If you need to receive documents from a receive location and submit them to BizTalk Server, you can configure submit calls programmatically. For more information about submit calls, see Submitting or the Submit method. Or you can configure receive functions to process the data. For example, if you need to receive documents from a business organization or application that cannot communicate directly to BizTalk Server through a COM interface, you can use a receive function to submit the interchanges documents to BizTalk Server. Or, if you need to receive from a message queue, you can use a receive function to submit the document to BizTalk Server. BizTalk Server 2000 supports two types of receive functions: File and Message Queuing.

You can create a generic receive function for BizTalk Server 2000 in the administration console in which you define the receive function name, document definition, and so on. For more information about configuring receive functions, see Manage Receive Functions for a Server Group. For more information about advanced properties for receive functions, see Understanding Receive Function Advanced Properties.

The following illustration shows the relationship between the sending business application, the file system, and a generic BizTalk Server receive function.

Sending business
application

File system

BizTalk Server File receive function

BizTalk
Server

Submit

The following topics are covered in this section:

• Available Receive Functions
  
  
• Custom Preprocessors
  
  
• Multiple Instances of Receive Function Types
  
  
• Understanding Receive Functions and Document Routing
  
  
• Understanding Receive Function Advanced Properties