Differences between Teams and Workspace and why I just cannot make this work...

[bbaker 0]

I apologize in advance for what will just be a complaint and I have already opened a ticket but now I already know more about my situation.

 

First a little background, I have been part of this since the beginning.  I remember the days of "host" printers and the start of DigitalFactory.  I designed and manage a 3Dprinting curriculum at a University that supports 100s of users and I have always been reluctant to adopt cloud based solutions and just this week UltiMaker has help proved again why I have avoided cloud based solutions.  I can make my lab work on a local network fine but personally I love DigitalFactory and it was I always used both at home and at work so last semester (Aug2023) I made my students register for an UltiMaker account as a trial for my course.

 

This went so well that this semester (Jan 24), I made this mandatory and I was planning on going to an all cloud based solution (I have 2 other system that also work all cloud based) but low and behold, UltiMaker has changed something (~Nov23?) where Teams are gone and are replaced by Workspace or something?  I am sure the change was intended to be seamless but it is anything but seamless to me.  I cannot get any of my students into either my Workspace or my Team and this is causing continual frustration right at the start of what is otherwise an awesome course - so thanks UltiMaker, you are doing an great job of ruining my student experience....

 

Yes, I am sure there is a solution; yes, I am sure it probably related to my University's overbearing IT rules but I have made it work before; and maybe I will get there but for now I have to go backwards and go back to LAN only and also try to explain why cloud based printing does not always work.  A teacher just simply cannot do this to students: if you make the process difficult, students will disengage and the process will become laborious not educational.  To make it even better when a vendor makes these changes midstream with what appears to be limited overlap it just begs this type of problem.

 

I am sure I will catch some heat back from this but not nearly as much as I have from my students.  I just cannot begin to explain my frustration with something that should have been simple...

 

MORE than happy to discuss in person.  I am an easy guy to find.

 

R/Ultimaker Innovator 2020 (although even that link is dead lol )

[Dustin 130]

Hi there,
I am sorry to here you are having these issues.

I am not able to locate a support case under your registered email address on the community.
Can you please contact UltiMaker Support directly so we can look into this issue with you?
Here: https://support.ultimaker.com/s/contactsupport

UltiMaker does not provided direct support via the community.

Edit: 
I found your case, i will raise this to the Digital Factory Team

[bbaker 0]

Thanks and a member of the Digital Factory Team did reach out to me and we went through my issues in great detail and it was extremely helpful.

 

For posterity, I do want to add some final comments so my initial comments do not come off as too much whining.  My fundamental issue was at one point everything was working very well and dozens of users were using Digital Factory any Ultimaker printers very easily.  This was so successful that I made the process mandatory; however, an admittedly very small change in the implementation caused the next group of students to not work in the same way - although possibly I could have forseen that.  This lead to a complete disruption in my workflow and every student reaching out to me individually which is just too much trouble and the frustration causes students to lose interest.

 

However, once I fully understood the new process it was very easy to bring in the new students, although this also had an impact on my old students, so while not perfect, I was able to remedy the issue pretty quickly.

 

So there is good news.  First off, UltiMaker was EXTREMELY responsive and helpful and I think we both learned something during this issue, and secondly, I learned that the new process now also incorporated MakerBot (yes, I know the companies merged a year or so ago) so now my Digital Factory includes my MakerBot printers which currently outnumber my UltiMaker printers and now makes Cloudprint.makerbot.com (which I like a lot less) not required.  This was an unexpected but very welcomed change.

 

Bottom line, thanks UltiMaker, specifically Sergii for the great help.