Tutorial: Getting Started with FME Server

Article by MitaAtSafe · Jan 21, 2016 at 11:36 PM · lizsanderson edited · Mar 13 at 07:54 PM

Article created with FME Server 2020.0

Introduction

Welcome to FME Server! This tutorial will give you hands-on experience with the basics of FME Server. In this four-part tutorial, you will learn how to access FME Server, how to publish a workspace, how to create self serve access, and finally, how to schedule a workspace using automations.

Video

In part 1 of this tutorial, you'll learn what FME Server is, tour the Web User Interface, and run a sample workspace. Please note that this video was created with FME Server 2019.0, the interface may vary in other versions of FME.

Prerequisites

If you’d like to follow along with your own FME Server, here are the prerequisites:

FME Server must be installed
- Visit our website for a Free 60 Day Trial of FME Server
FME Server must be licensed
- See FME Server Licensing Walk-Through if you have not yet licensed FME Server.
FME Desktop must be installed and licensed
- Visit our website for a Free Trial of FME Desktop

Step-by-Step Instructions

Section 1: Take a Tour of the FME Server Web Interface

1. Open the FME Server Web Interface

You can open the FME Server Web User Interface in a couple of different ways:

Type in http://localhost as a URL in a browser window
Type in your hostname/fmeserver as the URL in a browser window (the hostname was specified during the installation)
Access it from the Windows Start menu. Find FME Server in the Programs list and click on Web User Interface

2. Log In

If you have just installed FME Server and you haven’t logged in yet, you will need to log in with the default username/password, which is admin/admin. Once you’ve logged in, FME Server will prompt you to change the admin password to something else. Complete this now before continuing. Since this is a fresh install, you will also have to license FME Server before continuing, please see FME Server Licensing Walk-Through for instructions.

If you are on an existing FME Server, you will need to reach out to your FME Server Administrator to obtain your username and password.

3. Tour the Dashboard

Once you have logged in, you will be taken to the FME Server homepage. On the homepage, you can access the main menu, help options, recent jobs, last published workspaces, favorite workspaces, recent projects, recent automations, and your account settings.

On the left-hand side is the main menu, this menu will vary depending on the permissions set up by your FME Server Administrator.

Clicking FME Server at the top will always bring you back to this home page.

The first grouping, which includes Run Workspace, allows a user to select and manage jobs and resources available to that user.

If you are logged in as an administrator, under the Admin grouping are a number of options for configuring FME Server.

The top right corner contains a Help button for links to documentation and articles, including resources for developers.

Next to that is the User Settings button.

Lastly, at the very bottom left, you can find information about the build and version of your FME Server.

Section 2: Run a Sample Workspace

FME Server comes pre-loaded with sample workspaces, which are good to use for testing various workflows. Let’s run one of these sample workspaces.

1. Open the Run Workspace page

On the side menu, click on Run Workspace, this will open the Run Workspace page.

The Run Workspace page allows you to run any workspace that has been published to FME Server. From here, we will need to set up a few more parameters before the workspace can be run.

2. Choose the Samples Repository

You can think of a repository as a folder in which to store related items. FME Server comes with three repositories pre-installed: Dashboards (which contains several workspaces that run daily by default to track server performance), Tools, and Samples. We are just interested in the Samples repository, so select it.

3. Choose which Workspace to Run

FME will narrow the workspaces down to only those in the repository that you selected. Click on the drop-down next to Workspace and select austinApartments.fmw. When the workspace is selected, it will auto-populate the Service, ensure that it was populated with Data Streaming. We will discuss Services in more detail when we publish our own workspace.

4. Click on Run

When the job is ready, the button will turn green; click on the run button. After the workspace is executed by FME, the result, a kmz file in this case, will be downloaded through the browser. Feel free to view the downloaded data by opening it in Google Earth or FME Data Inspector.

Data Attribution

The data used here originates from open data made available by the City of Vancouver, British Columbia. It contains information licensed under the Open Government License - Vancouver.