Hello FME friends,
Server Apps and Automations
FME 2022.2 is coming out shortly (my estimate is about 4-5 weeks), and one of the new features is called "Automation Apps":
Automations can be started on a set schedule or by a certain event, but can also be started by a manual trigger. An Automation App is how you can set off that trigger through an app or webpage.
As I understand it, it's like a workspace app, but the end user supplies information through keys, instead of parameters:
We're already working on articles and videos to go with the launch. But if you've already tried this functionality in the beta version, we'd love to hear your opinion.
In fact, if you use apps of any form in a production project, it would be great if you left a comment below. We'd like to get some feedback on the value that Server apps provide to your workplace.
Best Practice Guide Survey
I recently suggested to a few users that we work together to create "A Community Guide to FME Best Practices", and the response was good. In short, we would combine our experience of using FME and put together a community resource for everyone to use.
So, as a first step, I've created a questionnaire:
It's just 5 questions to ask what format this resource should take, what we should cover, and whether you would like to contribute to the project.
Even if you don't want to contribute any content, I'd love to hear your opinions. What type of resource do you think would be most useful for you?
Next step: I'll contact everyone who wants to contribute and create a place online for us to start discussions.
New Community Badges
As I've mentioned before, the FME City Guesser game is now online with a weekly contest. There are four challenges and a new badge for each. In its first week, the same person won all of the new badges!
So congratulations to jaymiecroucher, and if you want to move towards the top of the badge leaderboard too, click this link to give the game a try.
On a similar topic, I've moved the Webinar Badge app to the Community Cafe server too:
So to redeem your webinar codes, you know where to go!
Partner and User News
Bruce Harold's latest blog post on FME and Esri integrations this time covers ModelBuilder. Did you know that you can incorporate FME "ETL tools" into ModelBuilder?
But do you know why it can help? It can nicely handle parameter oddities. Bruce explains all.
From New Zealand, I see a webinar is planned on FME and Reality Capture Data. Presenters are Kirsty Mackie and Hamish Kingsbury:
The webinar is scheduled for Tuesday, 18 October 2022 at 10:30am.
In France, Veremes presented on FME at Big Data, Paris:
While in Sweden, Sweco is hosting its FME Database Mastery course next week, and the town of Staffanstorp is looking for a GIS engineer with FME skills.
Safe News and Info
Server Downloads
I saw that a user this week queried the size of our FME Server downloads. The full product is a 3.3GB file. The engine by itself is 3.8GB. How can it be that the engine alone is larger?
Luckily they - and you - don't need to worry. The full installer just uses a more efficient compression. We'll fix the engine-only build to use the same. But in the meantime, if you notice the difference, that's why.
Knowledge Base Articles
On the knowledge base this week, new articles include Creating Web Service Connections using OAuth 2.0. The most-updated article is How to Convert Point Clouds to Surface Models.
Also updated, Detecting Incidents in Unbounded Data Streams, and Running Workflows from a Third Party Application with FME Server REST API and Webhooks.
Next Week
Congratulations this week to: Katie M, Thom Leeffers, Ramachandra Nodagala, Satya Sirigineedi, Jonathan Boucly, Danny Meus, Joseph Kearney, Eirik Haverstad (FME Professional Certification); Jan Rykr (FME Server Professional); Simon Hughes (FME Business Professional).
Next Week
Next week there will be no What's Up Wednesday. Sorry, I'm off on a fishing trip.
But City Guesser will keep running and don't forget to comment below if you use Server apps.
