LGSS are one of the UK’s largest shared service operations, delivering a full range of business support services to a variety of public sector organisations.

In 2017, LGSS ran a programme of work to replace their existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with a new platform based on Unit 4’s Business World. BizTalkers was hired to deliver integration of existing flat file and XML data feeds into the new ERP.

The source files typically contained financial information such as for purchase orders, or invoices and were proved as batches from existing legacy systems. Several of key requirements were quickly determined:

1. The batch must be validated, ensuring correct formatting; totals within trailer records where provided
2. A file of records may contain data to be processed against multiple ERP “client accounts”
3. Validation failure of individual records should not prevent valid records within the file from being processed
4. Business users should be provided with the capability to edit and resubmit records that fail vaidation.

Given the above, we developed a BizTalk solution around the Scatter-Gather pattern. The incoming files were debatched to be processed by multiple instances of an orchestration. This orchestration would execute validation logic that required web service calls to the new ERP system. Ultimately, the source data would be gathered to batches of records with matching ERP client accounts.

The edit and resubmit requirment presented an interesting challenge. Were were able to meet this by employing a combination of the following:

1. A custom pipeline componented to archive the received file
2. BizTalk’s BAM functionality
3. A custom ASP.Net portal with Windows Authentication

This functionality is illustrated in the following video, in which:

1. A sample flat-file in dropped into a folder monitored by a BizTalk receive location
2. File level validation is passed but one of the records has an invalid Supplier Id
3. The BAM Portal is used to correct and resubmit