We want to roll out Speckle to some of the users here at WB so we can get them to upload their models to the server, but we have to make the process extremely smooth or we’ll lose them.
It’s a test group for now, but it will quickly grow to potentially all our Revit and Rhino users, hence we have to cater to an extremely homogeneous landscape of confidence with tech.
To install applications to our users we use Microsoft Software Centre, where we (DT) can package up files and scripts (batch or powershell, etc) that will run and install when they (architects) hit the install button.
The idea here is that I wouldn’t want to install the Speckle Manager on our users’ machines and then tell the users to install the Connectors they want. Is there a way to install the Connectors (e.g. just the Revit Connector) directly?
Hey @Tas , thanks for explaining your use case in detail!
Unfortunaley, we don’t currently support that, the main reasons being:
security, by controlling every step from code to installed connectors we can ensure nothing malicious gets deployed to users’ machines
faster rollouts, we release new updates to our connectors on monthly basis (and beta releases on a by-weekly basis). With Manager we can ensure people always have access to the latest and best Speckle
accounts management, Manager is currenlty the only place where you can log into Speckle from desktop
I might be forgetting something, but those are probably enough
Nevertheless, you’re of course free to set up such system yourself by building the connectors in a CI/CD pipeline and then distributing the artifacts via Software Centre.
We’re happy to help if you’d like to explore custom deplyment startegies with us.
Your first 2 points (security and faster rollouts) make perfect sense too, but what I had in mind wasn’t that you guys release the single connectors separately, which I agree would be a pain.
I was thinking more in terms of having some sort of “headless” Manager that could be steered through the command line. Similar to pyRevit for example.
So perhaps Software Centre actually installs the Manager to users’ machines, but it’s also able to pre-install the Revit (or any other) connector with some simple C:> speckle install [revit/dynamo/rhino/etc] connector
I think it would make it easier to adopt Speckle on a larger scale (in our office, but probably in many other firms too?) if we could control the installation process in a bit more detail. Not every user needs to be able to manage the process. Some ppl will probably only need to upload models.
Not sure if I made sense at all, but happy to chat more about it if you want to
I don’t think it’s a blocker for now as we’re just going to release to a few testers for now.
I’ll evaluate if it’s better to just install the Manager and let the few testers install what they want, or if we want to deploy the connectors directly.
Forgot to cross-post here, but we have since a while made individual installers for our connects available and as well enabled system wide installation options:
