Why did we build certain features in BizTalk360?

BizTalk360 is pretty much a matured product now from its inception back in May 2011. Every year, we consistently released between 5 to 10 releases. In each release, we target anywhere from 3-5 good (useful) features and constant improvements, bug fixes, and usability enhancements. Over the last 6 years, we made 2 major/complete user interface revamp to give the product a face-lift in terms of user experience. First, when we moved the platform from Microsoft SilverLight to HTML5 (version 7.0) and the second when we revamped the complete user interface (version 8.0) to categorize the UI clearly into BizTalk Server Operations, Monitoring and Analytics sections. Every feature we add to the product is carefully selected. We have clear objectives for each one of them. Before starting to work on a new feature, we ask the following questions like why are we building a particular feature, what problem we are trying to solve, and whether we can make BizTalk Server operations more streamlined/productive/secure. In this new blog series “Why did we build XYZ feature in BizTalk360”, I wanted to explain clearly the reasoning behind each one of the core feature in the product, why we built it, what business problem it solves when it comes to running your BizTalk environment smoothly. Here is the list of topics we are going to cover in this series. You can book mark this article, we will add links to each article as and when we publish the blog.

Operations

• Why did we build a web-based BizTalk Admin Console in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build User Access Policy module in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Auditing & Governance in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Advanced Event Viewer in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Custom SQL Queries in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Team Knowledge base in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Operations Dashboard in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Search and Action on BizTalk Artifacts in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Advanced Tracking Manager in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Business Rules Composer?
• Why did we build ESB Exception Management Portal in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build EDI Dashboard?
• Why did we build Message Box Queries (MBV)/ BizTalk Health Monitor (BHM) Integration?
• Why did we build Graphical Message Flow viewer in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build dedicated dashboard pages for BizTalk and SQL Servers?
• Why did we expose all of our internal REST API’s?

General BizTalk Server Monitoring

• Why did we build FTP/SFTP Monitoring?
• Why did we build MSMQ, IBM MQ, Azure Service Bus Queue Monitoring?
• Why did we build Web Endpoints Monitoring in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Database SQL Queries Monitoring?
• Why did we build Azure Logic Apps Monitoring in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Azure API Apps Monitoring in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Receive Locations, Send Ports and Orchestrations Monitoring?
• Why did we build CPU, Memory and Disk Monitoring on BizTalk and SQL Servers?
• Why did we build BizTalk Host Throttling Monitoring in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Auto Healing capability in Monitoring?
• Why did we build Windows Event Log Monitoring?
• Why did we build Window NT Service Monitoring?
• Why did we build Export and Import capability for Monitoring Configuration?
• Why did we build SQL Jobs Monitoring in BizTalk360?
• Why did we build Notification History capability for BizTalk Monitoring?
• Why did we build Custom Notification Channels in Monitoring?
• Why did we build Webhook Channel out of the box?
• Why did we build ServiceNow Integration out of the box?
• Why did we build Slack Integration out of the box?

Data/Transaction Monitoring in BizTalk Server

• Why did we build Data Monitoring for Receive Locations and Send Ports?
• Why did we build Data Monitoring for BizTalk Message Box Data?
• Why did we build Data Monitoring for BizTalk Tracking Data?
• Why did we build Data Monitoring for BizTalk EDI Data?
• Why did we build Data Monitoring for BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring Data?
• Why did we build Data Monitoring for Azure Logic Apps Data?
• Why did we build a dedicated Transaction/Process Monitoring Dashboard?

Analytics

• Why did we build Analytics Dashboard?
• Why did we build Messaging Patterns Visualizer?
• Why did we build Throttling Analyser?
• Why did we build New Relic Integration?