The votes are in! 

 

And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, August 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 (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.

 

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 - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Tord Glad Nordahl BizTalk Server Installation and Configuration Checklist Tord Glad Nordahl: "My own article, hard to defend why I want this to win (after all I wrote it), even though I think this is great info, and important to share to keep high standards for environments"
Mandi Ohlinger: "Holy schmoly do I love this topic! This is great list of what to do before, during, and after a BizTalk installation. "
Ed Price: "By far the best topic with the most useful information! This is truly a resource that people can come back to time and time again. And a solid introduction!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Maheshkumar S Tiwari Grouping and Debatching/Splitting Inbound Messages(TypedPolled) from WCF-SQL Adapter : BizTalk 2010 Ed Price: "Maheshkumar gave us a record-breaking 16 Guru articles this month, and this one shows great expertise in the code snippets, steps, and diagrams!"
Mandi Ohlinger: "Great example of debatching. Love the link to the blog post."
Tord Glad Nordahl: "Great article with good explaination"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Steef-Jan Wiggers BizTalk Server: Importing Certificates Ed Price: "Steef-Jan is a master at writing fantastic articles with an introduction that clearly explain the topic, vivid images, and command snippets. With 7 amazing articles from Steef-Jan this month, this one takes the cake!"
Tord Glad Nordahl: "Great to know when importing certificated."


Congratulations to these three for achieving greatness this month, some great articles. Maheshkumar gave us many contributions last month. Thanks also to Lex Hegt for his contribution.

 

Guru Award  SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Daniel Christian InfoPath 2010 embedded form on SharePoint 2013 Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice detailed article!"
Peter Laker: "Awesome article. Great subject, lots of detail, with images and videos. "
Ed Price: "This article keeps on giving with a video, steps, images, information, and more! It could use a TOC and Headers to break it up more. Fantastic article with a lot of depth!"
ML: "It is great to have video presented"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Matthew Yarlett SharePoint: Listing and Deleting SPListItemVersions Using PowerShell TVG: "Very useful script! Use it to identify the libraries in your site collection where versioning best practices are not enforced."
ML: "resolve the requirement which is frequently asked by cunstomers"
Ed Price: "Very clear article with a great introduction, code snippets, and images. The headers are in place, so I think I'll add a TOC now. Great article!"
Jinchun Chen: "Nice article."

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Rahul Shinde SharePoint 2013: How to Integrate Yammer with SharePoint for Social Feature Ed Price: "Great subject and good interaction in the comments. After Naomi suggested an introduction on what Yammer is, Rahul added it in! That's what the Wiki is all about!!"
TVG: "Yammer, the future of Social for SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premises. Organizations that have both services supporting their businesses probably cannot wait to discover the potential of both services combined!"
Peter Laker: "Brilliant article. Nice topic and plenty of detail."


Brilliant contributions here, one and all. Hats off to Daniel, Matthew and Rahul. Check out the full listings last month as we also had some nice contributions from Mohammad Nizamuddin and Aurélien Prévot. 

 

Guru Award  Small Basic Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: Parser Generator Peter Laker: "There can only be one...!"
Ed Price: "Wow. Those diagrams leave me speechless. One article, and it's amazing! Fantastic job!"
RZ: "It's very nicely done. Beautiful diagram. It is really helpful for new comers to programming."


Nuff said in the comments I think! Thank you Nonki for supporting this category for August!

 

Guru Award  SQL Server Reporting Services, Power View & SQL Server Integration Services Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Rajkumar5055 SSIS - Flat File Source - Datetime Column Format - Issue & Solution Ed Price: "Great breakdown of sections. Good explanations and use of images!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 SathyanarrayananS SSRS - How to set Column Visibility property for many columns based on Parameter value  Ed Price: "Very interesting topic! Good explanation and use of code and images! Could benefit from a TOC and Headers to break up the sections. Great article!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 SathyanarrayananS SSRS: Multiple Ways to Split a String into Multiple Lines Jinchun Chen: "Nice."


We only had two entrants for August, as shown above. Superb work by both. Congratulations to Rajkumar5055 for just nosing ahead this time.

 

Guru Award  Transact-SQL Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Saeid Hasani Sort Letters in a Phrase using T-SQL Ed Price: "Fantastic formatting, very clear, and some good comment interactions! Great job!"
Richard Mueller: "Very interesting with a good example. Great to list the limitations."
Jinchun Chen: "Cool. Years ago, I was asked the same question. This script can apply to many real situation."
Samuel Lester: "Sorting is always a great CS topic, thanks for this great content. I would love to see alternate methods for sorting, pros/cons (as you've done), performance discussion, etc. for a great learning opportunity. Nice job!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Naomi N T-SQL: Applying APPLY Operator Richard Mueller: "Well organized article with a good example and explanation of the code. And I liked the pun."
Samuel Lester: "Outstanding format, explanation, & references (calendar table, forum post, EOMONTH() function, etc). Great job solving the question with OUTER APPLY, then referencing the LAG/LEAD functions for SQL Server 2012. Technical and very well written! Great work Naomi, one the best overall from a technical and visual perspective!"
Ed Price: "Naomi nails the formatting and explains every step, taking us on this journey. Great article amongst some fierce competition this month!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Saeid Hasani Custom Sort in Acyclic Digraph Samuel Lester: "WOW! Very interesting topic! We don't often see a lot of graph/tree questions in the forums, but this topic brought out a lot of great discussion. Breadth-first vs. depth-first, inorder/preorder/postorder traversal, etc. Great job adding advanced content and very strong write-up!"
Richard Mueller: "Good explanation of terms, but they could be expanded."
Ed Price: "A great article from Saeid on an important topic, and with good community interactions!"


Although Saeid won two of August's awards, that is simply how the voting tool goes. We also had some other excellent entries by Shanky_621, Sugumar Pannerselvam & Surendra Nath GM  

 

Guru Award  Visual Basic Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Reed Kimble How to Get the Textual Representation of a Number (Convert Number to Words) in VB.Net Peter Laker: "Superb article. Well presented and detailed."
SB: "nice code example of a real world problem"
Ed Price: "Great formatting, explanations, and code snippets!"
Richard Mueller: "Very good ideas and well explained. This can be useful."
Anthony D. Green: "This would make a great programming exercise for students."

Silver Award Winner

 

 Paul Ishak Become More Productive by Making Custom Code Generation Tools (VB & C#) Anthony D. Green: "Code generators are an essential tool in any programmers arsenal and this article shows why and how powerful they can be. I'd love to see another article using technologies such as T4 templates to generate code."
Ed Price: "Fantastic example and explanations! "
Peter Laker: "Very nice copy-in of his popular article, thanks Paul!"
Richard Mueller: "Very interesting concept. We could use explanation of the code."

Bronze Award Winner

 

 .paul. searchableComboBox Control SB: "would find useful in many applicables."
Ed Price: "Great tie in with the Code Gallery!"
Peter Laker: "Great control, very useful, thanks Paul!"


Only these three names contributed last month, but all are very good quality contributions. Thanks guys! Hope to see you in September's winners!

 

Guru Award  Visual C# Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Isham Mohamed Avoid “File system redirection” in Visual Studio 2012 Christian Lukito: "Good article to explain Windows 8.1 behaviour"
CW: "This article calls out a problem you may encounter in C# and shell execution of things from the system directories. I thought it is well done and should help to unblock individuals."
Ed Price: "Great explanation to a common issue!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Jaliya Udagedara Progress of a Task in C# CW: "While not super interesting, this elevates a feature in a clean manner"
Ed Price: "Very well formatted. Important information for learners!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Chilberto Business & Entities to Azure Storage Entities using Automapper CW: "I have worked with Azure Storage entities before, but haven't ever used this automapper. I am not compelled to use it. I imagine it could be used to help separate my data entity from the object used in the code, but I can't really gather this from this sample alone."
Ed Price: "Good formatting with solid code snippets."


All deserving winners in this category, nice work folks! Also worth mentioning were the contributions by Mohammad Nizamuddin, Paul Ishak &  

 

Guru Award  Windows Phone Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Chilberto Azure Mobile Services Custom API - Exploring Server Side Capability JS: "only 1"
Ed Price: "Really important topic with great code snippets and solid explanations!"


Thanks for keeping the Windows Phone category afloat Chilberto. Maybe we can all rouse up some more competition for you in September!

 

Guru Award  Windows Store Apps Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Sachin S Custom styling the alternate rows inside ListView/GridView Ed Price: "Good topic and breakdown. It could benefit from more explanations and a breakdown of sections with a TOC. Thanks for the contribution!"


Thanks for your support Sachin S. We also need to promote this category more methinks...

 

Guru Award  WPF Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Magnus (MM8) Validating data in WPF 4.5 using the INotifyErrorDataError interface Peter Laker: "Excellent overview of validation"
Ed Price: "Important topic and great delivery and formatting!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 XAML guy Best ComboBox Tutorial Ever Ed Price: "Beautiful formatting, images, and code! Great introduction, conclusion, and breakdown of the different steps! Plus I love the topic of making great comboboxes!"
Peter Laker: "My own submission for August. A favourite from MSDN"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Himanshu12221 Deploy Silverlight Application to Server/ IIS site Peter Laker: "Thanks for the contribution"
Ed Price: "Great to see this how-to article that covers a simple way to deploy an app. Good topic! It could benefit from more explanations and examples."


Yey, Silver for me! Congratulations to the others. Gaurav Khanna also gave a nice contribution in August, but it wasn't added to the competition page before the end of month deadline, when submissions were closed and the list was loaded into the judging tool for voting.

 

Guru Award  Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Ike Ugochuku FIM 2010 R2: Creating a Custom Metaverse Object Deletion Rule using C# Ed Price: "Great article with clear requirements and steps. As Naomi suggests in the comments, it could benefit from code formatting. Good job!"
Peter Geelen: "Nice article, practical solution. Well designed."


Thanks Ike! Let's try and round up more for September.

 

Guru Award  SQL Server Database Engine Technical Guru - August 2013  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Uwe Ricken Dropping a clustered index will not reorganize the HEAP Peter Laker: "The one and only awesome entry for August!"
Ed Price: "Good explanations and formatting with the TOC, code, and images!"
Samuel Lester: "Uwe, thank you for the great depth and explanation! Technically and visually OUTSTANDING!"
DRC: "The article is very informative, queries used are accurate to match the explanation provided."

 

Thanks Uwe! Maybe we can find more contributors for future months...

 
 

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 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 announcement links:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/824b1bd8-2ce5-4328-8b03-9c40ca7d833d/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/3fc22707-3d6e-44d7-9808-625fbb31ccec/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/c357efe8-7a8c-4799-9944-21843ed681e9/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/134506e7-9432-47d3-ab82-46c45a9b2b0c/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/68453a46-1ed4-4c12-a7b4-1d0b5f8a02b9/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/4787c59d-c67f-49d5-b7e1-8d757997b0ea/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/fdf8029a-9d7b-4882-8ad6-d5319cca3b14/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/97196f7d-577b-4c3a-9250-a8e305e688ac/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/31a0a544-8740-44b7-a81c-7eeeb0c4bf98/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/312da725-79e2-4dcf-8d77-61e5a987881e/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/d12c2e4d-a296-4b87-b43a-a363895aa265/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/45cf037d-5cc7-4416-a5a3-89289674ac9e/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/dc9af721-7b24-47a5-867c-d615009a41fc/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/wpapps/en-US/60f42e3c-1db2-4a6f-adc0-67be63776185/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsapps/en-US/30a1fd1d-46cd-4f2a-b668-928832f53358/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/051df7f5-ed10-42b9-9d63-f85b18125588/microsoft-technet-wiki-guru-winners-for-august