Bentley CONNECT FAQ
Question: What benefits do I get from having a Bentley Profile?
Answer: The key benefits for a Profile are access to learning content about your software, the ability to track software usage on your projects and the ability to share files with others and with your mobile devices. More benefits will be added in future as we add more cloud services.
Question: Can I work offline without an internet connection?
Answer: Yes. If you are not online, the software will work as usual and you can run without signing in or selecting projects. When you reconnect and next open your file, you can assign it to a project at that point.
Question: No projects appear in my Assign Project list, what should I do?
Answer: First, click the Refresh button at the top of the dialog. If there are still no projects, click on the Register Project button at the top left of the Assign Project dialog. This will take you to a web page where you can register a project.
Question: How do I get permissions to register a project?
Answer: If you do not have permissions to register a project, ask your IT administrator to give you Project Manager permissions in your Bentley Profile.
Question: I do not see the project I created in the Assign Project list?
Answer: Click the Refresh button in the Assign Project dialog.
Question: Do I have to associate files with CONNECTED Projects?
Answer: While it is strongly recommended you do so, you are not required to associate your file with a project. However you will only get the benefit of software usage tracking in your project if you associate your files with a project. If you don't associate a file with a project at first, you can do so later using the Associate Project command. We will continue to add new cloud services in future which will use the project association to provide helpful reporting to you and your colleagues.
Question: Are my files now stored in Bentley Cloud Services?
Answer: No. Your files are saved on your local hard disk or network drive as usual. If you are using ProjectWise to store your files, they will continue to be stored there. The only change is that the ID of the CONNECTED Project is now stored in your file so use of the file can be associated with the project. The ID is a randomly generated complex 32 character string of characters, it does not disclose any information about your project.
Question: Do I have to sign in to use the software?
Answer: While it is not required to sign in to use the software, we strongly recommend that you do so. Sign-in is required to take advantage of current and future cloud services. Sign-In may be required in future.
Question: Can I turn off the prompt to sign in?
Answer: If you are not signed in when the Assign Project dialog is displayed, you will be prompted to sign in. It is not possible to turn off this prompt.
Question: What information is Bentley storing about my files and projects?
Answer: Bentley is not storing any information about your files. We are only storing basic information about your project including name, number, industry, asset type, and location. When you run the software using a file that is associated with a project, usage information is stored so that you can track which software is used when, on a given project. Bentley is not able to see the name of the user using the software, only the unique machine name is stored for licensing purposes. This is unchanged from previous versions of the software. Your information is kept confidential to you and your organization.
Question: How secure is the Project and Profile information stored by Bentley?
Answer: All project and usage information is stored using encrypted data sent to and stored in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This is a highly secure environment used by millions of companies.
Question: How do I see usage information regarding the software I use on a project?
Answer: Software usage reports are available via the SELECTserver web page at https://selectserver.bentley.com. Note that your organization must be using the hosted version of SELECTserver to take advantage of this capability.
Question: Can I track the use of non-Bentley applications on my project?
Answer: No. The usage tracked by SELECTserver and available to you in SELECTserver reports is only for Bentley applications.
Question: Do I need a license to use cloud services?
Answer: You do not need a desktop software license to use cloud services however all services require a Bentley Profile (which is free of charge), some services require a Bentley Passport and other services also require a specific Visa be added to that Passport. A Bentley Passport is a general access, named user license for using file servers like ProjectWise as well as cloud services. Usually your organization will purchase a pool of Passports for many users to use.
In the following table, an x indicates that the cloud service in that row requires the access privileges of the column.