A commonly misunderstood component of
SharePoint is the navigation. People are really surprised and honestly, it is
pretty anti-climatic! Here are a few things everyone should know about
manipulating SharePoint navigation.
Your best friend is
Site Settings
Site Settings is the first thing to get to
know for SharePoint navigation. It can also be a little confusing at first
because based on the type of site you are using, different options will appear.
Check out the screenshot below.
If you are working with a
publishing site (for example a site created from the Publishing or Enterprise
Wiki template) then when you go to Site
Actions > Site Settings in your SharePoint 2010 site, you
will see Navigation
as an option under the Look
and Feel column. If you working with a team site, you will see Quick Launch and Top link bar. But if
you are working with a team site that is a child of a publishing site, well
then you see Navigation.
Publishing
gives you more options
One of the benefits of
using the SharePoint publishing features is a more robust and centralized
navigation system. The key thing to remember with publishing sites is that
where you would traditionally create a folder for a type of content in your web
site directory, such as a folder for About Us or Press Releases, in SharePoint
you create a sub site. We want our end users to see a nice, unified site and
not bother them with the finer details that your SharePoint site is actually a
collection of nested sub sites under a parent site. The global navigation, also
known as the Top Link Bar, is going to help provide that central navigation.
Team sites are meant for
focused content and uses. The goal is not to string together a bunch of team
sites to create a larger web site. Publishing handles this need instead. That
is why the options differ between publishing sites and any team sites that are
children versus team sites that stand alone.
Options
for stand alone team sites
If publishing isn't a part
of your site hierarchy, then you can do the following with your team site
navigation through Site Settings:
- Add new links
- Control the
order of the links
- Nest the links
under a heading style structure (Quick Launch only)
Options
for publishing sites and their children
Here is a list of things
you can accomplish using Site Settings for publishing sites and their children
sites, whether that child site is a publishing site or not:
- Inherit the
navigation system(s) used from the parent site
- Automatically
show newly added web pages and/or sub sites
- Control the
number of items to display
- Sort items
automatically or manually
- Add headers,
links and control the order
- Selectively
hide sites/pages/links
Looking
at the options for publishing sites and their children
Here is a screenshot of the
settings you will see when you click into Navigation from the Look and Feel
section of Site Settings. Handy stuff has been highlighted in red. And yes,
there is a lot of handy stuff here
Realistic
examples of using the navigation settings
A lot of people turn to
third party navigation solutions. Often it is because of a lack of
understanding on how to use and apply what SharePoint navigation can do out of
the box. Here are some application examples for several of the navigation
settings:
- Display the same
navigation items from the parent site - share a
central navigation system across all your sub sites, thus creating the
unified user experience and linking all your sites together under one
navigation umbrella.
- Display the navigation
items below the current site - break free of the shared navigation
system for a one off site or to reset the navigation for a large network
of sites. For example if the Human Resources section of your large
Intranet needs it's own navigation system, it can have a link back to Home
but have it's own HR navigation going across the top that is then shared
for all the HR sites and pages.
- Option to Show Pages - every time a
new product page, biography page, client information page, press release,
etc. is added to the site the page will automatically be added to the
navigation (likely in a drop down menu based on your structure). It is
security trimmed so only users with access to the page will see the
navigation item.
- Option to Show Sites - every time a
new client management, project management, department (or the like) site
is created it will automatically be added to the nav, and is security
trimmed as well.
- Set the maximum number of dynamic items to show
- stop run away navigation systems with too many options in the top level.
- Add a link - include a
link to another web site, company resource or common tool. The formatting
of this added link will match the rest of the SharePoint navigation
system.
- Add a Heading - create your
own drop downs in the navigation or nested structure in the Quick Launch.
Many organizations have a smorgasbord of links they need to include to
various affiliates, company tools or shared resources.
- Hide an item -
Only 14 out of 15 client sites should be displayed to employees. Hide one
off items based on need while not affecting how other content is auto
added to SharePoint.
Still
need more?
If these settings don't
meet your needs for SharePoint navigation, there are other options. Suggest you
start with the Mega
Menu series and use a custom list to control your SharePoint navigation.
Courtesy: www.sharepointexperience.com
