Idea Guidelines

The Ideas board on the FME Community is your space to spark innovation and contribute to the evolution of FME. Here, you can submit your ideas for product improvements, new formats or transformers, and integrations.

We encourage you to not only post your ideas but also explore and vote on submissions from others. Your votes help us understand which ideas resonate most with our community. Adding comments with use cases to existing ideas is also a great way to have your voice heard! 

The ideas that users submit and the votes associated with those ideas are used to guide the Safe Software product roadmap.

Posting an Idea

Tips to Posting a Good Idea:

• Search the FME Community to see if your idea has already been suggested
  • If a similar idea was suggested but you have a different idea, providing a link to the existing idea helps build a use case. 
• Clear title
  • A clear concise title will help your idea be found and voted on.
• Description
  • Explain your idea
    • Add a description of your idea
    • Add what would count as your idea being implemented
    • Add which transformer or format this idea would apply to
    • Add screenshots, data, and workspace templates if possible
      • Zip data and workspaces
      • Try to send a sample dataset that will demonstrate what you are trying to do. The smaller the workspace, the easier it is to troubleshoot. 
  • After posting your idea, continue the discussion by replying to comments, and engaging with the developers if they interact with your idea. 
• Product Areas
  • Add the product area that your idea applies to
• Tags
  • Add tags for formats, transformers, and functionality. 

How to Post an Idea

1. Start a Post
To create ideas, questions, or conversations, you must be logged into the FME Community. Once logged in, click “Start a post” on the top menu bar. 

2. Select Topic Type
From the “Create new post” page, you can create a Question, Conversation, or an Idea. 

• Questions can be anything about FME, Safe Software, or data integration. See Asking and Answering Questions for more information
• Conversations are for general conversations that are not questions. They do not have the option for a “Best Answer.”
• Ideas are for product suggestions or enhancements

On the Create new post page, switch to Idea. 

3. Describe your Idea

• Title: A clear title highlighting your idea’s keywords. 
• Description: Describe your idea briefly, focusing on one idea per submission. 
  • Explain how the idea improves your workflow or use case. 
• Product Area: Which product area does your idea fit? See Product Areas for more information
• Tags: Select an FME format, transformer or other tag that your idea falls under. 

4. Submit your Idea
Once you’re happy with your idea, click Create to submit the idea. Next, share your idea with your colleagues or throughout the FME Community on related questions or ideas to help gain votes. See Ideation to Product (below) for more information on how the idea will move through the workflow. 

Please open a support case if you are trying to determine if your idea is related to a bug. If you are looking for help on accomplishing something OR you are wondering if what you are looking for exists, post a question in our Forums. 

Ideation to Product (Idea Statuses)

• New: Default status after an idea is submitted. Our Customer Success team will review each new idea. 
• Open: An idea that has been newly submitted by the community. It’s open for commenting and voting.
• Gathering Interest: This status is for ideas that have caught the attention of the Product team and are being actively considered for development. 
• In Development: An idea that has moved beyond the consideration phase and is currently being worked on by the Development team. It remains open for comments and voting, which can provide valuable feedback during the development process.
• Released: This status applies to ideas that have been fully developed and integrated into the product.
• Archived: Used for ideas that will not be pursued. This could be because they’re not applicable, duplicated, outdated, or otherwise not in line with the product’s direction.

Product Areas

Ideas can fall under one of six Product Areas. Please select the best product area possible.

FME Form

• Covers All GUI elements in Data Inspector, Quick Translator, Workbench, and Transformer Designer

FME Flow

• All Web UI elements 
• FME Flow CLI
• Flow deployment configurations
• Flow REST API
• Managing roles and permissions
• Integrations for actions & triggers

FME Flow Hosted

• All topics related to instances 
• Flow Hosted dashboard / management
• Managing accounts

FME AR

• FME AR mobile app on iOS

Note: No further development/improvements are planned for FME Mobile/Data Express or FME AR mobile app on Andriod. See linked deprecation notices for more information.  

Integrations

• Covers FME's ability to connect and interact with various external systems and platforms
• New format requests
• Existing reader and writer functionality enhancements
• Custom connector requests (eg, SlackConnector, HubSpotConnector)

Note: For FME Hub content updates, please comment on the component in FME Hub or submit a Support Case if it is a Safe Software owned component. 

Transformers

• New transformer request (eg, I want a built in transformer that converts Time Zones)
• Enhancement of existing transformers (eg, new parameter request)

Feedback on Ideas

When an idea is archived, merged as a duplicate, it is no longer open for comments. If you disagree with a status change of a closed idea, please open a Support Case with the idea name, URL, and your reasoning.