TechNet Guru Awards - November 2013

All the votes are in!  

 

And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, November 2013 !!!!

 

The TechNet Guru Awards celebrate the technical articles on TechNet, contributed from valued wiki authors like YOU!

Each month, the contributions are scored by a panel of judges (5 per category, 2-3 in each are MS experts), and the winners of each category are showered with love and attention from all corners of TechNet.

See the links at the bottom, to find out more about the competition and how to enter.

 

We have picked the top three highest scored contributions for each category to bestow our awards upon.

The awards are in gold, silver and bronze, the gold obviously being the top winner of the category.

The last column is just a few of the comments judges made during the judging process.

In some cases, we have not obtained permission to use the judges names, so they have been reduced to initials.

 

My fellow wiki ninjas will be digging deeper into some of these articles in this blog series, so watch out for those.

Starting this month you will notice some articles are marked as failing to meet our minimum bar for quality or content.

Any of our judges can exercise their right to veto an article, if they do not feel it meets minimum requirements for a medal.  

When this is the case, we will at least give an indication of the reason, so you understand why.

 

A big thank you also to the other authors who did not make the top three of each category.

Some articles only just missed out, so we may be returning to discuss those too, in future blogs.

Guru Award  BizTalk Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Steef-Jan Wiggers Windows Azure BizTalk Services EAI Bridges – Diagnostics Mandi Ohlinger: "Anyone and everyone who's using BizTalk Services needs this topic. Well done!" TGN: "WABS, I LOVE YOU! and I love this article! well described and a bunch of good images to help the explaination! Great work Steef-Jan!" Ed Price: "I love the large and thorough Introduction section!" 

Silver Award Winner

 

Suleiman Shakhtour BizTalk Server: How to Extract Email Attachments By Pipeline Mandi Ohlinger: "A great solution to a common problem. We need more of these. Thank you for the source code links!" Ed Price: "This is a fantastic topic! Thanks for this great contribution!" 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Tomasso Groenendijk How to use Business Rules in the ESB Toolkit and test them with the BRE TestTool Ed Price: "Great use of images to clearly express each step. Congratulations Tomasso, in winning your first Guru medal!" 

 

Congratulations to Steef-Jan, Suleiman and Tomasso!

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

BizTalk Server 2010: How to use SFTP Adapter by Mohit Gupta
This article failed our quality/content bar. Judge comment was "This article needs a lot more work to work better"
 

Guru Award  SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Brandon Atkinson Use the XML Viewer Web Part, HTML, and JavaScript to Build Custom Web Parts TVG: "No full-trust solutions, brilliant. But make sure that the injected JavaScript never impacts the functionalities on the page." GO: "Excellent article! The GOLD medal winner for me! This article is well written with small images and a very fluent english. You'll read and understand every word. Technical but for each level. An excellent resource for the SharePoint Community! Thanks Brandon! " Craig Lussier: "Fantastic article. Superb walk through with commentary, images and code. Well done!" 

Silver Award Winner

 

Matthew Yarlett A Complete Guide to Getting and Setting Fields using PowerShell Jinchun Chen: "It is really a good article for getting start on using field in PowerShell." Craig Lussier: "Excellent reference with high reuse value. Great work Matthew!" GO: "Powershell, Powershell and again Powershell. The message here is clear. Everything is possible with Powershell. This article deserves absolutly a medal." TVG: "Excellent! I would create a PowerShell command library so that I can simply download this script from this page and reuse it directly with the correct parameters.."

Bronze Award Winner

 

Benoit Jester - MTFC SharePoint 2013: Search - User Segmentation Jinchun Chen: "Nice article." TVG: "Very interesting!" Ed Price: "Benoit does a great job telling the story through images. It was an incredibly competitive month for SharePoint. We also need to mention Steven Andrews' amazing Deep Zoom Image article." Craig Lussier: "Highly detailed and insightful walk through of this new SharePoint 2013 search feature. Great article!" GO: "Again a great article from Benoit. Well Done!"

 

Congratulations to Brandon, Matthew and Benoit!

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

 

Guru Award  Small Basic Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

litdev Dynamic Graphics Ed Price: "Incredibly detailed. A fantastic resource to keep coming back to! From the comments: "Wanted to say WOW - this is great!" and "Awesome. Thanks""

Silver Award Winner

 

Nonki Takahashi How to Make a Check Box Ed Price: "Well formatted and in-depth how-to article! Great job!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Joe Dwyer Why Small Basic is a great programming language for beginners Ed Price: "A well-articulated value statement for Small Basic! Thanks, Joe!"

 

Congratulations to litdev, Nonki and Joe!

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award  SQL BI and Power BI (SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, Power Pivot) Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

johnsom How to add JPEG and PNG report export when SSRS 2012 is integrated with SP 2013 Jinchun Chen: "Good sharing." Ed Price: "Although this article could benefit from improved formatting, formatting on the code, and an image... the clarity and quality of the topic are what earns this article a prominent placing. Johnsom earns his first medal!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Tim Pacl SSRS: Converting Between Tablix Controls (Matrix, Table List) Ed Price: "Tim proves consistency with another fantastic article that is very thorough! We have a strong showing from SSRS in the BI category for November!" 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Michael Amadi Calculating the % difference between the same measure evaluated in two user selected contexts Ed Price: "Michael earns his first Guru medal and gives us a Power Pivot article for BI! Great use of images and code!" 

 

Congratulations to Johnsom, Tim and Michael!

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

 

Guru Award  Transact-SQL Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Naomi N T-SQL: Create Report for Last 10 Years of Data Richard Mueller: "Excellent article solving a common problem." Ed Price: "Good details in the Solutions section!" Samuel Lester: "Handy code and very slick solution!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Ronen Ariely Random String Samuel Lester: "Great comparison and VERY useful information in the application testing space as you mentioned." Ed Price: "Great detail and depth!" Richard Mueller: "I disagree with several statements in the article. For example GUID values will be random." 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Saeid Hasani Simplified CASE expression Ed Price: "Incredibly clear and detailed explanations. Great job taking Carsten's advice (in the comments) and giving it good code formatting. It helps a lot!" Samuel Lester: "Extremely thorough and a great read! Good addition!" 

 
Congratulations to Naomi, Ronen and Saeid!

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

 

Guru Award  Visual Basic Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Reed Kimble Generate Color Sequences using a RGB Color Cube in VB.Net Richard Mueller: "I love the color cube. Very well explained." MR: "Great article and well written." SB: "Article has narrative and text and shows concept well" Ed Price: "Once again, Reed delivers an astonishingly thorough article that's easy to read and understand. Great topic!"

Silver Award Winner

 

.paul. Shapes - Areas + Volumes SB: "This had narrative, code and practical usage for beginners to VB. THis would get people going quickly using VB and I can see it being useful for beginners to VB." Ed Price: ".paul. earns another Guru medal! The code could be formatted better, but as SB mentions, this is very informative and the perfect article for a new coder! Could benefit from a TOC and headers." Richard Mueller: "Good explanation. I would like to have seen the missing classes without downloading the source code." MR: "Good example of OOP. Maybe include a GetArea returning a Double as well?"

 

Congratulations to Reed and Paul!

 
.paul.hangMan 
This article failed our quality/content bar. Judge comment was "As an 'article' this doesn't help someone understand concepts and how to go about creating this."

SB: "I like the example but this is purely a code example. A bit of narrative to explain logic or what we are trying to achieve would have made this go to the top."
Ed Price: "Short and sweet. This is a fun one! I also think this deserves to be broken down into code sections with more explanation. "
Richard Mueller: "Good synergy with Gallery. Could use more explanation of how it works."
MR: "Fun app"

  

 

Guru Award  Visual C# Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Jaliya Udagedara Thread.Sleep vs. Task.Delay NN: "Short and swift and very informative article. I like all articles by Jaliya and this is no exception" Ed Price: "Great formatting with thorough explanations!" 

Silver Award Winner

 

Deeptendra Difference between Static Class, Sealed Class and Abstract Class in C# NN: "This article explains some basic C# concepts, but it will be much better if it would provide examples" Ed Price: "Good comparison for starters, but it could go deeper on each class." 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Muralidharan Deenathayalan Learn about Class,Object and Constructors NN: "Good and simple article that is helpful for C# beginners" Ed Price: "As NN mentions above, this is a good article for new coders. As Carsten mentions in the comments, it would benefit from better code formatting."

 

Congratulations to Jaliya, Deeptendra and Muralidharan! 
 

 

Guru Award  Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

mcosmin Various Media Objects for Windows Phone and Their Roles RC: "A few interesting additions to the Media for Windows Phone docs. For completeness it should also address how Media Foundation fits in. Also please update the MediaElement link to point at Windows Phone docs rather than Silverlight." Ed Price: "Great explanations of the classes! This article could benefit from a TOC."AN: A good article, and useful subject!

 

Congratulations to mcosmin!

 

Dave SmitsChecklist for great apps
This article failed our quality/content bar. Judge comment was "Following the suggestions as stated violate accessibility guidelines"

Ed Price: "Some great tips! Carsten has a good suggestion in the comments... to use the Format Code Block tool."
RC: "These are some good ideas (but when overriding colours be sure to respect high contrast!), but are a bit limited and miss many higher profile issues to be a checklist for high quality. "

 

Guru Award  Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

dev hedgehog Custom Tree Virtualizing Panel Ed Price: "The introduction sets expectations very well, and then the sections are divided very clearly. Great code formatting. Per the comments, thanks for adding the TOC!" Peter Laker: "Love this tip. Great contribution hedgehog!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Magnus (MM8) WPF: Programmatically Selecting and Focusing a Row or Cell in a DataGrid Peter Laker: "Great subject, very informative, lots of explanation." Ed Price: "Very thorough and well formatted!" 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Ayyappan WPF Treeview Using Self Reference Table and Entity Framework Peter Laker: "Great article, great walk through and nice presentation." Ed Price: "Great topic! It would benefit from a TOC and Headers. Some great TreeView articles this month!"

 
Congratulations to dev hedgehog, Magnus and Ayyappan!

 

  

Guru Award  SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Uwe Ricken When Foreign Keys will conflict with FILLFACTOR Jinchun Chen: "Nice! I love it." NN: "Great article, very comprehensive. Few drawbacks - it doesn't explain in details what the correct solution should be. Also, the code samples to the article include line numbers which make them harder to copy" Ed Price: "As Saeid in the comments wrote, "I love this article. This article defines the quality!" Between the explanations, code, comments, and diagram, the story is told well." Samuel Lester: "Outstanding explanation, format, and write-up! Superb again Uwe!" DB: "Very interesting both in content and technique. " DRC: "Very nice article, well documented with sample script and sample output. If we add the references to few of the topics discussed, would be helpful to understand the concept better so that the reader will get the complete picture of the blog talks about. Definitely a TechNet WIKI article. "

Silver Award Winner

 

Ronen Ariely SQL Server: Create Random String Using CLR NN: "This article can not be read by its own without reading the article it refers to. The code is not explained, the process of creating CLR function is also not explained. So, it is not clear how this C# code is used in SQL Server at all" Ed Price: "This could benefit from much more explanation. " Samuel Lester: "Very good article and a great in-depth break-out that compliments your broader random string tech-net Wiki article. Great read!" DRC: "It would have been better if the code would also provide the below details: 1. How to load the dll generated in SQL Server memory 2. Sample T SQL script to use the function and a sample output for the same. "

 

Congratulations to Uwe and Ronen!

   

Guru Award  Windows Server Technical Guru - November 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

Mr X How to protect your Active Directory from RID Pool Depletion GL: "Good background and procedures." JH: "great diagram, great topic. well written" Richard Mueller: "Great information that could prevent a disaster." JM: "Very good article" 

Silver Award Winner

 

Mr X How to extend the Delegation of Control Wizard templates in Active Directory Users and Computers Richard Mueller: "Very valuable information. Needs a TOC. The tables and images help a lot." GL: "Good detail in this article. I'd like to see a use case added." JH: "very useful, nicely illustrated" JM: "Very good article, but it would be good to improve readability by fixing minor errors in grammar (missing articles, pluralization sometimes incorrect)"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Mr X Delegate moving user, group and computer accounts between Organizational Units in Active Directory JM: "This is an excellent article and I'm sure a lot of Admins will find it very helpful." JH: "good topic, well organized table, easy to read" Ed Price: "Great table and good use of cross-linking to related Wiki articles!" Richard Mueller: "A great table and great references." GL: "Good article."

 

Congratulations to MrX for another clean sweep, but be warned, Yagmoth555 and Kelly could be giving you some competition!

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

I hope you find the extra comments for the runners up useful, as we get so much useful feedback it seems a shame to waste any.

We are very lucky to have over 30 Microsoft employees and Wiki Council judges helping us with this project, and some real "players" in these technologies, shown above and hiding behind initials, so thank you to the judges for another month's judging and all your comments.

A huge thank you to EVERYONE who contributed an article to November's competition.

Hopefully we will see you ALL again in December's listings?

 

If you haven't contributed an article for this month, and you think you can create a more useful, clever and better presented wiki article than the winners above, here's your chance! :D

 

Best regards,
Pete Laker

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