Service Instances

Service Instances

When a service instance gets suspended, BizTalk automatically assigns it with an error code. In BizTalk360, you can see the list of service instances depending on their state such as In Progress, Running, and Suspended. BizTalk administrators are alerted when service instances are in the suspended state, and they would want to understand the reason and find a solution for the problem.

Let's take an example to understand the procedure of adding a KB article for one of the service instance error codes. Say, there is a service instance for an application "Contoso" and the service instance has moved to the Suspended (Resumable) state because the published message could not be routed as no subscribers were found for the message. The error code connected to this error is '0xc0c01680'. This information is available to the support team under the 'Error Description' section. With this information, the support team may/may not be able to identify the root cause of the error and fix it. The support team can find a solution/workaround by referring to multiple blogs, support articles, and so on. BizTalk360 provides the flexibility to the support team to document these solutions (as a knowledge base article) which will be useful in the long run. Once they have the permissions, they can create a KB article for the corresponding error code.

Adding a KB Article for a Suspended Service Instance

1. Log in to BizTalk360
2. Click the Knowledge Base icon on the left side panel
3. Click Service Instances, and click Add New to create a new KB article
4. In the Add New Knowledge Base Article page, enter/select the following information

• Article title – Give a meaningful name for the article. For instance, if the article is for an error code 0xc0c01680, it can be named as "Article for error code 0xc0c01680"
• Error Code - Enter the error code for which the KB article is created, say 0xc0c01680
• Article Description – Enter the detailed information for the KB Article in the text editor space provided. The text can be formatted with the appropriate font/colors/bold/italics and so on
• Environment – Choose the environment for which the KB Article is to be displayed. If the default option (Choose Environment) is chosen, the KB article will be applied to all the environments
• Service Class – Choose the service class of the service instance. All the service classes in the environment will be displayed in the drop-down
• Application name – Select the application for which the service instance corresponds
• Error Text – This field can contain the token from the description of the error message. This field is restricted to 20 characters
• Host Name – Select the host instance for the corresponding application that was selected previously
• Service Status – Select the state of the service instance (active, suspended, dehydrated, and so on)
• Service Name – Select the name of the service instance

5. Click Save to save the KB article and immediately create another new KB Article

6. Click Close to close the KB article creation window and display the list of created KB articles. It will prompt the user with a confirmation message as Are you sure you want to close?

7. Click OK to close the KB article creator window

Create multiple articles for the same Service Instance error code

In a real-time environment, a service instance can fail due to some error and BizTalk attaches the error with an error code. In the same way, another service instance can fail for the same reason as the first one. In these situations, the same error code is tagged with the error. But the workaround may not be the same for both scenarios, and the support person has different workaround steps to fix the problem. In this case, the support person needs to create multiple KB articles for the same error code, and tag them according to the service instance. This will ensure the correct KB article is displayed depending on the service instance name.