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Receive Locations

Understanding Receive Locations Monitoring

Receive Locations are the entry points for all messages entering your BizTalk Server environment. Each Receive Location listens on a specific protocol (HTTP, FTP, File, MSMQ, etc.) and triggers integration processes when messages arrive. If a Receive Location is disabled or stopped, your business cannot receive critical transactions—orders won't be accepted, files won't be picked up, and API endpoints won't respond.

Why Receive Locations monitoring is critical:

  • Business continuity – A disabled Receive Location means zero messages flowing for that integration. Orders, invoices, notifications, and API requests are silently rejected or time out. Your trading partners and customers experience failures without explanation.
  • SLA compliance – Partners expect 24/7 availability. A disabled File pickup location means missed SLAs when files aren't processed within agreed timeframes. HTTP endpoints return errors, impacting partner trust.
  • Operational visibility – BizTalk doesn't alert you when someone manually disables a Receive Location via BizTalk Admin Console. Without monitoring, you discover problems only when partners complain or business users report missing data.
  • Change control – Receive Locations are often disabled during maintenance or troubleshooting. If forgotten in disabled state, production traffic stops flowing. Monitoring ensures disabled locations are detected immediately.
  • Security and compliance – Tracking settings control what data is logged for audit and debugging. Monitoring tracking configuration ensures compliance requirements are met (e.g., financial transactions must log message bodies for regulatory audits).

Common scenarios requiring Receive Location monitoring:

  • Adapter-specific failures – FTP credentials expire, file shares become inaccessible, HTTP SSL certificates expire, SFTP host keys change
  • Accidental disables – Developer tests in production and forgets to re-enable, maintenance window extends longer than planned
  • Configuration drift – Tracking gets disabled to "improve performance" but violates audit requirements
  • Endpoint changes – Partner changes IP address but Receive Location still points to old endpoint (appears enabled but receives nothing)

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

  • Receive Locations in BizTalk are listed within Nodinite as resources using the same name as the Receive Location.
  • Nodinite mirrors the Application structure, providing a 1:1 mapping with BizTalk Applications.
  • Receive Locations are grouped by the Category Receive Location for streamlined management.

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

Note

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

Actions

The following Remote Actions are available for the Receive Location Category:

Receive Location Actions Menu
Receive Location Actions Menu in Nodinite Web Client.

  • Enable – Start receiving messages
  • Disable – Stop receiving messages
  • Tracking – View and manage Tracking Settings
  • Details – Displays information about the receive location

What are the key features for Monitoring BizTalk Server Receive Locations?

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

What is evaluated for Receive Locations?

The table below explains the different evaluated states for any Receive Location:

State Status Description Actions
Unavailable Resource not available Evaluation of the 'BizTalk Receive Locations' is not possible due to network or security-related problems Review prerequisites
Error Disabled A Disabled Receive Location renders as state 'Error' Enable
OK Enabled and running Receive Location is operational, and no other problems are detected Disable
Details
Tracking

Tip

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

Filter

The BizTalk Monitoring Agent supports filtering unwanted resources. See Configuration for details.

Errors

The following problems and solutions may exist depending on your environment and configuration.

Schedule Task Adapter

Issues may exist with the BizTalk Schedule Task Adapter. Read more here

Problem

The Actions Enable and Disable for ports using the Schedule Task Adapter require the Microsoft.BizTalk.Scheduler.dll to be loaded from the GAC. If you get an error like this executing the Action Enable/Disable, check that the file is really in the GAC on the server running the BizTalk Monitoring Agent.
Error on Action Start or Stop
Error dialog when enabling or disabling a port using the Schedule Task Adapter.

Solution 1 using Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio:

Check if it is installed using a Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio

gacutil /l Microsoft.BizTalk.Scheduler

If missing, add the solution is to the assembly into the GAC, enter the proper path for the version of BizTalk

gacutil /i "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 R2\Microsoft.BizTalk.Scheduler.dll"

Add the dll to the GAC
Adding the DLL to the GAC using Developer Command Prompt.

Solution 2 using PowerShell

To install:

  1. Run the PowerShell console as Administrator (elevated mode)
  2. Enter the following PowerShell, enter the proper path according to the installed path of your BizTalk Server
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load("System.EnterpriseServices, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a")
$publish = New-Object System.EnterpriseServices.Internal.Publish
$publish.GacInstall("C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 R2\Microsoft.BizTalk.Scheduler.dll")

Add the DLL to the GAC
Adding the DLL to the GAC using PowerShell.

Next Step

Enable
Disable
Tracking
Details
Monitor Views
Configuration

Send Ports
Add or manage a Monitoring Agent Configuration
Monitoring Agents
Administration
Monitoring Agents