The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (September 2014)

All the votes are in!  

 

And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, September 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.

 

Guru Award  BizTalk Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Johns-305 [boatseller] BizTalk: Working with Preserve Interchange EDI Xml – Part 1 Mandi Ohlinger: "This is a great How To article with the steps and terms clearly defined. If you want to preserve interchanges, you need to read this." TGN: "EDI is a big part of BizTalk, great wrap up, both articles."

Silver Award Winner

 

Verma.Sumit BizTalk Server - Default Pipelines TGN: "Very nice article explaining the default pipelines "in-depth"." Mandi Ohlinger: "Great detailed information on the XML pipelines. Very informative read. " 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Rahul_Madaan BizTalk Server - Debatching multiple message types using Envelope Schema Mandi Ohlinger: "A common task explained simply. Very effective." TGN: "Very nice tutorial. I would love to see some better images though, and a little better elaboration on the different steps, but overall a very good article." 

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • BizTalk: Working with Preserve Interchange EDI Xml – Part 2 by Johns-305 [boatseller]
    TGN: "EDI is a big part of BizTalk, great wrap up, both articles."
  • BizTalk Server - Zombie Messages in Parallel Convoy by Rahul_Madaan
    TGN: "Really nice article. And a great way of showing how Zombies occure. After reading this article you're a certified "zombie killer". :)"
    Mandi Ohlinger: "This would be a better blog. There isn't much to it; it seems to just be stating a small fact rather than any useful information."
  • BizTalk Server - Disaster Recovery Strategies by Verma.Sumit
    Mandi Ohlinger: "This seems to missing a lot of information. The topic provides an overview of these 3rd party (non-supported) method but that's it. It fails to mention any BizTalk specifics."
    TGN: "I would not recommend people to use any other backup methods then the standard supported method by Microsoft when it comes to backing up BizTalk databases. But for the BizTalk Servers and for shares needed by BizTalk there's a lot of really great tips here."

  

Guru Award  Exchange Server Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Rafael Mantovani Exchange: Unable to Verify Information About Users Availability Ed Price: "This is a good article with some good images. This article was originally in English, but because it was posted on the Portuguese Wiki, it got translated into Portuguese! The English version should be pasted into a new article on the English Wiki. Here is the English version: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/pt-br/contents/articles/26759.nao-e-possivel-verificar-informacoes-de-disponibilidade-dos-usuarios/revision/7.aspx "

 

Guru Award  Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Eihab Isaac (MVP) FIM 2010 R2: Coexistence Exchange Provisioning Scenario using PowerShell Management Agent AM: "Eihab, thank you for continuing to make excellent contributions to the community. This is a useful reference for anyone needing to meet similar requirements without the service and portal." PG: "Nice article. Well designed!" Søren Granfeldt: "Great overview on real world challenges with managing diffrent Exchange versions using FIM. Second part wil really complement this article."

 

Guru Award  Microsoft Azure Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Chervine Predictive Analytics with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning

JH: "Love it! One of my favorite articles on the wiki from last month."

Ed Price: "Fantastic article! Incredibly well written with good details and helpful images. This Machine Learning topic is very important and timely right now!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Alex Mang What Are Scoring Profiles In Azure Search?

JH: "Alex has done a tremendous job with his library. Love it that he shares update on the library on the wiki."

Ed Price: "Wow, I love all the explanations and detail. And this topic is incredibly valuable. Amazing job!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

saramgsilva Microsoft’s Windows App Studio Beta : Connecting a Menu App to Azure Mobile Service

JH: "Great article with a lot of pictures. A good one!"

Ed Price: "Great topic, Sara! Very thorough and well written!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award  Miscellaneous Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Brian Nadjiwon How to Create and Use Enums in Powershell Ed Price: "Wow, what a detailed article! Great depth and use of images! I think it's time for a PowerShell category!" TGN: "I LOVE ENUMS! Great explaining and a great article. Well done, Brian!" PG: "Nice, practical solution, clear explanation."

Silver Award Winner

 

Adnan Umer Understanding GPU Usage tool in Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 Ed Price: " A fantastic Visual Studio article with great details and vivid images!" TGN: "Very valuable and a great toturiol on how to use the "GPU Usage tool"" 

Bronze Award Winner

 

Britt Adams Unexplained High CPU Usage on Intel E5 Processors Ed Price: "Very thorough explanation! Great job! " TGN: "Wow, computer science is fun. Nice wrap-up and how-to. I loved it!" 

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  

Guru Award  SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Vivek Jagga SharePoint, Office 365 or a Hybrid Deployment? Jinchun Chen: "Excellent!" Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice, I can see this one coming in real handy in comparison studies"

Silver Award Winner

 

Inderjeet Singh Common issue when using SharePoint 2013 Multi Tenant environment (Apps and User Profile Synchronization) Jinchun Chen: "Nice article." Margriet Bruggeman: "Useful and not too much is written about this topics, which adds some bonus points"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Dan Christian Tips and Tricks to Resolve Poject 2010 Server Migration Issues Margriet Bruggeman: "Extensive KB-type article in case you need it"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award  Small Basic Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Philip Munts Small Basic: For Windows 8.1 Tablet

Michiel Van Hoorn: "Great article for those (1) want to make apps for tablet form factors and (2) are looking to package a SB app into a package."

Ed Price: "I love it! What an important topic!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: Emoji

Michiel Van Hoorn: "Another entry from Nonki which opens up new possibilities. This time Emoji and the font editing."

Ed Price: "This is incredibly interesting!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: Dictionary

Michiel Van Hoorn: "Simple entry on a powerful feature"

Ed Price: "Great overview of the Dictionary Object! Good job integrating the Known Issues and the See Also section!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

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

Gold Award Winner

 

visakh16 Finding SSIS Packages having References to a Table or Column RB: "Interesting subject, with a lot of practical usage" Jinchun Chen: "Really helpful." PT: "Good article that addresses a specific problem and offers a solution. Thank you"

Silver Award Winner

 

Ch. Rajen Singh SSIS: Export Multiple File With Fixed Size PT: "This is a good article, well-written and solves a real problem." Jinchun Chen: "Nice article." RB: "Interesting workaround for the fixed file size problem"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Ed Price - MSFT Power BI Community Council PT: "Great information about the purpose and composition of the Power BI Community Council to inform and raise awareness."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

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

Gold Award Winner

 

Shanky An Examination of Logging in Truncate Table Statement and Its Comparison With Delete Statement

Jinchun Chen: "Excellent"  AM: "The best!"

Ed Price: "Wow, Shanky! What an amazingly thorough and detailed article!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Tulio Rosa SQL Server Load Balancing

AM: "Also very good!" Jinchun Chen: "Excellent"    

Ed Price: "Fantastic topic, good job on the diagram, and great use of TechNet Gallery! Plus a Portuguese translation!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Ashwin Menon Get Notified when a database status changes

AM: "This is well explained"

Ed Price: "Very thorough article! Good References section!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • How can I prevent IDENTITY column value jump by Durval Ramos  
    AM: "Nice article even though the title could be misinterpret. SQL Server doe not guarantee there will not be gaps in a column with identity property (i.e. transaction rollback). I would suggest adding CRASH, RESTART or FAILOVER to the title." 
    Ed Price: "Great job on the explanations, code snippets, images, References, and the Portuguese version! This is a fantastic contribution!"

  

Guru Award  System Center Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Mr X How to upload new Drivers in SCCM 2012 R2 

Peter Laker: "Very nice, thanks Mr X"

Ed Price: "Wow. Great use of images to walk the reader through the process! Could benefit from a See Also and Additional Resources type of sections. Very thorough!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Mr X How to create a new Boot Image using SCCM 2012 R2 

Peter Laker: "Another good article!"

Ed Price: "Short and sweet How To article! It's great to cover all these scenarios. Excellent addition to our System Center library of content!"

 

Guru Award  Transact-SQL Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

visakh16 Full Outer Join - The Most Generic Join Statement

JS: "A good summary, though a bit generic and already available mutliple times on the internet. The sample (with data) could be a bit more crisp though." Jinchun Chen: "Very helpful."

Ed Price: "I love the explanations at the top in the Context and Reasoning sections! And then the solution has a fantastic mix between explanations, illustrations, and the code snippets. And the links at the bottom help JOIN together the Join resources! Great job!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Praveen Rayan D'sa Dynamic pivot with column alias

Jinchun Chen: "Good." JS: "Make sure no to use a parameter declaration without a size of the variable type, like in VARCHAR, better use Varchar(YourSizeHere)."

Ed Price: "Fantastic solution. Good job getting the references in there at the bottom!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Saeid Hasani Calling Stored Procedures Using Transact-SQL

JS: "A good write up for getting the feet wet with procedure, though missing some depth." 

Ed Price: "Wow! I love how you break out each section, explain it, and give the code snippet. It makes it very easy to read, understand, and get to the right section! To JS's point, it's probably better for beginners than advanced T-SQL gurus, but this content is still very valuable. Great example of the community giving advice and helping out with the content. Incredible article!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • T-SQL: Splitting a String into multiple columns by Durval Ramos
    JS: "There are many Split functions out there available including those that are already used by the community"  
    Ed Price: "Great explanations and great job dividing each section, explaining it, and including images and code snippets! To JS's point, the References and See Also sections also tie this content set into some of the other sources that are used by the community. Great job!"

 

Guru Award  Visual C# Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

João Sousa ASP.NET WebAPI - Basic Redis Peter Laker: "Nice WebAPI basics Joao!" JM: "This is best"

Silver Award Winner

 

Jaliya Udagedara Publishing and Subscribing using NServiceBus JM: "Close second IMO" Peter Laker: "Great intro to NServiceBus! Thanks Jaliya!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Adnan Umer Calculating Percentage Similarity of two Strings in C# JM: "I like this!" Peter Laker: "Awesome snippet and explanation, thanks Adnan!"

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

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

Gold Award Winner

 

Adnan Umer Introducing ObjectGraphLibrary to visualize Stack and Heap JH: "Good article about stack and heap visualization." TGN: "Hardcore stuff, but very valuable. Great article buddy!"

Silver Award Winner

 

saramgsilva Microsoft’s Windows App Studio Beta: Creating a BackOffice App for Menu App JH: "Another great article by Sara! A lot of code snippets, pictures and explanations." TGN: "Great tutorial, well explained. And a bunch of screenshots. I loved it!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

Muiz Khan Using Speech Recognition without Internet TGN: "Nice one. I love articles that explain something in an easy understanding way. Great work Muiz!" JH: "Good explanation of offline capabilities of speech recognition."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award  Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Andy ONeill WPF: CollectionView Tips KJ: "Wow, very thorough!" Peter Laker: "Blindingly good article Andy!"

Silver Award Winner

 

Magnus (MM8) WPF/MVVM: Binding the DatePickerTextBox in WPF KJ: "useful tip - could see needing to do this and searching for this article and finding it" Peter Laker: "Excellent work as always Magnus!"

  

Guru Award  Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Durval Ramos Visio Portal

Peter Laker: "Awe inspiring portal from a Wiki legend!"

Ed Price: "Great introduction, a lot of links, divided by sections, and it even has References and Return to Top links! Amazing article!"

  

Guru Award  Windows Server Technical Guru - September 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

Mr X Getting Started with KMS (Key Management Service) JM: "Another excellent article, great work." Philippe Levesque: "Really good documentation." Richard Mueller: "Good topic with good images to explain." Mark Parris: "Good insights, would be good to higlight also the improvements in 2012 and 2012 R2."

Silver Award Winner

 

Kelly Bush Authentication Policies and Authentication Silos – Restricting Domain Controller Access Mark Parris: "Nice article, providing further insight into some of 2012 R2's capabilities." Richard Mueller: "Great article with lots of detail. Could use TOC and See Also section." JM: "An excellent article, thanks for the contribution!" Philippe Levesque: "Good article, it explain some security that we don't see much."

Bronze Award Winner

 

FZB Windows Server: DNS Service - Negative Caching Mark Parris: "useful tidbit, i have often seen shortttl zones for such records." JM: "A good article, however it needs a rewrite for clarity." Philippe Levesque: "Andy information to have, thanks for sharing !" Richard Mueller: "Needs more explanation."

Also worth a mention were the other entries this month: