Shape the future of FME with your ideas
New and Open ideas are awaiting review or have been reviewed by our Product Management team, and are open for commenting and voting.
A @PreviousTransformer() attribute written on Rejected features.Our team has extensive "Error catching" for workspaces, where we create "error reports" for features which are rejected from transformers. We typically use an AttributeCreator, and nearly every one lists the previous transformer for faster debugging. Having this attribute would enable us to create presets and/or an Error Report Custom Transformer for many rejected ports, rather than many, many AttributeCreators for the various transformers with rejected ports.
Please consider adding a System Event for Schedule Created. I would like the option to create an Automation when a Schedule is Created it runs an Automation that makes a call to the Rest API to share that schedule with the appropriate Roles/Users. This would ensure neither the Schedule Owner/Admin is responsible for maintaining these permissions which could become tricky to keep track of if there are a high number of schedules being created on a regular basis. This is needed because newly created schedules cannot be shared automatically apart from as the superuser (https://knowledge.safe.com/idea/99535/fme-server-security-full-permissions-for-individua.html).
This idea is a follow up on the following question I posted on the FME community; 'Paste as Text' option for Copy-Pasting to Annotations in WorkbenchPersonally I prefer to have the option to paste content in plain text to (Annotations) in Workbench. When using ctrl-v (as I am used to), the original formatting is preserved.redgeographics pointed out to me that Pasting via right-click -> paste strips the formatting.Although I'm glad there is an option to paste as plain text (without formatting), it's not clear if it is designed to work like this. Also I believe that the current implementation is not so intuitive. Therefore, the core of this idea is to improve the (user experience) upon using different 'paste as' options for (annotations in) Workbench.Some idea's;Within the FME Workbench options, add a default 'Paste as' behavior when using ctrl-v for pasting to workbench.Expand the right-click menu, and split the current 'Paste' option into two new options; 'Paste as Plain Text' and 'Paste as formatted Text'.
This was mentioned at the FME UC in Bonn 2023 in one of the slides for a potential upcoming enhancement and I'd just like to take the opportunity to discuss why I think it would be quite helpful in certain workflows. I think It would be especially helpful to certain applications/companies in the 3D modelling space or online shopping services etc.At present we have a process which takes a set of 3D models (various typical city 3d models) and we build a catalog out of these with the help of FME. As part of that process we call a 3rd partly tool to create both, a preview and icon, out of the models which are included in the catalog. Obviously having this supported directly in FME would be beneficial. I'd also like to add a workflow where that users can upload their own models and in the process an icon is generated. It's much nicer in some ways than a file name or description. At present because our upload process is hosted on FME Cloud I do not have access to the 3rd part tool (Node.JS based).
PowerShell modules are an easy way to automate. There are modules for many technologies such as VmWare, Azure, AWS, SecretServer, SQL etc; a module for FME Flow / FME Flow Hosted API v4 is missing. Possibly Autorest can be used to archive this: GitHub - Azure/autorest.powershell: AutoRest PowerShell Generator - it would be greate with integrated help-files, standard names, much more. $cred = Get-Credential$repo = get-FMEFlowRepository -server fme.contoso.com -Credential $cred | where name -like "*myrep*"Invoke-FMEFlowWorkflow -Server fme.contoso.com -Repository $repo -Workflow test.fmw -Credential $cred
When scrolling through long tables in the Data Inspector I'm often looking for duplicate values. Most times I use a DuplicateFilter to see what values are duplicate. I think it would be more helpful if the Data Inspector can highlight these values for me. Something similar is possible in Excel for example.
Similar to what is in DatabaseJoiner, add the ability to select only certain fields to bring over when using the FeatureJoiner or FeatureMerger, but leave default of bringing over all fields. Would be nice to have this so don't have to use multiple transformers (e.g. using AttributeRemover prior to FeatureJoiner).
For numeric statistics, support a percentile list output in the Summary for integer attributes. The list elements would be the value in the distribution which is less than p% where p = 1,2,3,...99.
I have several workspaces that write to a database, which utilizes the "SQL To Run Before/After Write" feature. Often the "before" actions consists of multiple DELETE statements, to clear tables for insertion of new data.Unfortunately these are run as singular statements. I.e., if an error occurs, e.g. a timeout, the previous deletes are not rolled back, as it would be in a transaction. I've tried to insert an explicit transaction (MS/SQL), but it doesn't work as intended.Why doesn't FME wrap any before/after SQL's as a single transaction, and perform a COMMIT command if all's well, or a ROLLBACK command if an error occurs ?Most databases handles transactions. If a specific database doesn't, just skip this part.
It would be helpful and an ease of use for the users if we can add Open Street Maps(OSM) as the Background Map in FME Data Inspector.
When inspecting data in 3D which has Lat Long for X and Y and meters (or feet) for z the data inspector doesn't handle this very well. The Z axis is treated at Lat Long and so gets greatly graduated. This is not uncommon and can be quite confusing. Especially for new users. There is no way of 'fixing' the view without reprojecting the whole dataset. A button in the Data Inspector to view all units in equal units would be pretty nice. This is essentially already done in 2D where all data get reprojected to match the basemap.
When FME gets to supporting OpenAPI in the HTTPCaller, then to the extent that OpenAPI supports the various pagination approaches, make them available in the transformer.
VUE file reader, a solution to handle 3D models (graphics and object properties) asociated with Intergraph Smart 3D y SmartPlant an data formats .VUE and .MDB2. Hexagon SmartPlant does not support full potential to export to IFC format, so a VUE reader and a transformation process from VUE to IFC files in FME would provide interoperability for AEC companies working with Hexagon software.
Along themes mentioned in https://community.safe.com/s/bridea/a0r4Q00000Hbr7TQAR/reading-from-zip-files-extract-only-file-specified-to-use-less-disk-space-in-t?currentpage=5andhttps://community.safe.com/s/bridea/a0r4Q00000HbrNzQAJ/select-data-in-compressed-files-eg-zip-downloaded-from-an-url-same-way-as-fr?currentpage=7I've got a few hundred zip files, with around 1000 files in each one. The reason they are zipped is because they are json files, so compress quite well, and handling 100,000 files in a directory gets unwieldy.when reading the features in using a wild-carded reader e.g. *.zip[***.geojson]the behaviour seems to be that it sits there for a long, long, long time before starting to read any features. Combined with the messages in the console, this makes me think it's unzipping every zip file before starting to read any features, rather than unzipping and reading in parallel ?Would be far better to skip the entire unzipping and writing to disc stage and just stream the zip file contents, unzipping the the data stream as it gets pulled off the stream and piping it into next process step.There is a python based streaming reader herehttps://stream-unzip.docs.trade.gov.uk/getting-started/https://stream-zip.docs.trade.gov.uk/similar lib herehttps://github.com/allanlei/python-zipstream
Whenever Actions - Remove is done on a Schedule, Resource, Repository, etc... the box next to the, for example, Resource that you want to remove is at first checked, then the checkmark disappears when you do Actions - Remove; it would be more reassuring to the FME Flow users to keep the check mark in the box to left of whatever is to be removed, rather than have the check mark disappear once dialog box for Actions - Remove appears.
Hi there,When the PointCloudCombiner is applied to polygons, it produces grids of points separated by the Point Interval covering those polygons. Would it be possible to add an optional 'origin' to the PointCloudCombiner, to give more control over the positioning of those grids? Thanks a lot!
It seems as if currently there is no possibility to populate a choice parameter dynamically, based on scripted parameters. To illustrate the idea a bit...Offering our clients the possibility to convert geo-data from our database into CAD files we need to know what datasets are available to choose from. Having a Python script returning the table names of the database is easy enough, but then the choice parameter does not take the list to select from.Hence, it would be very nice if we could offer a choice list that's more dynamic.
When working with many values in the AttributeValueMapper, like the case when you have imported from a lookup table, it would be very useful to sort both the columns Input Value and Output Value both numerical and alphabetical. Just like the Table view in Data Inspector works.(there were an old similar idea which got sort of an answer but manual sorting is not what I need when I have many values in the AttributeValueMapper transformer: https://community.safe.com/s/bridea/a0r4Q00000HbrJdQAJ/sorting-attributes-attributevaluemapper )
It would be great to get a warning when publishing a workspace to FME Flow if any disabled Readers/Writers or Transformers are present in the workspace. Often Writers in particular are disabled while testing new changes and I have accidently published these workspaces without realising.
Azure Services Bus as an option in an Automation Trigger, to receive messages from the Azure service bus and use them to start other workspaces. On the FME Hub, there is already an AzureServiceBusConnector transformer. An integration into an automation trigger would be a great addition to this transformer.
This is a minor user experience request. I want to see full version number in the window title and startup screen. Recently, I was using FME Workbench 2022.2.24 yet, both the window title and startup screen only showed a partial version number, "FME Workbench 2022.2." Since I had both 2022.2 and 2022.2.24 installed, this was confusing. I checked FME Form 2023.0.1 and see that it has the same behavior; it only displays "2023.0" in the window title and startup screen.This should be easy to implement and it can only help users. I suspect that the reason the full version number is not displayed is merely because FME has always done it that way. Thank you for your consideration.
This idea is a follow up on the following question I created on the FME Community; https://community.safe.com/s/question/0D7Dm000000dkmTKAQIn short, I noticed that the StatisticsCalculator always expects Summary statistics. In case you only want to calculate Cumulative statistics, you either need toignore the error/warning (redCogwheel) indicating; 'Parameter 'Statistics to Calculate: ' must have a value'provide a dummy attribute to calculate regular 'summary statistics'.Something about that doesn't feel right. It would be nice to also have the option to only create Cumulative Statistics. I guess that may be possible by embedding the regular 'Summary statistics' in a Checked ParameterGroup (and be default checked), similar to how that is currently the case for Cumulative statistics (default unchecked).
This idea is a bit of a follow up on the following question I created on the FME Community; https://community.safe.com/s/question/0D5Dm00000goQFoKAMIt feels a bit odd that in the 'Feature Information' window you can sometimes see that an attribute is of (Data) type 'bytes', but nowhere in transformers or functions of Workbench you seem to be able to leverage this information. E.g. the following two features;feature 1; text (bytes): 48656C6C6Ffeature 2; text (string: UTF-8): 48656C6C6Fare virtually inseparable/indistinguishable in FME. A sample dataset is attached (as zipped FME Feature Store (FFS) file). Therefore, I think it would be nice if the Data Type 'bytes' could get a bit more formal position in FME. E.g.;When testing/filtering with 'Operator' = 'Type is', add the ability to select 'Bytes' as a type.In AttributeManager/AttributeCreator (as of 2023), add option to set Type equal to 'Bytes'In Python FME (Objects) API, add 'bytes' as a formal data type. See e.g. the following; fmeobjects.FMEFeature.getAttributeType — Python FME API FME 2023.0 b23309 documentation (safe.com)
The native Revit Writer only has support for surfaces.It would help the asset management flow to also have support for line and point objects.Point and line data can be used for referencing predefined classes in object libraries or as a basis for new drawings.This is in line (pun intended) of the Revit way of constructing objects such as walls based on heartline or outside line (inner or outer face)
With the current Directory Watch capability, a trigger message is fired for every file change that occurs in the watched directory. This is fine when a workbench is required to process each file change.In the scenario where multiple files are copied into the directory that you want to process all at once (e.g. copy in multiple mid/mif files to be converted into one file geodatabase), a trigger is fired for each file, where you would ideally want one trigger message to say "this directory content has changed".I would like to see an option on the directory watch configuration to allow either one trigger per file change (i.e. the current situation) or one trigger per directory change (i.e. where one or more files have been changed/created). This will then allow the associated workbench to be run once to process all files in the directory.
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