The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (October 2014)

All the votes are in!  

 

And below are the results for the  TechNet Guru Awards, October 2014 !!!!

 

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.

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

When this is the case, we will at least give an indication in the comments, 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 - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Agustín Mántaras Visual Basic script to deal with BizTalk Suspended Messages Mandi Ohlinger: "A quick and easy way to handle suspended messages. I'm a fan!" Ed Price: "Great article! Thanks for including an MSDN Gallery link, a See Also section that links to the Wiki portal, and some great example snippets!" Sandro Pereira: "Nice script, in my opinion it will be best to write this in PowerShell script. Well written, well formatted (some minor improvements can be made)"

Silver Award Winner

 

Johns-305 [boatseller] BizTalk: EDI Features Not Just For HIPAA Mandi Ohlinger: "A great walkthrough including the screen shots. Nice addition to the Wiki. " Ed Price: "Good use of images and color in the code snippets!" Sandro Pereira: "Nice start be this article should be explained better. Article format can be improved."

Bronze Award Winner

 

Steef-Jan Wiggers Securing BizTalk endpoints leveraging Sentinet API Management Part 3 Sandro Pereira: "Another excellent article in this series on Sentinet API Management. Well written, well formatted with nice pictures, great article and I love the topic." Ed Price: "Fantastic depth on this article!" 

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • Securing BizTalk endpoints leveraging Sentinet API Management Part 4 by Steef-Jan Wiggers
    Sandro Pereira: "Another excellent article in this series on Sentinet API Management. Well written, well formatted with nice pictures, great article and I love the topic."
    Ed Price: "Oh, wow. Great diagrams and descriptions!"
  • Basic Architecture of BizTalk by Girish R. Patil
    Mandi Ohlinger: "A simplified and easy-to-understand explanation of BizTalk. Well said. "
    Ed Price: "Good architecture image to explain the context. Great that you included the See Also section!"
    Sandro Pereira: "Basic information, can be improved. Article format need improvements and pictures should be improved"
  • BizTalk360 Monitoring BizTalk Server - How to evaluate? by Steef-Jan Wiggers
    Sandro Pereira: "An important topic and a lot of times forgotten: monitor BizTalk Server with third party tools, begins to be filled one gap in the TechNet Wiki. Well written, well formatted with nice pictures, great article"
    Ed Price: "This is a nice walkthrough of this partner tool. Great that you're including the See Also section!"
Guru Award  Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Wim Beck Event Driven Scheduling of Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) using a Windows Service Ed Price: "Fantastic job on formatting, the code, and all the explanations! The TOC and References are a nice touch!" PG: "Nice innovative solution, that is a nice add-on to existing solutions. " 

  

Guru Award  Microsoft Azure Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Chervine Creating and Querying Microsoft Azure DocumentDB JH: "DocumentDB is one of my favorite new services on Azure. It's cool to see that someone seems to be excited as I am. Hope that this article is just the beginning of a whole series about Azure DocumentDB."Ed Price: "Great use of images and code snippets. Good conclusion! Great topic!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Chilbeto Publishing Multiple Azure Environments TN: "Great " JH: "This topic is normally forgotten when talking about Cloud development. I had a hard time to find an appropriate mechanism myself. This article provides one of the better ways how you can deploy multiple environments to Azure." Ed Price: "Great overview article. Good diagram at the top! Could benefit from a TOC and References. Good job on the conclusion!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

saramgsilva Microsoft's Windows AppStudio: Add Support For Push Notification Ed Price: "Great introduction and incredibly thorough. Great job!" JH: "A new article about AppStudio focusing on push notifications. Push notifications in my opinion, when done right, makes an app alive. Would love to see a complete example with all features mentioned in the related articles published on GitHub." 

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • Authenticate your App with Facebook using Microsoft Azure Mobile Service by Abdul Rehman Aftab
    Ed Price: "The images help tell the story. Could benefit from a TOC and References. Great article!"
    JH: "Most apps need authentication, but don't want to be an authentication provider itself. This article shows step-by-step instructions to use Facebook as an authentication provider. There is still some space for improvements, for example showing what happens under the covers, how the OAuth flow actually works. Most articles don't mention this, but in my opinion every developer should now what happens when a third-party authentication provider is used." 

 

Guru Award  Microsoft Visio Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Mr X Unattended installation of Visio 2013 Ed Price: "Great job, Mr X! Good use of images!" AH: "It gives good instructions with the help of the pictures but its still missing detailed information if some user needs it. Need to provide a wiki/msdn references that are available something like https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179097.aspx. Overall decent article"
Guru Award  Miscellaneous Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Brian Nadjiwon How to Create and Use Classes in PowerShell Richard Mueller: "Very interesting concepts. It would help to name the objects something like "Jim" rather than "Person", for example. There should be a See Also section, and more links to references." Ed Price: "Great topic and explanations of the classes!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Andy ONeill Visual Studio: Snippetty Tip Richard Mueller: "Great idea with some good advise." Ed Price: "Great explanations of the code snippets! Fun topic! As is mentioned in the comments and in the article, many people don't know this is possible!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

saramgsilva How to create a Virtual Machine for run Windows 10 Technical Preview Ed Price: "Fantastic topic! Good use of images!" Richard Mueller: "Good images and a good step by step explanation. Needs links to references and other Wiki articles (See Also). We should try not to use first person."
Guru Award  SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Geetanjali Arora SharePoint Online : An Introduction to Office Delve TN: "Great wrap-up about Delve" Ed Price: "Amazing depth and a great overview to a new topic! Great job on the images and details!" GO: "woohooo; a DELVE article. Great work." Margriet Bruggeman: "A new topic explained well, I was actually looking for this info!" Jinchun Chen: "Great."

Silver Award Winner

 

Steven Andrews Building a list specific search with JavaScript TN: "Great tip for mid-dev" Ed Price: "Great job on the descriptions, formatting, images, and See Also section! Check out the great comment from Dan at the bottom of the article!" GO: "Nice work Steven. It's definitely a great article.!" Margriet Bruggeman: "Great! easy to use solution for a request that is made often" Jinchun Chen: "Nice work"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Dan Christian No-code solution to lookup previous item in a list Ed Price: "Effective images and helpful video and See Also help round out this great article!" GO: "Thanks Dan and as USUAL an usefull article." Jinchun Chen: "Nice. If InfoPath Form is accepted, we can use InfoPath Form to achive the goal as well." Margriet Bruggeman: "I can tell that effort is taken to explain the idea well"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  Small Basic Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: Rotation Centers for Shapes of Triangle and Line RZ: "Excellent article. This is a must read if you want to make an object move. You need to understand the coordinates and the rotation center." Ed Price: "Great use of images!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Nonki Takahashi Small Basic Known Issue: 26992 - GraphicsWindow.GetPixel(X, Y) Doesn’t Work Properly If X Or Y Has after the Decimal Point in Remote Ed Price: "Good recommended workaround!" RZ: "Yeah, another bug in Small Basic that might get you and need to be fixed :)"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: International Resources Ed Price: "Oh, yeah. This one is so amazing! Thank you for making this and organizing the resources so well!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Clean sweep for Nonki, poor show from Small Basic community this month :(

 

Guru Award  SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Visakh16 Random SSRS Musings 1 : Rowset Concatenation Using Native SSRS Expressions MR: "Interesting example of LookupSet function usage" RB: "merging columns on a single line with an interesting solution" Jinchun Chen: "Good workaround we are generally using." Ed Price: "Great descriptions and use of images!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Jan D'Hondt Dates in Excel files rendered from reports are displayed as plain numbers Ed Price: "Great job laying out the sections. The images help convey a lot!" MR: "Very short tip that could be useful because of different behavior on iPad and Windows" RB: "interesting work-around."

Bronze Award Winner

 

Anushka Weerakkodyge Integrating Power View with SharePoint Server 2010/2013 - Multidimensional Mode RB: "nice walkthrough" Ed Price: "Great depth in the procedure steps! It's similar to another article (see comment), but it's still a good addition. Good use of images!" MR: "This article explains how to install Power View on SharePoint but do not explain that Reporting Services is the tool required for Power View to work - the initial setup is required only whether SSRS has not been installed before. Otherwise, it has to be upgraded and then the shortcut can work."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Shanky In depth Look at What can Cause Index to be Still Fragmented After Rebuild AM: "Well covered." Ed Price: "Good job on the explanations, Conclusion, and See Also section!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Ronen Ariely Representing list of values using a single value Ed Price: "Great breakdown of sections! Good formatting on the sections and code snippets! Great interactions in the comments!" AM: " Interesting options and walk through."

Bronze Award Winner

 

Visakh16 Generate Scripts for Stored Procedures Without Dynamic SQL in SSMS AM: "Nice tip for better use of SSMS." Ed Price: "Great breakdown of the problem and solution. As Saeid wrote in the comments, "Clear article which shows handy solution!" Good job!"
Guru Award  System Center Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Alan do Nascimento Carlos ALM and IT Operations - Management 360 with System Center Operations Manager in 06 Steps Ed Price: "Lots of images. Great job breaking up the steps! Could benefit from a TOC and References. Great article!" GO: "Thanks for the only article. great btw. :-)"
Guru Award  Transact-SQL Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Visakh16 Behavioral Difference of IIf Function in T-SQL Compared To SSRS Richard Mueller: "Nicely done with code examples. The "See Also" section should only link to Wiki articles." GO: "Wonderfull article thank you!" Jinchun Chen: "Interesting comparison " Ed Price: "Good topic. Very clean and clear. Great article!" JS: "Good writeup, though I would bring the comparison with the table to the top and reference the samples from there."

Silver Award Winner

 

Ronen Ariely INSTEAD OF Triggers Ed Price: "Good depth here. Great explanations of the code! Great job interacting in the comments and improving the article!" JS: "Use object qualifiers (schema name to make sure that the right objects will be picked, e.g. dbo.) Outline ab bot more the things what not to do in production! Be aware that although people read this, they tend to use it anyway. If triggers are enabled, they are executed once for each batch They are executed each statement not batch, miswording here." Richard Mueller: "Good article. The "See Also" should only include Wiki articles. Some of the "Resources" could be moved to "See Also". Grammar needs work." GO: "Thanks" 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Praveen Rayan D'sa Find the Database where user defined object located and where it is being referred. GO: "This article deserves absolutely a medal THANKS!"  Richard Mueller: "Good topic. Grammar needs work. "Caution" states undocumented stored procedure is safe for production, but later states it is not." Ed Price: "Great article. We should include the technology in the title. Good descriptions, and great References!" JS: "Although the outlined solution is interesting and shows the public the usage of the "new" system views finding the right dependencies, it is not recommended to describe the usage of undocumented features such as sp_msforeachdb as there are alternatives, especially in this scenario. You could generate a query using the sys.databases view and let it print out the database name along with the use statement. In addition to this and as the statement has to be run with a high privileged account as schema information is secured as well, it should be made safe to SQL injection. In many case in the statements there is just a concatentation of values used. You can easily inject code in here, Also make sure that names / object identifiers are quoted with [] in order to allow also special characters like spaces in the names"
Guru Award  Visual Basic Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

.paul. Image balloonTips Richard Mueller: "Lots of code. Great idea. The "See Also" section should only include links to Wiki articles." Ed Price: "Great solution. Good explanations!" 

Silver Award Winner

 

.paul. Image Arrow Pointers Richard Mueller: "Interesting idea. Need more links. Don't use first person." Ed Price: "Creative solution! It would be good to break up the code more, to explain it. Great article!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Paul Ishak Visual Basic Graphics Frame Class (Easily Converted to C#) Ed Price: "Good solution! Could benefit from more explanations of what the code is doing." Richard Mueller: "Don't use first person. Could use more description, explanation, and links."
Guru Award  Visual C# Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Chervine Using XML Serialization with C# and SQL Server Ed Price: "It goes on for quite a while! Great job breaking out all the code snippets and explaining them well! Could benefit from a References or See Also section. Great TOC!" Søren Granfeldt: "In these days of generic data, this serves as a good example of storing unstructured data" Margriet Bruggeman: "Through discussion of the topic" DB: "Interesting"

Silver Award Winner

 

Magnus (MM8) C#: Generic Type Parameters And Dynamic Types Søren Granfeldt: "Nice example of diving into generic code and extensibility" DB: "Good walkthrough of generics and reflection" Ed Price: "Important topic! Great descriptions." Margriet Bruggeman: "Good, I like the way the article covers various sides of the problem"

Bronze Award Winner

 

saramgsilva File exporter for IEnumerable of T Ed Price: "Another great article from Sara! Great job on the TOC and code snippets!" Søren Granfeldt: "Great idea; could use a little more generic approach on the formatting of values" Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice example of applying generics" 

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Durval Ramos Summit: Principles of International TNWiki Summit Richard Mueller: "A great writeup and introduction to this fantastic idea. Well done." Ed Price: "Great depth and planning for this event!" GO: "This is one of the best Portals that I've ever seen! Thanks"

 
 

Guru Award  Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

saramgsilva How to Integrate Cortana in the Menu App JH: "I got three words for you: I love Cortana! This article shows nicely how to integrate Cortana into your own app. Would love to see more." Ed Price: "That's what I'm talking about! Way to go for a "What's Next" topic and nail it! I expect this article to gain a lot of interest. Fantastic article!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Carmelo La Monica The class GeocodeQuery in Windows Phone 8. JH: "Lots of code examples about a feature some apps should be use more. Geocoding becomes more and more important, so this article fits perfectly into this." Ed Price: "This is an important class with a lot of possibilities. Great execution on this article! Could benefit from a References or Additional Resources section. Good job wrapping it up with the conclusion."

Bronze Award Winner

 

saramgsilva Export To CSV for Windows Store apps JH: "Most people laugh when they hear about CSV export of data. A database would be a better place for the data of an app. In my opinion this is not always true (because CSV is small and can be used in different ways), so most apps should have the capability to export data into the CSV file format. This article shows how this can be done." Ed Price: "Another very important article. I love the Source link to the MSDN Gallery. Great job!"
Guru Award  Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Andy ONeill WPF: Entity Framework MVVM Walk Through 1 Ed Price: "Very well formatted, clear sections, and lots of depth and clear explanations! The TOC, code snippets, Summary, and Further Reading links all help round out this great article!" KJ: "awesome" 

Silver Award Winner

 

saramgsilva How to binding a ResourceDictionary to a Lisbox in apps based in XAML Ed Price: "Incredibly clear and fantastic topic! The TOC and Source link to the Gallery item help provide more value!" GO: "She did it again. Great article." 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Shweta Lodha PopUps with Interactivity [Prism 5.0] KJ: "handy" Ed Price: "Good clarity and use of code snippets and images. Could benefit from a TOC and References/See Also. Great job!" GO: "Layout could be better, but still valualble article."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  Windows Server Technical Guru - October 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Richard Mueller Active Directory: Generalized-Time Attributes Mark Parris: "Very detailed article providing very good information." GO: "Top 1 AD article Thanks Richard." JM: "This is an excellent article, thanks for your contribution." Philippe Levesque: "Good article ! I really liked the note about the whenChanged"

Silver Award Winner

 

Darshana Jayathilake Some useful features with Windows Group policies JM: "This is an excellent article, but I recommend making the title more accurate by renaming it something like "How to configure Applocker using Group Policy" " GO: "I like the article; so great written" Mark Parris: "A good insight on some GPO settings and their capability." Philippe Levesque: "Good visual howto !"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Mr X How to manage Windows Taskbar Items pinning using Group Policy Philippe Levesque: "Good subject well explained, already seen users that ask for that in the forum as it's new." JM: "This is a good article that would be much more useful if you specify the Windows versions to which the article applies." GO: "Merci, Mr X" Mark Parris: "Very useful, especially if you need to utilise this capability post deployment."

 

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

Hopefully we will see you ALL again in November 2014'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

More about the TechNet Guru Awards:

Forum posts:

Coming soon!