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Open ideas have been reviewed by our Customer Success team and are open for commenting and voting.
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.
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.
add webservice definitions to FME Flow roles, so we can control who can access them, it seems if you use FME Flow as connection storage for FME Form, connections are controlled by roles, but anyone can see and use any webservice definition. If I am wrong about this, then this idea can be dropped.
Current situation: FME Flow’s Git integration relies on broad‑scope personal access tokens, which many security policies prohibit.Why fine‑grained: Fine‑grained PATs were created to align access with what really matters—specific repositories, operations, and lifetimes—enforcing least‑privilege and reducing risk. This will make it easier to implement version control because current organizations like ours don’t allow broad scope.Request: Add native support for GitHub fine‑grained PATs in FME Flow version control so teams can adopt it while meeting modern security policies.
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:
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
It would be nice if FME Flow could be set up to communicate with other servers like Autodesk Construction Cloud and Sharepoint using OAuth2- client_credentials. Currently most integrations are based on user authentication which requires users to validate their password once in a while.It could be documentation is not complete for these types of flows or packages are not yet prepared for this. But every integration documentation should have a chapter: how to integrate the client_credentials flow.
When writing PDF it would be good if I could choose to write PDF/A version of the files. PDF/A is an ISO standard specialized for the digital preservation of electronic documents and in several cases it's a requirement when delivering PDF-files to a customer.
Since the old idea was archived
The 'NoFeaturesTester' custom transformer currently out on FME Hub is powerful. However, we're getting pushback from IT from using it in our production workspaces in FME Server. We've benchmarked their work-arounds, and it slows down the workspace significantly (2 seconds with NFT vs. 2.5 minutes with their suggested alternatives). My idea: Harden this transformer and turn into a standard transformer.
Add .ods reader and writer (LibreOffice OR OpenOffice) !
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
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.
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 :-)
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