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How to Copy Data to the Message Context as Property Fields

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You can promote a property as a Property Field in much the same way as promoting a property as a Distinguished Field, and you can also use the Quick Promotion feature to streamline the process.

You might choose Property Field promotion over Distinguished Field promotion for the following reasons:

  • The values you want to promote are shorter than the 255 character limitation that applies to Property Fields.

  • You need the values that you promote to be accessible outside of orchestrations, such as within pipelines or ports.

    This topic provides step-by-step instructions for promoting a property as a Property Field in both of these ways.

To promote a property as a Property Field using the Promote Properties dialog box

  1. If necessary, create an appropriate property schema into which you will promote a property. For step-by-step instructions for creating property schemas, see Creating Property Schemas.

    Note

    This step might not be necessary if you have already created a property schema and inserted the appropriate Field Element nodes as child nodes of the Schema node.

  2. In BizTalk Editor, open the schema for which you want to promote one or more properties, and then select the (first) Field Element, Field Attribute, or Record node that you want to promote as a Property Field.

    Note

    You can only promote Record nodes if they are configured to contain only simple content by having its Content Type property set to SimpleContent.

  3. Right-click the selected node, click Promote, and then click Show Promotions.

    The Promote Properties dialog box opens with the selected node showing as selected in the schema tree on the left side of the dialog box.

  4. In the Promote Properties dialog box, select the Property Fields tab.

  5. Confirm that the property schema into which you want to promote a property is present in the Property Schemas List in the Property Fields tab. If it is present, skip to step 8.

  6. In the Property Schemas List section, click the Folder icon. The BizTalk Type Picker dialog box appears.

  7. In the BizTalk Type Picker dialog box, navigate to the appropriate property schema (that you may have created in step 1), select that schema, and then click OK.

    Note

    Optionally, you can change the namespace prefix associated with the property schema by changing the string in the appropriate Prefix column field.

  8. With the node to be promoted still selected in the schema tree on the left side of the Promote Properties dialog box, click Add.

    If allowed, the selected node is added to the end of the Property Fields List on the Property Fields tab. If not allowed, a message box provides an explanation. If not allowed, the Add button is not enabled.

  9. Double-click Property column cell for the row you just added to the Property Fields List, and then in the drop-down list, select the Property Schema and corresponding Field Element node into which you want to promote the selected node. Drop-down list values have the form X:Y, where X is the namespace prefix of a property schema in the Property Schemas List, and Y is the node name of a Field Element node in that property schema.

    The default value in the drop-down list is the first property schema (Field Element) node that has not yet been promoted, sorted alphabetically across all relevant property schemas. This will rarely be the property schema node into which you intend to promote a given schema node.

  10. You can select additional nodes for promotion in the schema tree on the left side of the dialog box, clicking Add and then performing step 9 after each selection.

  11. When complete, click OK.

    The nodes that you selected to promote are now Property Fields and are associated with a particular Field Element node in a property schema.

To promote a property as a Property Field using the Quick Promotion command

  1. In BizTalk Editor, open the schema for which you want to promote one or more properties, and then select the (first) Field Element, Field Attribute, or Record node that you want to promote as a Property Field.

    Note

    You can only promote Record nodes if they are configured to contain only simple content by having its Content Type property set to SimpleContent.

  2. Right-click the selected node, click Promote, and then click Quick Promotion.

    If the default property schema, as defined by the Default Property Schema Name property on the Property Pages for the relevant schema, does not exist, you must click OK in the confirmation dialog to create the default property schema and configure it with an appropriate Field Element node to accommodate your property promotion.

Note

You can view and manage properties promoted using the Quick Promotions feature by opening the Promote Properties dialog box and then clicking the Property Fields tab. For step-by-step instructions for opening the Promote Properties dialog box, see Opening the Promote Properties Dialog Box.

See Also

Promoting Properties
How to Create Property Schemas
Ways to Use Message Content to Control Message Processing