All the votes are in!
And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, December 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.
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.
 | BizTalk Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Steef-Jan Wiggers | Custom pipeline optimization using the Virtual Stream class | TGN: "This one is nice and neat, and a good read for all BizTalk developers" Sandro Pereira: "Pipeline performance optimization - Excellent choice and once again a quality article. Very important topic. Well explained, written and formatted, nice pictures." Mandi Ohlinger: "Always a fan of using custom pipelines to achieve certain tasks. Another great addition. " |
| Abhishek kumar | BizTalk Developer guide for XlangMessage Operation | Mandi Ohlinger: "Very nice! I like how you describe the function and give an example of how/where to use it. Very practical and very helpful. " TGN: "Great work Abhishek, keep it up! I really enjoyed reading the article." Sandro Pereira: "Nice Article, very useful and well described. " |
| Lex Hegt | How to use MBV to compare multiple BizTalk environments | Sandro Pereira: "Amazing article Lex. Nice topic, extremely useful, well written, nice pictures, well formatted." Mandi Ohlinger: "Lex - you're on a roll!! Great explanation and great use of MBV. I added this topic link to the BizTalk Admin checklist, also on the Wiki. " TGN: "This is a nice feature Lex, I know about it, but I never thought of this way of doing it" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- BAM Pitfalls with BizTalk 2013 by Lex Hegt
Mandi Ohlinger: "'BAM Pitfalls' is right. I love that this topic summarizes several issues; making it a one-stop topic. Great job. "
Sandro Pereira: "Errors and Warnings Causes and Solutions is one of my favorite topics! Nice and useful article Lex. Great pictures and well formatted!" - BizTalk Server 2013 - Calling a View in Oracle 11g XE using the BizTalk Adapter Pack by Steef-Jan Wiggers
Sandro Pereira: "Small masterpiece part 2, a good article does not require a complex topic, small tasks described in this way makes an excellent article. To take as a reference!"
TGN: "Nice one Steef-Jan, great photos and very well explained." - BizTalk Server 2013 - Invoking a Procedure in Oracle 11g XE using the BizTalk Adapter Pack by Steef-Jan Wiggers
Sandro Pereira: "Small masterpiece, what else to say!"
TGN: "We need these Oracle + BizTalk = love articles, great work again." - BizTalk Server 2013-One Way Operation With BizTalk WCF Publishing Wizard by Abhishek kumar
Sandro Pereira: "Nice Article, well described. However you need to be careful in the article format: some picture need to be improved, different text size found, some caption centralized other not. Nevertheless we are here to help." - BizTalk 2013 -CRUD Operation With WCF SQL Adapter and Correlation by Abhishek kumar
Sandro Pereira: "Nice article and I also like the topic. What is missing in my opinion is a better explanation of the orchestration flow (explaining better the steps) or a sample code available for download. In terms of article formatting, were necessary some edits but nevertheless very decent. Good work."
| Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Wim Beck | FIM2010: Eliminating equal precedence | Søren Granfeldt: "Very relevant information since EQPRE is going away" Ed Price: "Great introduction and references!" AM: "Thank you for your contribution! This strategy will be useful for folks relying on equal precedence once that feature is depricated." |
| Borys Majewski | How to configure (Hardware) Load Balancer for Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager | AM: "Thanks for sharing - nice simple explanation for why we must configure sticky sesisons." Søren Granfeldt: "Good information. A little more in-depth would be nice" Ed Price: "Great background info and great job breaking down the sections! Good suggestion from Soren: Could use a little more "Why" in some sections." |
| Microsoft Azure Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| saramgsilva | Azure Mobile Services: How to creating a Dev and Prod environment | JH: "Good article about something most people struggle with or, after some fights with it, just ignore." Ed Price: "This is an incredibly important article to support Azure Mobile Services! Amazing job on this!" |
| Miscellaneous Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Andy ONeill | MSDN Forums: Asking Questions | Peter Laker: "An excellent idea for an article Andy! If only they all took the time to pose a question properly..." Richard Mueller: "An important topic. I would like to see links, perhaps to forum threads I have seen discussing this." |
| jeffpetty | Accessibility Resources for Developers | Richard Mueller: "A very good collection of links. This should be very helpful to developers." Peter Laker: "Awesome collection! Thanks jeffpetty." |
| Ed Price - MSFT | Skype: How to Add Moderators/Administrators to a Chat Group | Richard Mueller: "Good, clear explanation. Good See Also section." Peter Laker: "Top tip Ed! " |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Writing a Xamarin.Forms Plugin by Jakob Gürtl
Peter Laker: "Very useful topic, thanks Jacob, keep it coming!"
Richard Mueller: "There should be links explaining what NuGet and Xamarin are about. I hesitate to download third party tools without research."
| SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| John Naguib | Workflow Manager Disaster Recovery | KB: "Very interesting article!" TN: "Useful article covering disaster recovery of workflow manager" Ed Price: "Great details on Disaster Recovery! Also, some good interactions in the comments. Could benefit from a See Also, References, or Additional Resources section. Great article!" |
| Inderjeet Singh Jaggi | SharePoint server The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component | Ed Price: "Very clear descriptions of the issue and solutions! I added a TOC and Headers to show what it looks like. Great solution!" KB: "Nice, well detailed article. I like the many screenshots, it's easier for the reader to follow." |
| Inderjeet Singh Jaggi | Create a custom MySite host template in SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 | Ed Price: "This one is short and sweet. It's very clear, thanks to the help from Peter. See the article's comments for more details. Good article!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Setup Shared mailbox in Sharpoint 2013 to Exchange 2013 with Oauth by Inderjeet Singh Jaggi
KB: "This is a nice found for a problem many of us encounter. But perhaps you can also mention the OAuth command the Exchange team has to run?"
Ed Price: "OAuth! Another great solution! Could benefit from Headers. Thanks for the great contributions! " - Configure App service Application \ App catalog in SharePoint 2013 by Inderjeet Singh Jaggi
Ed Price: "Very thorough! Could benefit from a TOC and Headers. This is an important topic to understand how to use the SharePoint Apps service. Great use of images!"
KB: "Your article is very detailed and will help a lot of people that have to setup their environment to start developing SharePoint Apps. But it's not a good idea to have one step detailed with screenshots from Central Admin, while the other steps can be performed in PowerShell. Can you extend your article with for each step, both the PowerShell and the screenshots for manual steps?" - After installing SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1 or higher update Workflow service stops working by Inderjeet Singh Jaggi
KB: "Very helpful post!"
Ed Price: "Great solution! Also, special thanks to Erdem for translating it into Turkish! Great job!" - SharePoint error External Data Refresh Failed:We are unable to refresh one or more data connections in this workbook.The following connections failed to refresh by Inderjeet Singh Jaggi
KB: "Again a short but to the point article on solving a ennoying problem."
Ed Price: "It's very important to get these solutions documented. Thank you for your contributions. I updated the title per our guidelines." - SharePoint 2010 \ 2013 Create a SharePoint Site Collection with a custom Template using Powershell by Inderjeet Singh Jaggi
Ed Price: "Great script! Could benefit from sections, headers, and a little more details explaining each step."
KB: "I'm OK with the article for SP2010 but it is against the recommendations for SP2013 to move away from full-trust code" - SharePoint Powershell Script to create, update, delete and assign site Quota template by Inderjeet Singh Jaggi
Ed Price: "Good use of images!"
KB: "Nice article"
| Small Basic Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Pappa Lapub | How to add background music to a Small Basic game | RZ: "Very cool. It's always fun to add some music to the games." Michiel Van Hoorn: "Depending the music choose this will be very annoying ? Great insight into the use of events" Ed Price: "Great scenario and set of instructions! Good job on the code commenting. Could be improved with a See Also section and breaking up the code with more explanations (the full block of code could be hosted on the MSDN Code Gallery and linked to from the article). Great article! A lot of people will want to do this!" |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic: Instructions to Graduate and Debug with Visual Studio | Ed Price: "What a great resource! The "Debug with Visual Studio" section really helps tell the full story! A fantastic addition to the Small Basic library!" RZ: "Yes, at some point, you may want to graduate to VB.NET. This post gives you the details." Michiel Van Hoorn: "Aha, step into the real world of Visual Studio (Community). Great detailed steps" |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic: Revision Control | Michiel Van Hoorn: "Excellent step up for more professional programming. Even more relevant since VS is depending more on Github." Ed Price: "Incredibly useful, great detail, and a perfect example of telling a story with images!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Small Basic: Shortcuts by Nonki Takahashi
RZ: "Shortcuts are very useful. They will further speed up your programming :)"
Ed Price: "Short and sweet! Very helpful to have this list!"
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Like Nonki’s excellent article on the IDE very usefull to know your shortcut (keys)" - The Small Basic Environment (IDE) by Nonki Takahashi
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Good explanation of the functions of the IDE. Together with Nonki’s article on shortcuts a good read to learn the features of the IDE."
Ed Price: "Nice and thorough description of the IDE! Great article!"
| SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Prashanth Jayaram | SSAS - Discuss various backup methods & Automating cube database backup with AMO - PowerShell | RB: "Very nice scripts. Will definitely use them" PT: "Nice article with some useful script for managing SSAS backups in PowerShell." |
| Visakh16 | SSIS : Importing FlatFiles with Varying Number of Columns Across Rows | PT: "Nice, well-written and easy to understand. These are two techniques that solve a real problem with inconsistent text file structures." RB: "Can be useful in some situations. Nice article" |
| Supriya Thigale | SSIS Performance Tips | RB: "interesting article. Lots of godd tips." PT: "There are several very good suggestions here. Unfortunately many are difficult to understand due to poor English. Please have this article reviewed and corrected. This would be a winner if it were easier to read." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Dynamic Axis Unit in SSRS Reports by Anushka Weerakkodyge
PT: "Good topic. Please expand the article and show a working example."
RB: "Cool tip. "
| SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| SaravanaC | SSMS Short cut to get information from DMO without Stored Procedure | DRC: "1) The article provides details about how to create keyboard shortcut for SMO output. 2) Need to modify the below section to point to the correct location to paste the T-SQL query Existing: Add the below sql text in any SSMS shortcuts (Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard), close and reopen SSMS. Modified : Add the below sql text in any SSMS shortcuts (Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard->Query Shortcuts), close and reopen SSMS. 3) Sample screenshot would be helpful " Ed Price: "This is a great contribution! There are some good suggestions from DRC here (and I put it in the comments) and from Shanky in the comments. This is a great resource!" |
| System Center Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Mr X | How to capture a Windows image using SCCM Capture Media | Ed Price: "Short and sweet, but still helpful to get some visibility on this. Great interaction in fixing the images, per the comments section! Ideally, it could include more background info and an example scenario. Great article!" MA: "Good one, direct to the point, it would be bettre if some introduction or scenarios added." |
| Transact-SQL Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Visakh16 | Setting Dependencies Between SQLServer Agent Jobs | Richard Mueller: "Good code and images. An interesting topic. The code could use more explanation or comments. Grammar needs work." Ed Price: "This is incredibly thorough! Fantastic job on the intro and descriptions! The code could be broken down and explained. Maybe a link back to an MSDN Gallery item to host it. What an amazing article and topic!" |
| Saeid Hasani | T-SQL: Error Handling for CHECK Constraints | Richard Mueller: "Good code snippets. I like the See Also section and links. Grammar needs work." Ed Price: "Great explanations, code breakdown, and use of images!" |
| Saeid Hasani | T-SQL: Negative Effects of SSMS Query Designer | Richard Mueller: "Well done, but grammar needs work. I like the links and the See Also section." Ed Price: "I love the descriptions of each issue! Great job on this! And the way you break down the resources at the bottom pretty much made me cry. I love it!" |
| Visual Basic Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Emiliano Musso | Data Manipulation from SQL Server source through controls and LINQ | Richard Mueller: "Good use of images and code is well explained." MR: "Great intro into LINQ and using TableAdapters" |
| Emiliano Musso | Using ICommand with MVVM pattern | Richard Mueller: "I like that the code is broken up into sections and explained. I learned a lot from this. The article could use links to references." MR: "Great followup to the VMMM article. Well written!" |
| Emiliano Musso | Basic Outlines and Examples ON MVVM pattern | MR: "Great walkthrough of basic MVVM usage!" Richard Mueller: "Great companion to the other MVVM article. I especially like how the code is explained." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Drawing Grids With GDI in Visual Basic.Net by Paul Ishak
MR: "Love the article and how you describe the steps! WTG"
Richard Mueller: "I like the instructional, step-by-step style. Very well explained." - Save and Load a DataGrid's columns graphical properties in WPF by Emiliano Musso
Richard Mueller: "Instructive. The comments in the code are good, but it would help to break up the code into sections and expand on the steps in paragraphs."
MR: "Great usage of using DataSet XML save function!"
| Visual C# Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| saramgsilva | Class diagram: a easy way to understand code | Ed Price: "Fantastic explanation of an important scenario! Incredibly thorough, using an important code sample, great images and explanations to guide you! Great article!" Peter Laker: "Excellent topic, nice intro!" |
| .paul. | Hexagonal Grid Patterns | Ed Price: "Great solution! Incredibly well written! I love the use of images and sections to unfold the story of building the program!" Peter Laker: "A fun and interesting article!" |
| João Sousa | ASP.NET MVC5 - AngularJS, Create XLS file using ExcelPackage | Ed Price: "Wow! Great solution! I love the descriptions, sections, and code formatting! Great Resources section! NOTE to Editors: We need to change the article URL to: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/29124.asp-net-mvc5-angularjs-create-xls-file-using-excelpackage.aspx" Peter Laker: "Sweet snippet! Very useful topic too!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Entity Framework : Customized Join Table in a Many to Many Relationship by Jaliya Udagedara
Ed Price: "Amazing job with the descriptions, images, and code formatting!!! I also love the code download! Could benefit from a TOC with Headers. Great article!"
Peter Laker: "Nice explanation and code!" - Programming Methodologies by Vithal Wadje
Ed Price: "What a powerful general resource! This could benefit from a TOC. Thank you for this valuable contribution!"
Peter Laker: "Nice discussion, thanks for the post!" - How do I get my connection string? by Noam B.
Ed Price: "Fantastic solution! I updated the title, font, and voice, per our guidelines (see comments for details). Good steps!"
Peter Laker: "Thanks Noam!"
| Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Ed Price - MSFT | Skype Portal | Richard Mueller: "A great addition to our portals. I especially like all the languages." Peter Laker: "Winner! Definitely the best article in this category this month! Wait, what!?" |
| Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Can Bilgin | Drawing/Inking Api in Windows Runtime Apps | JH: "Nice article about the drawing and inking API with a lot of code snippets." Ed Price: "Great article! Very in-depth! Great job explaining the code snippets and breaking it up!" |
| Carmelo La Monica | Part one: Sqlite on Windows Phone 8.1 | Ed Price: "Great use of images and code blocks to tell the full story of using this important tool! Fantastic article!" JH: "Wow, what an article. Very impressive from its lengths, but also from the content covered." |
| SubramanyamRaju.B | Making Nice Custom Loader in Windows Phone(C#-XAML) | JH: "Short, but a nice one if you want to have your own load animation in your app." Ed Price: "Great job on the descriptions and code blocks! This is a great scenario to walk through! Thanks for the contribution!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Using Crypto++ library with Windows Phone 8 by Vineet Jain
JH: "Security seems to be a topic most app developers don't come up with or just ignore. This one is for C++ and I would like to see one for .NET developers."
Ed Price: "Wow, what a lot of information here! I'd love to see an article with this much information broken down with a TOC. Great list of helpful links at the bottom!" - Draw Text on Image Control in Windows Phone (C#-XAML) by SubramanyamRaju.B
JH: "Love it. This article doesn't ramble on the theory and goes down to business immediately. Good examples and pictures of the end result."
Ed Price: "Short and sweet. Another great scenario to walk through!"
| Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| saramgsilva | How to send data through bluetooth in a WPF application using 32feet.Net | Peter Laker: "Just love this, very relevant and incredibly useful, to many no doubt. Thanks!" Ed Price: "This article goes on forever! It's incredibly thorough! I like the Credits! The GitHub source is also good! And some great references at the end! One benefit would be to break down the code and images more with descriptions of what's happening (a tall order from such a huge and thorough article, but it would help make things clearer). Great addition to the wiki! Thank you!" |
| Magnus (MM8) | WPF: Disabling or Hiding the Minimize, Maximize or Close Button Of a Window | Ed Price: "Wow! Great formatting, great write-ups, amazing code formatting, and a nice set of resources at the end!" Peter Laker: "Very useful, thanks Magnus!" |
| Saad Mahmood | Unleashing Visual States in Expression Blend for VS 2013 (WPF, WP, WinStore) | Peter Laker: "Nice article with lots to give. great work Saad!" Ed Price: "The headers help break it down! I love the Practice section with all the images and details! Great article!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- WPF: Dynamic XAML by Andy ONeill
Ed Price: "Wow, this is such a great introduction! I love all the gallery resources. This article is a valuable gold mine of embedded links and information for Dyanmic XAML!"
Peter Laker: "Nice tips Andy! Great work! Vey useful collection of facts for all"
| Windows Server Technical Guru - December 2014 |
| Richard Mueller | Active Directory: Leading Spaces in Names | Mark Parris: "A very useful insight to a common AD issue." Ed Price: "Whoa! I just went to Wiki Heaven! This has an Introduction, Reasons, Return to Top links, thorough descriptions, helpful images, a legendary table on LDAP Filters, Example Scripts, and the Other Resources and See Also sections had me giggling with delight! What an amazing article! " JM: "This is an excellent article, thanks for your contribution!" Philippe Levesque: "Good article. It show some advanced debugging" |
| Mr X | NSlookup for Beginners | Philippe Levesque: "Good article for any beginner. Adding maybe a note about WINS resolution can be good ! " Mark Parris: "A good starting point and introduction to NSLookup." Ed Price: "Wow, what a great resource for beginners! I love these type of articles! Incredibly thorough with a great Conclusion and Reference!" JM: "This is an excellent article that will help people learn about NSlookup, thanks!" |
| Mr X | How to update SYSVOL Replication filters | Philippe Levesque: "Good tip to prevent unwanted bandwidth between site" Mark Parris: "Interesting little nugget of information." Ed Price: "Short and sweet! Great solution and helpful addition for the community!" JM: "This is a very good article, thanks for your contribution!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Syskey Encryption by Darshana Jayathil
- Ed Price: "Short and sweet! Good job. Per MP's comments, it could be made more thorough with some additional information, such as the implications of implementing and the effects it may have on patch management. Also, it could use more descriptions around scenarios, an example, and some Resource links at the bottom. Great job on the information here!"
- JM: "This is a good article that could use an edit pass for typos and grammar."
- Philippe Levesque: "Good how to ! Can you revert the change ? Would had been a good note"
----------------------------------------------- 8< ---------------------------------------
In some categories where a single person wins multiple medals, we do have discretion to add or take a few points if it helps another article tip into the medals, but this month, the voting scores were so strong, we had to take the results as they are. A huge thank you to EVERYONE who contributed an article to December's competition.
Hopefully we will see you ALL again in January 2015'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 soooooon!!!