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.

Instructions

In this lesson, you will:

• Optional: Watch the Organize Workspaces with Bookmarks video.
• Scroll down to read the text below.
• 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.

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 Utilities > 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

Jennifer has annotated her walkability workspace and now wants to add bookmarks to give it a clear visual hierarchy. She needs to group related transformers into sections so she and her colleagues can navigate the workspace more easily.

In this exercise, you will:

• Create named bookmarks to group related transformers into sections.

1) Open Starting Workspace

• Start FME Workbench (2026.1 or later).
• Open your starting workspace (C:\FMEData\Workspaces\UseDataIntegrationBestPractices\organize-workspaces-with-bookmarks.fmw).

2) Add First Bookmark

The group of attribute management transformers near the beginning of the workspace is a good candidate for a first bookmark, as they all prepare the address data before it is ready to join.

• Click and drag to select the five attribute management transformers and one annotation.

• Right-click any selected transformer, then select Create Bookmark.

• As the bookmark name, enter: Prepare addresses to join, then press Enter.

3) Add Remaining Bookmarks

Add bookmarks to group the remaining transformers in the workspace. Use the following guidelines to decide how to group them: 

• Group by function: place transformers that do similar work together.
• Group by their step in the overall workflow.
• Distinguish reading and writing bookmarks clearly: consider using the Reader/Writer color option for bookmarks that contain feature types.
• Aim to include more than one transformer per bookmark.
  • If a transformer has a unique function that doesn't fit elsewhere, adding annotation to it is a reasonable alternative.
• Try to include every transformer in a bookmark.
• Name each bookmark to describe what that section of the workspace does.

Once complete, your workspace should look something like this:

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