Happy Friday, FME'ers! Welcome back to TGIF: Thank Goodness It's FME.
Last week, Zoe and Aaron showed us how FME is opening up to the wider world through custom APIs and AI integrations. This week, we're back with Part 2 — and Shirley, Carl, and Mac are here with three features that'll make your day-to-day FME work faster, cleaner, and a whole lot more manageable. Let's go!
Carl’s Favourite Feature: FME Flow REST API + Swagger Documentation
If you’ve ever looked at FME Flow’s REST API and thought “that looks powerful, but where do I even start?” Carl has the answer. Every FME Flow deployment comes with built-in interactive Swagger API documentation, and it’s a game-changer for anyone looking to integrate with or automate FME Flow without setting up a full workspace or downloading third-party tools.
The Swagger UI is a live, browsable catalogue of every endpoint in the V4 API, organized by category and color-coded by HTTP method. Each endpoint expands to reveal its parameters, request body requirements, response schemas, and, best of all, a “Try it out” button that lets you run real API calls directly against your own FME Flow deployment.
In his demo, Carl walks through a real-world scenario: being asked to investigate a failing Automation, disable it, run a quick test job, confirm the results, and create a new schedule, all from the Swagger UI, no workspace required. Every call also generates a ready-to-use cURL command that you can take straight to the terminal.
And here’s the cool part: it doesn’t stop at the built-in API. With Data Virtualization in FME Flow, you can import or build your own custom APIs, and Flow will automatically generate an interactive Swagger interface for those too.
Check out Carl’s demo here!
Shirley’s Favourite Feature: Show Summary Annotation
As workspaces grow more complex, they can quickly become difficult to read, especially when you’re inheriting someone else’s workflow or revisiting a project you haven’t touched in months. Shirley’s pick is one of those features that quietly transforms how readable a workspace can be: Show Summary Annotation.
Summary Annotations are FME-generated comments that appear directly on the canvas beside any object in your workspace. For Readers and Writers, they display details like data type, name, and attributes. For Transformers, they automatically show active parameters, so instead of double-clicking into every transformer to understand what it’s doing, you can read it right there on the canvas. Change a parameter and the annotation updates instantly. Move the transformer and the annotation follows.
In her demo, Shirley shows how to use a single shortcut (right-click any object or press CTRL+SHIFT+K) that turns even the most complex workspace dramatically more readable in seconds. Whether you’re handing a project off to a teammate, picking up legacy work, or just building something you’ll want to understand six months from now, Summary Annotations mean anyone can follow exactly what’s happening without clicking into a single transformer.
Check out Shirley’s demo here!
Mac’s Favourite Feature: Schedules
If you find yourself manually triggering the same workspace every morning, Mac has the feature to change that: FME Flow Schedules.
Schedules let you automate exactly when a workspace runs, whether that is every hour, every weekday at 6 AM, or on a custom cron expression for more precise timing. Time zones are built right in, so jobs run when you actually intend them to. You can monitor upcoming and past runs directly from the Schedules UI, and if anything changes, updating or pausing a schedule takes seconds.
In his demo, Mac walks through setting up a real scheduled workflow from scratch, covering the key settings that make automation reliable in a production environment.
Check out Mac's demo here!
That’s a wrap on this week’s Favourite Features! From Flow Schedules and custom REST APIs to the show-stopping power of Summary Annotations, it’s clear this team has strong opinions about what makes FME great!