As you continue following Sales in building their business management system in Office 365 and SharePoint, recall where they (i.e. Sales) and IT left off when creating sites for the Intranet (everything in green is created). We’ll mirror this site structure again and start to build out the SharePoint site navigation using the Managed Metadata Term Store. This will require attention to the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) site as well as the other sites in the Intranet.
If you need a refresher on how sites were created and decisions made on setting up the navigation, inheritance, etc. please refer back to this post.
In this post, we’re going to follow along to setup navigation using the Managed Metadata Term Store. This is going to involve 3 basic steps:
- Create the remaining top level sites.
- Enable the SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure feature in the Site Collection level feature set.
- Configure navigation in the Managed Metadata Term Store
Completing SharePoint Site Setup and Basic Navigation
First, create the remaining top level sites. Refer back to this post for a review.
Marketing, Human Resources, IT, and Finance Divisions sites above should be created with the same permissions and settings as the Sales Division Top Level Site.
- Use the Team Site (Classic Experience) template.
- Specify title, description, and language.
- Display in quick launch is “No”.
- Display on top link is “Yes” (we’re going to recreate this soon).
- Inherit permissions from parent is “Yes”.
Don’t worry about creating the “Inside Sales Team Site” or “Field Sales Team Site” as those are representative of specific scenarios where internal, restricted privileged sites are needed. At this point, the site structure should be as follows:
The top navigation will look as follows (even though this about to change):
Enabling Features Needed to Build Navigation with SharePoint Managed Metadata
In order to set the navigation up the way we want, we need to enable the SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure. Actually, many of the steps they take to customize and build out the Intranet and individual business management components will depend on the SharePoint Publishing Infrastructure moving forward.
- Navigate to the top level site in the Intranet
- Control Gear > Site Settings
- Site Collection Administration > Site Collection Features
- Activate the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature
Be patient, this feature takes awhile to activate.
Configuring the Managed Metadata Termstore
Now, it’s time to setup navigation in the Managed Metadata Termstore. This is broken up into several small videos and images below.
First, open the Term store management feature:
Now, create the site hierarchy:
After the hierarchy is created, setup the term set’s “Intended Use” to be for “Site Navigation“:
Now, go through each term and specify the “Navigation” properties:
Updating the SharePoint Managed Metadata Custom Sort Order
That’s not all of them, but the idea is the same for each. Almost there…the items will appear in alphabetical order if the sort order is not specified. Click the “Navigation” term set node, Custom Sort, and then specify the desired sort order. In this case, “Home” was forced to the first item in the navigation:
Updating the SharePoint Sites to Use Managed Metadata Navigation
And, finally, to update the sites. Note that even though the sites are all set to inherit global navigation from the parent site, it still may be necessary to go into Site Settings and click “OK” in the Navigation options for each site. It’s an oddity with SharePoint, and you may even see the navigation menu revert or take a couple of clicks to “stick”. Just follow the video below throughout the sites, and given a couple of unexpected potential UI switches as the setting propagates, the new navigation will remain and your site will be on driven from the managed metadata term store:
Next, we’ll dive into SharePoint Search for a couple of posts.
Categories: Business, Business Management, Contract Lifecycle Management, Office 365 and O365, SharePoint
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