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5 ways to create navigation in modern SharePoint Online site – Today in this article we’ll learn about various types of navigation available in the modern SharePoint online and how to create navigation in modern SharePoint Online.
Key-Highlights: Navigation in modern SharePoint Online
- Introduction
- Different types of navigation step by step walk thru
- Summary – what do we have here?
Introduction – Navigation in modern SharePoint Online
Building proper navigation to a site attracts more users, as they like the new navigation. The main purpose of navigation is to allow the users to land on their intended page in a quick manner and they should be able to navigate wherever they want. And at any given point, the user should be able to go back to the home page of the site. So, while SharePoint architect designs the navigation, they must adhere to the rules of navigation and know the end user’s current way of navigating before introducing a new one.
Different types of navigation step by step walk thru – Navigation in modern SharePoint Online
While we talk about Hub Site navigation, we must know about other types of navigation as well. The types of navigation in SharePoint Online are as below.
- Site Navigation (Local Navigation)
- Site Collection Navigation(Global Navigation)
- Hub Site Navigation
- Megamenu Navigation
- Personal Navigation
Now, we’ll talk about each type of navigation with a proper example.
Site Navigation (Local Navigation) – Local navigation in SharePoint means
This is simple navigation without which no SharePoint user/developer could go in the classic SharePoint experience at least – the very popular term for this type of navigation is called “Quick Launch”. If you are at the site level and need to create navigation related to that particular site, then Quick Launch navigation is your best friend!!!
Example of Site Navigation (Local Navigation).
Pic – Quick Launch Navigation(Team Site)
In contrast, if we have a communication site, Quick Launch is on the top of the page. The communication site is a special template that is introduced in the SharePoint modern framework. In a Team site, we have a quick launch (on the left) and top navigation (on the top), and with the communication site, we only have one navigation on the top.
Note:
The communication site does not have top navigation. Instead, Quick Launch has been moved from the left to the top.
Pic – Quick Launch Navigation(Communication Site)
Global navigation SharePoint online – Site Collection Navigation (Global Navigation)
Let’s say we have ten subsites and we want common navigation to all the subsites – then global navigation is the right choice. The navigation should be configured in the top-level root site collection and this navigation should be inherited from all sub-sites below it.
Pic – Global Navigation(Team Site)
Note:
The Site Collection Navigation option only exists on sites not connected to Office 365 Groups (classic sites or modern team sites without a Group).
Hub site navigation SharePoint Online
In modern site architecture, we will never have all the stuff in a single site collection. Sometimes, we may have a department site as a communication and a team site with an office 365 group connected. Those are independent site collections, in this case, global navigation will fail. This is where the hub site comes into the picture. Hub sites allow us to combine all those different types of sites and site collections and bring them all under one umbrella.
Here is an example of hub site navigation, note here that the link Sales and IT are from different site collections (classic team site).
Pic – Hub Site Navigation
Mega menu in SharePoint Online
The much-awaited megamenu navigation was recently launched by Microsoft (February & March 2019). It addresses many issues that users have been facing over the last several years in the traditional drop-down navigation approach. One of the major issues of drop-down-based navigation is, that if the navigation item lists are more, most of the actual content of the site will be hidden or shadowed by the drop-down menu. This is how the user gets frustrated and it leads to poor user adoption of the site. And also in the drop-down-based approach, we cannot have multi-levels of nested items.
Example of a mega menu:
This is a white rectangular box menu – using this we can implement multi-level nested item navigation but in flat architecture. At any given point in time, users will not lose their content. While working on the mega menu we must know this – if we configure the mega menu in the hub sites, this will not be inherited automatically in the subsequent associated site, we need to configure these in associated sites as well.
Pic – Megamenu Navigation
Note
We can achieve all four (Quick Launch, Global, Hub Site, and Megamenu) on the same site if we use a team site not connected to an Office 365 Group. The site which is connected to an Office 365 Group loses the site collection (Top) navigation option.
Personal navigation in SharePoint online
All the above types of navigations are man-made – I mean these need to be manually configured. Apart from these, we have one more navigation we may name personal navigation – these are not manually configured, based on the sites we may visit frequently these will be listed over here.
Go to the below URL and click on “SharePoint”.
We’ll get the below page – Example of personal navigation – these navigation items will vary from person to person because it depends on the specific user site visits.
Pic – Personal Navigation
Summary – what do we have here (navigation in modern SharePoint Online)?
In this article, we have learned the various types of navigation that are available in SharePoint online – like, Site Navigation(Quick Launch), Global Navigation, Hub Site Navigation, Megamenu Navigation, and Personal Navigation. And also we have learned the advantages of navigation over the other ones.
See Also: SharePoint Online Tutorial
You may also like the below SharePoint Online tutorials:
- Office 365: Getting started with SharePoint PnP PowerShell – installation
- In 2 steps convert a classic SharePoint page to modern using PnP
- Office 365: Retrieve hub sites and associated sites using PnP Powershell
- Create a modern team site using PnP PowerShell in SharePoint
- In 4 steps access SharePoint online data using postman tool
- SharePoint admin center: Learn SharePoint online administration in an hour – step by step
- SharePoint REST API: GET vs POST vs PUT vs DELETE vs PATCH
- Office 365: Understanding the hub site in SharePoint online
- Plan and implement SharePoint site navigation
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