Managing Parties

Using the Parties node, you can set up business partners (parties) or internal departments (business profiles) with which BizTalk Server solutions interact. For more information, see Trading Partners.

You can create and configure a party using the BizTalk Server Administration Console. After you create a party in BizTalk Server, it is likely that you want to interact with that party using an orchestration. Parties interact with orchestrations through roles. For example, you might have a shipping role in your orchestration. The shipper would have one or more parties associated with it. When the orchestration needs to decide the least expensive shipping company to use to ship an item, it can compare the prices of the parties in the shipper role.

You must enlist a party to tie it to a specific role. Enlisting a party enables an orchestration to interact with the party. See How to Enlist or Unenlist a Party for a Role.

Prerequisites

You must be logged on as a member of the BizTalk Server Administrators or BizTalk Server B2B Operators group.

Create or edit a party

1. Open BizTalk Server Administration. Expand BizTalk Server Administration, expand the BizTalk group, right-click Parties, select New, and then select Party.

2. On the General page, do the following:

   Use this	To do this
   Name	Enter a party name.
   Local BizTalk processes messages received by the party or supports sending messages from this party	Select this checkbox to specify that the party represents the same trading partner that also hosts BizTalk Server. Important: For a two-party TPM solution that uses out-of-the-box pipelines shipped with BizTalk Server, you must select this check box for at least one party. Note: If you clear this check box, some properties will be disabled while creating the agreements for this party.
   Additional Properties – Name / Value	Enter a name-value pair to store any information about the party. You can add as many name-value pairs as you want. Note: The name-value pairs are not used by the BizTalk Server for any processing; this data is for information purposes only.
   Delete	Select to delete the selected name-value pair.

3. On the Send Ports page, do the following.

   Note

   In BizTalk Server, the send port association is done at the agreement level. The Send Ports page available as part of the party properties is purely for backward compatibility. Whenever you associate a send port with an agreement, the send port setting is also propagated to the party setting and you can see the send port association in this page as well. However, the reverse is not true. You cannot associate a send port with a party and then have that send port be automatically available as part of the agreement settings.

   Use this	To do this
   Send ports - Name	From the drop-down list, select a send port to bind to this party.
   Send ports - URI	Displays the send port address.
   Remove	Select to remove the selected send port from the party.
   Properties	Select to display the Send Port Properties dialog box for the selected send port.

4. On the Certificate page, do the following:

   Use this	To do this
   Browse	Select to display the Select Certificate dialog box, where you select the signature certificate from the Local Machine or Other People certificate store to apply to messages transmitted to the party.
   Common Name	Displays a description of the selected certificate.
   Thumbprint	Displays the thumbprint of the private key certificate that is used for party resolution and signature verification. The certificate thumbprint has the format HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH, where H is a hexadecimal digit (a number from 0 through 9 or a letter from A through F).
   Remove certificate	Select to remove the displayed certificate.

5. Select Apply to accept the properties, or select OK to complete the configuration setting. Either action will validate the settings

Update an existing party

After a party is enlisted to a role and the ports are bound, you can:

• Edit the party's name and description
• Edit the party's certificate
• Specify whether the party is for the organization hosting BizTalk Server

1. In BizTalk Server Administration, and select Parties.

2. In the Parties and Business Profiles pane, right-click the party you want to view or edit, and then select Properties.

3. View or edit the properties.

4. Select Apply to accept the properties, or select OK to complete the configuration setting. Either action validate the settings.

Delete a party

Delete the party using the BizTalk Server Administration Console.

Important

You can only delete a party that is not enlisted in a role. Before you can delete a party, you must first un-enlist it from any of the roles where it is enlisted. See How to Enlist or Unenlist a Party for a Role.

1. In BizTalk Server Administration, select Parties, right-click the party you want to delete, and then select Delete.

2. In the Confirm delete party dialog box, select Yes to delete the party.

Search for a party

If you have a large number of parties created, you can use the Search option to display the parties that you want to see.

1. In BizTalk Server Administration, select Parties.

2. In the Parties and Business Profiles pane, towards the top right corner, enter a search string in the Search Party text box, and select the search icon. You can also press ENTER to start the search.

   You must consider the following points while using search:

   • The search string is not case-sensitive

   • You can search for text within the name (sub-string search). For example, if you search for ‘ar’, the BizTalk Server Administration console displays the parties that either start with the search string (e.g. Artist) or the parties that have the search string in their name (e.g. Party1).

   • The search operation is limited to party names.

3. To clear the search results, select the red 'x' next to the search text box.

See Also

Managing Role Links
How to Configure the Party Resolution Pipeline Component
Managing EDI and AS2 Solutions