Essentials of Automations: The Art of Triggers and Actions in FME

Essentials of Automations:
The Art of Triggers and
Actions in FME

Kezia
Yu
Technical Support Specialist,
FME Flow
Bailey
Knapp
Technical Support Specialist,
FME Flow

Welcome to Livestorm.
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What is your experience
with FME Flow?

Agenda
1 What are Automations
2 Understanding Triggers and Actions in FME
3 Adapting Existing Workspaces for Enhanced
Automation
4 Transitioning to Automations from
FMEFlowJobSubmitter
5 Next Steps & Resources
6 Q&A
Agenda

Streamline your data workﬂows &
ensure efficient, real-time data across
various systems and platforms with
FME Flow Automations.

Triggers & Actions in Automation enable:
● Increased Efficiency
● Improved Accuracy
● Greater Control
● Scalability
The Importance of Triggers &
Actions in Automation
FME Flow 2024.1

Common Challenges with Triggers & Actions
● Resources: Lack of time or manpower to explore and implement advanced features.
● Knowledge Gaps: Insufficient training or expertise in maximizing the potential of FME for
speciﬁc use cases.
● Suboptimal Workﬂows: Existing processes are not fully optimized, leading to
inefficiencies and potential data issues.

Transform your FME
workspaces into powerhouses
of productivity with the art of
triggers and actions!

Automation Webinar
Series
● May 29: Optimizing FME
Workﬂows with Parameters
● Today! The Art of Triggers and
Actions in FME
● June 19: Exploring Attributes &
Automation Parameters

One platform, two technologies
FME Form FME Flow
Build and run data workﬂows Automate data workﬂows
FME Flow Hosted
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FME Enterprise Integration Platform
Safe & FME

2
Understanding
Triggers and
Actions in FME

Triggers
Listen for and receive messages from external clients
or from within FME Flow

SFTP
Dropbox
Manual Trigger
Azure Event
Grid
JMS
UDP
HTTP Request WebSocket
FTP
System Event
SQS/SNS
SMTP
and
IMAP
SQS/SNS
Topic
Schedule
S3 Bucket
Resource
or Network
Directory
Triggers
Webhook

Complete workﬂow tasks at
speciﬁc times in the future
Monitors activity on a
Resources folder or other
location, and sends
messages about that activity
Receives JSON and other
data in the body of an HTTP
request message
Common Triggers
Schedule Directory Watch Webhooks
Check out our webinar Event to Action: Accelerate Your Decision
Making with Real-Time Automation for more!
● Automated data
synchronization
● Periodic report
generation
● Automatic data updates
from watched folders
● Updating data from
survey submissions
● IoT sensor response to
create an alert

Internal Actions
Process messages between triggers and external
actions, either in an FME workspace, or through
another tool

Run a Workspace Merge Messages
Run a Dynamic
Workspace
Log a Message
Filter Messages
Internal Actions

External Actions
Send messages to external clients or inside FME Flow

Notifications
● Sends out messages containing key
information from previous actions in the
automation
● Can include information on the data
processed or job completion status
● Some allow attachments
Types of External Actions
File Upload
● Receives messages from previous
automation actions and sends out files to
external applications
● Able to define file path and name that is
uploaded

Dropbox
Azure Event
Grid
JMS
HTTP Request
WebSocket
FTP
SMTP
SQS/SNS
Topic
S3 Bucket
External Actions
SFTP

● Make data accessible by delivering data and analytics
insights to clients’ preferred cloud data storage
locations
● Send alerts on job completion status that data upload
processes are halted if validation is failed
● When a citizen submits an application online, the data
is processed and a summary email with relevant ﬁles
is automatically sent out
Applications of External Actions
Common External Actions

Slide Title
Automatically
extract and
process data
Goal Block Key
Directory Watch Notiﬁcation
Result
Manual effort to
extract speciﬁc
information and
send email
Leverage
Resource
Directory Watch
trigger and Email
external action
Data is
automatically
extracted,
processed, and
email sent

● Taking workﬂows to the next level is easy
with automations click and drop interface
● Automations offer a wide variety of
triggers and actions to suit most needs
● Even simple automations save
organizations valuable time and effort
Key Takeaways
Directory Watch Notiﬁcation Demo

3
Adapting Existing
Workspaces for
Enhanced
Automation

Adapting Existing Workspaces
with Automations Writer

Messages & data are passed between Automation components
● Key-Value pairs hold
information about an event
or a user-deﬁned value.
● Parameters can intake
attributes, allowing for
Actions to be run with
upstream values.
● Automation attributes are
based on JSON formatting

Webinar: Essentials of Automations:
Exploring Attributes & Automation
Parameters
Parameters and attributes are
available for each trigger
and action
Ex: User Parameters created in FME
Workbench become Parameters inside
the “Run a Workspace” Action.
Start drawing connections between ports
to use incoming attributes inside an
actionʼs parameters

Routing Data between Workspaces
● Implement enterprise integration patterns
● Send data from within a workspace to other Automation Actions
● Build workspaces to run data-driven parallel processing
● Merge data from other systems

Slide Title
Enrich data that is
sent to other
systems in the
middle of an
automation
Goal Block Key
Downstream Processing
Result
Data is inside
FME Workspace
Use FMEFlow
Automations
Writer
This enables data
to be passed both
into and out of
workspaces that
are in
Automations.

● Automation attributes can pass
messages and data between automation
components
● Automations writer can be used to create
output ports to the workspace action
nodes and bring data out for further
downstream processing
Key Takeaways

4
Transitioning to
Automations from
FMEFlowJobSubmitter
Workﬂows

How often do you use
FMEFlowJobSubmitter
in your workﬂows?

Job Chaining & Downstream Processing
FMEFlowJobSubmitter FME Flow Automations
● More Complex: configuring &
maintenance
● Results in workflows that
have more moving pieces
and seperate
● Easy to use: build, scale,
troubleshoot .
● Have workflow in one visual
view/interface
● Easy to share and document

Slide Title
Splitting out
Actions in
Automations
Goal Block Key
Enhance Workﬂow with Automations
Result
Using FME Flow
Transformers
Automations Job
Chaining
Workﬂow that is
easy to build,
maintain, and
scale

● Split jobs and pass data between actions
using Automations writer.
● Build out Automations by chaining jobs in
sequence or in parallel, replacing the
FMEFlowJobSubmitter.
Key Takeaways

FME Flow Transformers
● Deprecation in 2024.1
○ FMEFlowResourceConnector
○ FMEFlowLogFileRetriever
○ FMEFlowJobWaiter
● Alternatives:
○ FME Flow Rest API V4
○ FME Flow Automations

Chat Storm:
Which triggers or actions
are you most likely to
use?

Achieve
efficient, scalable,
automated
workﬂows with
FME Flow

Resources to Get Started
● Routing Data Between Workspaces in
Automations
● Dynamic workspace Chaining in FME
Flow Automations

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Essentials of Automations: The Art of Triggers and Actions in FME

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