Install the Collaboration Service

You can install the collaboration service to support concurrent and collaborative multi-user authoring, commenting, and editing on the same requirement specification.

To allow collaborative editing of the requirements, Siemens integrates with CKEditor to use their collaborative editing capabilities (https://ckeditor.com/collaboration/). The CK plugin embedded within the Requirements Management Active Workspace Client communicates with the collaboration service.

Siemens recommends the following components to achieve a secure setup:

• Firewall: To secure all inbound and outbound communication from the collaboration service.
• Reverse proxy: To set up SSL certificates that allow HTTPS communication from the Teamcenter server.
• Docker orchestrator: To allow multiple instances of collaboration service and provide load balancing between them.

Prerequisites

Component	Version	Notes
Linux machine	--	Customers may use existing Linux machines. All components may be installed on a single Linux machine.
Redis	3.2.6 or newer
PostgreSQL	12.0 or newer	Customers may use an existing setup. A new user is created as part of this setup.
Docker Orchestrator	Docker Swarm or Kubernetes	Needed to perform load balancing between the service replicas.
Reverse Proxy	Nginx or Apache	Recommended to install the SSL certificates that allow HTTPS communication from the Teamcenter server.
Firewall	--	Recommended to secure all communication to and from the CK collaboration service.

Note: You must have a req_realtime_collab license for real-time co-authoring of Teamcenter requirements.

Procedure

1. Log on to Deployment Center.
2. Enter the machine on which the database is installed in the Database Host field.
3. Enter the database port number in the Port field.
4. Enter the name of the database in the System Database Name field.
5. Enter the database user name in the User field.
6. Enter the password for the database user in the User Password field and then confirm.
7. Enter the host machine on which Redis is installed in the Redis Host field.
8. Enter the Redis port number in the Port field.
9. Enter the User Password and then confirm.
10. Select a Reverse Proxy Protocol from the list. The default value is HTTPS.
11. Enter the TLS certificate file path.
12. In the Reverse Proxy URL field, enter the URL of the Reverse Proxy which is already installed.
13. Click Save Component Settings.

What to do next

Once installation of the collaboration service is complete, run:

docker stack deploy -c req-ck-collab-service.yml CK

To enable the collaboration service, also run this command, using the IP address of the machine on which the collaboration server is installed:

add_ckeditor_access_keys -u=*** -p=xxxx -g=*** -baseurl=http://<host>:8000 -dashboardsecret=****