All the votes are in! 

 

And below are the results for the TechNet Guru Awards, November 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, 2-4 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 out of the medals, if they do not feel it meets minimum requirements for a medal.  

When this is the case, we will at least give an indication in the comments, 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 - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Peter Lindgren BizTalk: Get your bindings sorted TGN: "Very good article, I love the way you made this easy with PowerShell"
Sandro Pereira: "Can very really usefull. Excellent artile. Well written and well formatted article."
Mandi Ohlinger: "Resolves a huge pain point. Thanks for sharing!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Steef-Jan Wiggers BizTalk Server 2013 - SQLExecute Oracle 11g XE using the BizTalk Adapter Pack Sandro Pereira: "I think the words are always the same, once again excelent article. Well written, well formatted with nice pictures. Excellent topic."
TGN: "Well described, great photos and work. It is Always a pleasure to read your work Steef-Jan."

Bronze Award Winner

 

 AshishJain24 Using XpathReader to access the content of Message in BizTalk to enhance performance Sandro Pereira: "You can archive the same gool without using a HelperClass by using the xpath function inside orchestrations, nevertheless nice alternative. Well written and well formatted article."
TGN: "Nice Article, well described and good snippets." 


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • BizTalk Server: Support notification email on SendPort / ReceiveLocation status change by Mohan Raj Aryal
    Mandi Ohlinger: "Using Database Mail to send BizTalk notifications? LOVE. IT."
    TGN: "A somewhat decent way of monitoring the ports, but I would spend too much time on this, and most certainly I would not rely on it too much."
    Sandro Pereira: "Be carefull when you mess around in BizTalk Databases. Well written, well formatted but the pictures quality can be improved"
  • BizTalk BAM Tables by Vignesh Sukumar
    Mandi Ohlinger: "Great list. There's always a place for BAM "stuff" on the Wiki. "
    Sandro Pereira: "Standard information but nice to be descrived. Well written and well formatted article."
    TGN: "Great wrap up of of all the important tables in the BAM database. great worki." 

 

Guru Award  Forefront Identity Manager Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Borys Majewski How to extend FIM GALSync solution with additional contact sources Ed Price: "Great use of a table and images! Good formatting, and thorough summary!"
PG: "Simple solution, nice procedure." 


 

Guru Award Microsoft Azure Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Chervine Creating and Deploying Microsoft Azure WebJobs JH: "What an article! I'm a big fan of WebJobs and really glad that an article like this is now on our wiki."
JM: "Clear use case. Always great to see new takes on the simpler features."

Silver Award Winner

 

 Chilberto Managing Multiple Azure Environments with Visual Studio Online Builds JM: "Makes a complex topic, yet a useful feature easy to read - very visual"
JH: "Great one on a topic most people forget. Love the step-by-step explanation."

 

Guru Award Microsoft Visio Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Mr X How to check the Activation Type and Status of Microsoft Visio 2013 installations SR: "Same as article - http://blogs.technet.com/b/odsupport/archive/2010/08/11/how-to-check-the-activation-type-and-status-of-office-2010-installations.aspx"
Ed Price: "Short and sweet. Nice addition! Intallation guidance is very important. There is an older version of this (see link from SR), so this is a good update for the current release."


 

Guru Award Miscellaneous Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Andy ONeill DotNet: Reporting Options Richard Mueller: "Great research went into this article. This will be a great resource for developers."
Ed Price: "Wow! What a fantastic comparison of the different options! This is incredibly useful and a great model for future comparison articles!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Jared Hamilton Troubleshooting "Access Denied" WMI Service Richard Mueller: "I like the detailed steps. We need links to references. There are many articles on the subject, and even tools."
Ed Price: "Important topic that's well executed!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Brian Nadjiwon How to Create and Use an Object Browser In PowerShell Ed Price: "Lots of great detail and deep explanations here! The last section seems to be missing a link. Great article!"
Richard Mueller: "Very interesting and potentially useful. The article seems incomplete."


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award  SharePoint 2010 / 2013 Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Dan Christian Office 365 SharePoint Online BCS with Azure SQL database Margriet Bruggeman: "Much needed info, I like it a lot!"
Ed Price: "Wow! I love the Requirements section and the use of photos. Also, great depth and References at the end!"
Benoît Jester: "As usual, a fantastic article by Dan!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Mokhtar Bepari How to get unique permissions for sites/lists/libraries for Office 365/SharePoint 2013 On-Prem Margriet Bruggeman: "Handy admin tool"
Ed Price: "Important topic. Very thorough article that's well formatted!"
Benoît Jester: "Good script, can be useful!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Steven Andrews SharePoint 2013 Table of Content: Seting display columns with Powershell Margriet Bruggeman: "Nice gotcha"
Ed Price: "This is great. It's a small piece, but it's vital that everyone knows this. Great job!"
Benoît Jester: "Thanks for pointing this out."


 

Guru Award Small Basic Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Ed Price - MSFT Small Basic Student Testimonies RZ: "WOW! This is fantastic list. It's very encouraging for everyone to read this!"
Michiel Van Hoorn: "This is very very interesting as inspiration for fun ideas in every age category. Also very valuable if your are preparing for teaching kids."

Silver Award Winner

 

 Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: Capitalization Conventions RZ: "Many new learners (especially children) don't distinguish the difference between upper and lower cases. This is a great way to not only introduce that concept but also explain how to do the conversation."
Michiel Van Hoorn: "Fundemental reading stuff for the beginning programmer. Learn to do this right in the beginning and enjoy it forever! Great explanation!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Nonki Takahashi Small Basic: IntelliSense RZ: "A great way to introduce new learners to the concept of IntelliSense."
Michiel Van Hoorn: "We take intellisense too much for granted. Learn to love it and you do not do anything without it. "


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

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

Gold Award Winner

 

 Visakh16 Random SSRS Musings 2 : Simulating NOT IN and NOT LIKE Functionality In SSRS Filter Expressions PT: "This is a fine article and very well written. These are both excellent examples of how simple expressions can be used to extend the capabilities of reporting features."
Ed Price: "This is a fantastic article! Great topic, great explanatins, and good use of images and the code snippets!"
RB: "Nifty workaround for NOT LIKE and NOT IN. Added to SSRS tips and tricks list !"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Anushka Weerakkodyge Passing Multi Value Parameter to SSRS Report Using URL PT: "This is a good, albeit brief, example of a valuable report navigation technique but it has significant limitations. You mention that member references include an ampersand but you don't include an example of the actual parameter values, which would be helpful for those unfamiliar with MDX. It's important to mention that this technique will only support a short list of selected parameters due to the 260 character limit of SSRS URL strings - which most users will encounter with this technique. Please review and edit for language."
Ed Price: "Good topic that's well-formatted. Please see PT's notes for improvement areas."
RB: "HTML escaping and parameter parsing is never elegant !"



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

Gold Award Winner

 

 Shanky SQL Server 2012 Memory changes :Do Not Refer to Buffer Pool value in Dbcc Memorystatus and Counter SQL Server Buffer Manager: Target pages DRC: "1) This is a very good article and provides very good information about the SQL Server Memory utilization. 2) This also provided the issues with DBCC MEMORYSTATUS output which shows the invalid values. 3) It shares different ways to calculate the same memory usage using which we can prove that the values are incorrect in DBCC MEMORYSTATUS 4) It also compares with the older version of SQL and provides the expected value for the memory usage. "
JS: "A good comparison, though, please do link articles in the MSDN / BOL / TECHNET not general links or the list of articles you posted. This is obvious as of the usage of the forums. I would be better to get people more insights on the topic you presented."
DB: "Interesting and useful" 

Silver Award Winner

 

 Prashanth Jayaram Capturing Database(s) and Table Usage stats – sp_spaceused simulation using DMV’s DB: "Useful Stuff"
DRC: "1) This article is provides information about finding space usage by the user database and tables. 2) This can also be achieved using the SP_SPACEUSED command but it provided a custom script to get more information about every user table 3) It also provides scripts to save the outputs in a table which can be used to analyze the trends in data size growth. "
JS: "The usage of sp_msforeachdb (an undocumetned procedure which can change without any notice as being unsupported) is used in the solution. As it already implemented the right way (with a loop) in the queries at the bottom of the article, I would suggest to also apply that to the first ones and make that available again."

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Kev Riley SQL Server Data Tools - Error SQL71501 Unresolved References - An Obscure Cause JS: "I would love to see a bigger picture to this like "Possible causes for the error to occur", whereas one of the causes would be the spaces problem. I can imagine people searching for the error code and finding this site which only covers one problem and might be not the problem they are hitting. A good idea to get the edge cases, but a seperate item is questionable."
DB: "Good to know"
DRC: "1) This article provides one of the scenarios where we hit the above mentioned error in Visual studio. 2) It also provides the steps to reproduce the issue and steps to resolution. "


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • SQL Server Data Tools to Visual Studio 2013 - Database Reverse Engineering by João Sousa 
    AM: "Great step by step article. No doubt many SSDT users will benefit from reading it."
    DRC: "1) Provided the detailed steps for the complete process with screen shot wherever necessary. 2) This demos the feature “refactor” in this article, need to check if this is a new feature only from VS 2013. "
    JS: "Nothing not already described in the MSDN topics like this one here. In addition to this, the article does scratch only the surface of certain functionalities, with the topic of Refactoring, but mainly explaining the import process."
    DB: "Basic product functionality explained"

  

Guru Award System Center Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Markus Eliasson Protect OneDrive-data with DPM

AB: "My favourite!"

Ed: "This is a fantastic topic! Short and sweet! It could benefit from section headers and a See Also section. Great article!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Alan Nascimento Carlos System Center - Monitoring Applications with System Center Reporting

AB: "Very nice article, thanks!"

Ed: "Great content and topic. It could benefit from more descriptions and formatting around the processes. The images are very helpful!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Prajwal Desai Deploy Endpoint Protection Updates Offline Using SCCM 2012 R2

AB: "Another good article"

Ed: "Great descriptions and use of images! It could benefit from sections and a TOC. Good job on the instructions!"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award Transact-SQL Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Kev Riley T-SQL: Safely Concatenate Values Into a Scalar Variable Richard Mueller: "Good explanation of an important concept. Also a good example for how to troubleshoot unexpected results."
Manoj Pandey: "nice info/gotcha & clear explaination to take care while you are working with string concatenation"
JS: "Interesting article and a very good point as well as outlining the information for a workaround / new solution."
Ed Price: "Love the in-depth References section and great explanations with code and images! Very thorough."

Silver Award Winner

 

 Visakh16 T-SQL Tips : Search and Replace String From Multiple Nodes Within a XML Document Ed Price: "Another amazing article! Great thoroughness on this! Could benefit from a little more code breakdown and explanation. Great article!"
Manoj Pandey: "good handy/readymade script you can use while dealing with XML documents/strings"
JS: "Good explanation and guiding the read through the solution with examples that can be replayed."
Richard Mueller: "A subtle issue that is well explained. The "See Also" should reference Wiki articles."

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Saeid Hasani T-SQL: CHECK Constraints Ed Price: "Wow! The detail and depth here is amazing! Fantastic job and high quality!"
Richard Mueller: "Extensive documentation of an important topic. We need more references. The "See Also" should only link to Wiki articles."
Manoj Pandey: "indepth detail and implementation of CHECK constraint, with lot of handson and examples"
JS: "Good article, though a bit hard to read and quite long. It would be nice to laave out some stuff already described in the BOL and only point out the stuff whichis really relevant and special for you."


 

Guru Award Visual Basic Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Emiliano Musso Create QR Codes with Google Web APIs MR: "Good article and walkthrough on creating a user control "
Richard Mueller: "Very clever, but more explanation needed. A brief explanation of a QR code is would be helpful."



Guru Award  Visual C# Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Chervine Code Reflection in C# Ed Price: "I love the way you break down the code and explain it in this article! Fantastic job!"
Søren Granfeldt: "Very useful for generic application. Good starting point for apps going in that direction"

Silver Award Winner

 

 João Sousa ASP.NET MVC - Ed Price: "Great formatting, with some good code snippets and descriptions! Great images!"
Søren Granfeldt: "Very nice coverage of niche corner. Hopefully this will evolve more over time"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 João Sousa ASP.NET MVC - AngularJS, WebAPI and EntityFramework to build SPA Ed Price: "Another great article! Good use of code!"
Søren Granfeldt: "Nice example, but maybe to mainstream and like other samples out there"


 

Guru Award Wiki and Portals Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Julio Iglesias Pérez Artículos TechNet Wiki en Español (es-ES) Richard Mueller: "An excellent collection of links. Very well done. The few Spanish sentences should probably be translated into English."
Ed Price: "I can see all the work you put into this. It's amazing! A great resource for our Spanish readers!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 Peter Geelen - MSFT Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) - Resource Portal Ed Price: "Great toolkit! Very useful! Great job coming up with a ton of resources for this!"
Richard Mueller: "Good collection. The "Wiki" could be a "See Also". The introductory paragraph could be expanded to briefly explain what EMET is."


 

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

Gold Award Winner

 

 Carmelo La Monica Part one: the Nokia Maps on Windows Phone 8.

JH: "Very detailed article. Can't wait to see part two!"

Ed: "What a fantastic article! Great topic, strong Introduction, great use of code snippets, and it ends very well with the See Also section and the MSDN Code Gallery link!"

Silver Award Winner

 

 SubramanyamRaju.B WindowsPhone: Image crop with rectangle (C#-XAML) 

JH: "Had the same problem some time ago. Had been great if this article was available back then."

Ed: "Great job on the code snippets! Could benefit from a TOC. Very useful topic!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Jaliya Udagedara Using Prism for Windows Runtime

JH: "Personally, I don't use Prism in my day by day work, but love it that articles about frameworks important as Prism are now also on our wiki."

Ed: "Wow! What an incredibly thorough article! Great formatting and depth! It could have benefited from a TOC with more header sections. Love the Gallery link to the code!"


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

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

Gold Award Winner

 

 Andy ONeill WPF: Keeping your MVVM Views DRY Ed Price: "Great depth! Good insights!"
KJ: "Love this! good principles, good article"

Silver Award Winner

 

 saramgsilva Modern UI for WPF application by example (handle navigation) Ed Price: "Good descriptions and code formatting. Great topic!"
KJ: "Didn't know about these libraries...nice!"

Bronze Award Winner

 

 saramgsilva Modern UI for WPF application by example ( NavigationMessageService - MVVM ) KJ: "Didn't know about these libraries...nice!"
Ed Price: "Great job on the code formatting on these! Perhaps a See Also section to tie them together would be good."


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

 

Guru Award Windows Server Technical Guru - November 2014  

Gold Award Winner

 

 Kelly Bush Controlling Object Visibility – Deny List Content Mark Parris: "Very good, insight on the deny ACL in Active Directory."
JM: "This is an excellent article, nice work

Silver Award Winner

 

 Richard Mueller Filters with PowerShell Active Directory Module Cmdlets Mark Parris: "Excellent article on what can be a challenging concept to master."
JM: "This is a fantastic article, very concise and clear and very useful. Thanks for your contribution."

Bronze Award Winner

 

 Mr X How to Automatically Delete User Profiles older than a certain number of days using Group Policy Philippe Levesque: "Great article ! Really fill a problem I seen a lot of time when you delete a user and there is left-over on TS server"
Mark Parris: "Interesting snippet."
JM: "This is a very good article, thanks for your continued contributions to the Wiki."


Also worth a mention were the other entries this month:

  • AD Recycle Bin Feature In Windows Server 2012 R2 by Prajwal Desai
    Philippe Levesque: "Good article ! Good information to learn to use that new feature !"
    JM: "This article is excellent, thanks for contributing to the Wiki!"
    Mark Parris: "Informative article on the Recycle Bin for Windows Server 2012."

    -------------------------------- 8< --------------------------------

     

    A huge thank you to EVERYONE who contributed an article to November's competition.

    Hopefully we will see you ALL again in December 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

     

    More about the TechNet Guru Awards:

     

    Forum posts:

    Coming soon!