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Dear All,
I have no prior experience with BizTalk, but have been advised to investigate it as a solution to the problem I’m currently facing. The situation is as such:
- several email inboxes (residing on MS-Exchange and LotusNotes servers) need to be monitored for incoming emails
- these emails need to be parsed, their contents extracted and packaged according to a predefined XML schema
- the XML data will then be transmitted to another system via HTTP POST on a preset port
- success/failure/message confirmation from the external system will then be fed back via XML over HTTP POST
- these messages will then be sent to the relevant inboxes as emails
I’m wondering if BizTalk will be able to help me accomplish this, and also what components of BizTalk I would need to incorporate. Should BizTalk fit the bill, would it involve very complex configuration, and would it require indepth knowledge of .NET?
I would like to thank everyone in advance for any assistance/advice provided. Thank you.
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Yes, I think BizTalk could be used to solve your scenario. But first here are a few considerations worth further investigating before you jump in head first.
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If this is your first BizTalk project, ensure that you have spent ample time in the tutorials and samples.
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Don’t underestimate the effort required in setting up the BizTalk infrastructure i.e. Active Directory accounts and groups, SQL Server, SQL Server Disks, SQL Server Agents, BizTalk App servers, Hosts, Host Instances etc. I have seen before where people try to spin up their production environment at the last minute prior to go live and have problems. There is a ton of good documentation from Microsoft on setting up your environments.
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I am not 100% sure about Lotus Notes. If you have the ability to connect to Lotus Notes through POP3 then you will probably be ok. If not you may be able to implement a relay between Notes and Exchange. I have used the Microosft and a 3rd party adapter against Exchange and it does work well.
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What is the format of these incoming emails? Are they XML, structured flat files(either CSV or Fixed Width)? Depending upon the format, you may/or may not need some custom work. If XML that is the least amount of work, if CSV then use Flat FIle Wizard(it is pretty good). If it is unstructured then you may need to write a .Net method to help out with parsing.
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Sounds like you would then need to map your input to your output doc to send via HTTP
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Are you expecting the result Synchronously or A-synchronously? If Sync then you would want a solicit response send port. If Async then you are probably look at correlation. As a beginner you will need to spend some time on correlaton if this is the case.
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You then would use the SMTP adapter to send response back to your relevant inboxes.
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Without seeing detailed requirements and the message formats it is tough to say how much custom work is involved. If the message formats are well defined then I don’t think much would be required.
Edit:
In the event that you are dealing with attachments, then check out this must see post by Stephen Thomas(the owner of this site) http://www.biztalkgurus.com/blogs/biztalk/archive/2006/08/08/How-to-Split-Received-Email-Attachments-in-BizTalk-2006.aspx
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