The New Way to Collaborate in AEC

Back in July 2023, we introduced our new web app, inviting 150+ of you to test and share feedback and ideas to help us build a better version of Speckle XYZ (today's legacy app). After a Great Rename and lots of testing and learning, we’re finally shipping the official version of the new Speckle web app.

Speckle Brings You and Your Team Closer

At Speckle, our mission is to enable anyone navigating within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry to perform in the most effective and productive way. The new Speckle web app represents an opportunity to bring our community and AEC peers together and enable multiple disciplines and stakeholders to collaborate successfully. At the same time, managers get a gist of what’s going on in real-time.

To access the new web app, you need to head to app.speckle.systems, while speckle.xyz will be deprecated at some point (more in the FAQs at the end of this article).

In a nutshell, the new Speckle web app offers:

• Clarity & Ease: a smooth and friendly UX / UI to help you collaborate effectively.
• Productivity: all teams can access the most up-to-date data and models to ensure higher productivity and better coordination.
• Strategic Overview: you will never miss out on what’s going on in your team by accessing real-time updates and effective communication tools.

How does the New Web App Differentiate from the Legacy App?

Key changes

You’ve probably heard this already - some key concepts are being renamed: streams, branches and commits are now projects, models and versions. The structure stays the same.

Projects contain multiple models, and each model can contain multiple versions. This change is very important as we believe it’ll make it more intuitive and natural to work with Speckle - no more need to second guess what a branch should be!

• Projects are similar to projects in real life, where you can control access and visibility. Give permission to various stakeholders to view, edit, and visit your work in real-time, enabling smooth collaboration across your team.
• Models can be organised in a flexible way and are infinitely nestable. They enable you to approach your work effectively while customising how it is organised so that it makes sense to you and your team. It can be helpful to think of models as Speckle equivalents of your local files.
• Versions represent snapshots of your data. They are automatically created, allowing you to effortlessly track the changes and history of your model in real-time. Versions enable seamless collaboration and coordination across interdisciplinary teams.

This change represents the tip of the iceberg as we’re also introducing a new look! A modern, easy-to-use, and friendly interface to encourage you and your team to adopt Speckle at scale. Some of you have even referred to the new experience as “impressive”, “smooth” and “creative”.

Features & Capabilities

The new Speckle web app brings back your favorite functionalities from the legacy app and more:

1. Collaboration: Compare Versions, Follow Mode, Embeds
2. Speed and performance: Federations, Faster Speed Loading Time
3. Upgraded experience: Foundation for Automate (Beta)

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So, let's dive in:

1. Collaboration

• Model History & Changes: Related, the Viewer no longer displays one version but a model. This allowed us to enable fast exploration of its evolution and surface some really exciting new product features that previously were only available in competing paid solutions. One of the coolest is viewing the changes between two different model versions: now, at a click of a button, you get a comprehensive result of added, removed, modified and unchanged objects. The best part: it runs in seconds.

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• Embeds: you can embed your 3D model on websites and documents to easily share your work outside Speckle, with your teams and other stakeholders. An example with Notion below:

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• Discussions: Another welcome change is turbocharging comments: they will persist at a model level throughout their versions. This means you can flag an issue in one version and mark it as resolved in a subsequent one.
• Follow Mode: starting a live design review session with your colleagues is now one click away. In follow mode, we sync the spotlighted user’s viewport, sections, filters, etc., with their followers in that session.

2. Speed & Performance

• Loading Larger Models: the new Speckle makes our platform faster and more stable, including loading large models. See it for yourself:

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3. Smoother & Upgraded Experience

• Automate’s Building Block: You won’t be able to access Automate (beta) without signing up for the new Speckle web app. You can already sign up for Automate’s closed beta programme here.
• Federations: Models (formerly known as branches) are now infinitely nestable. They also serve as a strong foundation for ad-hoc federations, with the ability to instantly open any group or subgroup of models in the viewer.
• Onboarding & Resources: We’re introducing a new onboarding experience to support your learning journey. The onboarding process has been redesigned to give you a more comfortable, informative, and useful landing. Expect more tutorials and resources, with video walk-throughs and continuous support.

Try the new web app today!

Terms & Conditions of Use

You don’t have to migrate your data from the legacy app to new Speckle web app. You simply need your login credentials to either log in or sign up.

Hear from our Community:

Jonathan Rabagliati, Geometry and Computational Design Lead at SOM: “I'm a real believer in Speckle, and I really value the responsiveness to users. It's remarkably reliable and incrementally developing."

Mohamed Manseur, Chief Architect BIM Coordinator at CSCEC: “Everything is great for the new features, it’s becoming faster and faster.”

Jason Sachs from figureForward, architect, creator of day1bim Tools, Associate Assistant Professor ensa Grenoble / Université Grenoble Alpes: “The Viewer is so nice, especially sharing the model with non-professionals.”

You can watch our latest Community StandUp recording for a live demo of the new web app:

Upgrade your Speckle Experience Today

We know how important effective collaboration is in the world of AEC. Enabling different disciplines to seamlessly work together will drive efficiency and productivity across your organisation. With the new Speckle web app, expect collaboration to rise. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think about this new experience and can’t wait to see what you build next!

You can subscribe to Speckle News for monthly product updates:

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FAQs

Q. How do I get access to the new Speckle web app?
Head to app.speckle.systems and log in using your existing credentials. The new web app is configured to consume the same data as the legacy app (speckle.xyz), and therefore no migration is needed.

Q. What happens to existing models and scripts using the Legacy Speckle URLs?
All legacy URLs to legacy streams and commits will redirect to the relevant new URLs.

Q. Are the API endpoints changing?
The GraphQL and REST APIs continue to support the legacy queries and paths as-is. Additional GraphQL queries support new terminology. These can be mixed and matched. The viewer introduces a LegacyViewer object, which can be a shim between the new viewer API 2.0 and legacy methods.

Q. What about the desktop connectors?
Our desktop connectors are already compatible with the new web app! You can publish and load versions of your models using our 20+ connectors from the new Speckle web app. Starting on 2.18, our official connector release will natively support the new web app URLs and naming conventions.

Q. How do I access the new web app from connectors? What about URLs from my existing files?
You can now upgrade your accounts from Manager for Speckle 2.13.0. Simply open Manager for Speckle and click to upgrade your account. All official Speckle connectors and your existing files should work seamlessly with new web app URLs.

There are, however, currently two exceptions: Blender and QGIS:

• For Blender, legacy URLs can no longer be pasted directly once you've upgraded your account via Manager for Speckle. The workaround is to reformat your URL to use the new projects, models, versions format, and your URLs will work fine then.
  
• For QGIS, once you’ve upgraded your account via Manager for Speckle, QGIS does not automatically use these upgraded accounts with old legacy URLs. The workaround is to add back the account you upgraded, pointing at your legacy server. Your existing URLs will continue to function within QGIS.

We are working on supporting this within QGIS and Blender for a future connectors release.

Q. What happens with my existing Grasshopper and Dynamo scripts?Your existing scripts will work with both new and old URLs. No change is required, but you should consider using new URLs.

Q. Do the C# and Specklepy SDKs Support the new web app URLs?
Yes! You can currently use old and new URLs with our SDKs (using the StreamWrapper class). However, see below regarding multi-model URLs.

Q. What about connector and SDK multi-model URL support?
Please note that multi-model URLs and URLs with federation filters are not currently supported within connectors or our SDKs. This support is being considered for future releases of the SDK and connectors, particularly for Grasshopper and Dynamo Nodes. We’ll update you if this support is added.

Q. What does “Upgrade Account” mean?
Manager for Speckle will check your registered accounts and highlight any pointing to a “Legacy” server. This is one where the old terminology is still alive. In the case of the Speckle public server, where both experiences are available on the same server, this option allows us to “Upgrade” your account to the new web URL of the same server.

Manager for Speckle will also notify you of accounts to upgrade on launch if you have enabled desktop notifications.

Q. But I’ve already been testing the new web app.
If you have two accounts registered to the public Speckle servers, you will be prompted to remove the legacy one, which will now be considered a duplicate.

Q. I have existing saved exchanges in my Revit/Rhino/Navisworks document.
If you upgrade your connectors to the latest (>=2.18) version, Speckle will handle your upgraded account and enable it to be used seamlessly with the new Speckle URLs. So, don’t forget to update your connectors to 2.18.

Q. When will the legacy Speckle stop existing?
The legacy app on speckle.xyz for Speckle will enter security maintenance later this year and will receive security updates as required.

Q. I am self-hosting; how do I get the new look?
First, ensure you are up-to-date and using the latest version of Speckle Server to get the new look. We recommend backing up your database before upgrading; instructions for this can be found in our guide.

If you deployed your self-hosted server using Docker Compose, please refer to the Docker Compose file in our documentation. You should amend your Docker Compose file to match the updates in our documentation. The Docker Compose file in our documentation uses the new look by default.

If you deployed your self-hosted server using Helm for Kubernetes, you must enable frontend_2, by adding the following to your values.yaml file:

frontend_2:
enabled: true


Please follow the instructions for deploying the Speckle server using Helm, as described in our documentation.

Q. I have found bugs or have feedback; what should I do?
Head to our Community Forum for real-time support, or submit feedback using the User Feedback form.

Thanks for tuning in, we can't wait to hear what you think about this new upgrade!

Try the new web app today