Bentley CONNECT

Last updated: April 09, 2019

The Basics

The core premise of CONNECT is to facilitate successful project outcomes through common capabilities and shared services across desktop, mobile, server and cloud. To enable this, Bentley has utilized Microsoft's Azure cloud-service to connect uniformly and consistently with and across users, projects, and enterprises. To enable the value and your success on CONNECT it is imperative that users register for a free CONNECT account, sign in when using your CONNECT Edition products and associate your design models with a CONNECTED Project.

The User Advantage

Each CONNECTED user is provisioned with a Personal Portal on the Bentley CONNECT site. This portal provides you access to CONNECT services and more. See the section on CONNECTION client Sign In for more details on how to access this and other CONNECT services.

One of the key capabilities of CONNECT Edition products is the ability to receive update notifications and initiate updates directly from your desktop for all versions within the same generation of the product line. Users no longer need to sign into SELECT Downloads to look for updates of their product but will now be able to check for updates and receive notification of updates from within their products.

The Organization Advantage

The value of CONNECT just starts with the CONNECTED User advantage. Of course users and organizations work together on projects. If an Organization choses to register their projects with Bentley, those projects now become CONNECTED Projects. With CONNECTED users and CONNECTED projects, the ability for project centric analysis, dashboards on who is working on the project where and how much, shared documents, deliverables status and more are now available through the Project Portal.

At this level, enterprises that have CONNECTED Users working on CONNECTED Projects with their CONNECT Edition products become CONNECTED Enterprises. Information that was once disjoint or unavailable, is now placed in context with Key Performance Indicators brought to the forefront to help our accounts improve project performance. All that from just signing in as a CONNECTED User and associating work with CONNECTED Projects.

Key Concepts

Bentley Profile

This is a single sign-in to all Bentley web pages and Cloud services. If you don't have one already, you should create a Bentley profile. This will let you:

sign in to all Bentley web sites
submit and manage service requests if you have a technical problem
ensure you receive advice when new versions of CONNECT Edition products are available
update you when new product training materials are available
give you access to Cloud Services

CONNECTED Projects

Once you have a Bentley Profile, you (or your organization's IT administrator) should register a CONNECTED Project. This is a way of keeping track of everything you and your team members do within that project. A CONNECTED Project doesn't contain your project data, it is simply a universal common ID to link together all activity within a project. It also contains information such as Name, Number, Industry, Asset Type, Location etc.

The first time you open or create a file, you will be prompted to select a Project. All activities relating to that file will be associated with the project.

Bentley Cloud Services

This is a range of services for learning, file sharing, project sharing, transmittals, project analytics and more. Some of the key components you will use as a part of Cloud Services include:

CONNECTION client - small desktop application that manages your sign-in
Project Chooser - a dialog box which lets you choose projects to associate your files with
Personal Portal - web page where you can manage your Bentley profile and access learning content
Project Portal - web page where you can manage your projects and launch cloud services

To take advantage of the values of CONNECTED users must be registered and signed in, CONNECTED projects must be available and CONNECT Edition/Service products must be used to associate product work with CONNECTED Projects. Let's look at how to do each of these items.

If you have ever signed in to Bentleys SELECT site to download a product, submitted a service ticket or signed up for a webinar then you are already registered to use the CONNECT services. Proceed to the Sign-In section for information on how to sign in.

You can also log in directly from the Bentley website from https://ims.bentley.com . Doing this will send you to a sign-in web page where you can select the Register link to enter your profile information and password.

Sign-In as a CONNECTED User

Once you have registered as a CONNECTED User (see previous section) you can proceed to sign-in. Sign-in can be performed from one of two places:

CONNECTION client Sign-In Window

If you have installed any CONNECT Edition/Services product then you have installed a CONNECTION client. This client shows up as an icon on your taskbar.

Double-click the icon or Right-Click>Open on the icon to expose the CONNECTION client Sign-in Screen. Enter the same email you provided in your registration and your password.

Product CONNECT Sign In

If you start ContextCapture mobile while no CONNECT user is signed-in, the login page will display before you can access the app.

Forgot Your Password?

If you don't recall your password simply select the "Forgot Password?" link on the sign-in window and your password will be reset through email.

A fundamental requirement of CONNECT is the creation of projects. Only users with "Project Manager" and "Administrator" level role on their profile are allowed to create projects. Contact your account administrator to add projects or assign you rights to add projects yourself. See the Managing User Rights Section below. Projects are typically added to the Bentley registry for your company through any of the links on the Project Portal or Personal Portal.

Right-Click the Bentley CONNECT icon in your taskbar and select "Personal Portal".

In the Personal Portal, select "Projects", this will take you to the "Project Portal".

In the "Project Portal, click "Register a Project" to add a new project. See the section "Managing User Rights" if you do not have the rights to add a project.

The project attributes should be entered accurately

to obtain the greatest value from CONNECT. Content, recommendation and insight services are based specifically on the Asset type, industry and location.

Right-Click the Bentley CONNECT icon in your taskbar and select "Personal Portal". Hint, you can also navigate to the Personal Portal from the CONNECT widget in ContextCapture cloud service console.

Select the "+New" in the Recent Projects tile to Register a New Project. See the section "Managing User Rights" if you do not have the rights to add a project.

Managing User Rights

User rights in an organization are administered by the site administer in your company. This is typically the main contact for your company at Bentley. This user can assign you Project Manager Rights through the User Management Portal https://ims.bentley.com/usermanagement. Select the Manage button on the top of the window and search for a user.

Select the user and click "Modify Roles" to expose the roles window. Scroll down and select "Project Manager" to allow a user to add and manage projects.