The votes are in!
And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, July 2013 !!!!
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, 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 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.
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 - July 2013 |
| Steef-Jan Wiggers | Provisioning BizTalk Services using the Windows Azure Management Portal | Mandi Ohlinger: "Great topic! The screen shots make it easy to follow. Including the MakeCert.exe syntax is a good bonus." Peter Laker: "Excellent article, great layout and formatting" Ed Price: "Bullets, links, bold, and images... you make everyone want to try BizTalk! Fantastic!" |
| Steef-Jan Wiggers | BizTalk Server 2013: Sign and verifying a message | Peter Laker: "Lots of detail. Nice layout." Ed Price: "This is a very common topic, and I love the way you tell the story and present the information in each section!" Tord Glad Nordahl: "This is a topic that appears in the forums often" Mandi Ohlinger: "Certificate-related questions are common by EDI users. This topic provides some really good details." |
| Lex Hegt | BizTalk Message Based Routing: why is my file not transfered to the location of the Send Port | Mandi Ohlinger: "This is a great troubleshooting topic! In fact, it should be bookmarked by every BizTalk admin." Ed Price: "Great formatting with easy navigation!" |
We had five entries in BizTalk for July, and all were very nice quality. SAAkhlaq just missed the medals this month, but his article is well worth a mention and a look.
| SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Matthew Yarlett | Viewing, sorting and filtering SharePoint User Profiles using PowerShell | Jinchun Chen: "Many users would like to filter User Profiles based on some criterion. This article shows them a good example." Ed Price: "Well formatted and broken up with the code and images. And as Jinchun mentioned, this is a very common scenario." |
| Stefan Bauer | Get "Modified" and "Modified By" information from a view in a list or library | Ed Price: "It's a common request. Your solution is simple and straightforward. The comments are also revealing as to how useful this is. As Matthew says, "Handy bit of code." Great job!" |
| Rahul A Shinde | SharePoint 2013: How to get Following and Followers of user using JSOM or JavaScript | Jinchun Chen: "Cool. " Ed Price: "Interesting topic, great code snippets, and as Gitanjali says in the comments, "Very useful"" |
We had twelve entries for this category in July, a fantastic show! Thanks go to Ashish Gupta,Julie Boudro, Mohammad Nizamuddin, Jesper Arnecke & Daniel Christian, who all just missed out on medals this month.
| Small Basic Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Nonki Takahashi | Small Basic: Shapes Editor | RZ: "This is an amazing program. Nonki deserves to be the winner!" Peter Laker: "There can only be one... :D" Ed Price: "I can't get over how Nonki made an application that's basically better than Paint. And this article really compliments the application. As Jibba Jabba says in the comments: "This is amazing, Nonki. Really informative sample."" |
A shame we only had one entry for Small Basic for July. Let's hope we can drum up some more interest from the SB community for August!
| SQL Server Analysis Services, PowerPivot Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Paul Turley | We’ve Got The Power: “Power BI”, New Microsoft BI Suite Announced | Ed Price: "Given the new launch of the Power BI brand, there was a huge opportunity to write a great article on what this new suite looks like, and Paul nailed it! In the comments, Naomi, Dplotnikov, Kishhr, and I all agreed that this is a fantastic article!" |
| Christian Wade | Currency Conversion in SSAS 2012 (Multidimensional & Tabular) | Ed Price: "Christian masterfully tells the story of Currency Conversion, and I love how it's told for both Multidimensional and Tabular modelling. Great job!" |
| Paras Doshi | Custom Calculations for Invoice & Returns using PowerPivot DAX formula | Ed Price: "This is an important DAX scenario that Paras walks you through. " |
Four entries for this category, but only three entrants, who all won a well deserved medal. Paul's article especially filled the ticket!
| SQL Server Reporting Services, Power View, & SQL Server Integration Services Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| SathyanarrayananS | SSRS - Multi Font Color / Multi Font Size within Single Field / Textbox | Peter Laker: "Most useful of the two for me." Ed Price: "Very common scenario. The code and comments help walk us through it. Good job!" |
| Shanky_621 | How to Transfer Records from SQL Server to Postgres | Peter Laker: "Excellent article. Very close second." Ed Price: "Another useful article! Good detail." |
Two great articles for this category, and hopefully something for us to build on. Thanks to both entrants, keep the articles coming!
| Transact-SQL Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Naomi N | T-SQL: Gaps and Islands Problem | Richard Mueller: "Good explanation with great references." Samuel Lester: "Great scope, content, background info, references, and solution! In my opinion, the perfect scope for a wiki article. I also love that it references a question posed by the SQL Server community. " Peter Laker: "Very useful snippet" DB: "This is a good summary of a topic that's been well covered in the referenced authorities." |
| Naomi N | T-SQL: FIFO Inventory Problem - Cost of Goods Sold | Peter Laker: "Deeply detailed and full of techy goodness." DB: "This is substantial, novel and important." Richard Mueller: "Advanced topic with lots of code. Suggestions: 1. Use third person when discussing. 2. Use descriptive aliases in the code to improve readability. 3. Eliminate columns not relevant to the discussion. 4. Show minimum code necessary to demonstrate how to calculate FIFO costs. " Samuel Lester: "Amazing level of detail! This article will be extremely useful for people with a similar problem, but it almost borders on the verge of too specific for this wiki/editable forum. I'm worried that even if someone with a nearly identical challenge makes updates that the flow/readability/usefulness may diminish. Would be spectacular as a blog entry as it is so incredibly detailed and full of useful content." |
Naomi holding up the T-SQL category for July, thanks Naomi. This should be a category many disciplines can contribute to, so maybe August will pick up. Thanks nonetheless to Naomi for some great contributions!
| Visual Basic Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Reed Kimble | How to Handle a Huge Collection of Strings in VB.Net | MR: "Extremely well written article. Great details about tradeoffs of memory vs. performance. " Ed Price: "It looks fantastic and is easy to read. Great introductions/explanations for each code snippet!" Richard Mueller: "Outstanding article. Clear explanations and clear code. This can be extremely useful in cases where a dictionary object doesn't help." SB: "A nice article which details a problem, identifies a solution and gives credible numbers in the summary to show the performance improvement. The code is simple to understand and deals with a number of issues. with a nice description and the relevent code." Anthony D. Green: "I love how the author introduces the text with several practical examples of where such a technique might be valuable. Good coverage of implementing the .NET collection pattern and a more performant alternative to linear search." |
| Paul Ishak | Knife Thrower! | Anthony D. Green: "It's great when learning can be made fun and game programming is the quintessential example of that. This article was a blast!" MR: "Great article. Could use more structure and formatting. Maybe trying to do too much? Article should try and teach, not just talk about the code" Ed Price: "So this is just hilarious. It's fun, and it has great interactions in the comments. From the Thinker: "Good article! I tried the code sample it was great!" As Mark mentioned, if this article sought to educate more on why and when the reader should do specific things, it would be perfect!" Richard Mueller: "Amazing. Detailed explanation. Perhaps we didn't need information on namespaces." SB: "The article was good, however there is a lot of code and the article feels as though its just documenting the application for the most part." |
| The Thinker | Binary and Back | Anthony D. Green: "Short and sweet. This article concisely covers a valuable beginner." SB: "Simple small article - straightforward and too the point. basic level but these are often what are asked on the forums and addresses the point." Ed Price: "I'm a big fan of geeky binary, so it's fantastic to see this! And I love the video reference at the end! Very entertaining! This would be even better if it explained all the core concepts." Richard Mueller: "Good explanation of very basic functions." MR: "Important topic (binary representation) but I felt that the article was too short and could dig more into how an integer is represented in binary and how to build code to use that concept. Also could show advanced ways." |
Five articles, from three entrants, all who have won an award for July. Some great articles too! Thanks again folks, hopefully see you all in with a chance of winning more for August!
| Visual C# Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Connecting to SSAS Cube using Silverlight | CW: "Link to "asynchronous operations in wcf" is dead, but he article is nice" Christian Lukito: "Nice article about Silverlight, WCF and SSAS" Ed Price: "A fantastic solution that's presented well!" |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Bing Maps for Silverlight - Customized Tooltip for Pushpins | Ed Price: "This is cool. A fun solution that uses multiple technologies. Great code formatting and image. As Matthew mentions in the comments, you should also put the snippet in the TechNet Gallery!" CW: "This is an interesting article. I enjoyed that it was straight and to the point" Christian Lukito: "Simple, yet show possibility with Bing Maps under Silverlight" |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Set WCF Service Authentication to Use a Custom Username & Password over HTTP | Christian Lukito: "Good article with detailed steps. Helping user that puzzled how to do this correctly." Ed Price: "A highly needed solution that's formatted well and very clear and easy to read. Great job!" CW: "I am far from an expert of WCF, and this is the first I have seen an example explaining how to use custom user names for service access. I believe this is likely a useful article. It was also very easy to read and digest. I don't know why we just aren't running the powershell command to self-sign a cert and instead using a third party tool, but to each his own I suppose." |
Despite four entrants for this category, Jaliya won all three awards for July! We may limit the number of awards per month in future results as we still figure out the perfect format for these awards. But for now, congratulations go to Jaliya for an outstanding collection of contributions! Love also goes to Karl Mitschke, chilberto & Mohammad Nizamuddin for their entries. Maybe you'll have a better chance in future months.
| Windows Phone Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Senthil Kumar (isenthil) | Location API in Windows Phone 8 | JS: "Best written and most complete" Ed Price: "This is a very well rounded article. It would be perfect with even more explanations around the various concepts. Good fix by Isenthil from feedback in the comments!" |
| Lohith Goudagere Nagaraj | Text To Speech in Windows Phone 8 | JS: "Is OK" Ed Price: "An important topic from Lohith with good explanations. As Nitesh says in the comments: "Nice and Easy, Lohith!"" |
| Ken Tucker | How to use Sqlite with a Windows Phone 8 app | JS: "Nice, but not enough documentation" Ed Price: "Good code formatting. The images are helpful. It could use more explanations and details for each step." |
Congratulations to Senthil for taking Gold, and to Ken and Lohith for Silver and Bronze. Some great subjects covered in July. Let's hope August is even better!
| Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Ken Tucker | Create an Analog Clock in a Windows Store Application | RC: "Clocks are a classic Xaml demo! A few things to consider: Hard-coded colours are a common accessibility failure. These should be pulled from resources and follow high contrast settings. I'd also write it as a templatable control and make the time a bindable property with converters from time to angle. The xaml could be readily swapped out for different analogue faces, digital, etc. It's a bit more work, but would demonstrate some useful techniques." Ed Price: "This is a great topic! " |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Tasks Window in Visual Studio 2013 Preview | Ed Price: "Good use of images to visually explain the Tasks Window." RC: "A big upgrade to the Tasks window for Visual Studio 2013 is that it now supports all languages, including JavaScript. See HERE. There is a good walkthrough demonstrating how to use the Tasks and Stacks windows together at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd554943(v=vs.120).aspx" |
| Jaliya Udagedara | Windows Store App with a SQLite Database | RC: "Nice clearly written intro to using SQLite. One confusing thing is that it starts out HTML specific talking about Web Storage and IndexedDB but then explains how to use SQLite in a C# app. I'd love for it to cover .Net and JavaScript apps like Tim Heuer's series at http://timheuer.com/blog/Tags/sqlite/default.aspx does, as well as C++." Ed Price: "Great introduction and good use of images and well-formatted code." |
Nine great articles contributed for July, thanks to everyone in the Windows Store category. Sachin S also contributed FOUR great articles for July and narrowly missed a medal. Hopefully we will see more from all these players in August?
| WPF Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Magnus MM8 (Magnus Montin) | WPF/MVVM: Binding the IsChecked property of a CheckBox to several other CheckBoxes | AN: "Very detailed, nice images, excellent explanations" Ed Price: "Strong introduction and good explanations for each code snippet. Terrific!" |
| XAML guy (Peter Laker) | WPF Data, Item and Control Templates - Minimum code, maximum awesome | AN: "Love the animated gif/video. Great introduction to WPF" Ed Price: "Good workflow and the animated GIF is great! The introduction could use more of an explanation of the scenarios and problems that the code solves. Great article!" |
| Gaurav Khanna | Editable Button in WPF | AN: "Nice code dump. Would like a little more explanation." Ed Price: "It's a good solution, but it would be better to break up the code with explanations and to describe the various concepts more." |
Only three entries and all three are winners for July. WPF is a popular technology, so hopefully we will see more entrants soon.
| Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| Ike Ugochuku | FIM 2010 R2: HowTo - Bulk import of attributes flow rules into Synchronization Rule in the Portal | Peter Laker: "Excellent article" Ed Price: "It's great that you thought of the Prerequisites section." |
| Ike Ugochuku | FIM 2010 R2: HowTo - Make a connection to Oracle Database 11g | Peter Laker: "Very close second. Nice layout and content." Ed Price: "Good formatting. The steps could be introduced more and given numbers. More explanations would help. Great job!" |
Just the two entries, so Bronze goes unclaimed this month. Great work however from the two we received.
| SQL Server Database Engine Technical Guru - July 2013 |
| pituach | Shrink SQL Database during Restore | Peter Laker: "Excellent article, lots of detail." Ed Price: "The case study section and strong explanations help bring this article to the top... not to mention a fantastic subject! Great job!" |
| Uwe Ricken | SQL Server: No Fragmentation in HEAP from INSERT / UPDATE | Peter Laker: "Nice tip, well presented code." Ed Price: "A great solution with well-formatted code, and well-placed images. If it included more explanations, it would be perfect. A very good article!" |
| rksqldba | SQL VDI Backups fail with Error 9001 | Peter Laker: "Nice copy in from forum help. Just what we need." Ed Price: "This is a good, straightforward solution." |
Congratulations to these three. Some great knowledge shared with the community. Mohammad Nizamuddin just missed out on a medal for July, so hopefully we'll see him return and try again for August!
A great big thanks to EVERYONE who contributed an article to last month's competition.
Hopefully we will see you ALL again in this month's listings?
If you have not yet contributed an article for this month, and you think you can produce a more useful, clever and better produced wiki article than the winners above, here's your chance! :D
Best regards,
Pete Laker
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