TechNet Guru Winners - February 2016!

All the votes are in!  

 

And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, Fabulous February 2016 !!!!

 

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 - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Steef-Jan Wiggers BizTalk Server Convoy Sandro Pereira: "Explaining what it is and its concepts, it as well, so important as explain how it's done. Very good choice of topic, really well explained and in clearly way. Great job Steef-Jan. For me the best of the month. "Ed Price: "The diagrams really bring this alive!"LG: "It is really full description of one of the complex idea in BizTalk."
Silver Award Winner  Eldert Grootenboer Deploying web services with BizTalk Deployment Framework Ed Price: "Thank you! This is a much-needed scenario that's very well written!"Sandro Pereira: "Again well explain and in clearly way, an excellent article for BTDF lovers :). Great job."
Bronze Award Winner  lanax Continuous deployment - BizTalk Applications built using BTDF and Octopus deploy Sandro Pereira: "Good article, nice to see people right about new tools and how that they can add value."Ed Price: "Great scenario on continuous deployment! The code could use a breakdown to explain the parts, but the introduction is very thorough!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • BizTalk360 Custom Notification Channels by Eldert Grootenboer
    Sandro Pereira: "Another great article related to this excellent monitoring tool. A must have article for admin team that are using BizTalk360. Great job Eldert."
    Ed Price: "Great job on this. The images help walk you through it, and it's valuable to have the source code available on the MSDN Gallery!"
  • Handling field delimiters as content in Flat File Schema by Mauricio Feijo
    Ed Price: "Great breakdown of the solution."
    Sandro Pereira: "Don’t get me wrong I love the topic but I had the impression that something is missing, it is very vague. In my opinion it requires more detail to be an article that brings additional value."
  • Introduction to BizTalk360 Version 8.0 by Steef-Jan Wiggers
    Sandro Pereira: "Great introduction to this excellent monitoring tool. Good job Steef-Jan."
    Ed Price: "Great descriptions. The API and Conlusion sections are especially well written!"
    Using XPath expressions in BizTalk by Eldert Grootenboer
  • Sandro Pereira: "You are once again on fire this month Eldert, great job. Excellent samples and good explanations. And very useful topic."
    Ed Price: "Great breakdown of the scenarios!"
Guru Award  Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Jeff Ingalls MIM 2016: Privileged Access Management (PAM) - FAQ Ed Price: "Great resource to come back to!"Søren Granfeldt: "Good start"
Silver Award Winner  Wim Beck FIM2010: Selective Import Attribute Flow Søren Granfeldt: "Nice ideas...."Ed Price: "Great scenario and thorough Intro and Possible Solutions sections! Could benefit from a breakdown of the code or a conclusion. Great formatting!"

FIM legends Jeff and Wim enter the history books of TechNet wiki and stamp their authority of this vital technology. Could YOU be listed next month? Know someone who could?

Guru Award  Microsoft Azure Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Steef-Jan Wiggers Access Azure Redis Cache with an API App JH: "Nice article about combining Redis and API Apps, especially the integration of Swagger is great."
Silver Award Winner  XAML Guy IoT Suite Under The Hood - Predictive Maintenance JH: "Have played with the template myself. Great to see an article about it. Would love to see an article on how to customize the template in more detail."
Bronze Award Winner  Samir Farhat How to access an ARM Azure virtual machine from Internet JH: "Had the problem myself in the beginning. Found a way through the portal. Good to see PowerShell scripts to do it in a repeatable fashion."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  Miscellaneous Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Geetanjali Arora An Introduction to Microsoft Graph API Richard Mueller: "Very well explained with good detailed steps. I like the references."Peter Laker: "Top marks Geentanjali, nice article"
Silver Award Winner  Gaurav Kumar Arora Cruds in NancyFx using ASP.Net and FluentNHibernate Using Repository Pattern Richard Mueller: "Lots of good code and images. Grammar needs work."Peter Laker: "Very interesting, thanks Gaurav"
Bronze Award Winner  SYEDSHANU ASP.NET MVC User Role Base Menu Management Using WEB API And AngularJS Peter Laker: "Wow great article!"Richard Mueller: "Lots of code and detailed steps."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Nathanaël Stassart OneDrive : Next Generation Sync Client Deployment guide Ed Price: "Wow this is thorough! Great formatting, color-coding the tables, including images, code formatting, and a general breakdown of each step, in depth!"Richard Mueller: "Good use of Wiki guidelines and great links. The "See Also" should be Wiki articles, this is really "Other Resources"."
Silver Award Winner  Rakhi Jain SharePoint 2013 : Customize Document Library TreeView Navigation Bar Richard Mueller: "Great use of Wiki guidelines."Ed Price: "Short and sweet. Great scenario and good use of an image and code formatting! Very clear steps."
Bronze Award Winner  TenPart SharePoint 2010: Updating TermStore using PowerShell Ed Price: "Good details and formatting. Could benefit from a TOC, breakdown of the code, and a See Also section at the end for Wiki links. Thank you!"Richard Mueller: "Good code. We could use some references."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  Small Basic Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Ed Price - MSFT Small Basic 1.2: Installation Guide Richard Mueller: "Good use of Wiki guidelines. Great images that detail the steps."
Silver Award Winner  Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: Desktop Michiel Van Hoorn: "Realy cool to interact with Windows components."Richard Mueller: "Excellent use of Wiki guidelines"
Bronze Award Winner  Ed Price - MSFT Small Basic: How to Publish Your Program Richard Mueller: "Good images and useful information."Michiel Van Hoorn: "Sharing is caring. How much fun is it to share your code with friends and family"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner    SSIS - Transfer data from Multiple tables using a single DFT PT: "Vinay, this is a very creative and useful solution to a difficult problem. I've seen multiple ETL frameworks for SSIS over the years and I think your approach is quite sound. Congratulations on winning the Guru award this month!"RB: "Nice walkthrough and solution to a common scenario"
Silver Award Winner  Visakh16 SSRS Tips : Implementing OR Based Logic for Dataset Filters PT: "Visakh, thanks for posting this useful information about report filters. This is a powerful feature that takes a bit of effort to use effectively."
Bronze Award Winner  Greg Deckler Dates Prior to 1900 in DAX PT: "Greg, thanks for this insightful contribution. The date range limit is something I run into all the time and is a tough problem to solve. This is a good work-around technique."RB: "Interesting workaround"

Come on BI community! Let us be proud of our Powerful ways! Let us March for SQL BI and Power BI

Also this month:

Guru Award  SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  FLauffer Workaround for Delay in Transaction Log Truncation: Snapshot Replication UR: "good and short explanation of a common problem with transaction logs."DRC: "The article talks about executing sp_repldone as workaround which can be used only as a last resort. "Peter Laker: "There was some discussion about the validity of this article. The conclusion is that it is a valid TechNet Wiki article, but should only be for "implementing a workaround which need to be used only as a last resort to fix the issue only when the other options are exhausted"
Silver Award Winner  Benchmark your SQL Server Instance Ed Price: "Fantastic job on the write-up and use of images! Great job on the diagram at the end!."

Where are you daring DBAs and sexy SysAdmins! Step up and show us your talents!

Such a mighty community of data delving dudes, but not very good at giving... ;)

Guru Award  System Center Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Darren Joyce SCOM Reset Health on Alert Close Alan Carlos: "Thanks for article!"Ed Price: "Great depth and details in this article! "

We need more System Center contributors! Could you could help, or do you know someone who can? Pass the word!

Guru Award  Transact-SQL Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Olaf Helper SQL Server: Implementation of N-Gram Search Index Richard Mueller: "Very interesting ideas for search. Good use of Wiki guidelines"Ed Price: "I love how you break down the code and explain it so thoroughly!"
Silver Award Winner  Natig Gurbanov SQL SERVER:Using Datalength() function Richard Mueller: "Interesting. This could use some references."Ed Price: "Great topic. It could benefit from more explanation of the code."

Transact SQL community where are you! Blog it! Tweet it! Facebook your friends! Let's get this party started!

Guru Award  Universal Windows Apps Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  George Chondrompilas Real-time chat UWP application using Azure Mobile App and SignalR JH: "Nice and simple example. Would love to see more examples using SignalR."Ed Price: "The breakdown of the code and the images add great value."
Silver Award Winner  Magnus (MM8) UWP: Disabling Selection Of Items In a ListView JH: "Nice workaround for disabling items."Ed Price: "Fantastic formatting and great explanations!"

This is the future man! Whare are all the Gurus when you need em! Now is the time my friends to make your mark, like George and Magnus! Legends!

Guru Award  Visual Basic Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  .paul. calc2 - A VB.Net OOP Calculator MR: "Nice example!"Richard Mueller: "Interesting ideas. Lots of well documented code. Good use of Wiki guidelines."
Silver Award Winner  SYEDSHANU Control Chart Using VB.Net MR: "Nice and easy to use chart!"Richard Mueller: "Nice GUI. Lots of code."

Is VB dead? I don't think so! We know you're out there! Step up and let us know thy name!

Guru Award  Visual C# Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  SYEDSHANU ASP.NET 5 CRUD using Scaffolding and Entity Framework Carmelo La Monica: "Very interesting article, very detailed and good images and video."Jaliya Udagedara: "Good article with a detail explanation. And the sample code is available in MSDN Code Gallery. Hint: you can use EF itself to generate the database and seeding the data rather than running the scripts."
Silver Award Winner  Emiliano Musso Binary Clock in C# and WPF Jaliya Udagedara: "This is interesting. Great explanation using code snippets, images and a video. And the sample code is available in MSDN Code gallery. Just great!"Carmelo La Monica: "Congratulation, very impressive imeges, good video dimostration and lot of funny :)"
Bronze Award Winner  Brian Seekford How to access legacy forms checkboxes and ActiveX checkboxes in Word using C#! by Brian Seekford Jaliya Udagedara: "Would love to have a better formatting in the article and of course a sample to download and try it out."Carmelo La Monica: "Good article. it can benefit format C# code and table of contents."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

Guru Award  Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Ed Price - MSFT Wiki: Dynamics CRM Portal Richard Mueller: "A great portal with great links."

We love our wiki. We award ourselves big hearty pats on the back too! Well done Ed. Keep at it boy!

Guru Award  Windows PowerShell Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Pierre-Alexandre Braeken MCSE RSA with PowerShell - PowerRSA Ed Price: "Great depth! This article will be a good resource to return to!"
Silver Award Winner  Richard Mueller PowerShell AD Module Cmdlets Cannot Clear, Add, Remove or Replace Back Link Attributes Ed Price: "Beautiful formatting, and great use of the different sections!"

Powershell is the KEY my friends! So much power under the hood! Only for REAL MEN (and real women of course)

Guru Award  Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Andy ONeill Combobox Matching Complex Type Peter Laker: "Nice work Andy. Well presented and useful, just like you!"Ed Price: "I love how Andy's articles break down each snippet like this!"
Silver Award Winner  Brian Seekford How to display a different value in a WPF combobox based on selection i..e None instead of blank by Brian Seekford Peter Laker: "Thank you Brian, good contribution"Ed Price: "Good scenario. Could benefit from See Also links and code explanations. Good article!"

WPF lives on in the REAL WORLD of common line-of-business apps that look good, are quick to knock up, and actually get the job done.

The most productive in-house LOB devs are still using WPF - FOR THE WIN!

Guru Award  Windows Server Technical Guru - February 2016 
Gold Award Winner  Kia Zhi Tang (Ryen Tang) Nano Server: Deploying an Internet Information Services (IIS) Web Server Alan Carlos: "Great article! Congratulations!!! Nano Server is amazing!"JM: "This is an excellent article on Nano server, thanks for your contribution"Richard Mueller: "Good references and step by step instructions."Mark Parris: "Good insight into the one of Nano server's capabilities."
Silver Award Winner  Mahdi Tehrani Load balancers and Active Directory Mark Parris: "Critical information that people need to be aware of."JM: "This is a good article that could use an edit pass for clarity"Richard Mueller: "I share your concern for the need of a load balancer. Any AD integrated app should use AD group memberships."

Windows Server is such a huge machine within the development world. The powerhouse of so many applications. Guru needs more heroes like these two! Spread the word!

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

Hopefully we will see you ALL again in March 2016'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!