Does SharePoint need Global Navigation at all anymore?
Nope, that isn’t a click bait title. I’m really asking the question. ‘Does SharePoint even need Global Navigation at this point?’
And coming from me (Sean) of Regroove (where we’ve helped organizations roll out and/or migrate hundreds of Intranets and Portals) AND due to that experience, we produced the product Navo which still provides the most robust, flexible, and easiest to set up and configure Global SharePoint Navigation solution out there … I think that’s really saying something. We’ve been deeply invested in creating Navo for easing the burden and confusion around navigating SharePoint sites and content for a long time.
SharePoint isn’t really the place you ‘go’ anymore. It is simply where you store your stuff now.
Now, let me set one thing straight. I’m not implying that it isn’t necessary to provide clarity to your employees around all the tools, apps, procedures, documents, and everything else that matters (or was historically found in an Intranet perhaps). Far from it in fact. Frankly, EVERY organization should be providing clear, concise, and speedy access to information so that employees can get on with doing their actual jobs — it is often said that employees can spend up to 25% of their time looking for information … often the same information, over and over. If time is money, stop wasting money.
And taking that notion a step further, during the giant blurgh that is Covid right now, folks are feeling even more disconnected and unable to find what they need while stuck at the other end of an Internet connection, removed from the office culture and people around them in the know.
Okay, back to the point of this post.
SharePoint isn’t the only tool in the toolkit anymore
There was a time when SharePoint was used for all sorts of stuff. An Intranet. Document management. Enterprise Search. Analytics. Lists for tasks, discussions, calendars and even custom developed solutions. Some referred to it as the Swiss Army Knife for business and often the visual appeared in many a PowerPoint deck.
SharePoint was the place you started your day, outside of Outlook (today supplanted by Microsoft Teams). SharePoint was often even the enforced home page of employee browsers. It was all pretty cool for a little while there. However, SharePoint had a problem. It was big, bloated, offered too many possibilities, each with their own complexities, rules and limitations … but more importantly, the age of the mobile device and apps arrived. SharePoint tried … even renaming ‘lists’ to ‘apps’, but nobody was fooled. Apps that were best for the job had arrived and were making inroads, fast.
SharePoint sucked on mobile (and even today, the SharePoint app isn’t much better … just adding confusion more than helping — unless you have someone on the team that really knows what they are doing during planning and leveraging its strengths).
SharePoint is finally focused on what it is genuinely good at
While SharePoint is still enormously powerful (and let’s face it, CENTRAL to Microsoft Teams and OneDrive for Business), it is now dialed into only those things it does best:
- Communication Sites and Pages — Beautiful, rich web pages and sites for communicating ideas, projects, etc. Is something that SharePoint excels at again
- Team Sites and Document Management — SharePoint is still king of the hill for sharing files (‘sharing is the point’) and daily we remind customers that it isn’t “Teams or SharePoint” it is … “Teams AND SharePoint”
- Even lists which are very much rooted in SharePoint are now being given a lot of upsell as “Microsoft Lists”. Microsoft is all in on Teams and SharePoint is becoming the plumbing under the hood increasingly
Sure, there are ‘hub sites’ and other attempts at trying to provide SharePoint and content administrators with some sort of shared navigation structure (I won’t dare call it Global Navigation because … well, it isn’t). And the home site app and the idea of splashing SharePoint pages in the Teams taskbar are all interesting avenues one could take to try to provide unified clarity within Teams. It might work for some, but that also isn’t Global Navigation.
If Global Navigation isn’t needed in SharePoint — then where should it be?
Everywhere. The way your employees find what they are looking for should be everywhere. And when you onboard new people, they should be successful from day one, too.
With Navo, our “Navigation as a Service” platform, companies are empowered to deploy Global Navigation EVERYWHERE. I often refer to Navo as a “Floating Intranet” because the Nav is everywhere you are. On your desktop, on the go (your phone, tablet or even your Tesla ;) and in the places where you work, communicate, and collaborate (your favourite browser, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint).
Navo is available as a browser extension
This one is our favourite. Navo as a browser extension in both Google Chrome and Edge Chromium is a game changer. Now you don’t have to be in your Intranet (say SharePoint) to find what you are looking for. You could be on ANY website and still browse your company directory for the things you need.
And don’t get me started about the OmniBox. I can’t live without it now.
Navo is available as an app
Navo is a progressive web app. That means with just a click, you can load the Navo Web app (https://app.GetNavo.com) right on to the Home Screen of your iPhone, iPad, or Android devices. And you can even pin it as an app on your Windows 10 taskbar. And users can customize the look of Navo to suit their needs including a range of styles and dark/light modes.
Navo is available as a Microsoft Teams App
Yep, like everyone else, I guess we’re also fighting for visibility within Teams. And with dozens, if not hundreds of companies building “Intranet in a Box” solutions, they are all coming at it the same way. “Come look at our SharePoint Sites” they all seem to be screaming. Navo is different. Navo is simply providing an interface to find everything your organization has, whether that be some SharePoint pages or sites, 3rd party tools, etc. We don’t discriminate — if you have an important link to share with your employees, simply add it.
You can even add Navo as a tab within a channel, focused right on the branch of your navigation that you need in that context.
And finally, Navo is very much still available within SharePoint, if you want it
Okay, if you finally got to the end of this article and still want to add Global Navigation to SharePoint … Navo can absolutely help and in ways other solutions, including the stuff Microsoft is now finally providing, still fall short. Check out our SharePoint comparison page here: https://getnavo.com/sharepoint
To summarize, if you let SharePoint do what it does best (rich pages and content and links to key documents), you can simply expose those links within your Global Navigation to everyone, everywhere, on whatever device they might be on … instead of dragging them into your portal. Thus perhaps, you don’t need global navigation anymore in SharePoint … but if you do, we’ve always had your back there anyway.
Navo is the Directory for the Connected Workplace — GetNavo.com
