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It’s time to upgrade your BizTalk360 installation! We are here with our next release of BizTalk360 V.9.0.3. 

A brief summary of new features we introduced in V9.0.3

Database Size Monitoring

Database Size monitoring helps to monitor the Data and log file size of the BizTalk and BizTalk360 databases, by simply configuring the error and warning threshold values for the database and log file sizes.

Below are the BizTalk databases that can be monitor using BizTalk360:

  • BizTalkDTADb
  • BizTalkMgmtDb
  • BizTalkMsgBoxDb
  • BizTalkRuleEngineDb
  • BAM databases (BAMPrimaryImport, BAMAlertsApplication, BAMArchive, BAMStarSchema)
  • SSODB

database-size-monitoring

Analytics Custom Widget Reporting

By using the BizTalk360 Reporting Custom widget, you can retrieve performance metrics of the BizTalk environment such as Messaging Performance, Message Transmission failure rate, Server performance, etc., as a report. Based on the configured schedule you can receive that report in your email box.

analytics-custom-widget

Configurable Polling interval for monitoring

By default, the BizTalk360 monitoring service checks the status of all configured artifacts every 1 min. However, BizTalk360 provides an option for the user to configure the polling interval. Based on the configured polling interval, the monitoring service will determine the monitor status of the endpoints.

Migration Scenario – After migration, the default polling interval 1 min will be set to all the Endpoints. This can be modified as per your requirements.

polling-interval-monitoring

SQL Server Cluster Monitoring

we extend our support to monitor the SQL Server cluster. Cluster SQL Server can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server Network name. BizTalk360 will start monitoring the currently active node. In case of a failover, BizTalk360 will automatically take the active server for monitoring.

The following resources can be monitored by configuring the SQL Server:

  • CPU & Memory
  • NT Services
  • Disks (available disk space)
  • Event Logs

sql-server-cluster-monitoring

Subscriptions (Message Box)

In addition, to retrieve the service instance and message details, BizTalk360 allows users to execute queries to retrieve the details of the subscription from the message box database. The subscription details such as Name, Service Name, state, subscription type, service instance id will be retrieved on message box query execution.

message-box

Look at this blog article to see the benefits of the above features in detail.

Let’s jump into the feature improvements in detail

SQL Authentication Support

BizTalk360 allows users to view and monitor the SQL Query results by using Secure SQL Query and database query monitoring functionality. In Which BizTalk360 executes the Query by connecting to the server against windows system users (using windows authentication mode).

But shared server can have multiple users having access to different instances and Databases. So, to support this, we have improved these functionalities by supporting SQL Authentication mode, With this user can connect to the database with the relevant user credentials.  From this version on, you can also query your Azure databases.

sql-authentication-support

Dashboard Improvements

The dashboard is one of the key functionalities where customers would be using more often on a day-day basis. So, we have considered improving the dashboard frequently based on customer feedback.

BizTalk360 Monitoring Dashboard improvements

  1. Indication of alarm status (Enabled/Disabled)
  2. Number of Alerts Notified (2/3)
  3. The artifacts from the collapsed view are now clickable to route to the respective mapping section

biztalk360-alarm

BizTalk Group Dashboard improvements

BizTalk group dashboard in BizTalk360 gives the consolidated view of all the artifacts mapped to all the alarms in an environment.

From this version on, we allow the user to configure the BizTalk group dashboard based on their needs. Users can choose the artifacts types (Application, Servers, Queues, Folder Monitoring, etc . ) that they want to look into the dashboard. So that BizTalk360 monitoring service will fetch the status of only the chosen artifacts type on every cycle, rather looking for all the artifacts. In this way, we have improved the performance of the monitoring service. Also, you can Enable or Disable the BizTalk Group dashboard at any point in time.

Migration Scenario – After migration, the BizTalk Group Dashboard will be in enable mode, with all the artifacts type chosen. After which you can reconfigure this as per your requirement.

group-dashboard

Tracking (DTA) Performance Data Collection Optimisation

In the earlier version, Users can enable tracking data collection for various metrics type, say  Failure/Success rate for Port, Schema, Messaging Performance for the port , schema, orchestration, etc, where BizTalk360 will start collecting data for all the metrics of the selected type. From this version on, to improve the performance, we allow users to choose the relevant DTA metrics, which will reduce the number of calls to the DTA database.

Users can choose the DTA metrics at the environment level in a well-ordered tree view diagram.

Migration Scenario –If you enabled Tracking (DTA) Performance Data Collection then after migration all DTA metrics under the selected type will be enabled. This can be modified as per your requirements.

tracking-data-collection

Logic App

With the rise of Hybrid integration solutions, the job of BizTalk administrators has extended to the (Azure) cloud. BizTalk360 helps these administrators by providing operational and monitoring support for Logic Apps and  API Apps, thereby admin need not check the Azure portal to know the health of these services,  where they can easily operate and monitor from BizTalk360.

However, in the earlier version of BizTalk360, we allow all the users to manage all the LogicApps there is no access restriction. We have improved this in this release where admin can define which user can manage (enable, disable, delete, trigger) the Logic Apps based on the role.

In addition to this, we have introduced the filter option to filter the logic apps under different subscriptions.

Quick Alarm

With the quick alarm, you can select the application artifacts that you want to monitor, BizTalk360 will automatically map that artifacts for monitoring.

application-artifact

Notification Channel

Now you can define the error type i.e. only error & warning or error/warning/healthy of the artifacts to get notified in the notification channels(slack, Service Now, Webhook).

azure-service-operation

Place Holder Encryption

Place holders can be used in the custom widgets. To tighten the security now all the placeholder values configured in custom widgets will get encrypted. For the existing placeholder, values will get encrypted automatically once you upgraded to the latest version.

Service Instance operations 

From this version on, we allow the user to enter the reason in the comment section (optional) for all the service instance operations (Resume/Suspend/Terminate). The same will get audited for reference.

SFTP

All the file mask patterns supported in BizTalk server will now support in BizTalk360

Conclusion

Considering the feedback from our customers, BizTalk360 will continue to provide more useful features.

Why not give BizTalk360 a try! It takes only 10 minutes to install on your BizTalk environments and you can witness and check the security and productivity of your own BizTalk Environments. 

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The post BizTalk360 V9.0.3 New Features and Enhancements Summary appeared first on BizTalk360.