All the votes are in!
And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, June 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, 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 - June 2014 |
| Steef-Jan Wiggers | BizTalk Server: Custom Archiving | TGN: "This one was my favorite this month. Archiving is a topic that is brought up often. Well done explaining it simply and how to do it according to best practice" Sandro Pereira: "Love the topic, well explain and with everything you need, my favorite." Mandi Ohlinger: "Another great addition to the Wiki. " |
| boatseller | BizTalk: Reducing and Consolidating WCF Serialization Schema Types | TGN: "Very good, keeping the code clean, and only referencing what you need and consolidate it is important!" Mandi Ohlinger: "Great solution to somewhat-annoying behavior. Nice addition to the Wiki!" Sandro Pereira: "Great article." |
| Murugesan Mari Chettiar | How to Implement Concurrent FIFO Solution in BizTalk Server | Ed Price: "Incredibly thorough in your explanations! Great formatting. Good job!" TGN: "First in, first out. Great article Murugesan!" Sandro Pereira: "Good additional to the TechNet Wiki, good work." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- BizTalk Server and Sentinet - Protocol Mediation REST to SOAP by Steef-Jan Wiggers
Ed Price: "Thanks for digging into this important topic. Amazing job on the diagrams and images!"
Sandro Pereira: "Was missing this topic in the TechNet Wiki, great article!"
TGN: "You've put a lot of effort into this one. Sentinet is a good addition to BizTalk development, great work Steef-Jan." - BizTalk: Passing variables into maps by Alastair Grant
Mandi Ohlinger: "Nice use of the ThreadStatic attribute!"
TGN: "Nice article, and it is true every now and then you need that variable into the map!"
Sandro Pereira: "Good example, however this approach comes with little performance hit also and in some scenarios you can also find yourself in particular dangerous situation, for example if you don’t validate if the static singleton instance object still exist or not in the code you obtain “object reference not set to an instance of an object”" - BizTalk: SQL Patterns for Polling and Batch Retreive by boatseller
Sandro Pereira: "Good work and good article."
Ed Price: "Good topic with great use of images and code formatting!"
TGN: "This is really good. I can see you spent time on this one. Great work!" - BizTalk Server : Scheduling Orchestration using Trigger Message by Maheshkumar S Tiwari
Mandi Ohlinger: "This is a must-read when using scheduled receive in BizTalk! LOVE the Codeplex adapter. "
Sandro Pereira: "As one of the persons in charge for this adapter... I must say I love it!"
TGN: "Good one, an article that is very valuable for the community."
| Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Remi Vandemir | Custom Reports in FIM2010R2 | AM: "Great step-by-step guide for generating custom reports. Thanks for taking the time to put this together." PG: "Nice article, in an area that is less known!" Søren Granfeldt: "Very comprehensive." Ed Price: "Great job on the intro, and a lot of images really help clarify all the steps!" GO: "Thank you " |
| Eihab Isaac | FIM 2010 R2: Review pending export changes to Active Directory using XSLT | Ed Price: "Great introduction, great steps, and great job on the image and code formatting!" GO: "An introduction, a sample code, images, a TOC and a conclusion. Nothing here to preserve the GOLD medal!" PG: "Nice article!" Søren Granfeldt: "Nice and precise" |
| Scott Eastin | A Practical Alternative to the PeopleSoft | AM: "Thank you for sharing. Great (and probably superior) alternative for those using PeopleSoft as import-only data source." GO: "Amazing article, love it so much" PG: "Would like to see more elaborated details in this article." Søren Granfeldt: "A little more technical stuff would be nice" Ed Price: "Some good community collaboration in removing blog-like personalization. This is a great topic with some good holistic thinking!" |
| Microsoft Azure Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Mr X | Configuration of WATM (Windows Azure Traffic Manager) for Web Portals hosted on Azure VMs | JH: "Two simple words: Love it! The detailed explanation on how Traffic Manager works is awesome." Ed Price: "Wow! Incredibly well written, with beautiful diagrams and a great use of images and tables! Great topic!" GO: "This is a great article! Thanks Mr.X" |
| Mr X | How to use Windows Azure as Traffic Manager for Web portals hosted in multiple on-premise datacenters | JH: "Very detailed! Great explanation at the beginning followed by a good step-by-step guide." Ed Price: "A much needed article! Great job on the formatting and images!" GO: "Thanks again, MR.X" |
| Mr X | How to connect Orchestrator to Windows Azure | GO: "I really enjoyed reading this article, clever and well written. Lovely done!" JH: "Great article! I especially love the amount of pictures provided in the article." Ed Price: "Good procedural article! Great use of images!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Configure a custom domain name for a web site - Windows Azure (Godaddy) by Saad Mahmood
Ed Price: "Great details!"
GO: "Well written.. Thanks for your help and article for the community"
JH: "A very relevant topic. Would love to see more articles related to other hosting providers." - Azure storage block blob upload from Android by Isham Mohamed
JH: "Good explanation of block blobs. Unfortunately the biggest part is a code snippet provided by Microsoft. It would be great to have a real-world implementation a reader can use directly."
Ed Price: "Good topic and commenting in the code! But a lot of this article is from other sources."
| Microsoft Visio Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Mr X | How to open Visio files without Visio | AH: "This Article is pretty basic and lacks details. Visio Viewer doesn't just open in IE but also in Outlook and File explorer. The writer should include the link to http://blogs.office.com/2012/11/28/download-the-free-microsoft-visio-viewer/ this blog which has lot more details " Ed Price: "Good. I think the SEO on the title will drive more awareness of the Visio Viewer." GO: "Thanks you Mr.X! Again a great article!" |
| Miscellaneous Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Ed Price - MSFT | Yammer: Announcements Feature | TGN: "Wow, not only is this a good way on how to write annoncments on Yammer, but in generel. Really, really great write-up Ed! T" GO: "Tord says on the comment section: "Very nice article, Ed. I really enjoyed reading it and you had a great set of tips. Thanks for sharing!".. I only can respond AMEN! Thansk Ed!" Margriet Bruggeman: "Short & Sweet" |
| Anthony Caragol | Backing Up and Restoring Lync 2013 Contacts | Margriet Bruggeman: "Good discussion of announcements feature" GO: "Great article, but I'm missing, examples, images, definitions etc for a huge section like "backup and restore"" TGN: "Very good, Lync has eaten up the market and is a key product in most companies, articles like this is very valuable. Great work Anthony!" |
| SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Geetanjali Arora | SharePoint Online : Working with People Search and User Profiles | Benoît Jester: "A very good article, a must-read for those interested by SharePoint Online and the use of search and user profile API." Jinchun Chen: "Excellent. Just a tip, if you would like to improve the performance, please use the Search Service to search user profiles" Craig Lussier: "Good walkthrough and code example for getting started with People Search!" Margriet Bruggeman: "Good starter for working with search and profiles" |
| Jaydeep Mungalpara | Creating Bookmarks in Wiki Pages - SharePoint Rich Text Editor Extension | Margriet Bruggeman: "Really cool! In the past, I was actually looking for this and its a nice implementation of this functionality. This article gets my vote!" Craig Lussier: "Great solution for extending out of the box functionality. I like the synergy between the TechNet Wiki and TechNet Gallery!" GO: "Simple but powerfull. We should all take an example about how this article has been written. This article has a TOC, headings and even a code! Well done!" Jinchun Chen: "Nice. " Benoît Jester: "A simple button which can save a lot of time!" |
| Dan Christian | PowerShell to copy or update list items across SharePoint sites and farms | GO: "The best artice for June! Thanks Dan, you deserve the GOLD medal!" Benoît Jester: "A good article with useful scripts, as they can be used fior many scenarios (data refresh, migration tests, ...)" Jinchun Chen: "Good and low-cost solution. To be automatic, we can use EventHandle instead. " Craig Lussier: "Nice PowerShell script solution and explanation of the scenario. Consider using functions with parameters for easier reuse so input parameters are not hard coded." Margriet Bruggeman: "This script can be useful, although typically migration scenarios are more complex than this. Having said that, I probably end up using this script some time in in the future" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Social Data Timer Job is not running, Recycle warning in progress, job will not be run immediately by Waqas Sarwar
Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice problem description and solution, very clear"
GO: "Thanks buddy!"
Benoît Jester: "Thanks for the tip!"
Craig Lussier: "Thanks for the troubleshooting tip - I am sure this will help others in the field."
| Small Basic Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| litdev | Small Basic: Sprite Arrays | Ed Price: "An important topic that's well described with fantastic examples! Great article!" Michiel Van Hoorn: "Great starter for Sprite Fundamentals and how to handle them. Briljant start point for greating you 2D shooter" |
| Jibba Jabba | Small Basic - Monthly Challenge Statistics | Ed Price: "Jibba Jabba brings us astonishing insights and data about LitDev's Small Basic Monthly Challenges!" RZ: "This is very nicely done and showed all the statistics visually" |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic: Challenge of the Month | RZ: "This is very nicely done and organized all challenges of the month in one place" Ed Price: "Although this is very basic, it's incredibly helpful to get all these in one list and to access all the great challenges!" Michiel Van Hoorn: "Good explainer on fundamental structures." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Small Basic: List Extension by litdev
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Nice to have move indepth into the List Extension. "
Ed Price: "Great in-depth explanation and practical use of the List Extension!" - Small Basic: Subroutine by Nonki Takahashi
RZ: "Subroutine is not an easy topic to explain. Very glad to see Nonki explained it so well."
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Good explainer on fundamental structures."
Ed Price: "Perfect concept for the Wiki... to explain one topic in depth! Could benefit from more high-level info about subroutines." - Small Basic: Condition by Nonki Takahashi
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Good explainer on fundamental structures."
Ed Price: "Another great topic! This one covers Conditions and is great to read!" - Small Basic: Label by Nonki Takahashi
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Good explainer on fundamental structures."
Ed Price: "Another valuable addition to help explain the components of Small Basic!"
| SQL BI and Power BI Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Anil Maharjan | Using Power Query to tell your story form your Facebook Data | Jinchun Chen: "Interesting. I liked this best" PT: "Plenty to like here" |
| Tim Pacl | SSRS Expressions: Part 1 - Program Flow | PT: "A very comprehensive article about program flow expressions. Nice job. I'm sure many will benefit from this article. Just a little feedback about some terminology that could be more clear: The entire statement that is typically used to set a property value for an object in an SSRS report is an "expression". Each of the three programming constructs you've mentioned (e.g. IIF, SWITCH & CHOOSE) are "functions" and not expressions or statements." Jinchun Chen: "Perfect! Good article for SSRS newbie." |
| Durval Ramos | How to get row counts for all Tables | Jinchun Chen: "Another great tip!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- How to Schedule and Automate backups of all the SSAS catalogs within the Server Instance by Anil Maharjan
PT: "This is a very useful article about automating multiple Analysis Services database backups using an SSIS package and the SQL Server Agent. Nice job."
Jinchun Chen: "Good."
| SQL Server General and Database Engine Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Shanky | SQL Server: What does Column Compressed Page Count Value Signify in DMV Sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats ? | DB: "Interesting and detailed" DRC: "• This is a good article and provides details of each and every step and the output with explanation. Very well formed and great information. • We can modify the create table query with “DEFAULT VALUES". CREATE TABLE [dbo].[INDEXCOMPRESSION]( [C1] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, [C2] [char](50) NULL DEFAULT 'DEFAULT TEST DATA' ) ON [PRIMARY] " GO: "Very informative and well formed article as Said says.. Thanks for that great ressource. " |
| Durval Ramos | How to get row counts for all Tables | GO: "As usual Durva has one of the best articles about SQL Server General and Database Engine articles! Thaks buddy!" |
| System Center Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Prajwal Desai | Deploying SCCM 2012 R2 Clients Using Group Policy | Ed Price: "Great depth on this article! Valuable topic. Good use of images." |
| Mr X | How to introduce monitoring and automatic recovery of IIS application pools using Orchestrator | MA: "Good job Mr X, However I would like to see this runbook integrated as a recovery task with Operations Manager IISapppools Monitors in order to maintain a standard way of notifications and availability reporting." Ed Price: "Good formatting on the images, and great scenario!" |
| Prajwal Desai | How to deploy lync 2010 using SCCM 2012 R2 | Ed Price: "Great job documenting the entire process!!!" |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Installing a legacy boot image in SCCM to support XP migrations by Dave Jaskie
Ed Price: "Good use of images to show the steps!" - How to deploy .net framework using SCCM 2012 R2 by Prajwal Desai
Ed Price: "Good job with the descriptions through the process." - Server 2003 R2 Distribution Points in a ConfigMgr 2012 R2 Environment by Phil U
Ed Price: "Great job explaining this scenario!"
| Transact-SQL Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Saeid Hasani | T-SQL: How to Generate Random Passwords | JS: "I loved the article, well structured, to the point. Not missing any caveats that might occur, really good in the end. I would suggest changing the function to accept a whitelist / blacklist as well as a length of the password to be created. This would be the cherry on the pie :-)" Samuel Lester: "Very nice writeup for a real world problem!" Richard Mueller: "Clever and apparently well researched. I liked the detailed step by step explanations." Jinchun Chen: "Excellent!" Manoj Pandey: "A good and handy utility TSQL that I can use and levarage if I have to use similar feature in future." |
| Hasham Niaz | T-SQL : Average Interval Length | Richard Mueller: "A good article, but I need more explanation of the concepts." Manoj Pandey: "A handy TSQL script that I can use and levarage if I have to use similar feature in future." |
| Visakh16 | T-SQL: Retrieve Connectionstring Details from SSIS Package | Manoj Pandey: "Good shortcut by using TSQL with XML to read metadata information from SSIS XML file." Samuel Lester: "Handy trick, thanks for posting!" Richard Mueller: "Good code, but more explanation needed. Could use a See Also section." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Handling images using T-SQL by Durval Ramos
Samuel Lester: "Comment mentions "stub article". Is there more coming? Great tutorial with what you've posted already."
Richard Mueller: "Good use of images and demonstration of the steps, but his stub article needs to be completed."
Manoj Pandey: "A very good end-to-end implementation of storing images, retriving & displaying them in UI." - Sql server 2012 - Denali - T SQL features for easy querying by Sugumar Pannerselvam
Richard Mueller: "Good documentation of new functions. I felt more explanation needs to be added to justify the conclusions."
Manoj Pandey: "Very concise and practical article showing new Keywords introduced in SQL Server 2012."
| Visual Basic Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| The Thinker | Better to Ask for forgiveness then permission | Richard Mueller: "Good use of images and code. The humorous title might be better in a blog." MR: "Great topic!" GO: "Well, to be honnest, many people worked on that article, but still, the owner "the thinker" should receive the credits! muchos gracias "The Thinker" for the Most Revised Article" |
| Visual C# Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Entity Framework Code First - Defining Foreign Keys using Data Annotations and Fluent API | Ed Price: "Wow. Good descriptions, great code snippets, and great job highlighting sections on your images!" GO: "Thank you." |
| Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| XAML guy | History and Technology Behind the TechNet Wiki Ninja Belt Calculator | Ed Price: "It's amazing to see all the details of what this tool does. Great job on the descriptions and formatting the images and text!" Richard Mueller: "Great documentation. Good links to explain everything." GO: "I love your articles XAML guy! Always clear and always a pleasure to read! Thanks for you help and commitment for this tool." |
| Durval Ramos | HTML5 Portal | Ed Price: "This is great to see this HTML5 resource!" Richard Mueller: "A great contribution to our collection of portals" GO: "The HTML5 Portal is A-W-E-S-O-M-E !" |
| João Sousa | ASP.NET Portal | Ed Price: "Good job on this portal! The Return to top links are helpful!" Richard Mueller: "More should be done to distinguish this portal from here." GO: "Thanks Joao!" |
| Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Dave Smits | Theming of your application | Peter Laker: "Another great article from the mighty Dave. Very useful. Not sure if MS like us want us to work around the accents so much though ;)" |
| saramgsilva | Creating Windows Phone and Window 8.1 applications using Microsoft App Studio | Peter Laker: "A great introduction! Nice walkthrough, and plenty to look at!" |
| Carmelo La Monica | Create Universal Application with Windows Phone App Studio (en-US). | Peter Laker: "Sensational article. A real attention grabber and written very clearly." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Magical MVVM in WindowsStore Apps Using Expression Blend by Saad Mahmood
Peter Laker: "Another excellent tutorial from Saad. Great content, great layout." - Adding SDK Extension to the project from a specific folder by saramgsilva
Peter Laker: "A great tip, from a living legend in development." - WindowsPhone 8 Custom URI Scheme:Launching other own apps from your app (C#-XAML) by SubramanyamRaju.B
Peter Laker: "Nice subject, but needs some help on readability. Also the code snippets need formatting."
| Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Magnus (MM8) | WPF: How To Tab Between Items In a ListBox | KJ: "This article seemed very useful to me. The kind of thing that I might need and here's the answer. " GO: "Thanks for that great article!" |
| Sugumar Pannerselvam | Lets forget about limitations and temprorary fix... Think about 4.5 features | KJ: "Wish there were code samples and more flushed out scenarios" GO: "Why second place? the layout and way to explain didn't convince me. Doesn't mean that the article is bad. The article is awesome; but I miss something." |
| Windows Server Technical Guru - June 2014 |
| Mr X | DHCP on Windows Servers – Why are the expired IP addresses not getting re-assigned? | JM: "This is an excellent article, thanks for your contribution." Richard Mueller: "Important information with good explanation. Needs a See Also section." Philippe Levesque: "Good article ! I like how it's explained versus Windows Server. An image with the DHCP's process could be a good addition for reference. (DHCP OFFER, DHCP ACK, etc..)" |
| Mr X | How to force a DHCP database cleanup for expired leases in a specific scope | GO: "I'm actually thinking that nobody can defaut you Mr.X" Philippe Levesque: "Good article ! I would add that changing the lease time to be shorted could help too." JM: "A very good article, however you might consider adding this content as a section in your article about expired IP addresses in DHCP" Richard Mueller: "More good information. Should be linked to the other DHCP article." GL: "This is OK but a better solution for a highly utilized DHCP scope would be to shorten the lease time and/or configure a superscope." |
| Hicham KADIRI | Windows Server Core 2012 R2 - Initial configuration | GL: "This is good required information. I would really like to see information added about how to add a server role. You might consider providing PowerShell alternatives to the netsh and other commands." JM: "This is a great to-the-point article on how to configure a Core install of Windows Server, nice work." Richard Mueller: "A great collection of useful tools. Some could use images, more detail, or examples. The example sections could be added to the Table of Contents." GO: "Well, our new french MVP! Well written Hicham! Do not forget to pray attention for the layout! It's capital for readers and judges!" Philippe Levesque: "I like the article, a good resumé of the command you need to do to configure a server." |
Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:
- Helpdesk, System Administrators, and Powershell… How to get started by SeanSobey
GL: "Good collection of links. I would like to see a little more about how PS is different from VB, batch, WMI. Maybe share some personal experiences you had getting started."
Richard Mueller: "Good collection of useful command. Needs a See Also section."
GO: "Not formatted, is not attractive, so for me the last one."
JM: "This is a nice Learning Roadmap-style article to help folks get started with Windows PowerShell"
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Quite a lot of medals for Mr X this month! :D
A huge thank you to EVERYONE who contributed an article to June's competition.
Hopefully we will see you ALL again in July 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
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