What is a Notification Channel?

Introduction

Notifications are an established concept for alerting users, it is an important piece to make users aware of certain conditions that may require timely action. Notifications from BizTalk360 could be sent through various channels like SMS, Email, HP Operation Manager and other widely used external notifications channels like the Slack, ServiceNow, WebHook and Microsoft Teams.

By default, external notification channels are in-built into BizTalk360. The only step you need to do is to configure these notification channels with the appropriate URL, Access Token value (for Slack) and Authentication settings (for ServiceNow and WebHook), and Teams WebHook Connector (for Microsoft Teams). What this means for you, is that if you are already using either of these channels in your organization, it becomes easier to receive alerts from BizTalk360 right into these channels.

In addition to the existing external notification channels in BizTalk360, you can also add a new custom notification channel that could be your ticketing system, internal databases, calling a REST endpoint, executing a PowerShell script etc.

CRUD Operations in Notification Channel

BizTalk360 supports adding, editing, configuring and deleting notification channels. You can add any number of notification channels to your BizTalk environment in BizTalk360. By default, the predefined notification channels will not be configured, in-depth steps to configure different external notification channels is explained in the different articles. The Alert History in the Monitoring section (under Notification History) will display the Channel Notifications (history of alerts) that have been triggered to the notification channels, and their transmission status

Edit Notification Channel

Please note that you can only edit the name of the notification channel and toggle the initial status of the channel (either enabled/disabled). Follow the steps as shown below to edit the notification channel information.

• Log into the BizTalk360 application (as a Super user)
• Click the 'Settings' icon found at the top right corner of the page
• Click 'Monitoring and Notification' from the Menu panel on the left side of the screen
• Click 'Manage Notification Channels'
• Select the checkbox against one of the Channel names; for instance, B360.Notifier.SlackNotification
• Click Edit

1. Channel Name - Enter a friendly name for the notification channel, say Slack Notifications
2. Initial Status - Uncheck the checkbox if you do not want the slack notification channel to be enabled by default

• You cannot make any changes to the Logo and DLL Name
• Click the Save button to save the changes
• Once you click Save, you will notice that the Channel Name field reflects the new name for the notification channel, and the Status field reflects the initial status

Delete Notification Channel

To delete the notification channels:

• Follow the steps 1-4 as mentioned in Edit Notification channel section
• Select the checkbox against the Slack Channel name, for instance, B360.Notifier.SlackNotification
• Click Delete
• You will be prompted with a warning message as "Are you sure, you want to delete the selected notification channel?". Click Yes to go ahead and delete the notification channel. Click No to abort deleting the notification channel.
• When you click Yes in the previous step, you will be prompted with a warning message as "The selected notification channel has a mapping with Alarm(s), Do you still want to delete the notification channel?". This message appears only if the notification channel is mapped with some alarm. If you are confident to delete the notification channel, click Yes. Click No to cancel the deletion process.
• Clicking Yes in the previous step will delete the selected notification channel. You will see a message as "Notification Channel Deleted Successfully". The notification channel will no longer be visible in the Manage Notification Channels list. All mappings associated with that notification channel will be deleted.

Reconfigure Notification Channel

To Reconfigure the notification channel:

• Follow the steps 1-4 as mentioned in Edit notification channel section
• Click the gear icon for the Slack channel name, for instance, B360.SlackNotification. In the Edit blade, to update the DLL click on “Choose DLL” option and select the new DLL from the desired location or through drag & drop.
• Click on Validate and Render button to validate the updated DLL.
• You will be prompted with a warning message “Ensure the current DLL and already configured DLL both belong to the same namespace” Click Yes and Save the Channel. Click No to cancel the reconfigure process.
• After the successful DLL upload and validation, you need to configure the channel with the updated properties. The notification channel will be updated with the new changes and all mappings associated with that notification channel will be updated in the alarms. Eg: Any changes made in the alarmproperties.xml reflect the fields in the configuration and values can be updated as per the user preference for seamless notification experience with updated values.
• Click the Bell icon to view all the list of associated alarms with the corresponding notification channels along with environment details for easy reference.