🎶 On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 🎶... 12 Best Practices to extract the most value from FME! The FME Integration Platform is filled with readers, transformers, and writers to help your data flow freely between applications. It's also full of various features that can help you troubleshoot, plan hardware upgrades, and keep your environment safe and secure. We're bringing back this top talk from our FME User Conference by popular demand as a special Christmas treat. Whether you are installing FME for the first time or planning your next upgrade, this is the presentation for you. Join our Support Specialists Sienna and Chris as they share tips, tricks, and best practices that you can easily implement in your organization to get the most value from the FME Platform. To follow, we’ll host a Q&A session to answer any questions you may have to make the most out of these tips & tricks as you apply them to your own workflows. Reserve your free seat today. We hope to see you there!

1. FME Platform Best Practices

2. FME
User
Conference
20
22
Christian Berger
Customer Solutions Specialist
Sienna Emery
Customer Solutions Specialist

3. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Part I: FME Desktop
1. Configuration
2. Authoring Workspaces
Part II: FME Server
1. Capacity Planning
2. Managing Resources
3. Security Configurations
Resources
Agenda

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User
Conference
Part I: FME Desktop (aka Workbench)
Configuration Options

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FME
User
Conference
Configuration
Installing multiple versions of FME
Desktop
• Always match your
production FME server build
number
• Beta (testing)
Upgrading FME Desktop
• Document previous build
number OR keep the old
build installed
Generally, workspaces are NOT
forward compatible

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FME
User
Conference
Personalize your FME Experience
FME Options has a lot of
options:
• Workbench
• Translation
• Appearance
• Toolbar
View > Windows

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FME
User
Conference
Web Services & Connections
Give web services,
connections, workspaces a
meaningful name
Existing Web Services
provided by Safe are for
demonstration purposes
and may stop working at any
time (Sheets)
• For production use, we
recommended obtaining
your own client id and
secret

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FME
User
Conference
Authoring Workspaces

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FME
User
Conference
An ideal workspace is
annotated and logical
sections that are contained in
bookmarks.
• Searchable
• Collapsable
• Explains what is happening
at a glance
Main benefit:
Easier to understand and maintain
Bookmarks & Annotations

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FME
User
Conference
Authoring Tips
Rejected Feature(s)
• Errors / Rejected features
often contain valuable
information
Feature Caching
• Only use when authoring
workspaces
Upgradable Transformers
• If it isn’t broken, don’t
upgrade it
* If you do upgrade the transformer, keep
a backup of the original workspace

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FME
User
Conference
Prepare for Collaboration
Naming Workspaces
Understanding Workspaces
• FME Desktop Best Practices
• Workspace Metadata
• Description & History
Table

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FME
User
Conference
New to FME 2022.0+
Visual Workspace
Compare and Merge
Compare two workspaces
simultaneously, seeing the
changes between the two
workspaces.
Ability to merge modifications,
adds, deletes.
Versioning and Collaboration

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FME
User
Conference
Part II: FME Server
Capacity Planning

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FME
User
Conference
Job Statistics
• Elapsed Time: End Time -
Start Time
• CPU Time: total machine
time
• CPU %: CPU Time / Elapsed
Time
• Peak Memory Usage: Peak
Memory of Engine - Engine
Memory before run
Understanding FME Server Metrics

15. 20
22
FME
User
Conference
Learn queue control
Queue control is a mechanism for targeting FME Engines to run specific jobs. The
reasons for using queue control include:
• Sending jobs to an FME Engine in close proximity to a data source.
• Sending jobs to an FME Engine that supports a particular format
• Reserving an FME Engine for a scheduled task.
• Reserving an FME Engine for quick jobs.
• Sending jobs to CPU Engines

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FME
User
Conference
Choosing a Deployment Architecture

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FME
User
Conference
Common Hardware Scaling Questions
1. Are there any optimal
hardware setups that would
affect the speed at which the
FME Server Engines performs?
2. Since we will be running some
fairly processing-intensive
scripts is there a suggested
setup?

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FME
User
Conference
FME Desktop workspace log
files (last few lines):
Where to Start
INFORM|FME Session Duration: 9 minutes 9.9 seconds. (CPU: 484.1s
user, 4.0s system)
INFORM|END - ProcessID: 14356, peak process memory usage: 1164584
kB, current process memory usage: 857028 kB

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FME
User
Conference
Memory
• Workspace dependent resource usage footprint
Disk Space
• Temp space (cache), temp files, Python, & creating local files
CPU
• 1 dedicated core per engine
Tech Specs / Legacy Tech Specs
Deciding to Scale the Hardware

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FME
User
Conference
Managing Resources

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FME
User
Conference
Standard upload location for
data:
• Network Drive
• FME Server Backup consideration
Performance Consideration:
• Where is your data stored (i.e.
Network Topology)
• DB/File Share Data ←→ Engine
Managing Connections &
Resources
Who or what roles should have
access to:
• Connections
• Resources
• Repository
• Database/SDE
• Publishing workspaces

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FME
User
Conference
Security Configurations

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FME
User
Conference
Securing FME Server
Reset Password
Password Policy
Active Directory / Azure Active Directory (Available in FME Server
2021.2+)
SAML Authentication (2022.0+)
Configuring HTTPS

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FME
User
Conference
When in Doubt, Reach Out

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FME
User
Conference
FME Server:
1. Admin Guide
• Deploying &
configuring FME
Server
2. Best Practices Guide
for IT Ops and Server
Admins
• Top security
resource
3. Troubleshooting
Guide
• General
troubleshooting
tips
FME Desktop:
1. Getting Started
Guides
• FME Desktop,
Geodatabase,
CAD, JSON, etc.
2. Articles
• Known Issues
• Performance
Tuning
3. Documentation
• Help
Top Resources
General:
1. FME Hub
• Connections
• Templates
• Transformers
2. FME Academy
• Data Integration
Best Practices

26. 20
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FME
User
Conference
Live Chat: Quick
recommendations &
tips
Monday to Friday
• 9am - 12pm
• 1pm - 4pm
Pacific Time (PST/PDT)
Community Forum:
How to related
questions, ask
anything here
Available 24/7
Global user base:
• Safers
• Partners
• Users
Support Outlets
Support Case:
bugs, enhancement
requests, licensing
1 on 1 with our
FME support team

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FME
User
Conference
THANK YOU

28. Thank you for joining us today!
Contact: info@safe.com
Questions?