Installing the ESB Management Portal Alert Service

The ESB Management Portal Alert Service is a sample service that notifies users of exceptions published to the ESB Management Portal. The service polls the exception database for new exceptions and evaluates these against exception alerts that users have created in the ESB Management Portal. The service then notifies any users or groups of users that have subscribed to the alert. The service retrieves notification e-mail addresses and group memberships from Microsoft Active Directory directory service. This service has no dependency on Microsoft BizTalk Server.

To install the ESB Management Portal Alert Service

1. If you have not already installed and configured the ESB Portal as described in the previous section, do that now.
2. Open the Microsoft Visual Studio solution named ESB.AlertService.sln from the \Source\Samples\Management Portal\ESB.AlertService folder, and then make sure that the <connectionStrings> section of the App.config file contains the correct connection strings for the EsbExceptionDb database, as shown here.
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   <connectionStrings>
     <add name="EsbExceptionDb"
          connectionString="Data Source=.; Initial Catalog=EsbExceptionDb;
                           Integrated Security=True" 
          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
   </connectionStrings>
   

3. If you are using a 32-bit computer, open the ESB.AlertService.sln solution in Visual Studio and change the TargetPlatform property for the Setup project from x64 to x86.
4. Build the ESB.AlertService.sln solution using the commands on the Build menu.
5. Open Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder Source \Samples\Management Portal\ESB.AlertService.Install\Release\, and then run the Setup.exe file for the service.
6. Leave all settings at their default values and click Next until the installer displays the user name and password values to configure the service account for the Alert Service. Select an account that is a member of the BizTalk Application Users group with access to both the EsbExceptionDb database and the server hosting the alert service. Type the account name in the form: <DomainName>\<UserName>
7. Use the Fault Settings page in the portal to configure the following settings in the Configuration table of the EsbExceptionDb database:
   • Email XSLT File Absolute Path. Point this setting to the folder that contains the ESB Portal Alert Service (by default, this is located in the file C:\Projects\Microsoft.Practices.ESB\Source\Samples\Management Portal\ESB.AlertService\Templates\EmailTransformation.xslt).
   • Enable Alert Queue Service. This setting indicates whether the alert service should run and check for new exceptions occurring that match existing alerts.
   • Alert Queue Polling Interval. This setting is the number of milliseconds for the alert service to wait between processing batches of alerts.
   • Alert Queue Batch Size. This setting is the number of exceptions that the alert service should process as one operation and match against existing exceptions.
   • Alert Queue Active Directory Cache Interval. This setting is the interval at which the alert service should refresh its cache of Active Directory information, including e-mail addresses and group memberships.
   • LDAPRoot. This setting is the LDAP connection string for your domain controller; for example, LDAP://servername.domain.com/DC=domain, DC=com.
   • Enable Alert Email Service. This setting indicates whether the alert service should send alert e-mail messages. If you disable this option, the service still processes exceptions and stores alerts in an outgoing e-mail queue table. You may prefer to use this scenario if you implement an alternative e-mail delivery service.
   • Email Server. This setting is the name of your e-mail server; for example, mail.domain.com.
   • Email From Address. This setting is the "From" e-mail address to use in alert e-mail messages.
   • Email Service Polling Interval. This setting is the number of milliseconds the e-mail service waits between sending each batch of e-mail messages.
   • Email Service Batch Size. This setting is the number of e-mail messages the e-mail service should process in a batch.
8. Open Services from Administrative Tools and locate the BizTalk ESB Exception Notification Service. Make sure that the startup type is set to Automatic, and then start the service. To open the Services management console, click Start on the taskbar, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Services (or click Start on the taskbar, and then type services.msc in the search box).

Now continue to the next task: Installing the ESB Management Portal UDDI Publishing Service.