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

[Brent Ellis]

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.

[#2]

Hi @Robert Schouten - yes, it's currently using the same nav provider (the work we did earlier this year was effectively to ensure the modern control behaved similarly to classic one for consistency on those classic sites where publishing infra feature was enabled) - so it will be bound by the same functionality and limitations. As for support on modern sites - yes, something we are looking into, but no specifics I can share at this time. Thanks.

[#3]

Hi @Paul Martello - correct, I was referring to the classic publishing feature. No, unfortunately that scenario isn't supported at the moment as the communication site doesn't use/display the top link nav bar (which is what would be inherited down to the subsite). Even enabling classic publishing wouldn't fix this - and you can't activate it as it conflicts w/ the new publishing model. We are evaluating how to best support sub sites in the new modern site templates, but nothing we can share at this time. Your best workaround is to manually add the reference links you need to the sub site. 

[#4]

Hi @Sean Squires - I'm just wondering what the time line might be for supporting the use of Modern Document Libraries and Lists in long-existing classic sites that utilize the Publishing feature and Managed Navigation for the Global Navigation (structured for the Quick Launch). Here's what I see right now:

Consider Level 0 as the top of the site collection, Level 1 as the link that appears across the top in the Global Navigation, Level 2 as the drop-down, and Level 3 as the fly-out to the right. In a Modern Document Library view of the navigation:

* Level 0 appears in the Global Nav but does nothing when you click on it

* Level 1 links work

* Level 2 links work

* Level 3 links are broken, as they omit Level 1 from the URL. I.e., the URL becomes .../sites/0/2/3 (no "1").

It seems we are so close. Is there hope?

Also, any hope for being able to display the Quick Launch (structure navigation) in collapsed form by default?

Thanks,

Richard

[#5]

Hi @Richard Sharp - I think we're there! But I want to make sure I understand your configuration. I'm not sure I understand how you have Leve 0 implemented to render in the nav if your L1 is the header node. I assume you are using term-driven pages? If I configure simple links for each child node each one works: that is, I create a global nav w/ managed navigation and set up L1 (global nav), L2 (drop-down), and L3 (fly-out) nodes (all w/ hyperlinks) - they all work as expected.

If I set up the child nodes as term-driven pages I seem to get the correct URL path and behavior: /L1/L2/L3 (which is relative to the parent site so the URL for the L3 page would be https://domain.sharepoint.com/teams/ssquires/L1/L2/L3 ). I haven't configured any other target page settings, so let me know if you're doing something different.

As for collapse by default - yes, we are evaluating changing the home page behavior to default collapsed (which would also make it consistent w/ the libraries). Thanks for the feedback here. 

[#6]

I have done that, but when selecting the link back to the homepage, the top navigation does not appear until I refresh the page.  

[#7]

Hi @Sean Squires,

Thanks very much for this follow-up. Based on your response, I spent several hours last week re-examining my configuration. I do use term-driven pages.I think the issue was that, while I had an entry for Level 0 (site collection home), I did not have a URL specifically configured for it. It was never required for the link to work in classic managed navigation. Once I added that URL and let things sit overnight, all the child links fell into place. So that is a huge win for us, and will enable us to start to use modern libraries in our existing site collections. Also, the fact that the text in the drop-down and fly-out items is no longer truncated is a great improvement.

I've noticed three other differences in managed navigation as deployed in modern libraries:

1. If a level 2 (drop-down) item does not have a level 3 (fly-out) child, the URL "preview" appears as expected in the lower left corner of the browser when you hover over the level 2 item. If it does have a level 3 (fly-out) child, no URL "preview" appears when you hover over it. All level 0, 1, and 3 "previews" appear as expected. The links function correctly, but it would be nice if the level 2 previews appeared consistently, as they do in classic mode.

2. The response in the appearance of the navigation drop-downs and fly-outs is noticeably slower than in classic mode. Not bad, but not the lightning-fast feel we're used to.

3. If one hovers over a level 1 (global nav) item to display the level 2 drop-down and then does not click on one of the level 2 or level 3 items but simply moves the cursor away from the navigation area, the drop-down (and, if chosen, the fly-out) menu remains open until one clicks elsewhere on the page. In classic mode, the drop-downs disappear immediately when the cursor is no longer hovering over the navigation item. This need for an extra click contributes to the feeling that the response is a bit more cumbersome than in classic navigation.

Nonetheless, the fact that all levels of managed navigation now appear to lead to the correct URLs is a great breakthrough for us, and I very much appreciate your sticking with this!

My next task is to get this to work in classic publishing sites that don't use managed navigation. Right now, when viewed from a modern library the drop-downs display all the contents of the level 1 sites as well as the links to the level 2 sites, which is not the desired behavior. Is that your experience, as well, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks again for all your help!

Richard

[#8]

Hi @Richard Sharp - thanks for the detailed reply/feedback. Great to hear that the recent updates are enabling you to move forward with using modern library ux. I'll take a look at that behavior w/ "no url" to evaluate whether there's more we should do there. I am keen to get this functionality working w/ modern templates so we'll keep the community posted on our progress there. RE: other items:

#1 - inconsistent status  toast of L2 items - I've bugged so we can take a look at. Thanks for reporting.

#2 - interesting; I'd thought w/ the client-side improvements we'd made here it was faster. We'll take a look, but let me know if this persists.

#3 - yes, I'm seeing that now, too - and agree the flyouts shouldn't persist when you move cursor focus away. I've bugged for investigation

Re: your last comment on classic publishing template - there is likely more work to do there on our side. We haven't done much w/ that template in favor of the new communication template. I'll note and forward feedback to the team. 

Thanks again!

Sean

[#9]

Can you make the top-level in global navigation not be a clickable link? For example, would like Departments to not be clickable. Appears to require a URL.

[#10]

unclickable headers would be great, as I have many users that click on them before waiting.

[#11]

Plus one for faster appearance of menu.

Or at least let the menu appear when the header is selected. Currently nothing happens and that confuses users. It is not intuitive to only select the little triangle.

On that note, our global nav currently has these boxes around the headers? Anyone else seeing this? This is only in modern UI not classic.

[#12]

Yeah, had those boxes as well in the last couple of days, not sure why, but they're gone now.

[#13]

Yes, they are gone now this end too.