Hi everyone !

Today I am writing a small post about the use of portals and how the council tries to evangelize their use. I will explain how the portals can serve us and why they exist!

Currently, on the home page of the wiki, there are eight portals linked from there..

Wiki: Technologies Portal

Wiki: Platforms Portal

Wiki: Virtualization Portal

Wiki: Troubleshooting Portal

Wiki: IT Security Portal

Wiki: Development Portal

Wiki: Cloud Portal

Wiki: Management Portal

Each portal has a simple use, it allows us to easily find an article. You can search with the tag cloud too, but on the other hand, the portals are great if you want a quick way to check if a specific article has already been written before you write it... then a portal is right there to help you!

For me, I initially started to update the portals because in the past I wanted to write an article about Exchange 2013, but searching with the tag cloud took me almost 30 minutes to find that no one wrote an article like that yet. So yes, a simple "Exchange 2013 Portal" would have helped me check quickly and directly.

A portal allows all articles to be found; an article that can't be found is not a good thing!

The last point that made me use the portals so much is the fact that I found that some articles that were written for earlier version products, but they can still fit for the new product. An example is a PowerShell tip for Exchange 2007. It can run on Exchange 2010 & Exchange 2013... So updating the original's article tag and linking it from the 3 product portals (2007, 2010, and 2013) make the article much easier to find!

And my last point... I want to give a great thanks to Richard Mueller, because he helped me drive this council's task!  :)

The key point of my post is simple!! If you're writing an article for a technology, then link to it from a portal so that it can be easily found!!!  :)

Thanks everyone !

Regards,

Philippe

French Wiki Ninja

The other day, I worked on a Wiki article and I had to include a large Excel spreadsheet into it.

Just using the “copy and paste” approach didn’t seem to be a good idea because it would have taken hours to get this task completed.
There must be a better method to do this – right?

This is when I started to look into options to automate this task.
After doing a little research, I found a simple method to accomplish what I was looking for - scripting it.

Scripting this task does not only enable you to get the data from the Excel spreadsheet into the Wiki article, it also enables you to format the resulting table a bit using inline styles.

When I was done developing my script, I thought it might also be a good idea to share with you how it works.

So, in addition to the Wiki article I was working on, I also wrote an article on  “How To Import an Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Into a Wiki Article”.
That way, you can write your own implementation if you want to.

Last but not least, if you don’t want to write your own scripts but want to use this feature when you write a Wiki article, you can also download the Wiki toolbox.
As indicated by the name, the Wiki toolbox is a collection of “little things” that help to simplify the process of developing Wiki articles.
I will let you know when I have added new features to the Wiki toolbox.
Those of you who have installed it, will automatically be notified when an updated version exists - this is the beauty of a ClickOnce release.

Please let me know if you have questions or other feedback.

Cheers,
Markus

.

Hello everybody, my name is Luiz Henrique Lima Campos, and today I will share a tip... here are 5 blogs that I always follow on TechNet.

Blogs are very useful because they can help us solve many technical issues.

They blogs I recommend are:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/ - SQL Server

http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/ - SharePoint Server

http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/ - PowerShell Scripts

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/ - Exchange Server

http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_resource_kit/ - Office

This is my tip for today.

Always consult and use these blogs, because they are very good.

A hug, until next time.

Luiz Henrique Lima Campos
Microsoft MVP, MCT,MCP,MCC,MCDST,MCSA,MCSA+M,MCTS e MCITP
Moderador no Microsoft Answers e TechNet Forums e Membro do TechNet Wiki Community Council
Visite o meu blog: http://luizhenriquelima.wordpress.com/
Me siga no twitter: @luizlima

Namaste All !!!

Today is 2013-10-30 and it was the same day a couple of  years back, when the first brick of Wiki Ninja Blog was set. The first post was written by Ed Price, About Wiki Ninjas - The Official Blog of TechNet Wiki

It was an introduction of Wiki Ninja Blog where the purpose of having a Wiki Ninja Blog was briefed, along with the contributors who volunteered to write for it and the theme to write. 

Initiators (12) 

• Bruno Lewin 
• Ed Price
• Eric Battalio
• Kurt L Hudson
• Luigi Bruno
• Luciano Lima 
• Monica Rush 
• Peter Geelen 
• Steef-Jan Wiggers 
• Thomas W Shinder
• TonySoper 
• Yuri Diogenes

Community Win – We write about an example or “story” of how the community came together to do something great with TechNet Wiki. This can be published on Tuesdays (as an Article Spotlight) or on Sunday Surprise. Examples:http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/archive/tags/community+win/   

Social Synergy - This is a subcategory for Wiki Life Wednesdays. We focus on using TechNet Wiki in a collaborative way with other social tools... TechNet/MSDN Gallery, TechNet/MSDN Forums, TechNet/MSDN Blogs, CodePlex, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Examples: http://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/archive/tags/social+synergy/  

Wiki Ninjas Announcements - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wikininjasannouncements/   - We're using this new blog to make shorter and more consistent announcements... TechNet Guru progress and winners, Wiki Ninjas Belts winners, Wiki milestones), and more. 

Hello and welcome everybody to our TNWiki Article Spotlight on Tuesday.

Nearly one year ago I wrote a blog post about Hadoop-based Services For Windows on the Ninjas blog. Six months ago I also wrote about Microsoft HDInsight (Big Data) Solutions. Why do I mention these two? Yesterday Microsoft made the announcement of the General Availability of the Windows Azure HDInsight service. As a big fan of both Windows Azure and Hadoop I want to use this announcement as an opportunity to highlight another wiki article covering the HDInsight Services - Introduction to HDInsight Services for Windows Azure. It was created a year ago by Brad Severtson and addresses basic Hadoop principles and how you can get started with it on the Windows Azure platform.

- German Ninja Jan (Twitter, Blog, Profile)