BizTalkTracker is primarily intended for the non-technical user who wishes to know if certain or any messages has been received and/or where messages has ended up after being routed through a BizTalk Server. Especially companies sending and receiving EDI will benefit from using this product.
BizTalkTracker gives a full overview and easy access to the BizTalk tracking data and a number of additional advantages:
- Easy access to view the message body
- Full end-to-end overview for all incoming messages
- Search on promoted properties across message types
- Alerts (Both message type and port alerts)
- Non-intrusive
Below we will take a brief look at each of these features at a very high level, and explain the advantages that BizTalkTracker provides.
Easy access to view message bodies
One of the disadvantages in the BizTalk Group Hub, is that if a body of an incoming or outgoing message is tracked and needs to be viewed, the way to do so is tedious.
In BizTalkTracker the viewing of a message body is a one click operation, where both the link to the incoming and outgoing message is displayed on a single line. Click here to see an example (opens in a new window).
While viewing a tracked body message in BizTalkTracker, you have the ability of indenting XML, EDI and JSON. You can also save the full message body to a local file.
Full end-to-end overview for every incoming message
For all messages handled by BizTalk, BizTalkTracker gives the user an end-to-end overview presenting the following values:
- Receive time
- Incoming (Receive Port and message type)
- Outgoing (Send Port(s) and Message type)
- Selected Promoted properties
The message type displayed can be translated. This allows the user to be presented with a more user-friendly name (such as Invoice, instead of http://namespace#Invoice)
The URI (folder/connection properties) is shown as a tooltip on both the incoming and outgoing column.
Furthermore, it is clearly marked with arrows if the incoming message is going out to more than one destination (has multiple subscriptions).
Search on promoted properties across message types
In BizTalkTracker it is possible to search for messages based on their tracked promoted properties without specifying the message type.
This means that it is possible to find all messages from a certain customer or supplier if these properties has been promoted, no matter if it is an order, invoice or any other type of message.
It is also possible to choose which of the promoted properties will be visible in the search as search filters.
Alerts
Besides all the easy tracking functionality, BizTalkTracker also includes an alert functionality, which can alert if certain types of messages or certain Ports has not been received within a user-defined period of time.
This allows the user to be proactive in detecting and reporting missing incoming messages and thereby preventing possible loss of turnover or minimizing extraordinaire cost.
Non-intrusive
Other tracking tools available for BizTalk today requires either special Pipelines, Triggers, stored procedures or custom databases to work.
BizTalkTracker do NOT need anything like this, the BizTalkTracker Web Application only needs a connection to the BizTalk Tracking Database from where all information are retrieved.
This ensures that BizTalkTracker can be installed and used with your existing BizTalk Server environment.
