R2-AS2 POC

R2 AS2 POC

Sometime back, I worked on a AS2 POC(proof of concept) using BizTalk 2006 R2. Here is a high level overview of VAN/BizTalk interaction, Party configuration, AS2 and EDI receive/send ports configuration in R2, to generate decrypted EDI files and 997s.

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 makes use of many components to successfully establish communication between VAN(Value Added Network) provider and their customers. In this proof of concept, to receive and send EDI messages, AS2(Applicability Statement 2) components and HTTP adapter components are primarily used.
BizTalk AS2 receive processing is performed using the AS2 receive pipelines. There are two types of AS2 pipelines available in R2. AS2EdiReceive pipeline to process EDI messages received over AS2 and AS2Receive pipeline to process messages that are not encoded in EDI. AS2 pipelines are also responsible for generating MDNs(Message Disposition Notification).
In the above diagram, a request-response HTTP Two-Way adapter is configured to receive messages from VAN. AS2 receive pipeline generates the MDN and routes it to the BizTalk MessageBox database. This MDN will be automatically picked up by the AS2Send pipeline which is part of the HTTP Two-Way adapter. AS2 receive pipeline uses the BizTalk S/MIME pipeline component to provide S/MIME decoding functionality. AS2 Decoder processes the incoming message AS2/HTTP headers, verifies the signature and decrypts the encrypted messages. After successful decryption, AS2 disassembler generates a MDN and sets the correlation tokens and properties on the MDN.
In the case of EDI messages, EDI disassembler will parse the message and generates corresponding EDI document and 997 acknowledgements.

Party Configuration:

• Create a new party using the BizTalk Administrator explorer
• Enter appropriate values in the Organization, Name and Value fields under the values. I used EDIINT-AS2, AS2-From and partner name respectively. Hint: AS2 functionality resolves the incoming messages party information based on the AS2-From and AS2-To values in the Aliases tab
• Next step is to set signing and encryption, MDN generation request properties for a given message
• Right click on the party to select AS2 properties, select Party as AS2 message receiver
  Leave the default values selected and make sure Sign message and Encrypt message check boxes are selected under Outbound AS2 message. I selected DES3, Application/EDI-X12 and also entered AS2-From and As2-To values, selected ‘Request MDN’ check box

HTTP Two-Way port configuration:

• Create a Request-Response receive port/location to process AS2 messages and generate MDN response
• Select HTTP as transport type and select AS2EDIReceive as receive pipeline and AS2Send as send pipeline
• Create a send port to send raw data and go back to the party you created earlier to select this send port using the party administration
• Select Certificate in the send port to apply certificate thumbprint for encrypting messages
• Create another send port to send pay load messages (EDI messages). In this case, selected file transport type to send EDI files to local folder and make sure to set EDISend as the send pipeline
• Enter receive port name and select EDIintAS.IsAS2PayloadMessage == True in the send port filter. This fileter values allows us to decrypt EDI messages and creates message files as specified in the Transport Type
  

997 Configuration:

• Create a new send port to create 997 files, selected File as Transport Type
• Set the filter for 997 messages and set filter BTS.MessageType = http://schemas.microsoft.com/Edi/X12#X12_997_Root
  Set EDISend as send pipeline

Certificate Management:
It turned out the most important part of the POC was to have valid certificates and configured it right. I obtained a trial certificate from VeriSign. Note, you can also use windows generated certificate too. In a nut shell, for the encryption/decryption of the messages over AS2, I followed the Certificate configuration as described in this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=942253