BizTalk HTTP/Web Proxies

BizTalk has a number of different Adapters that transmit over HTTP - and some companies are insistent on putting HTTP proxies in the way of communication. The BizTalk adapters all support the notion of authenticating HTTP proxies, which means this isn't an issue.

Well - this shouldn't be an issue. It is an issue when you don't always have the need for a proxy, e.g. you have one port that sends out to an external web-server and another that is local and inaccessible to your web-proxy. It seems that the proxy information is shared amongst adapters and ports - and if they don't match, things can get messy very quickly.

I have learnt a major distrust for the proxy configuration tab on the Send Port themselves, instead only use the proxy configuration listed on the adapter handler for that host. And it is with this you can work around the problem. Create a secondary host purely for the purpose of hosting differently configured HTTP-based connections.

I have left the default BizTalkServerApplication's send adapters to not use a proxy server and then created a ProxyHost which has send adapters with proxy configuration setup.

Don't forget you need to create a host instance and reassign your send ports to the appropriate host. And of course, restart your host instances for the changes to be picked up.

As an untrusting computer user, I also make sure that there is no proxy configuration for the current user, which can be done by running Internet Explorer under the credentials of your host instances and disabling any proxy settings.