Use a fake biztalk send port as configuration

Question

I am using a BizTalk orchestration to kick off an SSIS package. This package is essentially doing transformation on behalf of BizTalk on a very large volume of data. I have run into a problem as to the best way of specify in the drop location for SSIS use after the transformation. If this were a 'normal' BizTalk orchestration it would be easy to set up a send port. I would like to make a fake send port in BizTalk so that the admin could configure the send location from BizTalk and then have BizTalk pass that value into SSIS. However, if you configure a send port without actually attaching a connector to it, then it will not show up as an available binding in BizTalk admin.

Is there a way to get around this and force the admin to bind it before starting the orchestration? Any other ideas to allow for an easy configuration of this round-about process?

Answer 1

What I ended up doing was creating a decision shape that was true on one side so it never would go down the false branch. In essence I tricked BizTalk, so I could attach a connector to the send port that I am interested. Earlier in the orchestration I retrieved the value of the file location for the 'config' send port, so I can could send it to SSIS.