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At our annual event Integrate, Microsoft announced last year that BizTalk Server 2020 should have released in the first quarter of 2019. Only two weeks in the new year, Microsoft has released BizTalk Server 2020 (v3.13.717.0)! In this blog, we want to update you on what’s new in this version of the product.

No Changes in Available Editions

Similar to earlier versions of the product, BizTalk Server 2020 comes in 4 flavors:

  • Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Developer
  • Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Branch
  • Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Standard [to do: changed limitations]
  • Microsoft BizTalk Server 2020 Enterprise

You can download these products when you have an Enterprise MSDN account.

BizTalk2020-Downloads

New Features in BizTalk Server 2020

During Integrate 2019, Paul Larsen, the Program Manager who is responsible for BizTalk Server, already highlighted which new features are coming in BizTalk Server 2020. You can read a recap about Paul’s session here.

BizTalk2020-Features

As you can understand from Paul’s session, we were already expecting platform alignment. More importantly, BizTalk Server 2020 contains all features from BizTalk Server 2016, including the 3 Feature Packs, which have been released.

You can find the complete set of new features here

But, let’s have a look at some of the new features and capabilities.

Support for newer platforms

BizTalk Server 2020 adds support for the following Microsoft platforms:

– Visual Studio 2019
– Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows 10
– SQL Server 2019, SQL Server 2017, SQL Server 2016 SP2
– Office 2019, Office 2016

Hardware and Software Requirements for BizTalk Server 2020

Analytics

Operational Data Monitoring and Analytics.
Leverage the power of Azure (Application Insight and Event Hub) for deep data storage and Power BI for reporting and viewing of data.

Send tracking data to Azure
Configure data feed for Power BI

Application Lifecycle Management with VSTS

Using Visual Studio Team Services, you can define multi-server deployments of BizTalk Server 2020, and then maintain those systems throughout the application lifecycle.

Configure automatic deployment using VSTS

Management APIs

Manage your environment remotely using the new REST APIs with full Swagger support.

REST API reference

Advanced Scheduling

New and improved scheduling capabilities in Adapters.

Configure time zone and recurrence

Backup to Azure Blob Storage

When deploying BizTalk Server to Azure VMs, you can backup BizTalk Server databases to Azure blob storage.

Configure the Backup Job

Event Hubs Adapter

Using the new Event Hub Adapter, BizTalk Server can send and receive messages with Azure Event Hubs, where BizTalk Server can function as both an event publisher and subscriber, as part of a new Azure cloud-based event-driven application.

Event Hubs adapter

Office 365 Adapters

Leverage the power of BizTalk in newer office automation workflows by integrating with Adapters that allow you to send or receive Office 365 emails, receive or transmit Office 365 calendar events, and create Office 365 contacts.

Office 365 Outlook Email adapter
Office 365 Outlook Calendar adapter
Office 365 Outlook Contact adapter

Group Managed Service Accounts

Extend windows GMSA support to BizTalk operations and services.

Using Group Managed Service Account

Audit Log

Making BizTalk further secure by maintaining audit trails of all management operations.

New Read-Only Operator role

Brand new read-only operator role in facilitating the dev-ops model, where access to production stamp is provided without the ability to update anything.

Additional updates

·         Move to new long term supported Microsoft OLEDB Driver for SQL Server

·         Support for SSO Affiliate applications in the SFTP adapter

·         SQL Availability Group support for BAM DTS Package via SSIS Catalog

·         Partially disabled receive locations

·         Throughput improvements for Dynamic Send Ports with Ordered Delivery

Deprecated and Removed Features

Some features of the product are deprecated or removed from the product. Here’s the list:

Program

Status

Replacement

Samples

Removed

Removed from BizTalk Server installation

POP3 and SMTP adapters

Deprecated

Office 365 adapters

Support for ACS authentication in adapters

Removed

SAS authentication

SOAP adapter

Deprecated

WCF-BasicHttp Adapter

Old SQL adapter

Removed

WCF-SQL Adapter

BPEL support

Deprecated

None

JDE OneWorld adapter

Deprecated

None

OWC redist

Removed

None

BAM Portal

Deprecated

None

WCF-NetTcpRelay adapter

Deprecated

None

Changes that Catch the Eye

Based on the above lists, and besides the already expected features and improvements, a few features catch the eye.

Audit Log

Until now, no auditing was available for any operations performed against the BizTalk environment. Luckily, from BizTalk Server 2020 on, the Administration console provides auditing of operations. To be able to use this feature, you will have to turn it on in the Group Settings screen.

BizTalk2020-Audit-Log

The auditing data is stored in the Management database, and you can access it via the Operational Services. At the moment, the supported operations are:

  • Creating, updating and deleting ports
  • Suspending, resuming and terminating service instances
  • Adding, updating and removing BizTalk applications
  • Importing binding files

BizTalk2020-Managed-Database

Although this is a good start, multiple important operations are still missing; think of starting/stopping of ports, orchestrations, and host instances. We hope that Microsoft adds such operations in the future.

Read more about this feature here.

Support of .NET Framework v4.7

Earlier, Microsoft has announced that .NET 4.8 will be supported.

New Read-Only Operator role

The BizTalk Operator role has changed. Where before, it was possible to perform actions like stopping/starting ports and changing the port configuration, this role is now completely read-only. This can certainly be useful for facilitating DevOps scenarios.

read-only-operator-role

When accessing the BizTalk Server 2020 Admin console as a BizTalk Operator, all the operations are still accessible. However, when an operator tries, for example, to stop a port, an error message shows up, and the operation becomes blocked. Unfortunately, the error message is not always clear that the operation is blocked due to insufficient permissions.

BizTalk-Server-Administration

BAM Portal is Deprecated

Microsoft has decided to deprecate the BAM portal. Probably due to the new capabilities to push data to Azure, they decided to deprecate the old-fashioned BAM portal. In case you are using BAM, and you are considering upgrading to BizTalk Server 2020, you can still install and configure the BAM portal from the BizTalk installer and configuration wizard; you won’t be left in the dark.

Deprecated and Removed Adapters

Multiple updates in this area as well. For example, Microsoft deprecates the POP3 and the SMTP adapters in favor of the Office 365 adapters, which appeared in the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs. Next, the old SQL adapter has been removed and replaced by the WCF-SQL adapter, and the JDE OneWorld and the WCF-NetTcpRelay adapter have both been deprecated.

BizTalk360 Support of BizTalk Server 2020

The BizTalk360 product team has eagerly followed the developments around BizTalk Server 2020, and we are glad that BizTalk Server 2020 has been released. For BizTalk360, it is evident that the product must support all recent versions of BizTalk Server.

That’s why we made the latest released versions of BizTalk360 and Atomic Scope compatible with BizTalk Server 2020!

Conclusion

BizTalk Server 2020 has been released. This is the 11th version of the product since its inception in 2000. Although we have already seen most of the features of this release (in the BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Packs), this is still a useful release. Especially when you are still on versions older than BizTalk Server 2016, it will certainly be worth upgrading or migrating to this release.

The post What’s new in BizTalk Server 2020! appeared first on BizTalk360.