BizTalk: Add Multiple Files to a Zip Archive

In Microsoft BizTalk Server, multiple files can be compressed into a single Zip archive by invoking a send pipeline that uses the Zip pipeline component from within an orchestration. This approach allows you to aggregate multiple messages and process them together.

A sample project demonstrating this approach can be downloaded here.

The project includes a pipeline configured with the Zip component and an orchestration that collects messages in a loop, stores them in a list, and invokes the pipeline from within an expression shape to create the archive.

Orchestration Design

Expression Shape

To use the sample project, compile and deploy the orchestration. Then create a file receive location and a file send port, and bind them to the orchestration. Both should use the default pass-through pipeline, since the orchestration invokes the send pipeline to generate the Zip archive.

In this example, the orchestration collects six messages and adds each to a single Zip file. After placing six files in the receive location directory, a single Zip archive containing all files will be created.