BizTalk Business Features

BizTalk Server is an integration platform for developers. By nature Biztalk solutions are very technichal and its nearly impossible to show the value for business users.

For that there are special BizTalk capabilities for business users to step in. These are:
- Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
- Business Activity Services (BAS)
- Business Rules Engine (BRE)

BAM is defenitely the most important as it gives business users a detailed view on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the solution. Standard reporting is possible but argubly the most interesting part is the out of the box integration with SSAS cubes.

BAS is also interesting in that it allows business users to identify trading partners and agreements with these partners to "customize" business processes according to these agreements.

BRE is somewhat sitting in the middle of developers and business users. BRE is a place for developers to identify dynamic rules instead of "hard coding" those. On the other hand, and through a special feature called Vocabulary, business users can access these rules at runtime and change the values of these rules. Processes will pick up the new values without any downtime...

Keep tuned for articles and posts for every one of these features. After all its business users who own the money and their satisfaction is a priority for us poor developers :)