Monitor Business Processes with BizTalk

Throughout the series, we have been looking at how EAI

addresses the typical issues that hamper productivity of an organization.

Typically, the problem with having disparate systems is the lack of information

in each system to provide a complete picture and the lack of implementation

knowledge to make the complete picture of any related workflow.

Integrating these systems provides the solution and can

assist in



improving productivity and agility for a particular business process. However,

despite the integration, the decision makers still need access to the data

generated by the daily operations for various  purposes-the data can be

used to assess business trends or even to check the 'health' of any process

or might simply be for reporting purposes. Access to a birds-eye view of the

data helps get a complete picture without delving into much of routine details.

Essentially, it means looking at KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) of the

business. These can be compared and benchmarked to determine the efficiency and

direction of the organization.

Typically, KPIs would include things like 'how many days

it takes for the order to be fulfilled after it is confirmed?' or 'what is

the average turn around time for any customer queries?' that indicate the

concerned numbers. These numbers, translate directly to the performance, hence

the name 'Performance Indicators'.

Analyst defines the KPIs and the developer integrates them into the biz process. End users put BAM generated data for analysis

Typically, a BizTalk solution would contain several

applications, business scenarios and events. Consider a typical order management

process. It would involve several disparate participants such as the ordering

front-end, the billing system, the inventory system, the credit-card approval

system, and the fulfillment partners besides many others. Most of these

end-points are owned by different physical entities, like for example, the

credit card verification and amount approval would be from a third party

financial institution (usually known as credit card gateways). This disparity,

however, increases the complexity in getting the data from each of these points.

What is BAM?



The Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) tool that comes as a part of the

BizTalk Server 2004 suite takes the ownership of this problem. It provides a

flexible interface to directly peek in almost real-time business data flowing

through the various integration workflows developed with the BizTalk. What this

means is the data is not acquired from the individual systems, but from the

workflow that binds these systems together. That the systems are integrated in

an automated workflow, the end-systems themselves, cannot take ownership of the

accuracy and reliability of their data. Hence, it is necessary for the

integrating workflows to take care of it. The BAM offers this data to the

information workers with the help of familiar desktop tools that they use in the

day-to-day interactions. The data can be available for analysis and aggregations

through simple tools like MS Excel or Sharepoint portals, with almost no effect

on the



performance of the business processes.

As a very obvious approach to deal with this, the business

user or analyst can define the KPIs, aggregations and the trends that he needs

to monitor with familiar tools like Excel. This data can then be mapped by a

technical person to the actual messages flowing within the BizTalk processes.

Once these mappings are deployed to the database, the BAM stores all the

required data from the business processes to its own SQL Server database. This

data can later be used by information workers for analysis or daily operations.

The Tracking Profile Editor Tool in BizTalk maps process definitions to actual business processes

BAM user roles and tools



Fundamental to the understanding of BAM, is the understanding of the roles

that each of the participants play to bring the visibility in the business

process and the understanding of the tools that can be used to achieve this.

Once a business analyst has defined the KPIs, he can use an

Excel add-in for BizTalk (provided with the BAM tool) to write the definitions.

The analyst can define the data elements and create views and pivot table out of

it. At this stage, the BAM add-in generates sample data that is displayed in the

table or pivot table created by the analyst to simulate the end result. Once the

analyst is done with defining what he needs from the processes, he can simply

send the definitions to the developer for integrating them in the business

processes. BAM does not limit how the analyst chooses to communicate the

definitions. Infact, the analyst can be sitting geographically apart and create

the definitions. He can then e-mail the definitions to the developer who can

then work on them.

BizTalk comes with a tool called TPE (Tracking Profile

Editor), to map the definitions to the actual business processes. The TPE



provides a 'panes' view with one pane detailing the definitions from the

analyst and the other one showing the actual business process already developed.

So it becomes simply a matter of matching the definitions to the appropriate

points in the orchestration-both being visible in a single view. The developer

can, thus, import the BAM definitions from Excel into the TPE and then map the

definitions to functional points in the orchestrations. Various messages and

events can be mapped from the orchestration.

After mapping, the data needs to be deployed to the

database in order for BizTalk to actually start tracking the data. As we know,

BizTalk 2004 relies heavily on the SQL Server for most of its functionality.

Amongst the set of databases created at the time of BizTalk configuration, also

created is the 'Tracking Database', which stores the tracking configuration

and information in SQL Server.

Once the data is deployed, BizTalk monitors the running

orchestrations at the specified points and stores the runtime data in the

tracking database. BizTalk supports not just the plain two-dimensional SQL

Server database tables, but also the SQL Server's Analysis Services to offer a

multi dimensional view of the captured data. This can be used for in-depth

analysis including tracking of trends over a period of time.

Once the data is recorded in the database, BizTalk allows

reading the tracking data in several ways. Out of the box, it offers a

Sharepoint portal that can produce the data based on various search filters

specified. For better interaction, this data can be pulled into Excel that can

allow its analysis in several other ways. For instance, the Business user can

analyze trends by creating a pivot table with multi dimensional views of the

data. This data can also be used to pin point the bottlenecks in the existing

implementation, thus triggering an exercise of optimization of the process.

Potential bottlenecks in the process can be traced down and reduced so as to

boost the productivity further. For instance, the data might be able to provide

some vital information like: the existing payment gateway takes almost 2 days to

verify the credit card information and approve the transaction. The management

can then decide to shift to another gateway that might be able to provide a

faster response time. In effect, for our order management sample, the company

will be able to fulfill the orders faster.

The Business Activity Monitoring makes it very easy for the

business analysts, the developers and the end users working individually or

collaboratively, to provide the much needed visibility in the business

processes. All this, with a very familiar set of tools that help to clearly

delineate the responsibilities of the each of the participants in the solution.

Business analyst can use the Office tools that he is



already familiar with. The developers obviously make use of the TPE in the

BizTalk suite to link the requirements to the technology. This information is

automatically delivered to the business users. The business users can enhance

the business value of this information by creating charts, reports or alerts

using the supporting tools like Sharepoint Portals and Excel. To the business

this means better knowledge of the numbers that are crunched beneath the

technology covers.

Of course, this equips them with the most important

weapon-the information-to attack any problem concerning the productivity of

any particular business process.

Sanket Bakshi