Open ideas have been reviewed by our Product Management and are open for commenting and voting.
When connecting to azure AD through a Web Connection, FME Form uses QT WebEngine to perform the authentication. QT WebEngine does not support conditional access from azure (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/conditional-access/overview).Make an option in the authentication process to choose a different browser for authentication (like edge or chrome where this is supported) or make the QT WebEngine supplied with FME Form support conditional access.
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.
Add an input port for Schemas to enter the FeatureWriter when writing dynamicallyThe FeatureWriter could then ensure it’s received all the schema features before it starts processing the data features. Currently, ensuring the schema feature hits the featurewriter before the data features can be problematic, especially when you’re developing with feature caching turned on.
I have seen use cases where an organisation has its authoritative web and database connections stored in Flow and wants to make those accessible to Form users. However, they don’t want Form users to subsequently be able to overwrite or upload their own connections to Flow in an effort to keep it organised and structured.They achieve this by restricting access to the database and web connections to read/view only. Therefore allowing them to be used in Form and Flow, but not changed.However as Form is now set to use Flow as it’s connection storage, a user can’t create their own as their associated Flow permissions block writing to the connection storage.It would be helpful if you could have both a local and Flow connection storage configured, with the ability to copy between them.This is similar to some ideas in:
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.
Write in OBJ format, support adding id, add unique identifiers and groupings for each model
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 GitLab integration with Version Control
Since the old idea was archived
ESRI exported compact cache files are embedded inside of a .tpk tile package created within ESRI tools for offline usage of basemap data sets. This package contains imagery tiles stored in specified image format, in rows 128x128. Trevor H posted an article on the format here. https://gdbgeek.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/demystifying-the-esri-compact-cache/
It would be great if FME could either use a better IDE for the Python Caller and startup/shutdown scripts or allow testing in an external IDE such as PyScripter. Right now there is no debugging capability and if you want to test your values you have to say something like:print "value is",valueThen look for it in the log file. An internal line by line step through debugger would be useful, or to use an external editor that has a line by line step through debugger, enable PyScripter to understand:import fmeimport fmeobjects
I love the HTTPCaller, SQLExecutor, and FeatureReader, but I have to admit I was confused how to make them work. It turned out I had to use a Creator transformer, which is not obvious. I'd prefer if they just worked without adding a Creator transformer.
User is trying to write out an explicit table https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/office/overview-of-excel-tables-7ab0bb7d-3a9e-4b56-a3c9-6c94334e492c rather than a block of data styled as a table. Currently the data writes out without issue but the table stays as a single row, not expanding to fit the data in the table.Similar to this community thread, and this idea.Currently, FME's Excel writing library does not have support for tables and we cannot modify them. Excel has marked out the table’s extents in the sheet and we are simply appending to the existing range. With enough interest we could add a new library to tackle this issue.
If one Point of the tunnel-connection is selected - you can see the connection line as a dashed line.But if you want to change the view to the other side of the tunnel, you have to navigate by your own.That's not fine for big workspaces. So a possibility to jump to the oher tunnelpoint in the view would be a nice feature :-)
For example, if you need to replace suffix {a, b, c} with {x, y, z}, you will have to use three StringReplacers with different regular expressions. In this example, the StringPairReplacer cannot be used since the source string contains a, b, c within the non-suffix part.sourcedestination1abcaabcx2abcbabcy3abccabczI think the StringReplacer has a room to improve to allow users to define one or more replacement rules. Probably the parameters setting for the above example looks like this.If the user defined two or more replacement rules, the transformer performs every replacement in the order from top to bottom.
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've been working with data virtualization for a few projects now. I like the possibilities, but I think it still needs some improvements to make it easier to use the functionality:There seems to be only one way of linking a data virtualization workspace to an endpoint. And it seems to be a 1:1 relation. I think it should be much more flexible which workspaces can be linked to an endpoint. You're really bound to one way of working. It would be great if you can just create a normal workspace in Form, add an endpoint from there, and link it to the virtualization API endpoint afterwards. When testing with feature caching enabled, it asks for the input json every time again. It is not obligatory to add this input (since it uses the cache), but I do not understand why you keep getting the screen. I would expect that it works the same as a parameter. As soon as it is set (and you don’t change it) it is kept in memory without showing the pop-up every time again. If I'm correct it is not possible to change the namespace of an API after creating it. This is no issue if you just started, but for maintenance in the future this is really something which should be possible.
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.
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