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.
The FME Sharepoint reader and writer support a boolean "attachment" field, but can't read or write attachments themselves. It would be great if FME added support for attachments so that they can be downloaded or uploaded via the Sharepoint reader/writer.
It would be really cool if I can write output as a PMTiles (https://github.com/protomaps/PMTiles) file.PMTiles is a single-file archive format for tiled data. A PMTiles archive can be hosted on a commodity storage platform such as S3, and enables low-cost, zero-maintenance map applications that are "serverless" - free of a custom tile backend or third party provider.
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.
There are times where I would like to store more complex data as a parameter, I have resorted to json or comma-separated text (multi-line text parameter). This is mostly private parameters that specify data source, configuration or possible some initial data. In nature this data is tabular, most of the time.Maintaining json/text in a parameter dialog today is cludgy Getting the data into features requires multiple transformersNow, wouldn’t it be nice with a table parameter type? Using a parameterfetcher could possible read the table into a list, that one can just explode/expose. Maintaining the data in a dialog set for a table would also be easier… !
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.
It would be nice to have FME Flow have file extension restrictions as to what types of files can be uploaded to the resource folders. The ability to restrict types of extensions, especially executable, would be a major safety addition to Flow. If this could be added by user/groups level, that would allow the sys admins to restrict or allow file types based on their groups. For example, some users only allowed to upload CSV files, others more privileged users can upload spatial datasets, others can upload anything except executable. This also will have the benefit of keeping the resources clean and not be a dumping ground for less experienced users not knowing what the intended purpose of that resource is.
When we create a Web or FME Server connection in a workbench it automatically gets prefixed with myname. And then when published to Flow we get the same…. is it possible to create these connections with a more generic name, I’m not connecting as “robert.mcpherson” and it doesn’t seem to matter but this is an enterprise system and I will be for ever named in the system. I guess it doesn’t matter but it doesn’t seem a very “enterprise” thing
It would be really useful to have the option to install FME Flow with no pre-installed workspaces, no inactive automations/schedules, no topics/publishers/subscribers, and no AR App. Just the bare minimum: the Admin user and the default roles (fmesuperuser/fmeadmin/fmeauthor/fmeuser).All the other utilities and example content could instead be made available through FME Hub for download as Flow projects when needed.On a related note, I also question the usefulness of the default “Temp” resource connection, since it isn’t required by the system and isn’t automatically cleaned up. For new users especially, its presence can be confusing.
To my surprise, there is no option to add headers to an HTTP request in Automations. We need this option. In the meantime, I'll go back to Workbench :(
As an FME Flow User, I want to be able to redirect jobs from one queue to another so that it may run on a different engine while another job is occupying the originally intended engine. At this time, the only relative alternative is to cancel the job and resubmit using advanced drop down and selecting a job queue. The problem with this solution is that this interrupts an automation’s natural flow.
All the grids in FME servers are not sortable by users, sorting is the very basic function expected by all users from any software these days.Please allow users to click on any column header to sort ascending/descending/removing sort for a given column. The user should be able to hold the shift or control key to choose multiple columns to sort. The sort function should work for all supported data types in the column, e.g. Number, text, date, user, etc.
FME Flow APP with dynamicParameterData is great!However, I have installed the FME flow APP on my PC, and I would prefer to open the installed APP directly instead of a new web page. The progressive web application (PWA)) APP gives a better integration / look and feel.
In an Automation email action, we would like to use deployment parameters to set the following parameters:SMTP Server SMTP Server Port SMTP Account SMTP Password Connection security (less important)Motivation: we have clients with an important number of automations that use the “Email (send)” external action. When the smtp server settings change, e.g. between DEV and PROD environments, it’s a significant amount of manual and error-prone work to change these settings consistently in all the automations. It would be a big help if these settings could be set using deployment parameters:
Data Virtualization is a great tool to share functionalities and data translation results standardized. One great thing is the automated creation of an interactive Swagger UI documentation, which enables also non FME users, as one part of the target group of Data Virtualization, the accessibility to translations. Comparing the Flow Rest API with an automated Data Virtualization, it would be great to have the opportunitiy to authenticate with a token. Missing field for token in Data VirtualizationToken field in Flows REST API (v4)
On FME Server flag out Workbenches that are Part of an(one or more) AutomationWould be more comfortable in case of editing the Workbench or in organizing between Repositorys.
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.
Currently the JSONValidator only validates syntax, whereas the XMLValidator allows for Syntax only or Syntax and Schema.The Schema can defined as per http://json-schema.org/documentation.html
Idea: cancelling a job will rollback the whole transaction of all features for Snowflake WriterObserved behavior: cancelling a job in FME Flow will stop additional features from being written, but features that have already been written to Snowflake are already committed without any rollback of the transaction. There is inconsistency between “Features Written’ as recorded in the job log and actual features written according to Snowflake logs. The job log records zero features written while there have been many features written to Snowflake despite job being cancelled.Desired behavior: cancelling a job in FME Flow will stop additional features from being written and rollback any partial changes the job has just done. Outcome: improved management of jobs.
With the recent release from Leica regarding their BLK360 scanner coupled with Autodesk ReCap software the use of this format type will become widely used and delivered as a finished project file. In fact, I already have some .rcp files that have been delivered (although .e57 or .las files would be better). As such, please consider adding the .rcp format within the Reader Gallery.
It is really handy to set multiple presets in 2019 and this makes life a lot easier but i'm missing the ability to share these settings/presets with my colleagues. I would really love to see an export/import button or even a linked button so when changing some of the settings in the given preset it also changes everywhere else.
I need a method for ensuring workflows that include a single workspace being run multiple times triggered by the output of an automations writer are run consecutively not in parallel.In a similar way to how the Workspace Runner in FME Form ‘Wait for job to complete’ option works.I don’t want to simply assign these to a queue with a single engine as I want the first job to pick the first available engine.
[A Message from Product Management at Safe Software] This idea has been refined from its initial posting. The original description is preserved below for reference.The built-in “admin” user account in FME Flow lacks support for modern multi-factor authentication (MFA), including 2FA or passkey-based login. This poses a security risk, especially in environments where organizations rely on local accounts as a fallback when identity providers like Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) are unavailable.This idea proposes adding support for MFA/2FA/Passkeys to FME Flow’s local system accounts. This is critical for scenarios where SAML, LDAP, or Entra ID integrations fail or are temporarily offline, leaving only the local admin account as an option for access. Dear All,I would like to see FME Flow provide native built-in feature to allow users to run FME Schedule or default Dashboards -→ JobHistoryStatisticsGathering.fmw use Microsoft Entra SSO (FME) SAML-based admin accounts.We purposefully disable local “admin” users, since FME Flow doesn't provide 2FA/MFA option for local users but set it up to use Microsoft Entra SSO (SAML) with mandatory 2FA.Your support is appreciated :)Cheers,Reno
It would be nice to format the font (i.e. increase size, bold, etc.) in FME Flow Automation annotations. I understand that font size is somewhat controlled via browser settings and/or monitor resolution, etc. However, it would be nice to be able set bold for text elements or underline headers, etc. If it could mimic the functionality in FME Form, great, if not, a few font/text formatting options for annotation would be helpful.
The usage of deployment parameters greatly simplifies switching between test and production environments.When workspaces are used in automations, which reference deployment parameters in transformers, it is not possible to get the information from the corresponding “Run a Workspace” action whether deployment parameters are used and what values they have. The workspaces must first be downloaded and opened in FME Form to see, if deployment parameters are referenced in FME elements.Is it possible to use a symbol in the action to indicate that deployment parameters are being used and to include an overview of the parameters with values in the “Parameters” tab ins the action details (for example like in my sketch)?Thank you very much.
I would propose a switch in the backend to show or hide the geometry definition input field.My users are all over the place, some of them understand that they have to set a point on the map and are confused thereafter when a whole GeoJSON syntax shows up instead of coordinates they expect, others think they should write a street address in the input field (mistaking the input field for a geolocator), etc…I can leave a message for them but hey, how many will read it...
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