SharePoint Magazine talks to Bjørn Furuknap about his upcoming book "Building the SharePoint User Experience"

SharePoint Magazine has spoken with Bjørn Furuknap, the author of the upcoming book “Building the SharePoint User Experience” and the related article series “Customizing the SharePoint User Experience” right here on SPM. We asked him about his book, the articles, and writing online.

Bjorn, first tell me a bit about yourself? Who are you and why should people listen to what you say?

My name is Bjørn, and I’m a SharePointholic. I’ve been in IT since I can remember, but started my professional career in 1993. Since then I have worked on both the admin and developer side of the fence.

I set up my first SharePoint installation for my own company in 2001 and have since installed countless SharePoints, ranging from small fire-and-forget team sites to completely customized massive portals.

However, I didn’t really get into the SharePoint developer thing until WSS3 came out. I started writing webparts and stuff for WSS2 but never liked the development experience.

As to why people should listen, I have no idea. Perhaps because I am passionate about what I do and in addition passionate about writing about what I do. That passion means I put a lot of time and energy into continualy improving and learning.

People seem to appreciate what I write based on feedback and blog readership, and if they can learn something from it, thats even better.

What will the topic of the book?

The book will be focused on understanding the architecture of SharePoint from a user experience perspective. It will be a book for architects, developers, and designers who want to truly understand the architecture of SharePoint and how they can apply that to create great user experiences.

Will this be another CSS/master pages book then?

Ah, no, by all means, no. I make a clear distinction between experience and interface here. The user interface is just a small part of the experience. Other factors such as functionality of pages, content types, working with email on lists, and modifying the authoring experience are all part of the user experience. At the time of this writing I have written about one third of the content for the book and I have written less than two full paragraphs relating to design, css and master pages.

I make no attempt to teach people css or html, and there is no need to know any of that stuff to learn everything that is in the book.

Who will be the primary audience?

Everyone! Buy one for each of your friends, and two for yourself!

Jokes aside, the book is primarily for SharePoint developers who are familiar with the basics but want to learn more and go deeper into SharePoint architecture. You should know your master page theory, but you don’t need to know the CAML required to create a list from scratch. You will after you have read the book, though.

The secondary audience will be architects, developers, and designers who seek to better understand the options for enhancing the user experience and thus be a better resource for others who may not know all the nitti-gritty details of what is possible.

Ok, so tell me a bit more about the actual contents.

The book will be divided into three sections or parts. The first part will focus on getting the bare minimum of SharePoint knowledge down, such as basic feature design and CAML/XML basics. The second part is a deep dive into the core of SharePoint, going from the site itself down to inner workings of custom fields. Then, in the third section, we put all that knowledge into creating a new solution from bottom up.

I am also trying to focus on unique knowledge and stay away from what has already been written in other books. Of course, there will always be overlaps, but much of what I write I have yet to find described anywhere else.

Can you give some examples of unique content?

Sure! For example I have yet to find any books that explains the steps, or actually step singular, required to email enable a custom list. Anyone can click the ‘Email enable this list’ for a document library or several other list template types, but that does not work for custom list, or a number of other lists. In the book I explain how email enabling works down to reading the reflected source code of SharePoint, and then explain how to email enable custom lists using only a single line of code.

I also take the time to test every attribute and feature of definitions to verify the official documentation. Sadly there are many examples where the documentation is either lacking or even plain wrong. I make a note in the text every time I find something like this and document the findings by showing reflected source code as well examples.

How does the article series “Customizing the user experience” fit into all this?

The article series actually came first, I only started thinking about the book after I saw that I would never be able to fit everything I wanted into an online series.

The online series stands on its own, and you can learn plenty from just reading that and never read the book. If you do get the book, however, you fill find tons of more information on each topic. I have had to prioritize and cut content from the online series in order to remain sanely short.

If you compare the first part, which is the longest article I have written online, the book chapter for the same topic is about three times as long. The “Lists and list templates” part is almost ten times as long in the book because I can go deeper and cover more ground.

Why would this book be any different than other books on SharePoint?

I focus highly on also creating a great reading experience by trying to tell a story while explaining the technical details. When I start a new chapter I first create the story, which often has absolutely nothing to do with the contents of the chapter itself. For instance, chapter 7, which details lists, list forms, and views, the story revolves around a journey through a forest searching for a hidden monster that lives in a cave.

A monster?

Hehe, yeah, I’ve spoken to many a SharePoint developer who are trying to create views from scratch. It is quite often painful and many have ‘fallen’ to the beast, running out of the room while cursing SharePoint and the day Bill Gates was born.

Sounds more like a fairy tale than a SharePoint book

Perhaps, but there is very little direct story telling here. I use humor and other literary tools to hopefully make the reading a bit more enjoyable. I write the story first to set the mood and pace for different sections of the chapter. I realize that people will buy Tolkien books if they want to read stories, so 99% of the content is still pure technical skill building. The story is just as much a tool for me in writing a chapter as it will be for the reader. If it’s not fun for me to write it sure as heck won’t be any fun to read.

The message in chapter 7 is: “Don’t go into the cave unless you are prepared, and the weapons you choose are the knowledge you gain. ”

I was also thinking of having the chapter on fields and columns take the reader into the role of a private investigator in a murder mystery, complete with femme fatales and gunfights, trying to find out what killed the text field type. I figured a lot of the readers like RPGs so they might appreciate being part of the book rather than just observing. I still have to get that past my editor, though, he might not see the fun that I do.

Why do you write so much?

Heh, I love to write, but more importantly I want to participate in the community, be part of the experience in a manner of speaking. There’s a certain mentality in Norway called Jante that frowns upon anyone who stands out. I hate that mentality and hopefully by contributing to the community and showing what can be done if one participates I can inspire others to be more active as well. In the long run this means more people on the scene and by random chance alone at least some of them will be good and teach me something new

So you are not making any money off this?

Not directly, no. I do get royalties from the book, but not nearly the same as I would have made had I put the same amount of work into customer projects. However, demonstrating skill and being visible is a great way of getting attention, and I have noticed a rise in requests for my time.

Why did you choose to write for SharePoint Magazine?

It was just a stroke of luck I guess. I had an idea for my first article on runtime modification of components and had begun writing for my own blow when I happened to stumble across the then unlaunched SharePoint Magazine web site. I shot off an email to you and you accepted. It’s a lot easier to reach a wider audience when writing for a magazine than just in my own blog.

Now that the magazine has been up for a few months I see that the value to the community is much higher than I expected. The quality of the articles, the topics available, and the update frequency is spot on. I am really happy to be part of a great team of authors here.

Thank you Bjorn for taking the time to answer these questions. Do you have any final thoughts?

Yes, absolutely. If you are planning on participating in the community, do so. Take the first step, get a blog up, start writing. The SharePoint knowledge pool is growing worldwide but demand is growing even faster. Share your knowledge so everyone can benefit.

Oh, and I love my wife very much. I promised her I’d say that

If you want more information about the articles, the book or Bjorn, here’s how you will get that:
Bjorn’s articles on SharePoint Magazine
“Building the SharePoint User Experience”, book blog
Furuknap’s SharePoint Corner, Bjorn’s blog