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

In most cases a wiki has a flat hierarchy. The same is true for our TechNet wiki, but from time to time somebody groups related articles into one article and calls it "Portal". Since its inception the wiki has seen many portals. They are an entry point for most research on specific topics. But how do I find all the portals on TechNet Wiki? Richard Mueller has given us relief! At the end of 2013, he created a portal of the TechNet Wiki Portals. That is now your entry point to all portals we have on the wiki, regardless of whether you are looking for articles about SQL Server, SharePoint, or some development topics.

Happy "portaling"!

- German Ninja Jan (Twitter, Blog, Profile)

Hello Community!

Today, for this week's TNWiki Article Spotlight, I give you articles about DevOps!

If you didn't know, DevOps is a software development method that stresses communication, collaboration, and integration between software developers and IT Operations teams. Simply put DevOps tries to create a synthesis of Developers and Operations (hence the name) in the same team with the same goal.

Microsoft took this view, and they rejoined their solutions... System Center and Visual Studio ALM to work together with their tools.

Articles:

Team Foundation Server 2012 RC – Install & Configure
Author: Kishore Gaddam

Resume: Step-by-Step to install Team Foundation Server

Integrating Operations Manager with Development Processes
Author: Byron Ricks

Resume: Article explaining how to integrate Team Foundation Server and System Center Operation Manager.

Visual Studio Authoring Extensions for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager
Author: Brian Wren

Resume: Article explaining how to create management packs for operation manager using Visual Studio.

TFS 2010 Build-Deploy-Test
Author: AnujChaudhary

Resume: Article with useful information and links on how to configure Team Foundation Server (TFS) and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM).

ALM - Integration Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Project Server
Author: Alan do Nascimento Carlos

Resume: Step-by-step instructions showing how to integrate Team Foundation Server and Project Server (EPM).

Visual Studio IntelliTrace
Author: Jaliya Udagedara

Resume: Article explaining how to use the Intellitrace.

ALM - DevOps - System Center Global Service Monitor – Overview
Author: Alan do Nascimento Carlos

Resume: Overview of monitoring cloud service from Microsoft System Center.

ALM - DevOps - Dashboard of your Microsoft Test Lab Manager
Author: Alan do Nascimento Carlos

Resume: Article explaining how to configure a dashboard for managing your Test Lab.

There is much more material available on Technet Wiki that the DevOps community is sharing. I hope to be able to talk a bit more about this topic soon, about uniting IT OPS and DEV teams!

See you soon! 

Alan Carlos - Brazilian Wiki Ninja

Welcome to our Monday series, Interview with a Wiki Ninja!

Today's next interview is with...

Paul Ishak

Paul's Wiki stats:

• 23 articles!
• 100 article edits!
• 57 Wiki comments
• 7-time TechNet Guru award winner!

Here are some popular Wiki articles from Paul:

• Drawing Braille Characters with GDI
• LoOps! With Visual Basic.Net
• Virtual Memory In Visual Basic.Net
• Visual Basic.Net Common Errors - Index was out of range.
• Bitmap.Lockbits De-Mystified .Net
• Visual Basic.Net Pullout Panel Borderless Form

And now, to the interview!

Who are you, where are you, and what do you do? What are your specialty technologies? 

Paul Ishak, born in june of 1976, live in Las Vegas, I work in the Computer/Audio/Visual Field. I have been programming with "basic" syntaxed languages since I was 7 years old. I started on a commodore 64 and worked my way through a variety of different similar basic languages until the late 90's where I finally got my first exposure to Visual Basic. I feel sorry for AOL at that time... nuff said.

What is TechNet Wiki for? Who is it for?

A place where information collides and creates new ideas or exposes people to old topics for the first time. To me, TechNet is for everyone, learning is for everyone, expert or newbie.

What is it about TechNet Wiki that interests you?

Information from minds that are willing to share for free is appealing to me because it comes from a genuinely interested mind.

 What are your favorite Wiki articles you’ve contributed?

I am really liking my recent contribution(braille code). Mainly because I have fun tinkering around with GDI. I also like my not-so-recent article about converting System.Decimal datatype to an array of bytes. I enjoy working with binary/bytes just as much as GDI! See Drawing Braille Characters with GDI.

What are the top areas that need more attention and development on TechNet Wiki?

Visual Basic needs more attention period. 

What could we do differently on TechNet Wiki?

Have TechNet-generated hit counters and statistics.

Integrate TechNet Wiki with the forums, and add a feature to "convert forum thread" to technet article.

I might also suggest a "nominate forum thread" for Wiki conversion option as well, where if enough people make a nomination...

Who has impressed you in the Wiki community, and why?

For my area of interest, I would have to say that I never skip the reading of an article by Reed Kimble. Reed always has a deep insight to the topic at hand.

What does success look like for TechNet Wiki?

 I think TechNet Wiki is already successful, so just take a look at TechNet Wiki and you will see what success looks like!

Do you have any tips for new Wiki authors?

Take your time, make it worth reading...

Save your article's HTML source to a text file, that way you don't have to rush to finish in one day.

Take the time to draw illustrations if it helps clarify your topic

Take the time to create commented source code

Read and re-read what you have written

Clarity is key to expressing an idea

Create an example project in the MSDN gallery, link to it from your TechNet Wiki article!

Thank you to Paul for all your contributions (and for being patient with me publishing this)!

Please join me in thanking Paul for all his incredibly fun and creative contributions about Visual Basic!

    - Ninja Ed

Another day I was talking to a member of the "MSDN Community" that had never created an article on our TechNet Wiki.

Actually he never even knew TNWiki existed and that he could create an article, as a developer in the "TechNet Community".

The Man Behind TechNet Wiki, Ed Price said some time ago: 

Rather than create a separate Wiki Community for developers, we welcome developers into TechNet Wiki !

We don't want to separate content, we want to unite our knowledge.

The virtual frontiers appear to limit the access of people and seems makes a hostile environment for those unfamiliar.

It doesn't get any better than TechNet Wiki to join knowledge.

We write about tools, processes, configurations and many other products and solutions on Programming Languages in our TechNet Wiki.

Yes, there are great content on Programming Languages as C#, VB.Net and also in various platforms: ASP.Net, Windows Forms, Windows Phone and others.

This small sample shows how already exists content for developers and that you can create more articles about software development.

I recommend that before you try to create a new article, seeks to improve the content of existing articles having their knowledge.

We are in a Wiki, where all articles are available for changing, always in search of the best content for everyone, but there are articles that need more aid from the Community to keep updated or to complement your content.

This articles use the Needs Work tag.

If after his experience in complementary content articles you still have any questions about how to get to share their knowledge, then I suggest that you read the articles:

- How to Contribute Content to TechNet Wiki

- How to Write your First Article

- What Makes a Great Wiki Article

- User Experience Guidelines

You can also use a Template to structure the sections of your article. This is a feature that makes it easy to organize all your content.

This is important disclosures to all members. The MSDN Wiki is here! We are all one Community.

A Ninja Wiki shares your knowledge and also shows how to share.

See you soon here !

Brazilian Wiki Ninja Durval

Hello community!!
This is the once-in-a-month day to check the progress of each language.

The end of January is as follows:

Interesting topics for this month:

• Considering the recent situation, the activity of each language as a whole was low.
• French has kept pace themselves.
• Turkish beats Portuguese for 5 months in a row.

That's the end of the Report for this month!

Thanks!

Tomoaki Yoshizawa (yottun8)
TechNet Profile : Tomoaki Yoshizawa
twitter : @yottun8