BizTalk Server 2013 R2: Installation and Configuration – Install additional Developer tools (Part 19)

This part of the article will focus on the installation of additional useful tools to help you develop your BizTalk Server projects. The goal here is not to address all the tools available instead I will address only the most important ones that may have direct impact on the efficiency of your developments, because there are a number of tools that can aid you as BizTalk developer, which you can find on Codeplex or Microsoft Download Center, that are not offered out of the box by BizTalk Server like WCF Publishing Wizard and so on.

Install BizTalk NoS Addin for Visual Studio 2013

Although the currently available version for download at https://www.biztalk360.com/nos/ has not been developed and not be “officially” supported for Visual Studio 2013/BizTalk Server 2013 R2 it can be installed and used without problems in this new environment conjugation: Visual Studio 2013 and BizTalk Server 2013 R2 with a small workaround.

What is BTSG NoS Addin purpose?

The purpose of BTSG NoS Addin is to help all BizTalk Developer, why not, all BizTalk Administrator too in a lot of different situations, by improving the developer experience and why not reduce the development time in new or existent BizTalk projects.

It will provide several functionalities like quick search inside artifact, fast register/unregister in GAC, find critical, internal or external dependencies… and many for functionalities like JackHammering, which will compare your VS artifact with the artifact deployed in BizTalk environment, you can also extract the artifact (Orchestration, map, schema and so on) from BizTalk environment and put it in the VS solution or even test your pipeline in VS simply… several features that are usefully in our day by day work and a time saver in a lot of situations.

How can I install BTSG NoS Addin for Visual Studio 2013

Because the current version of the Addin is not officially supported for Visual Studio 2013, you cannot install it through the “Extensions and Updates” option from Visual Studio, instead, you need to:

You can install BTSG NoS Addin directly from Visual Studio “Extensions and Updates” option. For that you must:

Download the BizTalk NoS Addin from Visual Studio Gallery: BizTalk NoS Addin
Execute “BTSGSetup.exe” file with administration writes by, right-click on the file and select “Run as administrator” option.

BizTalk Server 2013 R2 BizTalk NoS Addin Install

On the Welcome to the BTSG NoS Addin Installer Setup page, click “Next” to continue

BizTalk Server 2013 R2 BizTalk NoS Addin

On the End-User License Agreement page, accept the terms by selecting the “I accept the terms of this License Agreement” option and click “Next” to continue.

On the Destination Folder page, set the destination folder and click “Next” to continue

On the Ready to install BTSG NoS Addin page, click “Install” to start the installation process.

On the Completed the BTSG NoS Addin Installer Setup page, click “Finish” to complete the installation of the Addin.

Add-In Registration for Visual Studio 2013 (Workaround)

Visual Studio add-ins are deprecated in Visual Studio 2013. You should upgrade your add-ins to VSPackage extensions. For BizTalk NoS Addin to work in Visual Studio 2013 we need to implement the following workaround:

When Visual Studio starts, it looks in the .addin file location (\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Addins\) for any available .addin files
- For example: C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Visual Studio 2013
Because BizTalk NoS Addin is meant to work with Visual Studio 2012 you should go to
- For example: C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Visual Studio 2012
- You will find in this location an “Addins” folder containing “BTSG NoS” Addin file

BizTalk Server 2013 R2 BizTalk NoS Addin Visual Studio folder

Copy the “Addins” folder to Visual Studio 2013 .addin file location
- For example: C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Visual Studio 2013
Go to the “Addins” folder:
- For example: C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Addins
- And edit the file ADDIN File.AddIn in notepad and change the <HostApplication> element with the following data:

<HostApplication>
   <Name>Microsoft Visual Studio</Name>
   <Version>12.0</Version>
</HostApplication>

Save and close the file.

To load BTSG NoS Addin into Visual Studio 2013

Open a BizTalk Server Visual Studio Project and on the Tools menu, click Add-In Manager.

In the Add-in Manager window, select the add-in from the Available Add-ins column list and then click “OK”.

Back to your BizTalk project, right-click on your BizTalk solution or in one of your BizTalk artifacts and you can see the new options provided by BTSG NoS Addin:

You can find all the documentation about this Addin in:

TechNet Gallery: BizTalk NoS Addin Documentation

Or in my posts:

Install BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard

The Pipeline Component Wizard is intended to ease the development of pipeline components used within a BizTalk Server environment. Supports both C# and VB.NET. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Server 2013 R2 Pipeline Component Wizard (BizTalk Server 2013 R2 download version)
GitHub project page
Blog post for guidance

Install BizTalk Server Functoids Project Wizard

BizTalk MapperExtensions Functoid Wizard is a Custom Functoid Project Wizard for Visual Studio 2010. It allows you to create a new Functoids project for BizTalk Server 2010 without having to create manually the project. Supports both C# and VB.NET.

The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Available soon

1 thought on “BizTalk Server 2013 R2: Installation and Configuration – Install additional Developer tools (Part 19)”

Eliassal says:

January 29, 2015 at 8:09 am

Again, very helpful thread. However Sandro, In VS 2K13, when using JackHammering, the dialog box displays correctly, clicking on any item schemas, orchestrations…retreives the artifact but when double clicking on one of them, a 2nd dialog appears with 3 items, compare it, extract…clicking on Compareit, I get the error message “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”. Any idea/
Thanks in advance