Exporting and importing diagrams

The diagrams you create with BizTalk Processing Monitor are stored in its own database. But, say you have a couple of developers working on a new version of your BizTalk system and they use BPM as well for their developing and testing purposes. If the new version has no new or changed ports, their diagrams will look the same as in the production system.

But if a part of the architecture has changed, resulting in changed ports, you will have to make those changes in your production system as well. Or...

Exporting and importing Diagrams

BizTalk Processing Monitor enables you to export your currently loaded diagram to a XML file. While doing so, your diagrams become portable between your different DTAP environments. After exporting a specific diagram in your Development environment, you can simple import that diagram in your Production environment.

Exporting and importing diagrams is simple. Just follow the steps below.

Exporting a Diagram

Step 1: Export a Diagram

When you have loaded a Diagram, open the File menu and click ‘Export…’, or instead hit Ctrl-E. The ‘Save as…’ dialog appears. The file name already contains the name of the currently loaded Diagram and the XML extension.

Just select an appropriate location to store the XML file and click ‘Save’. Your Diagram is now exported and can be transferred to your other environments.

Import a Diagram

Step 1: Select the Diagram you want to import

Open the File menu and click ‘Import…’ or instead hit Ctrl-I. The ‘Open’ dialog appears and you need to locate the Diagram you want to import and click the ‘Open’ button.

Step 2: Changes any values

After you have hit the ‘Open’ button, the ‘Import this diagram??’ dialog appears. This dialog, which basically is a slightly adapted ‘Diagram properties’ dialog, shows the values as they are stored in the Diagram you are importing and enables you to change any of these values. For example it might be necessary to change the connection settings to the BizTalk Management database or the name of the Diagram.

As Diagram names don’t need to be unique in BPM, resulting in multiple Diagrams with the same name, it is advisable to keep them unique, as this helps you identifying your Diagrams.

Step 3: Hit ‘Yes’, ‘Yes’, ‘Yes’

When you have changed any values, hit the ‘Yes’ button and confirm that you want to save these values, by hitting the ‘Yes’ button again at the following screen.

When the Diagram is imported, you are asked whether you want to open the imported Diagram.

Click the ‘Yes’ button one more time and the imported Diagram will be opened.

Finished!

By the way: the Export and Import functionality also enables you to bypass the limitation of  having at the most 2 Diagrams in the Trial edition, as after exporting a Diagram you can delete the currently loaded Diagram (in the ‘Open Diagram’ dialog) and import another Diagram.