Modern Team Site - Global navigation

[Christian Enghaug]

Hi All,

I currently work with a customer that have a site collection with sub sites, where they use a global structural navigation of the sub sites in two levels (with dropdown). I want them to take advantage of the new modern team sites, but I see different behaviors of the navigation concept. In one site collection the global navigation displays only one level, and the next level is displayed in the current navigation. In another site collection there is no global navigation at all. An yet a another one there is just the home link in the global navigation. In some site collections the links in the global navigation opens in a new tab an in another the link opens in the current window/tab. Because of this inconsistency I have to tell my customer to wait to see what's happening. What plans does Microsoft have for the navigation concept (global/current navigation)?  Where do we configure the navigation? It does not look like it cares about what's configured in the Navigation settings (/_layouts/15/AreaNavigationSettings.aspx). 

[#2]

The new team sites ( AKA Office 365 groups) are not production ready yet. So I wouldn't recommend them at the moment. They are only for first release.

[#3]

And navigation is one of the missing pieces of the cake...Microsoft has done some improvements but there is still work to be done

[#4]

I've been harping about navigation ever since the first previews came out for doc libs, it would be nice to have those big long threads back on yammer

On Peter's point: I would be nice to be able to "turn off" the sites for o365 groups, kinda hard to formally push o365 groups when it provisions all of these not ready / in flux modern sites.

https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/286611-office-365-groups/suggestions/16619995-ability-to-cont...

[#5]

Yes, but when you create a new Team Site, and activate the SP Server publishing infrastructure feature, you suddenly has a new link in the current navigation to a modern page called "News". But the page is empty, because the tenant has not yet got the news web part. When you then try to add a new page, a modern page is created. This is all happening in a Standard Release tenant. So some of the new modern features seems to be in "production" already. And you already got the modern look of lists and libraries. It's not the best experience for end-user that the global navigation disappears. I think Microsoft should at least support the navigation option already available in SP, before rolling out the modern parts of team sites. 

[#6]

This is a known issue (the News link appearing and not working) and last Microsoft message in regards of it was that they were working on a fix to remove thes link. You are right, some of the features are in "production", but you can disable new UI using controls provided by Microsoft

[#7]

Yes, I know. But the new UI is great, so I will not turn it of.  I feel the end-users miss a lot of good functionality if we disable the modern UI. By the way, I think I found one way to add the top level of the global navigation to the modern UI. If you have activated the SP server publishing infrastructure feature, the moder UI still using the settings form the "Top Link Bar"-settings (/_layouts/15/topnav.aspx). If you in the Navigation-settings (/_layouts/15/AreaNavigationSettings.aspx) select Sort Automatically, the first level of the global navigation is copied to the top link bar settings.  

[#8]

IMO, microsoft go ahead of itself trying to modernize, leaving out/skipping some foundational concepts that should be sharepoint 101 that are coming back to bite them. The new UI is great in theory, but in practice, I find it a pretty big mess so far. For us the pros havent outweighed the cons yet.

Its probably easier if you are toward the beginning of your sharepoint journey to adopt the modern stuff, but if you are years into it, definitely more of a challenge.

[#9]

I was sad to lose the drop down navigation when in a library but we can live with that. I updated all our sites to NOT have drop down nav, but there was a consistent top nav throughout the site. NOW - just last few weeks - When in a library or list the top navigation is duplicating the left navigation! So users have to go back to the home page of the site so they can navigation across the site collection. Terrible UI change. What gives?

MS, please provide guidance on how we should be navigation across site collections. Much less intuitive now.

[#10]

I experience exactly the same behavior in my developer tenant. It seems like this happens when you inherit the global navigation from the parent site and have activated the publishing infrastructure site collection feature. As a workaround I have configured the global navigation on every site (just 4 sub sites), then it worked as expected. By configure a header with a hyperlink on the second level, you get the dropdown menu as well.

I really hope Microsoft sees that the failing navigation in "modern" team sites is a critical bug, that needs to be fixed ASAP!

[#11]

@Christian Enghaug
I am doing the same thing which is to enable publishing features and setup navigation. However, the global navigation is not inheriting to sub sites. Did you have the same issue? Did you setup global in each sub site manually?

[#12]

Yes, sub sites were configured to inherit the global navigation, but instead of displaying the parent global navigation, the local navigation was displayed as the global navigation on sub sites. In my developer tenant inherit of the global navigation seems to be fixed now.

I configured the global navigation manually on each sub site, but you could use PnP PowerShell and the Provisioning engine to do this. Something like this:

$cred = Get-Credential
Connect-PnPOnline -Url "<URL to site where you have configured the global navigation>" -Credentials $cred
Get-PnPProvisioningTemplate -Out "c:\NavigationTemplate.xml" -Handlers Navigation

Then remove the CurrentNavigation from the template (c:\NavigationTemplate.xml). And then apply that template to all sub sites.

Connect-PnPOnline -Url "<URL to site where you have configured the global navigation>" -Credentials $cred
$subWebs = Get-PnPSubWebs -Recurse 

foreach($web in $subWebs){
    $web.Navigation.UseShared = $false
    $web.Update()
    $web.Context.ExecuteQuery()

    Apply-PnPProvisioningTemplate -Path "c:\NavigationTemplate.xml" -Handlers Navigation -Web $web -ClearNavigation
}

This is not tested, and is just an example of how you could do this by PowerShell. 

[#13]

I'm having different issues with enabling metadata global navigation in my tenant.

I've successfully enabled the publishing site collection features, but whenever I want to switch to metadata navigation I get "Access Denied" for our root sharepoint online site collection.

I'm Global Admin, Site Collection Admin and have manually assigned me Owner Permissions for the root site. Still Access Denied.

Anyone else?

[#14]

Are you an admin in the term store?

[#15]

yep

[#16]

I saw another weird issue with top nav. Top Nav links in modern pages always open in new tab. Is anyone else having same issue?

[#17]

Yes, it does on modern pages. But in modern lists and libraries it opens in the same window. Have not found a way to prevent this from happening. Anyone else? 

[#18]

I'd like to prevent this as well.

[#19]

So would I,

I am actually finding my modern links just open to a new BLANK page now as of a few days ago, even though the link is correct. V Frustrating 

[#20]

I’m finding that any 'Top Nav' from a modern Teamsite or Page opens the opens the link in a new tab, but opens in same tab (as expected) from the Quick Launch menu.

I thought I was just missing a setting somewhere, I've found no option other than deleting the top links.