What is included?

A complete list of available operations can be found here.

Deployment

There are new opportunities on the deployment side. Here are some ideas that popped into my mind:

• Dynamically create ports. Some messaging solutions are very generic. Adding new parties is sometimes just a matter of creating a new set of receive and send ports. This can now be done through this Management API, so you don’t need to do the plumbing yourself anymore.
• Update tracking settings. We all know it quite difficult to keep your tracking settings consistent through all applications and binding files. The REST API can now be leveraged to change the tracking settings on the fly to their desired state.

Runtime

Also the runtime processing might benefit from this new functionality. Some scenarios:

• Start and stop processes on demand. In situations that the business wants to take control on when certain processes should be active, you can start/stop receive/send ports on demand. Just a small UI on top of the Management API, including the appropriate security measures, and you’re good to go!
• Maintenance windows. BizTalk is in the middle of your application landscape. Deployments on backend applications, can have a serious impact on running integrations. That’s why stopping certain ports during maintenance windows is a good approach. This can now be easily automated or controlled by non-BizTalk experts.

Monitoring

Most new opportunities reside on the monitoring side. A couple of potential use cases:

• Simplified and short-lived BAM. It’s possible to create some simple reports with basic statistics of your BizTalk environment. You can leverage the Management API or the Operational OData Service. You can easily visualize the number of messages per port and for example the number of suspended instances. All of this is built on top of the data in your MessageBox and DTA database, so there’s no long term reporting out-of-the-box.
• Troubleshooting. There are very easy-to-use operations available to get a list of services instances with a specific status. In that way, you can easily create a dashboard that gives an overview of all instances that require intervention. Suspended instances can be resumed and terminated through the Management API, without the need to access your BizTalk Server.

This is an example of the basic Power BI reports that are shipped with this feature pack.

What is not included?

This brand new BizTalk Management API is quite complete, very excited about the result! As always, I looked at it with a critical mindset and tried to identify missing elements that would enable even more additional value. Here are some aspects that are currently not exposed by the API, but would be handy in future releases:

• Host Instances: it would be great to have the opportunity to also check the state of the host instances and to even start / stop / restart them. Currently, only a GET operation on the hosts is available.
• Tracked Context Properties: I’m quite fond of these, as they enable you to search for particular message events, based on functional search criteria (e.g. OrderId, Domain…). Would be a nice addition to this API!  You can vote here.
• Real deployment: first I thought that the new deployment feature was built on top of this API, but that was wrong. The API exposes functionality to create and manage ports, but no real option to update / deploy a schema, pipeline, orchestration or map. Could be nice to have, but on the other hand, we have a new deployment feature of which we need to take advantage of!
• Business Activity Monitoring: I really like to idea of the Operational OData Service, which smoothly integrates with Power BI. Would be great to have a similar and generic approach for BAM, so we can easily consume the business data without creating custom dashboards. The old BAM portal is really no option anymore nowadays. You can vote here.

Conclusion!

Very happy to see more commitment from Microsoft towards BizTalk Server. This emphasises their “better together” integration vision on BizTalk Server and Logic Apps! Check out the BizTalk User Voice page if you want to influence the BizTalk roadmap!

The exposure of BizTalk as a REST API opens up a new range of great opportunities. Don’t forget to apply the required security measures when exposing this API! By introducing this API, the need for auditing all activity becomes even more important!

Thanks BizTalk for this great addition! Thank you for reading!