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Orchestration category

Nodinite BizTalk Monitoring Agent empowers you to monitor BizTalk Orchestrations across all BizTalk Applications. The agent automatically detects and manages new or removed Orchestrations, ensuring your monitoring is always up to date.

  • Orchestrations in BizTalk appear in Nodinite as resources, using the same name as the Orchestration.
  • Nodinite mirrors the Application structure, providing a 1:1 mapping with BizTalk Applications.
  • Orchestrations are grouped by the Category Orchestration for streamlined management.

Filter
Here's an example of a Monitor View filtered by the 'Orchestration' category.

Note

All User operations within Nodinite are Log Audited, supporting your security and corporate governance compliance policies.

Understanding BizTalk Orchestrations

What are Orchestrations?

Orchestrations are the business process automation engines in BizTalk Server. They execute your integration workflows: routing messages between systems, transforming data, enforcing business rules, handling errors, and coordinating multi-step transactions. Think of Orchestrations as the automated workers that execute your integration logic 24/7.

Why is Orchestration Monitoring Critical?

Stopped or unenlisted Orchestrations cause business process failures.

  • Zero business transactions – An unenlisted or stopped Orchestration doesn't subscribe to messages, causing routing failures and suspended instances (not resumable)
  • SLA violations – Order fulfillment, invoice processing, and customer onboarding workflows halt completely
  • Financial impact – Multi-million dollar processes (e.g., insurance claims, loan approvals) don't execute
  • Silent failures – BizTalk doesn't auto-alert when Orchestrations are stopped; messages accumulate as suspended instances
  • Exception handling gaps – Unhandled exceptions in Orchestrations create suspended instances (not resumable) that require code fixes and message resubmission

Common Orchestration Monitoring Scenarios

  • Unenlisted after deployment – DevOps deploys new version but forgets to start Orchestration; business processes stop immediately
  • Exception storms – Unexpected data causes unhandled exceptions; hundreds of instances suspend, overwhelming operations teams
  • Missing subscriptions – Orchestration filter doesn't match incoming messages; routing failures create suspended instances
  • Stopped for maintenance – IT stops Orchestration for emergency patch but forgets to restart; business loses hours of processing
  • Throttling side effects – Host Instance throttling causes Orchestrations to appear healthy while messages queue in MessageBox

Connection to Suspended Instances: Orchestration exceptions (null reference, divide by zero, timeout, schema validation failure inside orchestration logic) create suspended instances (not resumable). These require developers to fix code, redeploy, and manually resubmit messages—costly and time-consuming.

What are the key features for Monitoring BizTalk Server Orchestrations?

  • Remote Actions – Execute powerful remote actions directly from Nodinite
  • State Evaluation – Monitor and evaluate the real-time run-time state of orchestrations

What is evaluated for BizTalk Orchestrations?

The table below explains the different evaluated states for any Orchestration:

State Status Description Actions
Unavailable Resource not available Evaluation of the 'BizTalk Orchestrations' is not possible due to network or security-related issues Review prerequisites
Error Unenlisted An Unenlisted Orchestration appears as state 'Error' Start
Enlist
Warning Enlisted/Stopped Orchestration is enlisted/stopped and does not process messages Start
Unenlist
OK Enabled and running Orchestration is operational, and no other problems are detected Details
Tracking

Tip

You can reconfigure the evaluated state using the Expected State feature on every Resource within Nodinite.

Actions

The following Remote Actions are available for the Orchestrations Category:
Orchestrations Actions Menu
Orchestrations Actions Menu in Nodinite Web Client.

  • Start – Start processing messages (also enlists the Orchestrations)
  • Stop – Stop processing messages
  • Enlist – Start subscribing for messages to process when started
  • Unenlist – Stop the orchestration and stop subscribing
  • Details – View detailed orchestration information
  • Tracking – Change tracking settings

Filter Orchestrations

Nodinite BizTalk Monitoring Agent lets you filter unwanted resources. See Configuration for details on excluding them from monitored Resources.

Tip

Use the filter feature to remove temporary Orchestrations that should not be part of your business-critical monitoring with Nodinite.

For information about subscription filters on Orchestrations, visit the Details user guide.

Next Step

Add or manage a Monitoring Agent Configuration
Monitor Views
Configuration

BizTalk Monitoring Agent
Start
Stop
Enlist
Unenlist
Tracking
Details
Orchestrations
Monitoring Agents
Administration
Monitoring Agents