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 would like to see SAML and Office365 authentication added to the HTTPCaller so that it can access information from more different online sources.
Hello FME Community 👋We at Safe Software are busy working on some exciting FME Platform enhancements, many focused on product security. We would like your thoughts on one of the ideas that is currently up for consideration.We’ve received previous requests to add OpenID Connect authentication support to FME Flow, and we think that OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication could be supported broadly across both FME Form and FME Flow.So, before we dive right into development efforts on this idea, we’d like to know what you think about it! Would you benefit from the FME Platform supporting OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication? If so, can you provide a brief description of how FME supporting OpenID Connect authentication would enhance your experience with the FME Platform? We are also looking for anyone who might be interested in testing out our implementation of OpenID Connect authentication, once available. If you would like to be included as an early tester, please indicate that interest in your response!Here’s a bit of background on OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication. If you’ve ever tried to create an account with a new app you’ve downloaded, you might be presented with options to use another account (like Google or Facebook) to login to the new app. In this way, you can use an account you already have, instead of creating a new account. This is OIDC authentication at work, and can be considered an extension to the OAuth 2.0 protocol already supported across the FME Platform. More information on OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication can be found by visiting the OpenID Foundation’s How OpenID Connect Works page. We look forward to hearing from you on this exciting idea!
With libraries like DuckDB in your Python environment, as is the case where you either have ArcGIS Pro or Enterprise on your FME machine, or you’re using ArcGIS Data Interoperability, then it is easy to retrieve potentially millions of features from an S3-API compliant object store or other web source in seconds, but it’s a bottleneck to send them on into the workspace one by one.I would like to see performance like reading CSV files brought to PythonCreator.There is a possibly related existing idea Introduce a Python Dataframe Creator/Transformer but I don’t want to confound using dataframes with this idea, which is fundamentally about performance.Dataframes might be how this idea is implemented, but my guess is that would be a heavy lift for Safe, another way might be a way to output an aggregate feature.
To get to know your current amount of Dynamic Engine / CPU Usage Credits you need to navigate to the Licensing Menu within the FME Server GUI. To see this, you need the proper permission that should not be granted to a lot of people. A possible way to make this information more accessible could be done via the REST API. Right now, there is no such endpoint. Accessing the credit amount via the REST API will give you the opportunity to automatically get the Credit amount and, for example, enables you to monitor the usage and reduction of you credits. This monitoring could be done via FME Server itself or by implementing the REST API request within a third-party application (like Grafana).
It would be nice if the RasterExpressionEvaluator would include math functions like @max(A[0],A[1],A[2]) similar to the expressionEvaluator
Migration Note: Idea originally posted on 2016-04-20
The following improvements to Role Based Security would be useful:1.Increased Granularity for Job Viewing and Job Management PermissionsI need the ability to allow users to see specific other user’s jobs and logs rather than all jobs and logs. We use different service accounts for different enterprise projects and currently I am having to share all jobs/logs with users so they can monitor their processes. Since not all groups need to see each other’s jobs this is not the best solution. (Thank you Safe for new search options in 2019 as they slightly help with this issue.)Likewise, in the current Role system being able to view all jobs requires job management permissions which let users cancel jobs in the queue or terminate running jobs. This puts me in a difficult position regarding how we implement SOX compliance. It is preferred users be locked out from managing running production processes. If the ability to view all logs but not manage jobs was made available that would be a move in a positive direction. If the option to say kill queued jobs but not running jobs was an option that may also be useful.2. Additional Options on Database ConnectionsHaving a Read option alongside the Full Control option for database connections would be excellent. I am seeing issues when I grant users access to connections without giving them full control over a connection. Since we have many processes using the same named database connection it is not ideal to grant users management access since one incorrect change by any user with access could disrupt jobs for all users using the connection. Something similar to how the Notification items are broken out would be amazing.3. Automatic Content Sharing with Administrator AccountsIt would be helpful if FME Server automatically shared user created content with members of the Super User role. If this could be an option for the FME Admin role that would also be appreciated. I have a plethora of users creating content and when they ask for help it is cumbersome to have to share their content with myself and my fellow Admins before I can help troubleshoot.
I would be good to have the ability to add new keyboard shortcuts for various menu and submenu items. At the moment most functions have shortcuts, but others do not including the "Update Reader..." and others which get used often.Having the ability for user to add new shortcuts and perhaps customize existing ones would be good for UI and better tailor the tool to the functions users use the most.
If a FeatureWriter is set to write dynamically, then the port which accepts the schema features should be a dedicated schema port, and not the main port that handles the features to be written.This is the design the FeatureReader transformer uses, and more recently the SQLCreator, to have a dedicated schema port. Dynamic writing can be done either by having a schema feature enter the writer before the features to be written, or by having each feature carry schema list attributes that describe how it should write. Potentially adding a schema port would make that second dynamic write pattern unviable, but we have tools now like the SchemaScanner to produce a schema feature for any workflows which would need to change from this.Also there are occasionally bugs where the writer tries to write out the schema feature, or schema attributes. Recently in 2023, a GDB writer will warn you that the schema attributes need to be renamed to follow GDB field name restrictions.It would be much more consistent design, and easier to teach how dynamic writing works if the FeatureWriter had a schema port to receive the schema. It only needs to appear when the write mode is set to dynamic.
An integration with monday.com api would be nice!
Write in OBJ format, support adding id, add unique identifiers and groupings for each model
The obj reader looks to support obj "Groups" and "Objects" - it seems that these bring in an OBJ as an aggregate of mesh features.At the moment it seems like the only way to create something similar is to give the objects a unique appearance name so that the output OBJ separates the meshes. This seems a bit hacky to me.It also means that it's not really possible to perform a "round trip" with OBJ files which support this group/object feature. It would be nice to have this supported - either via format attributes or by geometry properties. Being able to do this would enable output objs to have more value in tools like blender where groups or objects can selected. A use case is in City Models - if Roofs and Walls for example could belong to separate groups then in blender it might be possible to apply materials to all Roofs or Walls. As it is at the moment the resulting obj will typically just be a single mesh.
Multi-leaders are a core AutoCAD annotation object. FME can explode MLeaders on read but cannot write back to DWG as Mleader. This blocks end-to-end DWG automation workflows that modify and write back DWG files.Adding MLeader write support would allow users to recreate and update leader geometry, text content, and annotations programmatically.Another object key object which needs writing support is the AcDbTable or AutoCAD Table.Supporting these two key objects would significantly improve holistic DWG editing and automation capabilities in FME.
Add option to hide "Browse Resources" button on FME Server App. It confuses some users and there aren't usually any files users need to access in the resources. We prefer to design the input parameters on our apps as simple as possible to avoid overwhelming users with too many input fields and options. Minimizing the upload functionality to only one one button will certainly make the input apps more compact and easy for users to use.
Add GitLab integration with Version Control
The AutodeskDocsConnector currently requires a file URN. This is contained within the URL used by ACC, but in encoded form. It would be helpful if you could also just paste the ACC URL directly into the connector and have FME do the parsing internally.
In Autocad layer colors can be defined either by index or RGB.FME doesn't have a way of validating RGB layer colors. It looks like FME is doing a best guess using the color index here, but unlike with objects we don't have something like autocad_layer_true_color where we can find the exact RGB values.
During workspace testing I often use a lot of different parameter values. When I have a certain version ready for deployment or a next iteration, I would like to (re)set all the parameter values at once. This could be to the parameter default values or clear all values.My suggestion is to add to the Navigator pane:User Parameters (root)Published Parameters (sub)Private Parameters (sub)FME Server Parameters (sub)right mouse click options:Set all parameter values to DefaultClear all parameter values
As discussed in this q&a, output from the FeatureWriter is not included in the Total Features Written stat at the end of a workspace log and thus also not included in the job results page on FME Server. This can be confusing and potentially misleading so I'd like to suggest adding these numbers to the total.
I’m trying to download files from a SharePoint environment using the SharepointOnlineConnector transformer in FME. After a certain period, we hit the timeout criteria, and SharePoint becomes unavailable/unreachable.According to Microsoft’s documentation, there is a Retry-After header option that can be used to introduce a delay after each API call:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/embedded/development/limits-calling#patterns-and-best-practicesHowever, I cannot find this option among the parameters of the SharepointOnlineConnector transformer:https://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME-Form-Documentation/FME-Transformers/Transformers/sharepointonlineconnector-pkg.htmQuestion:Is it possible to extend the transformer with a header clause where we can set the Retry-After parameter? Or is there an alternative way to implement this behavior in FME?
Often, I’m dealing with large amounts of spatial features, but only need the non-geometry attributes. Reading in a national dataset of small polygons must add a lot of time to the process. Reading it all in and then removing geometry is a small saving, but not much. Could we have a ‘no geoms’ option in Feature Reader/Reader?
I often filter duplicates immediately before counting via a StatisticsCalculator. This led me to think that a ‘count unique values’ setting in the StatisticsCalculator could save a preceding DuplicateFilter each time, so that’s the idea.
Similar to the Regex Editor, I’d like an interactive window for creating and fine-tuning JSON queries.Bonus points for a live view of the query output using cached attributes.
The Esri ArcGIS Connector hub package includes the ArcGISBranchVersionManager transformer which currently supports List, Post and Reconcile actions.This idea is to support querying version differences using the version management Differences API endpoint, including resultType and async parameter options.The use case is to find edits that are to be propagated to an external (to ArcGIS) system in an efficient delta transaction. Usually it will be the default version state at two moments that will be queried, as it is the default version that will be propagated to the external system.In the legacy traditional version reading scenario, an SDE reader could extract differences with a Baseline Historical Date and Time constraint, this idea is an equivalency issue for branch versioned data.
Sometimes you only realize after a while that you need some followup action after a writer. This results in deleting the writer and inserting all the necessary information into a new FeatureWriter.I think it would be helpful if you could convert a normal Reader or Writer to a FeatureReader/ FeatureWriter.
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