Getting Started

Video tutorial

Accessing and logging into the platform

You access the Cloud of Things platform via a URL in a web browser.

Supported browsers

Supported browsers in this version are:

• Microsoft Edge (latest Chromium-based version)
• Mozilla Firefox (latest Extended Support Release [1])
• Google Chrome [2]
• Internet Explorer 11 [3]

[1] Only the latest Extended Support Release of Mozilla Firefox is explicitly supported. Possible incompatibilities will be removed during the regular maintenance process of Cloud of Things. Due to frequent upgrades of the Mozilla Firefox consumer release, the compatibility of Cloud of Things with other versions of Mozilla Firefox cannot be guaranteed.

[2] The Google Chrome support is based on Google Chrome Version 84. Due to frequent version upgrades of Google Chrome, compatibility of Cloud of Things with future versions of Google Chrome cannot be fully guaranteed. Possible incompatibilities will be removed during the regular maintenance process of Cloud of Things.

You may also use recent smartphone and tablet web browsers. We have tested our products with the following mobile web browsers:

• Chrome on Android (latest version) on Galaxy smartphones and tablets
• Safari on iOS (latest version) on Apple iPhone and iPad

URL

To access the applications for your Cloud of Things tenant, use the following URL:

https://<tenant-domain>.ram.m2m.telekom.com/

This will direct you to the login page of your default application. See Tenants in the Cloud of Things OpenAPI Specification for further details on tenant ID and tenant domain.

How to log into the platform

On the Login screen, enter your username (case-sensitive) and password.

If you use one of the public cloud instances of the Cloud of Things platform and log in for the first time, you will see a cookie banner at the bottom:

• Click Agree and Proceed to accept the default cookie settings (required and functional cookies enabled).
• Click Reject all to reject all of the default cookie settings.
• Click Preferences to select your individual cookie preferences:
  • Required - Required to enable core site functionality. They perform a task or operation without which a site’s functionality would not be possible. Required cookies cannot be disabled.
  • Functional - Used to track site usage and to process personal data to measure and improve usability and performance. Functional cookies must be actively enabled.
• Click See also our Privacy Notice to open the DT IoT privacy statement with details on the DT IoT privacy policy.

Select the Remember me checkbox if you want the browser to remember your credentials, so that you do not have to enter them again when opening the application the next time. This is especially convenient if you frequently switch between Cloud of Things applications, as the Cloud of Things platform will request you to authenticate each time when starting an application. You can make the browser “forget” your credentials by explicitly logging out.

Finally, click Login to enter the Cloud of Things platform. Initially, you will be taken to the Cockpit application (if not configured differently).

To explicitly logout, click the User button at the right of the top bar, then select Logout from the context menu.

How to reset your password

1. Click the Forgot password? link on the Login screen.
2. In the resulting dialog box, enter your email address and click Reset password.
3. Check your email account for an email from the Cloud of Things platform support providing a password reset link.
4. Click the link in the email and provide your new password.

If you yourself are the primary administrator, your email address used on first registering is automatically stored with your user. If you have questions, please contact product support.

How to access pages using URLs

You can navigate straight to any place inside a Cloud of Things application using the respective URL. For example, to show the basic information for a device, you can enter the following URL:

https://<tenant-domain>.ram.m2m.telekom.com/apps/devicemanagement/index.html#/device/<id>/info

Using such an URL, you can:

• Save bookmarks for specific devices or pages.
• Send emails with a link to devices or sensor data manually or automatically, using the real-time event engine.
• Use the backward and forward navigation of your browser.
• Write your own web applications which link directly to information contained in a Cloud of Things application.

Standard platform applications

Per default, Cloud of Things comes with the following three standard applications:

Apart from these standard applications that initially come with Cloud of Things, various additional applications are provided, offering a wide variety of functionalities. The availability of this applications depends on the Tenant you are using and the applications your organization is subscribed to.

Find a detailed list of all applications available with Cloud of Things in Administration > Managing applications.

On top of this, the Cloud of Things platform provides broad functionality to add your own applications to be used in your Cloud of Things account, see Administration > Managing applications for details.

The content of the Cloud of Things platform therefore is entirely dynamic and is generated based on various criteria:

• The applications that your organization has subscribed to.
• The applications that your organization has configured or developed itself for Cloud of Things.
• The functionality that your user is permitted to see.
• The configuration of the user interface, such as groups and reports.

UI functionalities and features

Main screen elements

The general structure common to all Cloud of Things applications includes the following screen elements:

Element	Description
Navigator	On the left you find the navigator. At the top of the navigator the name and logo of the application is displayed, indicating which application you are currently using. Below you find a list of entries leading to the various pages of the application. The entries are grouped into menus and menu items. You can collapse or expand menus in the navigator by clicking the menu name. Clicking the small arrow at the very left of the top bar will hide/or unhide the navigator. Per default, it is visible.
Page	"Page" actually refer to the main area in the application. The content provided here depends on the menu item selected in the dashboard. The structuring of the content differs from page to page. Data can for example be displayed in a list with a row for each object or you can find it being presented in a grid in which objects are represented by cards.
Tabs	Some pages, for example the page of any particular device, are divided into several tabs, either displayed vertically or horizontally.
Top bar	Page title At the left of the top bar the title of the active page is displayed, if any. Search button Clicking the Search button opens a search field to enter text for a full-text search. For details, see Searching below. Not always available. Application Switcher button Clicking the Application Switcher button opens the application switcher which allows you to quickly switch between applications. User button Right from the Application Switcher button you will find the User button with your username. Clicking it will open up a context menu with commands related to your account settings. Other buttons/ information may be available in the top bar depending on the application and the page being displayed.
Top menu bar	Depending on the active application and the active page, a secondary bar is displayed below the top bar providing further functionalities like a Reload link for reloading the page or a Realtime link for the display of realtime data.
Right drawer	Clicking the user icon at the very right of the top bar will unhide/hide the right drawer, offering access to the user settings, quick links to other applications and to relevant documentation. Per default, the right drawer is hidden.

On smaller screens, the layout is slightly different. The navigator is hidden and can be accessed by clicking the arrow icon on the top left. Only the active tab is displayed. To switch tabs, click the arrow on the tab header and select a tab from the list.

Application switcher

The application switcher allows you to quickly switch between applications. Click the Application Switcher button at the right of the top bar to display a list of icons representing applications.

The application switcher shows all Cloud of Things applications you currently have access to. These can be subscribed applications or custom applications. Just click the icon for the desired application to open it as active application.

If you are using Software AG Cloud, the application switcher also shows other Software AG Cloud applications at the first level, followed by the Cloud of Things applications.

Search and filter functionality

Full text search

Cloud of Things provides a full text search, available through the Search button at the right of the top bar in the UI.

On entering a search term into the textbox at the top of the Search window, Cloud of Things returns all assets (groups, devices, child devices) matching the search criteria.

Under Search results, the assets matching the search criteria are shown. To see more details click Go to the assets table at the bottom right. This will show the entire search results in a table format, see also Device management > Grouping devices > Subassets page.

The Search window only lists a limited number of matches. In case of more matches, to see the complete results you must switch to the asset table.

Exact match

By default, the search option Exact match is applied.

The underlying search functionality is based on the MongoDB full text search. For details, see https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/text-search/.

Entering multiple words separated by a blank returns all objects that match any of the words. For example, entering

My Demo Device

will return objects containing “My”, “Demo” or “Device”.

If you want to search for objects matching an exact phrase enclose it in quotation marks:

"My Demo Device"

You can also exclude words by putting a hyphen before the word to search the inventory for objects containing, for example, “My” or “Demo” but not “Device”:

My Demo -Device

Case is ignored. The following search texts return the same result:

My Demo Device
my demo device

Alternative search options

Other than with filtering, using wildcards in a search is not supported.

Instead, you can switch the search option by clicking one of the following buttons:

• Starts with,
• Contains or
• Ends with.

This will search for assets starting with, containing or ending with the search term, respectively.

Filtering

Some pages offer a filtering functionality to filter objects in a list.

As opposed to the search functionality, on entering filter criteria you must not necessarily enter complete words.

In many cases you can just enter any arbitrary text into the text field, even just 2-3 characters. Entering

cl

will reduce the list to all objects containing the string “cl”.

In other cases you may enter * as wildcard character to return all objects starting with “cl”:

cl*

The list will immediately be reduced to the selected objects.

For details on the filtering mechanism in the devices list refer to Device management > Viewing devices > To filter devices.

Real-time behavior of the navigator

In the navigator, changes are not updated in real time, meaning new, removed or renamed devices or groups will not be updated immediately.

You will only see such changes in the navigator of the application, in which you have made the changes.

Example

If you unassign a device from a group in the Device management application it is immediately removed from the group in the navigator of your current application. However, if you have another window open with another Device management application, you won’t see the changes, but will only see the changes after a refresh or another request (expanding a group in the navigator for example).

User options and settings

Clicking the User button at the top right opens the right drawer which provides access to various actions and information.

At the top you find the following items:

Change the language in the UI settings section. Reload the page to apply the new language setting.

The user interface language will be selected along the following criteria, in the order listed below:

• The language selected in the Cloud of Things user settings.
• The language selected in the browser preferences.
• The operating system language.

The UI is available in the following languages:

In the Platform info section, you find information on the infrastructure of your platform:

• The ID of your tenant, which might be required if you request support. Click the copy icon next to the tenant ID to copy it to the clipboard.
• Release version information for both the backend and the UI.

Moreover you can click Detailed info to download more detailed platform information.

The Quick links section provides links to the most common pages and processes in the platform while the Documentation section provides links to the most relevant guides.

To change user settings

Several account settings can be changed by the user.

1. Click the User button at the right of the top bar and then click User Settings.
2. In the Edit user dialog box, make the relevant changes.
3. Use the Product experience toggle to opt-out from the product experience tracking by Gainsight which is enabled by default if you accepted functional cookies.
4. Use the In-product information toggle to opt-out from the Knowledge Hub which is enabled by default.
5. Click Change password to change your current password, see To change your password for details.
6. Click Set up two-factor authentication to set up two-factor authentication and increase tenant security.
7. Click Save to apply your settings.

To change your password

1. Click the User button at the right of the top bar and then click User settings.
2. In the Edit user dialog box, click Change Password.
3. Enter a password and confirm it.
4. Click Save to apply your settings.

Make sure to select a strong password. To support you in doing so, a password strength indicator is displayed along with a password change.

By default, the password must meet the following conditions:

• Consist of at least eight characters (this parameter can be configured by the Management tenant, see Administration > Platform configuration settings.)
• Include each of the following character types:
  • uppercase letters: [A-Z], for example ABCDEF.
  • lowercase letters: [a-z], for example abcdef.
  • numbers: [0-9], for example: 123456.
  • any other symbol from following list `~!@#$%^&*()_|+-=?;:'",.<>{}[]\/ as a special character, for example !@#$%^.