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Structured Navigation (Publishing) not supported on "Modern" Sites/Pages/Lists/Libraries

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Creating a dedicated post to track this.  Lots of discussion on this from Yammer, and havent really seen this anywhere here yet..

 

What is the status of new "Modern" capabilities to support structured navigation?

 

What structured navigation gives us today:

  • Dedicated navigation page
  • Menu items can be permissions limited by groups
  • Visual interface to easily move up / move down / create folders

 

For years we have had users leverage this navigation structure, because it was easier for them to "grasp" and the extra features that you dont get with just the regular navigation.

 

Right now, we have almost 500+ sites that leverage structured navigation.  We have also as an organization put real emphasis on the Top Global Navigation menu, and not as much on the Left Side Navigation menu (which "Modern" seems to really key off of).

 

This is one of the items keeping us from moving toward the modern UI, so we dont have to go redesign the navigation of every site just to fit into the new modern world.

 

If we have to bite the bullet and just touch every site to make it fit in modern, it would also be nice to know that.

111 Replies

People always have the simple option of right-clicking and opening a link in a new tab whenever they want. I would want to see the same default behavior as we see today in classic sites: any link in the global navigation should open in the same tab. Otherwise people will have the same maddening experience we see in O365 Groups, where navigating back and forth between the various functional parts of the Group ends up in a screen full of duplicate tabs.

 

This behavior (opening in same tab) should be observed when just the Publishing feature is turned on and also when Publishing is turned on *and* Managed Navigation is in use. (I use Managed Navigation in the global nav, and structured navigation in the local nav.)

 

If, in addition, you want to specify an option we can set to force opening in a new tab for a specific link, that would be fine; but the default should be as it is today - open in same tab for all links. It's easy for anyone to override and open in a new tab whenever they want, but there's no way for a person to override and open a link in the same tab.

 

Richard

 

Also, I have every site use the same global nav as the parent, so every site shows the same global nav as the top of the site collection.

 

Makes sense. The current design should meet your needs as the top and left controls would work similarly and open subsites of the site in the same tab; but other workloads (like a group-connect site's shared mailbox) in a new tab.
Thanks for the feedback, Richard. I agree that it's easy enough to right-click to open in new tab - and we are trying to be thoughtful about the potential proliferation of tabs. I should have added that there is on-going work here - across the workloads - to ensure a more thoughtful and consistent experience.

Did you manage to fix this? I'm having the same problem. The second level of Global Nav now only works for me on the top level Site, but the items aren't clickable on Subsites.

 

Was able to fix it on the top level Site by going to _layouts/15/topnav.aspx, adding an item and then removing it. Tried fixing it for Subsites by going to _layouts/15/topnav.aspx and disabling/enabling inheritance, but no luck. Wouldn't mind rebuilding the Global Nav, but I don't see any way to add a submenu, this seems to only work for the new quicklaunch. 

I'm not using structured navigation but for me the top and left controls are not working similarly.  Left opens subsites in same tab, top menu opens subsites in new tab.  This only occurs when the top link is on a mordern team site or page.

 

Hi @Pooya Obbohat - we had to pause the rollout due to an impacting regression; the fix is only just now resuming (I'm posting a separate notice/update this morning). Can you give it another try later this week and let me know if you're still seeing any issue? Thanks!

So you're using managed nav for both global and current and the links opening behavior is different?

Morning everyone - the related fixes we were waiting on have rolled out so we're able to resume release of this fix. It should be fully deployed to production by end of this week.

 

I've posted a general note to the SharePoint community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/SharePoint/UPDATE-Support-for-Structured-Managed-Navigation-e...

 

Thank you again for your patience and help w/ this fix! Do let us know if you have any questions or issues.

 

-Sean

@Sean Squires I am using a modern site (connected to a group/team) and the custom links in quick launch on left nav do not work. They have same behavior as illustrated in this post here. 


@Phil Duffy wrote:

OK, just did some more testing and here's what happens.

 

  1. I create a custom view for a library (in classic mode) and put a link to that view on the quick launch (/sites/training/phildemo/Upload%20Test/Forms/Custom.aspx)
  2. In classic mode when I click on the link, the view opens up as expected with different columns, etc
  3. The library is set to Modern mode so now my menu is in modern view, and if I now click on the same link the URL is still pointing to the custom view (/sites/training/phildemo/Upload%20Test/Forms/Custom.aspx) BUT what I see on refresh is actually the default view (All Documents)
  4. And then to make things stranger, I cannot select my custom view from the View drop down.
  5. If I then go to the site home (in classic mode) the link works as expected again

Hope that helps, happy testing!

 

Phil.


From what I understand its the case because as per your msg in this thread, if the link is on same site, then it opens in same tab and auto populates the URL with /sites/.... in the process, the above point #3 happens. the view defaults to the document library view. 

 

Is this fixed? We are still facing this issue though. Advice?

Hi Nikhil,

 

I just checked and this issue has been resolved now. It was all about links to custom Views not displaying with the modern look and feel.

 

Phil.

@Phil Duffy thanks for your response. I am unsure what's the issue then, we are still seeing this issue. It happens every time I try to add a custom URL as a new link on the left navigation in the modern sites. The links default to the main document library view and not the respective folders within it. 

This sounds a bit different to our issue as we weren’t using folders but just a custom view (filtered/sorted). Maybe worth posting as a separate request to the moderator!

 

Phil.

@Phil Duffy thanks.. I guess I'll do that. 


@Phil Duffy wrote:

This sounds a bit different to our issue as we weren’t using folders but just a custom view (filtered/sorted). Maybe worth posting as a separate request to the moderator!

 

Phil.


 

@Sean Squires Would you or anyone else be able to help with this?

 

@Nikhil Nulkar wrote:

@Sean Squires I am using a modern site (connected to a group/team) and the custom links in quick launch on left nav do not work. They have same behavior as illustrated in this post here. 


@Phil Duffy wrote:

OK, just did some more testing and here's what happens.

 

  1. I create a custom view for a library (in classic mode) and put a link to that view on the quick launch (/sites/training/phildemo/Upload%20Test/Forms/Custom.aspx)
  2. In classic mode when I click on the link, the view opens up as expected with different columns, etc
  3. The library is set to Modern mode so now my menu is in modern view, and if I now click on the same link the URL is still pointing to the custom view (/sites/training/phildemo/Upload%20Test/Forms/Custom.aspx) BUT what I see on refresh is actually the default view (All Documents)
  4. And then to make things stranger, I cannot select my custom view from the View drop down.
  5. If I then go to the site home (in classic mode) the link works as expected again

Hope that helps, happy testing!

 

Phil.


From what I understand its the case because as per your msg in this thread, if the link is on same site, then it opens in same tab and auto populates the URL with /sites/.... in the process, the above point #3 happens. the view defaults to the document library view. 

 

Is this fixed? We are still facing this issue though. Advice?


 


@Abhimanyu Singh wrote:

Thank you @Miceile Barrett. Yes, we can see the filter pane, but that includes only a limited number of the list fields and no metadata terms. We look forward for the full metadata filtering options. It is good to know that you are working on this. 


@Miceile Barrett Any update on this please? It's been a long time and we are yet to see comprehensive metadata filtering in the filter pane of the modern UX. Please undertand that this is one of the friction sources for us which is preventing us from switching to modern from classic.

 

Pinging @Sean Squires again.

 

I believe I saw Metadata Columsn for Filter Pane on one of the customer showcasing videos (and the end of each video there is a short roadmap overview).

Today I noticed that the Quick Launch navigation is not security trimmed in the Modern UI.  Users see all the links instead of only those to which they should have access. 

@Sean Squires does the structured navigation on a Classic site with modern pages and libraries uses the same techniques to retrieve the navigation? So does it use object cache, etc. and does not perform well with larger structures? Can we also expect this structured navigation on Modern sites too? 

 

Thanks in advance.

Sean,

 

"assuming you have enabled publishing feature on a classic team site"  Are you referring to activating SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure and SharePoint Server Publishing?  Currently, I am creating a Communication site, and I can create a sub site, but the sub site does not inherit navigation from the parent site.   I believe activating the above would solve the issue, but I cannot even do that.