Adding new Hub sites will not get reflected inside the existing "Associated Hubs" & "Associated Chil

Steel Contributor

We have multiple layers of Hub Sites, and we are using those options to show the related child Hubs and the related Hubs:-

 
 

image.png

 

But if we add new Hubs sites and link them to existing hub sites >> those new hub sites will not get reflected inside the existing "Associated Hubs" & "Associated Child Hubs" links? so is this a bug? i waited for around 5 hours for now. Thanks

7 Replies

@john john This is by design. Your navigation will not automatically update when you add new associated hubs. If you want to pick up the new associated hubs, you will need to re-add the link and any new associated hubs will be picked up at that time. Think of that feature as a one time help. You will likely want to change the label name anyway, since the term “associated hub” is not going to resonate with your users.

@SusanHanleyThanks for the reply.  i am not sure how Microsoft is investing or at-least force us to invest in Hub sites and have this as a bug.. we can have hundreds of sites that are connected with each other using Hubs.. so if we add a new Hub, then we need to manually go through all the sites and update the navigation... looks totally weird !! and certainly it is a BUG.. we never face those issues when using Subsites!!

Associating hubs to one another is designed to support search. There is no "automatic" navigation in modern SharePoint - anywhere - so I'm not sure why you would expect associated hubs to do so. Even with a single hub - no sites automatically appear in navigation just because they are associated to a hub. I do not agree that this is a bug. In fact, I think that navigation should be carefully planned so, as an information architect, I prefer to choose which sites are in navigation.

@Susan_HanleyI am not managing the links manually,, i am using those built-in capabilities (not sure if you have ever used them before):-

 

johnjohn_0-1667240816706.png

 

those links are suppose to automatically show the associated hub/s and child hub/s without having to manually manage those links.. so if the underlying hubs change we should expect the links to get updated automatically as well.. so for sure it is a BUG or uncompleted feature..For example in the sub-sites , case, you can decide to show underlying sub-sites links inside the root site, and the sub-sites links will get updated automatically when adding/removing subsites.. seems you did not understand my main problem.. i am not managing those links manually from the beginning..

 

@john john I understand your frustration, but that's not how those links were designed to work. I believe you may be misunderstanding the intention of the "helper" links that are created when you edit hub navigation the first time you have associated two hubs together. This is very clearly stated in the documentation about associated hubs on this page: Associate a hub site to another hub site in the SharePoint admin center - SharePoint in Microsoft 36... so it is definitely not a bug. Look for the note in purple towards the bottom of the page.

"Navigational links to associated hubs are not automatically updated when there are changes to hub associations in the SharePoint admin center." - Associate a SharePoint hub site to another hub to connect search experiences.

 

I'm really confused as to what the intended use of this feature is. If it's the same as adding a link, and it doesn't add associated hub sites automatically, what is the point of having it as an option?

 

 

I agree with you! There is a "one time only" value to those links and very limited usefulness as an option over the long term. But, for set up, they can be helpful.