BizTalk Server Orchestration - Back (and Forth?) between Visio and Orchestration

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Author Back (and Forth?) between Visio and Orchestration
Neal Walters

2004-09-02, 6:15 pm

We are planning to use visio to design our business processes. I have used
the "export to" function and pulled the result into a Biztalk Solution and
orchestration.

However, the export back to visio (the "report from") option seem to be
rather disappointing.

Also, I'm guessing that at this point, all the orchestration code is gone
(for instance in Assignment Shapes or Business Expression Shapes, along with
logical ports), and that I dare not export it back to the orchestration again
- am I correct?

Is it really designed to be able to go both ways or is pretty much a
one-shot deal?

So in other words, once we design our business processes in visio and import
them to orchestration - should we manually have to keep the two in sync?

Thanks in advance for any input or practical experiences!

Neal Walters
http://Biztalk-Training.com - FREE Biztalk Training Videos


Alan Smith

2004-09-02, 6:15 pm

Hi Neal,

You are right, you can do forward engineer a diagram to an orchestration, or
reverse engineer an orchestration to a diagram, but you can't do round trip
engineering as far as I know.

/Alan


"Neal Walters" wrote:

> We are planning to use visio to design our business processes. I have used
> the "export to" function and pulled the result into a Biztalk Solution and
> orchestration.
>
> However, the export back to visio (the "report from") option seem to be
> rather disappointing.
>
> Also, I'm guessing that at this point, all the orchestration code is gone
> (for instance in Assignment Shapes or Business Expression Shapes, along with
> logical ports), and that I dare not export it back to the orchestration again
> - am I correct?
>
> Is it really designed to be able to go both ways or is pretty much a
> one-shot deal?
>
> So in other words, once we design our business processes in visio and import
> them to orchestration - should we manually have to keep the two in sync?
>
> Thanks in advance for any input or practical experiences!
>
> Neal Walters
> http://Biztalk-Training.com - FREE Biztalk Training Videos
>
>

Gilles [MSFT]

2004-09-02, 6:16 pm

Hello,

>We are planning to use visio to design our business processes. I have used
>the "export to" function and pulled the result into a Biztalk Solution and
>orchestration.
>
>However, the export back to visio (the "report from") option seem to be
>rather disappointing.
>
>Also, I'm guessing that at this point, all the orchestration code is gone
>(for instance in Assignment Shapes or Business Expression Shapes, along with
>logical ports), and that I dare not export it back to the orchestration again
>- am I correct?
>
>Is it really designed to be able to go both ways or is pretty much a
>one-shot deal?
>
>So in other words, once we design our business processes in visio and import
>them to orchestration - should we manually have to keep the two in sync?


The ODBA tool allows you to "go forward": take a visio diagram and convert it to .odx
or to take an orchestration and create a visio diagram out of it.
It does not round trip very well. This is a know issue we are working on.

Thanks,
-Gilles.

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