+45Using FME Flow with Esri ArcGIS Software – FME Support Center
If you are using version 2025.1+, you must download the Esri ArcGIS Connector from the Hub and use the new readers and writers. Workspaces authored in previous versions will need to be upgraded. For steps to upgrade, please see Working with Esri ArcGIS Feature Services in FME.
Am I interpreting this statement correctly? There is effectively no backwards compatibility in 2025.1 for workspaces that connect e.g. to an ArcGIS portal?
+12Thanks for pointing that out! The phrasing of that text block was quite confusing.
As mentioned at the top of the article you linked, “Starting in FME 2026.0, the legacy formats will be hidden in the Quick Add menu.”
Moreover, this article “Working with Esri ArcGIS Feature Services in FME” (see the “Visibility Change for the Stand-Alone Esri ArcGIS Feature Service Formats” section) provides additional context:
“As of FME 2026.0, users will no longer be able to add new instances of the stand-alone formats to their workspaces. Workspaces that already use these formats will continue to work as expected in FME 2026, but users will begin to see warnings in translation or job logs indicating that the older formats are deprecated, followed by a recommendation to replace the older format with the newer Esri ArcGIS Feature Service packaged format.”
Additionally, until FME 2026.0, only critical bugs will be fixed in the stand-alone formats.
So to summarize, it is best practice to download the Esri ArcGIS Connector from FME Hub to use the new reader/writer when authoring workspaces in FME 2025.1, since workspaces created in an earlier version will eventually need to be upgraded.
I hope this clears up any confusion.
+45Thanks for the clarification. It didn’t seem quite right.
Understand that these will need to be upgraded in due course, but relief that they won’t necessarily need to be upgraded on day 1
