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Updated May 5, 2026
Get started/Get started

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Everything here is organized around one idea: messages are published onto a bus, subscriptions decide where they go, and you can watch every hop. This page tells you what you are looking at and the fastest honest path to being productive.

Art2link ESB is an enterprise service bus that deploys from the Microsoft Marketplace into your own Azure tenant. The moving parts: an Application owns an integration’s artifacts; receive ports bring messages in through adapters and publish them onto the bus stamped with a message type; send ports subscribe with expressions over promoted values and deliver; pipelines and maps shape payloads at the edges. Everything is configuration saved in the portal, a deliberate goal of the platform rather than an accident. The only code in the system lives where it earns its place, and it too is saved in the portal rather than deployed: XSLT 3.0 maps, C# pipeline components and custom functions.

There is deliberately no orchestration engine, multi-step processes are composed from transparent primitives, every intermediate step a tracked message. If that sentence made you raise an eyebrow, you are probably a BizTalk person: the Migrate from BizTalk section was written for you.


SectionWhat it holds
Get startedThis orientation, the Manifesto (the five refusals the platform is built on), the 15-minute first flow, and the Glossary of platform terms.
Install & deployThe Marketplace deployment walkthrough and post-install configuration.
Migrate from BizTalkThe translation layer: architecture, artifacts, orchestrations, and the migration playbook.
Core conceptsOne article per first-class artifact, applications, ports, message types, maps, and the rest. Reference, not reading order.
AdaptersThe adapter catalogue, one article per transport, API to SQL.
Build & extendThe extension points: pipeline components, custom functions, NuGet packages.
AI featuresThe AI Accelerator and its guided modes for maps, components, and functions.
Monitor & operateTracking, Monitoring, Logs, Activity Notifications, the day-two surface.
AdministrationSnapshots for environment promotion.
Security & complianceThe security model, identity, data protection, and compliance, written for reviews and questionnaires.
EditionsThe edition comparison: what each edition includes, side by side.
Best practicesThe opinionated layer: design principles learned expensively.
PatternsThe integration-pattern catalogue, each pattern built from the platform's primitives.
TutorialsNineteen complete, runnable business scenarios, from order intake to EDI and HL7.

1 · Deploy Marketplace 2 · First flow 15 minutes 3 · Concepts three articles 4 · Tutorial real scenario 5 · Practices to production

1. Deploy into your tenant. 2. Build your first flow, fifteen minutes, zero dependencies, and you will have watched a message cross the bus in Tracking. 3. Read three concept articles in this order: Applications, Ports, Expressions & bindings, they carry the mental model everything else assumes. 4. Build a real scenario from the Tutorials, picking the one nearest your actual first integration. 5. Skim the Best practices before anything touches production, they are short, opinionated, and exist because someone learned them expensively.