Shape the future of FME with your ideas
Open ideas have been reviewed by our Customer Success team and are open for commenting and voting.
I have a need to send Kafka header information as part of a producer workflow. Currently header information is only available to receive as part of a consumer. Note that headers for sent messages are not available.
Allows the user to be able to gracefully handle failures
In FME Server 2019 on the email subscriptions protocol settings there is a drop down Load Template menu to populate some of the settings as per popular email services.It would be nice if we could add a custom template to that list, to use when setting up new subscriptions, rather than having to duplicate an existing subscription.
In our standard FME Flow training course we have one excercise where Workspace A does some checks on user parameters and if they are succesful it runs Workspace B through an FMEFlowJobSubmitter.One of our trainees accidentally set up the FMEFlowJobSubmitter to run Workspace A instead and when he published it to Flow he made a recursive loop: every time Workspace A ran, it queued Workspace A again. I was busy helping somebody else at that time so when I got around to his question I noticed it had ran 17000+ jobs in a matter of minutes. These were low-impact jobs, so it wasn’t an immediate problem, but it’s safe to say that this has the potential of completely overwhelming an FME Flow setup.After talking to Safe we decided to post it as an idea here to see if others have come across this as well or have opinions about it.The big question would be:Should FME be able to detect these recursion risks?And in a broader sense: have you had this happen to you? Or something similar that you think FME should be able to detect and warn you about?
Instead of clicking the green magnifying glass, imagine "hovering" over a port to see a live sample of the data (schema and first 5 rows) in a pop-up, like in the picture below:
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.
When inspecting features, particularly identifying point geometries, I find myself wanting to visualise the Identifier attribute for alot of points, sometimes along lines and centre of polygons. Obviously desktop GIS have this functionality…. but I’m asking to build on the Mark location option which already has a Label option. Can this same code be added under the Display Control, where users edit the styling of each dataset/layerData Inspection lacks functionality to add simple labels for a point dataset/layerA workaround in workbench is to use LabelPointReplacer transformer to create text geomSo the updated UI will need Label section in the drawing style… and as pictured belowability to select the Attribute Value column and make this the label text the font and colour would be nice label size (replacing font size?) may also be of assistance, though projected coordinates are likely needed to display in metresDisplay Control drawing styles to include a Label
Having user-configurable syntax highlighting colors to FME’s syntax highlighting (Python, SQL, Expression Editor), similar to how Visual Studio Code handles token-based color customization would be a nice addition.I find some of the default colors for JSON syntax highlighting to be difficult to read, so it would be great if there were some customizations for this.Text Editorhttps://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/syntax-highlight-guide
With the upcoming release where a Python IDE will be integrated with FME, the next, and most important logical steps is to pass cached data into the IDE for the purposes of debugging calculations and logic flow. I do not know how the integration with the Python IDE will be released but being able, at design time, to open the IDEA in debug mode is a powerful way of seeing how cached data flows into the PythonCaller, through the python logic, and then back out again.
PDF/Word documents have the ability to create form fields for users to fill in. Looking for the ability to auto-populate some or all of these fields from a database record. Ideally, the writer would accept a template .docx or .pdf and allow the field from the database to write to a field in the form.
I can’t see an obvious way to do this already at FME 2024.2, but it would be nice to be able to set the “Out Fields” parameter on ESRI service readers.Often I only need a handful, or even only 1 field from feature classes with enormous schemas. It would be nice if that could be configured in the reader itself seeing as the rest endpoint handles this parameter.Something like this as an example:
Currently, we can only set the default layer color in the DWG Writer using a color index. Various CAD standards also work with layer colors based on RGB values. I would like to see this expanded so that it can be set using both color index and RGB values.This will avoid having to create templates with thousand of layers manually (extensive cad standard).
The ISO-8601 standard for week numbers in the DateTimeConverter is missing the Week 01 - 53 implementation, where week 01 is the one with the first Thursday of the year. This is referred to as %V in other scripting languages. Can this be added as a DateTime function?
Custom Transformers to automatically output a Rejected port which returns all Rejected ports from within the transformer
I believe this was mentioned in a webinar, but being able to import an endpoint’s schema - from the dataset it is going to be accessing of course - without having to manually create every property would be a great thing to have. This could be from a local file, cloud source, anything. Beyond saving time, it should also ensure accuracy.
Hi FME Server Team,I would like to request an enhancement to the FME Server REST API.API Endpoint:/transformations/jobs/completedEnhancement Request:Currently, it is not possible to filter completed jobs by their finish time using this endpoint. I would like to request support for querying completed jobs by finishTime, in addition to filtering by repository and workspace.Use Case:For monitoring and automation purposes, I need to programmatically retrieve jobs that have successfully finished within the past 5 minutes, filtered by a specific repository and workspace name.Example Query:repository: <repository_name>workspace: <workspace_name>completed successfully (completedState: success)finished within the past 5 minutes (finishTime >= <timestamp>)Having the ability to query by finishTime (ideally with support for both a start and end range, or a relative time based on current time eg. last 5 minutes) would greatly streamline our integration workflows.Thank you for considering this request.
Currently, FME Workbench allows users to define parameters in custom transformers or published workflows, but the ability to provide detailed guidance for each parameter is limited. I propose adding a new feature to User Parameters that enables authors to attach rich descriptions to each parameter. This would include:Formatted text (Markdown or HTML) Web links to documentation, tutorials, or external tools Images or diagrams to illustrate usageWhen a user runs the workspace, they would see an information icon next to each parameter (show it only if it has content). Clicking this icon would open a dedicated window or pane displaying the enhanced description, helping users understand the context, expected input, and any dependencies or external resources required. BenefitsImproves usability and user experience, especially for complex parameters. Reduces support requests by providing self-service guidance. Enables better documentation and onboarding for new users.
Further, it would be convenient if the description and Workspace/Transformer Help would be synchronized automatically, for published parameters.Add Description field to Add/Edit User Parameter dialog (below).For published parameters, link the Description and Workspace/Transformer Help. If you edit Description of the parameter, apply it to the Help automatically, vise versa.
FME Flow currently has columns in the Jobs Completed screen like the workspace, source, date/time, engine, etc.What happens for bulk dynamic data replication is you need to run the same fmw multiple times with differing parameters. e.g. a SQL Server to SHP Downloader that runs on a single table at a time.Whilst yes you COULD run the workspace only once (reading hundreds of thousands of features), this not only adversely and unnecessarily affects server resources but means a single error affects all data. Instead, it’s best to run the workspace multiple times (once per SQL Server table) via say a FMEFlowJobSubmitter.In FME Flow this means you get the Jobs screen full of hundreds of the same workspace with a differing date. There’s no way to tell at a glance what parameters caused the 10 out of 200 jobs of the same workspace to fail.I’d like to see a parameter exposed in the Jobs screen so that I can see at a glance that Table ABC and XYZ failed. Not that Workspace123 failed 10 times with unknown parameters. Yes, I’m aware you can click into each job manually and that yes we could setup a log-reader workspace to do this. Or that we could setup a postprocessing task. I have setup such before - but it’d be nice out-of-the-box in the Jobs screen.This could be a standard parameter or a FME Flow parameter that can be set by the author (e.g. linked to a Published Parameter).Thanks.
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.
This enhancement will allow full automation of attachment backup workflows using ESRI ArcGIS feature services or geodatabase attachments being backed up to ArcGIS feature services.Currently, even with the ESRI ArcGIS package, you need to manually configure the feature service feature URL on a FeatureReader so that the features’ featureID can be passed to the ArcGISAttachment connector.Implementation would be sinmilar to the Publish Action item of the ArcGISOnlineConnector which exposes the _webservice_url
Hi there,In this article (Configure user attribute mapping with Azure AD SAML Provider – FME Support Center), a group claim can be setup to pass an AD group name which aligns to a role in FME Flow. As a group claim could be based on a search criterion and many AD groups could be returned which is a common method of Enterprise group membership in ArcGIS Enterprise software. I was wondering if this could be used to grant several roles to a user?Looking at controlling access to repositories, who can view workspace and who can run a job, etc via AD group assignment.Thanks
If you have ArcGIS Pro installed on your machine then you have access to the arcpy.geocoding module with its Locator class, which can be serverless. This puts geocoding in the hands of anyone with (say) a file-based locator.
The Tester and TestFilter transformers have five distinct Comparison Modes:Automatic Numeric Case Sensitive Case Insensitive Date/TimeAs well as the option to Specify Per Test.The FeatureJoiner and FeatureMerger transformers have three Comparison Modes:Automatic String (presumably the same as Case Sensitive, above, but I have not validated that and don’t see it specified in the documentation) NumericAnd the way that these transformers are designed, they are inherently “Per Test” or per “Join On” condition, as it were.The general Idea here is to make the Comparison Modes more consistent across transformers - there are likely other transformers that could be included in this, beyond the four mentioned above.Case Sensitive, Case Insensitive, and Date/Time could be useful in the Feature-type transformers, in addition to the Test-type transformers. There are other ways to achieve these, of course, but there may be value in having them readily available. The order in which Comparison Modes are listed could be consistent - this is a minor point.If the various types of Comparison Modes are already tailored to best match each class of transformer, then the idea may not have merit, but posing it in case others could see any value in the proposed change or a similar change.
This idea has come up in the 2016 thread (now released) about adding any output ports to FeatureWriter but the use case for Rejected features remains - e.g. some web-based format has a transient HTTP error, the failed features need to be retried after a wee delay, or a field overflows and can’t be written. @markatsafe @rylanatsafe you guys were on that thread. FeatureReader has a Rejected port, very handy for retry logic in a looping custom transformer, lets see it for FeatureWriter!There might need to be a Rejected port for each output port if you're going to loop it, or filter on feature type before looping to an input.
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