A possible way to improve working with FME Workspaces and informing the end-users about changes.
Documenting the workspaces with Bookmarks and Annotations is the first step in creating a well documented workspace. But what if you want a better way to work, and save all the minor changes you do every day? And find back to a previous version? Also if you share the same workspace with more colleagues either through Github or through a shared drive? Can we benefit more by working a bit more similar by looking to our coders even if we are non-code people? YES!
We also want to inform all the end users of our workspaces / FME Server workspaces / Gallery apps of any changes we have made with the workspace. NOT with a separate word-document we have prepared and they have to look at. NOT by sending an e-mail and say: Hey, we have added a new format. But within the actual workspace itself.
A suggestion to Safe Software to consider would be like this?
1. Start FME Workbench
2. Select Workspace you want to work with
3. Get pop-up:
a. What are you doing today? Enter short description: For instance (Check errors when writing to Shape)
4. Open workbench and you have a new textfield floating on the top left cornver of the canvas
5. When you have “found and fixed” what you should (should only take 5min – 1 hour is) hit SAVE button and a new pop-up. Prefilled with the text already enteretd:
6. This will now be saved in the workspace “History- which few people use?”. And you now have a good track history of the changes.
7. When published on FME Server the last change (and older) can be showcased on the Run Workspace:
And also on the FME Server Apps side.
