Learning Objectives

After completing this lesson, you’ll be able to:

• Identify why you should use bookmarks to divide your workspace into sections.
• Add a bookmark to your workspace.
• Resize and edit a bookmark.
• Edit bookmark properties.

Resources

• Starting workspace 
  • C:\FMEData\Workspaces\UseDataIntegrationBestPractices\organize-workspaces-with-bookmarks.fmw
• Complete workspace 
  • C:\FMEData\Workspaces\UseDataIntegrationBestPractices\organize-workspaces-with-bookmarks-complete.fmw
• Addresses.gdb.zip (File GDB)
  • C:\FMEData\Data\Addresses\Addresses.gdb
• Crime.csv
  • C:\FMEData\Data\Emergency\Crime.csv
• Parks.zip (MapInfo TAB)
  • C:\FMEData\Data\Parks\Parks.tab

Why Use Bookmarks?

Like its real-world namesake, a bookmark is a means of putting a marker down for easy access.

With FME, the bookmark covers an area of the workspace that usually carries out a specific task, so a user can pick it out of a broader set of transformers and move to it with relative ease.

Bookmarks make your workspace more straightforward to understand and navigate.

Adding a Bookmark

To add a bookmark, click the Bookmark icon on the toolbar.

Whereas a traditional bookmark marks a single page in a book, an FME bookmark can cover a wide canvas area. You can divide a single workspace into different sections by applying multiple bookmarks.

If you create a bookmark while objects are selected, the bookmark automatically expands to include those items.

Resizing and Editing a Bookmark

To resize a bookmark, hover over a corner or edge and drag the cursor to change its size or shape.

Bookmark Properties

Click the cogwheel icon on a bookmark header to open the bookmark properties dialog:

Here, you can change the bookmark's name and color and decide whether the contents will move (more on that later).

You can set bookmark colors to an existing color palette or use custom colors. Additionally, you can create customized palettes by going to Tools > FME Options... > Appearance:

You can use the context (right-click) menu for a bookmark or the mini-toolbar icon to disable all its objects, making it useful for testing purposes:

Exercise

To continue improving her workspace, Jennifer needs to add bookmarks.

1) Open Workspace

She opens the starting workspace (C:\FMEData\Workspaces\UseDataIntegrationBestPractices\organize-workspaces-with-bookmarks.fmw) with FME Workbench (2025.0.1 or later).

2) Add First Bookmark

Jennifer first identifies areas of her workspace she'd like to group together.

The group of attribute management transformers near the beginning of the workspace is a good candidate for a bookmark, as those transformers all conduct similar functions before the data is ready to join.

She clicks and drags to select these five transformers:

Then she right-clicks any of the selected transformers and clicks Create Bookmark.

They are surrounded by a new bookmark, which she names "Prepare addresses to join" by simply typing and then hitting Enter:

3) Add Remaining Bookmarks

Help Jennifer by adding bookmarks in the rest of the workspace.

Try to follow these suggestions when grouping objects:

• Group by function - like with like
• Group by their "step" in workspace processing
• Group by their location in the workspace
  • Feel free to move transformers or reader feature types 
• It's often a good idea to clearly distinguish reading and writing bookmarks
  • Some users like to have only one reading and one writing bookmark, and have those be the furthest left and furthest right bookmarks in the workspace, respectively
  • Some users like to use the default Reader/Writers color option for any transformer that contains feature types
• Generally, try to include more than one object in each bookmark. That said, there's not a huge difference between adding annotation to a transformer that's not in a bookmark versus putting that single transformer in its own bookmark.
  • The pro to using annotation is you can more easily fit lots of text, because text in annotations can wrap.
  • The pro to using a small bookmark is it gives you room to expand on that section if you find you need more transformers there later.
• Generally, try to include every transformer in a bookmark.
  • If it has a very unique function, you could leave it out of a bookmark and add annotation instead.

Once complete, your workspace should look something like this: