Build a proper set of navigation into your sites and SharePoint gets so much easier to work with. There are so many levels of navigation that this also warrants further blogs. Here’s my 2 favourites.

MEGA MENUS

Building a mega menu is a great way to connect site collections that make up the intranet. The mega menu has a maximum of 4 columns that then wrap if you have more than 4 categories of headings, like this.

To get the ability to create a mega menu like that right from the top of the site, you need to register it as a hub site in the SharePoint Admin Centre.

If you configure your main intranet site as the SharePoint Home Site, you also get to connect the mega menu to the Global Navigation icon.

This means you can navigate to any site connected to the main menu without having to go back to the intranet home first.

INTRANET HOME BUTTON

By the far the most useful navigation item is to add an “Intranet Home” option to the default tenant logo area. You need to be a Global Admin to change this, and it’s done in the M365 Admin Centre.

The link is then available on every single site collection, as well as from Outlook Online, OneDrive, etc. You build your intranet home mega menu to link to every important site collection in the company and teach people how they can just click the “intranet home” option to get back to the beginning if they get lost. This is especially handy when you have thousands of site collections.

If you have more than one intranet, like an internal vs external type one like this – the logo is the link because it’s also got people external to the business, so keeping the brand in mind was important.

Or perhaps you’re part of a big group of companies with intranets within intranets. You can then create a “Group Intranet Home” which takes you to a simple home page where the other intranets can be accessed from.

SharePoint is very challenging without well-planned navigation. Keep that in mind when designing your sites.