).

1. Create a new service in your Thing
2. Let’s give it a few “STRING” inputs: field, stringValue, and AccountName
3. Input the following code:

var authJSON = me.AuthenticateSalesForce();

var token = authJSON.access_token;
var instance_url = authJSON.instance_url;

var stringJSON = '{"' + field + '":' + stringValue + "}";


var params = {
                  AccountName: AccountName /* STRING */
};

// result: STRING
var object_url = me.RetrieveSalesForceAccountRecordID(params);

var url = instance_url + object_url + "?_HttpMethod=PATCH";
var authString = "Bearer " + token;
var headers = {
   "authorization" : authString,
   "content-type" : "application/json"
};

var content = JSON.parse(stringJSON);

var params = {
                  proxyScheme: undefined /* STRING */,
                  headers: headers /* JSON */,
                  ignoreSSLErrors: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  useNTLM: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  workstation: undefined /* STRING */
                  useProxy: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  withCookies: undefined /* BOOLEAN */,
                  proxyHost: undefined /* STRING */,
                  url: url /* STRING */,
                  content: content /* JSON */,
                  timeout: undefined /* NUMBER */,
                  proxyPort: undefined /* INTEGER */,
                  password: undefined /* STRING */,
                  domain: undefined /* STRING */,
                  username: undefined /* STRING */
};
// result: JSON
var result = Resources["ContentLoaderFunctions"].PostJSON(params);

A Note About Security

Salesforce has a few ways to authenticate your session.  The method described in this blog is the least secure way because ThingWorx has visibility to the username and password of the Salesforce account.  There are two other ways to authenticate and both use callback URLs.  Basically, a user sends a call to the login endpoint and enters user and password information directly into the Salesforce environment.  Salesforce then redirects to a callback URL that is appended with an authorization token.  If you’d like to implement one of the more secure methods, I would suggest using a REST endpoint to a ThingWorx service as your callback URL. More specifically, create a service that has a string input called “code.” Now, change your callback URL in your Salesforce connected app to something like https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=&redirect_uri=>.  Now, when you navigate to the login link, it will send your authorization code to your ThingWorx service (this is because it appends “&code=” to the URL).  You’ll need to then send that code via the Content Loader Functions to receive your authorization token.  One thing to note is that the ThingWorx instance must be on HTTPS.  Salesforce does not allow HTTP callback URLs.  More information about Authentication can be found at https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/intro_understanding_authentication.htm

If you have any questions about this blog or ThingWorx in general, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact EAC Product Development Solutions.

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