Shape the future of FME with your ideas
Open ideas have been reviewed by our Product Management and are open for commenting and voting.
The 'NoFeaturesTester' custom transformer currently out on FME Hub is powerful. However, we're getting pushback from IT from using it in our production workspaces in FME Server. We've benchmarked their work-arounds, and it slows down the workspace significantly (2 seconds with NFT vs. 2.5 minutes with their suggested alternatives). My idea: Harden this transformer and turn into a standard transformer.
After an Active Directory group is imported, synchronization will add any new Active Directory users within that group to FME Server Users. Currently if an Active Directory user is removed from the Active Directory group or is deleted and FME Server is synchronized, the group is removed from the role on FME Server, but the FME Server User remainsManually removing the account sometimes gets missed. I would like to be able to remove those accounts from FME Server. For organizations that heavily use Active Directory it would be nice to have a checkbox option to automatically remove Active Directory type accounts that have been removed from Active Directory or an imported group.
Possibility of including images inside Annotation . Is better when we want to document our Workspace with images.
Summary Annotations contain a lot of information, and therefore take up a lot of screen space. On the other hand, summary annotations dynamically display the settings of a transformer, which can be better than using static Annotation.Therefore it would be nice to have the possibility to select what information is shown in a Summary Annotation.This would have the benefit of showing only the settings the user deems relevant, while at the same time automatically updating this information when these settings are changed.
It would be nice to add tunnels to FME Flow Automations like you can with FME Form workspaces. It would help organize complex automations and make them fit better in the UI.
There’s various suggestions out there explaining how to get the number of features written during an automation:https://support.safe.com/hc/en-us/articles/25407494315789-FME-Flow-Get-the-Count-of-Features-Written-in-an-Automation However, these processes seem a bit complicated given that the count exists in the log for the workspace. Maybe I am wrong and it would be very complicated to access this number.For the “Run a Workspace” action, I would like to have “Total Features Written” included within Output Attribute → Success → Event Attribute:This would allow it to be utilized in downstream actions such as emailing.Also, you would be able to use it within custom attributes and that would eliminate the need for additional workspaces, automation writers, split-merge blocks and http requests.
When a Flow App is created there is an option to customize it by adding header, footer and icon images. Often this will be a company logo or something that is common to all Apps.Currently, the images for each App need to be uploaded individually.It would be great to be able to reference a file from a Flow Resources location to avoid repeated uploading of the same image(s) for each App.
The current customization options for FME Flow Apps is quite poor. FME Flow Apps have the potential to be a centralised focal point/application for organisational/enterprise level ETL; however, they currently allow for minimal flexibility and design when it comes to styling.The lack of flexibility and options for design improvements mean that even with greatest graphics/design eye in the world, FME Flow Apps are often left looking nothing more than a data dropzone, workspace runner or ‘Click to Download’ link.Expanding the options for image customization and editing, greater flexibility in text design, or incorporating HTML would greatly enhance the visual appeal of FME Flow Apps. This would increase visibility and improve perceptions to none FME users who are given access to a Flow App.Documentation could also be created in the form of a technical article on ‘Designing and Styling an FME Flow App for your Organization’ to support this process.
Currently in FME Flow Automations, when using the “Run Workspace” action, the job queue must be selected from a fixed list of predefined queues. There is no ability to dynamically select the job queue using a published parameter or automation attribute.This enhancement proposes adding support for parameter-driven job queue selection, allowing users to pass a value (e.g., from an automation attribute or published parameter, etc.) to determine which job queue is used at runtime.
I fully understand that Safe wants to make the sending of Success or Failure emails in FME Flow Automations more granular. But the big issue for a lot of us users is that we are at a severe disadvantage due to limitations our IT faces with getting the whole SMTP info set up correctly in FME Flow Automations. For this reason alone, I think it would be useful for there to be a basic emailer that can provide us users with an option for actually being able to use FME Flow Automations and send the one thing we need … An email with success or failure info. As for our company (And I’m sure this is the case at a lot of companies) we can’t use FME Flow Automations and that’s a real waste considering we have a lot of uses for them. Sadly, the Emailer has become the major dealbreaker for us. It’s out of our control as users and wish there was a viable easy option to just have an emailer that can send without having to be tied to a company’s email server.
Hello,I have noticed that any question with hyperlinks posted on the community goes to the moderators for review now. I think this slows the process of answering questions as the questions are reviewed by moderators in another timezone and would take a day to publish and another day to get answered.My idea would be remove the moderators review.Thanks
A parameter is like an argument that is static. A variable, however, represents a state and can be dynamically created and assigned in a workspace. I wish FME workspace UI exposes variables the same way it exposes parameters or attributes. Converting variables to attributes via VariableRetriever does not help, as attributes are about content while variables are about states and flow control.I am in agreement with @bambography in his or her post. https://knowledge.safe.com/questions/34563/can-global-variables-be-accessed-as-values-in-tran.html
To Clear the entire feature cache a user has to go to the first transformer, right click it and select clear data cache. Or start and stop the translation quickly.I’d like the option to clear the entire cache when I right click anywhere in the canvas and additionally a clear cache button in the toolbar would be nice.This would help speed up the development process and improve user workflow for a feature that already exists but could be improved.
Currently a User Parameter of type Choice can be configured as a drop-down, and the user is permitted to edit the choice, or it can be defined as a list or tree and allow multiple selection. But it cannot be both multi-select and allow choice edit.I would like the ability for the user to add values to the tree view in multi-select mode.
I’m trying to write features to an esri feature service, but getting “fatal errors” from the feature service that is causing the entire FME workspace to fail. I should be allowed to decide what to do if a “fatal error”, much in the same way that I can choose how to handle rejected features (Terminate Translation or Continue Translation).FME should just “fail” that single request and continue writing features out. Examples of where this would be useful:
When using a FME Server App which fails for some reason there is no built in way to return an error message to the user. It is always an unknown problem.It would be great if there was a way to return a few more details to the user. This is particularly important when an invalid dataset is uploaded. Without a workaround there is currently no way to let the user know their data needs to be fixed.
When using the GeometryReplacer sometimes the coordinate system isn’t defined - for example with GeoJSON. It would be nice to have an optional field to define the coordinate system at the same time as replacing it. A geometry replacer followed by CoordianteSytemSetter is fun, just would be neater to have it bundled together
Introduce native integrations with enterprise secrets managers:- Direct API integration with the likes of AWS Secrets Manager and Azure Key Vault.- FME Engines dynamically retrieve database passwords, API keys and OAuth tokens at runtime directly from a secure vault, ensuring sensitive credentials are never stored locally or inside workspace files.
I submitted this question 5 yrs ago. Still not a solid solution for this issue. To date i have had to create 3 different systems (matching records) between, autodesk, esri, fme and trimble. And for some unexplained reason fme started obfuscating their naming system when you use CSExtractor to Coordinate System `_UTM83-13_0' parameters: CS_NAME=`_UTM83-13_0' CS_ORIGINAL_NAME=`UTM83-13' But the Idea is. Add a method of smartly matching the trimble projection found in the jxl to the fme espg, or esri or even autodesk projection. Find a way to standardize this. I know if i try to project something to the incorrect project it tells me outside of coordinates. It seems there are many ways to get these matched especially when there is an existing system name.https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-ReadersWriters/jobxml/jobxml.htm this indicates that coordinate systems are now supported in jxl. is that the case?
Please improve the FeatureWriter editing experience for large numbers of feature types. Suggested enhancements:Allow input ports / feature types to be sorted alphabetically, for example by right-clicking the FeatureWriter on canvas and choosing Sort. Inside the FeatureWriter dialog, support sorting selected or all feature types, either with a Sort command or beside the move up/down controls. Add bulk-edit behavior inside the FeatureWriter so multiple feature types can be selected and common per-feature-type settings can be applied to all selected items at once, similar to multi-select property editing in IDEs such as Visual Studio.This would make FeatureWriter much easier to manage when working with many feature types, especially dynamic schema-heavy sources. Right now feature types can be manually reordered, but there is no efficient sort or bulk apply workflow. This would streamline “create if needed” tables and changing to operations to UPSERT while setting specific or common update key field; “Match Columns” Also, the bulk change to the table qualifier and other “apply to” like behavior will bring up the parity with the classic Feature Writer workflows.
It would be helpful if FME Server 2017 had an SFTP Watcher. Currently the regular FTP Watcher does not support SFTP. I am aware that the Notification Service supports SFTP subscriptions but currently in 2017.0.1.1 there is no corresponding SFTP publication option.
I've noticed that the Safe Software YouTube channel has recently started publishing more short tips, tricks, and workflow videos, which is great to see. I really appreciate the effort to create more educational content for the FME community.I do have a few suggestions that I think could make these videos even more engaging and effective.1. Audio qualityThe biggest issue, in my opinion, is the sound quality. It often sounds like it was recorded with a fairly basic microphone and includes noticeable background noise. Since audio quality has a huge impact on viewer retention, investing in a better microphone, cleaner recording setup, or basic audio post-processing would make a significant difference.2. Editing and pacingMany videos feel longer than necessary. Tips that could often be explained in 30–60 seconds are sometimes stretched to 3–5 minutes. Today's audiences are used to concise, information-dense content, so tighter editing and faster pacing would likely make the videos more useful and easier to watch.3. Overall production qualityThe videos would also benefit from a more polished production style. A simple screen recording is useful, but adding zoom-ins, highlights, annotations, quick cuts, clearer structure, or occasional graphics would help viewers focus on the key points.If video production is not a primary focus for the internal team, it might be worth collaborating with someone who specializes in educational video production, YouTube content, or short-form technical content. Even a small improvement in production quality could make the videos feel more professional and help present FME in the best possible light.The technical content itself is valuable. I simply think that better audio, tighter editing, faster pacing, and a more polished presentation would help these videos reach a wider audience and make them more enjoyable to watch.Thanks again for creating more content for the FME community. I hope you'll continue publishing more videos.
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