Staying local with Quick Launch

SharePoint team sites display a list of navigational links along the left side of the page in the Quick Launch menu. Quick Launch, also known as the Current Navigation, displays links to featured site content such as apps and pages. By default, the team site Quick Launch includes the following links, though keep in mind that Microsoft is known to change these from time to time:

• Home: A link back to the main start page for the team site.
• Conversations: A link to Microsoft Outlook, which includes a feature called Groups where you and others can have conversations, share files, and connect apps. In our opinion, this sounds a lot like Microsoft Teams and we expect Teams will take over this functionality in the future.
• Documents: A direct link to the Documents app.
• Notebook: A link to the OneNote notebook for the site.
• Pages: A link to the pages for the site.
• Site Contents: A link to the Site Contents page, which shows all the apps in the site.
• Recycle Bin: A place to retrieve items that have been deleted.

The Quick Launch navigation takes up valuable space. If you are on a smaller screen, the menu is hidden for you by default. You can test this by dragging your web browser to be narrower and watch as the menu disappears. When the menu disappears, you access it by clicking the top-left hamburger menu, as shown in Figure 18-1.

The items that appear in the Quick Launch are determined by the apps you add to the site and the links you manually add to the Quick Launch. Each app contained in a site can display a link to itself on the Quick Launch.

You can easily add or remove an app from the Quick Launch using the app’s settings:

1. Browse to the app you want to add or remove from the Quick Launch.

   For example, click the Documents app on the Site Contents page.

2. Click the Settings gear icon located in the top-right corner of the page and then click Library Settings.

   The Library Settings page appears.

3. In the General Settings section, click the List Name, Description, and Navigation link.

   The General Settings page appears.

4. In the Navigation section, indicate whether to include the list or library on the Quick Launch by selecting Yes or No.

5. Click the Save button.

   The links in the Quick Launch update to reflect your changes.

You also can disable the Quick Launch entirely for a site. You can add a site hierarchy called a Tree View to the left navigation panel instead of the Quick Launch. If you leave the Quick Launch enabled, the Tree View appears below the Quick Launch. To perform either of these tasks, follow these steps:

1. Click the Settings gear icon, choose Site Contents, and then click Site Settings for the site you want to manage.

2. In the Look and Feel section, click the Navigation Elements link.

   The Tree View/Navigation Elements page appears. Figure 18-2 shows the Tree View/Navigation Elements page.

3. Choose whether to enable the Quick Launch or the Tree View or both by selecting the Enable Quick Launch and/or Enable Tree View check boxes.
4. Click OK.

Adding quick links to a page

The Team site includes a section called Quick Links by default, as shown in Figure 18-3. You can add links to this section to make the site easier to use. For example, you might want to add a link out to a help article on docs.microsoft.com or you might want to add links for your partners. You can add any link to the Quick Links section.

The default Quick Links section is really just a Web Part that you can add to any page. We cover adding Web Parts to pages in Chapter 6.

To add links to the Quick Links Web Part, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the page that contains the Quick Links Web Part.
2. Click the Edit button in the upper-right corner to enter Edit mode for the page.
3. Click Add Links at the top of the Quick Links Web Part, as shown in Figure 18-3.

4. Choose a link to add.

   You can add a link to any recent locations, to a OneDrive document, to another SharePoint site, to a document you upload, or to an actual web link. In this example we will add a link to the docs.microsoft.com website, as shown in Figure 18-4.

5. Once you have the link in place click Open.

   The link will be added to the Web Part and you will be presented with the details of the link (see Figure 18-5). Here you can change the title, the thumbnail, and provide alternative text.

6. Click the close button at the top right of the pane to close the details pane for the link.

7. Click the Publish button, which appears in the top-right corner of the page, to publish the page with the new link.

   The final result is shown in Figure 18-6. Now anyone that visits the site can click the link that was just added to open a new web browser tab that takes them to the Microsoft technical documentation site.

Configuring SharePoint navigation

The navigation options in a publishing site adds additional configuration options for managing SharePoint navigation. There are two kinds of navigation that can be managed:

• Global navigation is the primary navigation your site visitors use to reach the main areas in your site, no matter where they are in your site. Global navigation is usually positioned somewhere at the top of the page and is consistent across every page in your site.
• Current navigation is contextual navigation that is usually found in the body of the page, usually on the left, and provides access to pages within each major area of your site. This navigation is considered contextual because the navigation items may change, depending on where the visitor is in the site.

SharePoint provides two navigation menus that correspond with global and current navigation. The Top Link bar is the global navigation menu that’s usually present at the top of publishing pages. The Quick Launch menu provides the current navigation that appears along the left side of most pages.

SharePoint’s publishing site assumes that you want global and current navigation menus created dynamically based on site hierarchy. To that end, configuring navigation in a publishing site requires two things:

• A site hierarchy that matches your navigation requirements. In other words, you have subsites for the major items in your global navigation and pages for the items below. Any time you want to create a new grouping of pages in the navigation menu, you have to create a new subsite.

  This often leads to extensive nesting of sites, which we recommend you avoid. This is one reason that people start looking for alternative approaches to navigation.

• The ability to think in terms of the current site you’re setting navigation options for, its parent site, its sibling sites, and any children sites that may exist. This can be extremely confusing to people, which is one reason why we see many people abandon dynamic navigation. It’s too hard to keep track of what’s happening where.

Configuring global navigation

In most publishing sites, you want all pages and sites to display the same navigation settings. SharePoint can dynamically display all subsites and pages within a subsite in your global navigation. Pages display in a drop-down list.

Each site in your publishing site can have its own global configuration settings. So you need to perform the following steps for each site. The settings you make in a subsite, such as whether to display pages, impacts navigation for the entire site, not just what the visitor sees when they’re on that site. Follow these steps:

1. Browse to the publishing site or subsite for which you want to configure global navigation.
2. Click the Settings gear icon, choose Site Contents, and then click Site Settings.

3. Click the Navigation link in the Look and Feel section.

   The Site Navigation Settings page appears.

4. In a parent site, such as the top-level site, use the Global Navigation section to indicate whether you want to display navigation items that are below the parent site.

   Select the Show Subsites options to display each subsite in the global navigation. To show the pages that have been created in the parent site, select Show Pages.

   Scroll down to the Structural Navigation: Editing and Sorting section of the page to get a sneak peek at your global navigation hierarchy.

5. In a child site, use the Global Settings section to determine whether the subsite will display the same global navigation items as its parent site.

   Select the Show Subsites and Show Pages options to display subsites and pages on the current site and any other site (parent or child) that opts to display navigation for the site you are configuring.

   A child site can be a parent site to another site. For example, you might create a subsite in your publishing site called MyPubSubSite. If you enable Show Subsites and Show Pages, the top-level home site will also display any pages and subsites of the MyPubSubSite navigation option.

6. Click OK to save your global navigation settings.

We usually have two browser windows open when we configure navigation. We use one browser window to configure the navigation and another to view the changes we made.

The subsite, MyPubSubSite, is configured to show pages. Table 18-1 summarizes typical global navigation settings.

Configuring current navigation

Configuring current navigation settings for each site is similar to global navigation. You have the same options to automatically show pages and subsites. As shown in Figure 18-7, you have these options to determine what items appear in the site’s current navigation:

• Display the Same Navigation Items as the Parent Site: This option displays the current navigation items using the settings of the parent site.
• Managed Navigation: This option enables you to manage navigation using a set of terms you define called Managed Metadata. When you select this option, your site will show sites and subsites based on the terms you have defined and not the subsites and pages in the site. When you select the Managed Navigation option, the option to show subsites and pages disappears.
• Structural Navigation: This option gives you the choice to display subsites and pages below the current site.

Choosing the Show Pages and Show Subsites options in the Global Navigation section makes navigation items appear for pages and subsites in the top navigation. Choosing the Show Pages and Show Subsites option in the Current Navigation section shows the navigational links in the left navigation.