Learning Objectives

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

• Understand when to use the Text user parameter.
• Understand when to use the Number user parameter.
• Configure the Number parameter to restrict the allowed numbers.
• Understand when to use the Choice user parameter.
• Configure the Choice parameter to use one set of values to show to the user and another to provide to FME.
• Configure the Choice parameter to allow multiple selections.

Instructions

In this lesson, you will:

• Scroll down to read the text below.
  
  • Optional: You can view the video instead of reading the text. The video covers the text material.
• Complete the Quiz toward the bottom of the page.
• Optional: Let us know if you found this lesson relevant to your role by filling out the survey at the bottom of the page.
• Click 'Next' to mark the lesson complete.

Types of User Parameters

There are many types of user parameters and many ways to use them.

The most common parameter types are:

• Text
• Number
• Choice

Text User Parameters

Text parameters are a simple way to accept plain text values into a workspace.

When adding a Text parameter, you can choose the Editor Syntax to control what values are accepted and, optionally, add syntax highlighting if code is expected. The default option is Plain Text. Choose the option that best matches your expected input to the workspace.

The Text parameter also provides an option to Trim Whitespace. When enabled, the parameter will remove any leading or trailing white space. To remove other unwanted elements, such as commas or other standard delimiters, use a StringReplacer or similar transformer to edit the value supplied by the user parameter before using it in the workspace.

There is no limitation on the characters that can be entered.

⭐ New for FME 2026.1: The User Parameter Manager now supports Regex, SQL, XQuery, and GQuery, with Plain Text consolidated into a single option. You get the full editing experience you're already familiar with—including Regex validation against a test string and database table previews in the SQL Text editor when supplied with a database connection.

Want to learn more about this feature? Watch our short demo video here.

Number User Parameters

The Number parameter type has settings that allow you to define whether it is a float or integer.

Here, for example, the workspace author is creating an integer parameter. They set the Numeric Precision to Integer.

The user cannot enter a floating-point (non-integer) number when prompted for a value. Because this is a number field, FME also prevents the user from entering text (alphabetic) characters.

This is an excellent example of how FME parses input to ensure it matches the parameter type, as shown in the following screenshots:

• Invalid input: 12,3 is not a valid integer
• Invalid input: abcd is not a valid float
• Valid input: negative numbers are fine
• Invalid input: 123.4567 is a valid float, but has four decimal places of precision when the definition was only 3
• Valid input: 123 is a valid integer
• Valid input: 123.456 is a valid float with the correct decimal places of precision

The Upper/Lower Limit settings for a numeric parameter also allow FME to parse the input to ensure it matches what is required:

• Invalid input: needs to be greater than 3
• Invalid input: needs to be less than or equal to 10
• Valid input: between 3.001 and 10.000

Choice User Parameters

A Choice parameter presents the user with a fixed list of options. Different choice type parameters allow the user to pick from a list, pick multiple entries from a list, or type in text as an alternative to a list.

Here, the user will be asked to enter their name. However, since the names of all users are already known – presumably, this is for a particular company’s staff – a list of them is created:

That way, the user is prompted to select their name from a list. They don’t have to type it in manually:

Notice that the Choices table has both a Value and a Display column. This section is a lookup table that maps the chosen entry to a value provided to FME.

For example, this workspace matches incoming records to a database using an EmployeeID.

The end user provides EmployeeID, but they can’t always remember their ID number. So, the author creates a Choice user parameter but uses different values for the Value and Display columns.

The parameter is configured like so:

When a user selects their name from the list, the value provided to the workspace is their employee ID. That way, the employee ID can be used as a match in the DatabaseJoiner without the end-user remembering it!

If you would like the end-user to be able to select multiple values, choose the List or Tree options under Choice Configuration.

The List option is configured similarly to Dropdown:

But it provides checkboxes instead of a single selection:

Tree creates a nested list. You use a delimiter in the Display value to indicate nesting; it's a period by default. For example, this configuration:

is presented to the user like this:

For both List and Tree, you can optionally Allow Multiple Selection.

These let the end user select multiple values by default. For example, if a manager wanted to run reports on several employees, they could use this. Multiple values are returned space-delimited by default, but you can change the delimiter using the Choice List and Tree Node Delimiter parameters.

Suppose you'd like to offer the user a selection of reader formats, writer formats, or coordinate systems. In that case, we recommend using the Import button on the Choice parameter. This lets you choose the ones you want and automatically fills in the FME-required string under Value and a human-readable label under Display. It's much better than doing it yourself!