70% of people start their journey by navigating. It is at the very heart of an effective digital workplace. Improving the navigation experience is Intranet's number one priority, and it often is not effectively designed or implemented. Navigation is also foundational for integration, automation, security, and many other essential areas of digital workplace investment. Poor navigation creates unnecessary inefficiencies and dependency on already overburdened resources to fill the navigation gaps with their time and effort directing requests, linking digital workspaces, essential applications, and more. The good news is that organizations employ proven designs and best practices today to overcome these challenges. Join Richard Harbridge, a Microsoft MVP and internationally recognized expert on Microsoft 365 and the Digital Workplace, as he shares insight on how to better plan, design, personalize, configure, integrate, and enhance navigation for your Intranet and Digital Workplace. In the end, there will be a Q&A session. Richard Harbridge is the Chief Technology Officer and owner of 2toLead and a Microsoft MVP. Richard works as a trusted advisor with hundreds of organizations, helping them understand their current needs, future needs, and what actions they should take to grow and achieve their bold ambitions.

1. Led by: David
In partnership with Omnia we will discuss how SharePoint,
Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Digital Workplaces can
improve their digital outcomes.
Webinar Presentation
TOP 7 WAYS TO IMPROVE NAVIGATION
IN YOUR DIGITAL WORKPLACE

2. @RHarbridge #SPSNH
RICHARD
HARBRIDGE
My twitter is @RHarbridge, I’m super friendly & I am proud to work at 2toLead.
CTO & MVP | SPEAKER & AUTHOR | SUPER FRIENDLY

3. What are we hearing
Navigation

4. End User
It doesn’t help me get to what I
need on a day-to-day basis.
It’s too cluttered with content
and not intuitive to use.
There is no choice in adapting
the user experience to my taste
It’s not easy to move between
different environments or portals.

5. Communicator
It does not scale well to my use
case (for a complex scenario).
I have to choose a one-size fits
all user experience for all users
It doesn’t offer me many ways
to brand the experience.
It doesn’t provide a way to really
highlight new content areas.

6. Administrator
It’s difficult or time consuming
to update and maintain.
I can’t safely delegate any
management to end users.
I can’t enforce any guidelines
for how it should be used.
I don’t have a good way to
surface coaching or guidance.

7. What’s the problem
Navigation

8. Design challenges posed by navigation
Navigation is hard even before we look at UX:
• Organizations are complex, and therefore mapping its functions to a consistent ‘one size fits all’
model – typically no more than three levels deep – is incredibly challenging. For many organizations,
the navigation serves as an abstracted version of the organization and its authoritative content, both
of which are in state of constant change.
The risks are high to getting navigation wrong. It is one
of the foundational pillars supporting your digital
experience. Get it wrong and risk losing your audience.
 We don’t all agree on how to structure information
simply because our brains aren’t all wired the same way.
Therefore, there is no objectively ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to
set up a navigation other than the concept of the “rule
by the many”.

9. Design challenges posed by navigation
The ability to navigate, or move between, different content areas underpins the entire
legitimacy of the digital workplace as a concept. Like a town planned without roadways or sidewalks,
much of a city’s offerings and core services will go unnoticed, unvisited and ultimately wither away.
Navigation is a hard challenge to get right.
Categorizing information and settling on informative
and intuitive labels is already a massive challenge and
this is to say nothing of the user experience itself.
In the already challenging context of limited real
estate, we layer on the need for personalization,
multilingual, branding, scalability, flexibility and
meeting the needs of multiple audiences and we have
a significant experience challenge.

10. Navigation
Where’s the science

11. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

12. Providing a consistent navigation experience
Suite bar
– Shared across O365 suite
– Logo graphic (organizational)
– Link to SharePoint Home
– Access to Microsoft Start
– Access to App Launcher
– Link to organizational ‘Home’
– Header background color
– Set in O365 Admin Centre
Hub navigation
a.k.a. “Portal Navigation”
– Shared across hub
– Logo graphic (hub)
– Link to hub home
– Background color
– Set in Change the Look
App bar
– Shared across O365 suite
– Global navigation links
– My sites (graph driven)
– My news (graph driven)
– My files (graph driven)
– Can be disabled temporarily
a.k.a. “Global Navigation”
Site navigation
a.k.a. “Current Navigation”
– Shared across site
– Logo graphic (site)
– Link to site home
– Background color/picture
– Minimal, compact, standard,
extended
– Set in Change the Look

13. Providing a consistent navigation experience across site collections
App bar
Global Navigation Frequent and followed sites Recommended news Recent files

14. Extensively outlined in our 170+ page Intranet whitepaper at www.M365Intranets.com.

15. Extensively outlined in our 170+ page Intranet whitepaper at www.M365Intranets.com.

16. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

17. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

18. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

19. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

20. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

21. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

22. From Viva Connections dashboards to Viva Topics navigation can be targeted, dynamic and
integrated where users already work (Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Teams Mobile App & More)

23. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

24. PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
The modern digital workplace and Intranet has a continually increasing number
of digital spaces or ‘sites’ where content is stored and shared.
How can we help our users navigate this?
With so many spaces (sites,
teams, yammer communities and
more) how can an Intranet (a
Digital Hub for your Digital
Workplace) improve navigation
of these spaces?

25. SOLUTION: LEVERAGE OOTB NAVIGATION?
Mega menu layout enables you to better organize and showcase the related content and sites
based on topic categories and headings. All with audience targeting and more…
Out Of The Box
●

26. SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER NAVIGATION!
Navigation doesn’t need to be limited to top level links, or simple UI layouts. Here we have two
examples of content in the nav, and richer/deeper nav.
Requires Customization
◔

27. A single clean menu which consolidates organizational links, current site links, and portal links.
Organizational links are
displayed in the user’s
preferred language and
can be targeted to certain
groups.
Links are organized
under headings to
allow categorization
of links.
Links specific to the current
site are always displayed here.

28. Site Links are accessible directly from
the header via selecting the Site Title
Introducing a new variant which places organizational headings front and center

29. Ensuring external and support resources are always available
Footer Links provide easy access to important
external resources, help, or contact information
Social Links provide the ability to
link users to your core social
networks ensuring they get the
visibility they deserve
Footer is persistent and consistent across sites,
reinforcing brand identity and providing easy
access to your external website

30. Footer Links are displayed in the
user’s preferred language and can be
targeted to certain groups.
Ensuring external and support resources are always available

31. Navigation with megamenu experiences can be a lot more than a simple layout of links.

32. Navigation with megamenu experiences can be a lot more than a simple layout of links.

33. Navigation with megamenu experiences can be a lot more than a simple layout of links.

34. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

35. PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
The modern digital workplace and Intranet has a continually increasing number
of digital spaces or ‘sites’ where content is stored and shared.

36. PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
Most organizations don’t know who created a digital space (SP Site, Team, Yammer
Community, etc). What was its purpose? It’s department? It’s product, client, project, etc?
As an end user this
makes navigating these
spaces extremely
challenging.
Think it’s better as an
administrator or digital
workplace/intranet leader?
It’s not.

37. PROBLEM: CONTENT GROWS OVER TIME…
Most organizations don’t know who created a digital space (SP Site, Team, Yammer
Community, etc). What was its purpose? It’s department? It’s product, client, project, etc?
As an end user this
makes navigating these
spaces extremely
challenging.
Think it’s better as an
administrator or digital
workplace/intranet leader?
It’s not.

38. SOLUTION: LEVERAGE OOTB NAVIGATION?
With improvements coming to global menu design can we leverage that to fill the hub mega menu
gaps? ADD your own app to this bar for a DIRECTORY as these default ones are not sufficient.
Out Of The Box
●

39. SOLUTION: LEVERAGE OOTB NAVIGATION?
With improvements coming to global menu design can we leverage that to fill the hub mega menu
gaps? ADD your own app to this bar for a DIRECTORY as these default ones are not sufficient.
Out Of The Box
●

40. SOLUTION: DIRECTORY EXPERIENCES!
What is shown below is a really simple mockup of a filtered OOTB site directory experience.
You can create many pages with different views/visuals and relevant links to resources (Team, Site, Yammer, etc.)
Our communities can be filtered or explored by hierarchies (site explorer), by focus area (topic map), by the ones you recently visited or have favorited (your sites, your
teams, your communities) or by filtering the columns below (just click the column header).
Link ID Community Manager(s) Practice Groups Date Created Category Private Owner
International Bank Of Banking EB001 Strange, Stephen; Connor, Sarah; Ripley, Ellen Corporate Securities 11/16/2018 RFP Y Snow, John
Travis County, Washington TCT001 Opel, Glenn; Knight, Misty; Allen, Tim; Banner,
Bruce; Marco, Polo, Rambo, John
Litigation; Environmental 11/15/2018 RFP Y Jones, Jessica
Gotham Housing Authority SAH012 Balboa, Rocky Government; Real Estate 11/03/2018 Pitch Y Jones, Jessica
Harbridge Corp HIL003 Parker, Peter; Spector, Marc; Segal, Steven; Bond,
James
Trademark & Copyright 10/30/2018 Proposal N Danvers, Carol
Metropolis Independent School
District
DIS020 Brooks, Mel; Knight, Misty; Grey, Jean; Banner,
Bruce
Public/Education Law 10/27/2018 RFP N Jones, Jessica
International Bank Of Banking EB001 Strange, Stephen; Connor, Sarah; Ripley, Ellen Corporate Securities 11/16/2018 RFP Y Snow, John
Travis County, Washington TCT001 Opel, Glenn; Knight, Misty; Allen, Tim; Banner,
Bruce; Marco, Polo, Rambo, John
Litigation; Environmental 11/15/2018 RFP Y Jones, Jessica
Gotham Housing Authority SAH012 Balboa, Rocky Government; Real Estate 11/03/2018 Pitch Y Jones, Jessica
Harbridge Corp HIL003 Parker, Peter; Spector, Marc; Segal, Steven; Bond,
James
Trademark & Copyright 10/30/2018 Proposal N Danvers, Carol
SITES, TEAMS & COMMUNITIES IN OUR ORG Not Following
BROWSE SECTIONS DEPARTMENTS SITES, TEAMS & COMMUNITIES MY LINKS
Org
Logo
Search
Out Of The Box
●
OOTB Lists and web parts
can give you directory
experiences if you simply
store the data from the
request process
(approved or already
created spaces).
* Public by default scales and
works better in the long run

41. Configure and plan for additional workspace metadata to assist users in navigating and exploring their digital
workspaces. Omnia has both a provisioning framework and integrated experiences for navigating workspaces.

42. Configure and plan for additional workspace metadata to assist users in navigating and exploring their digital
workspaces. Omnia has both a provisioning framework and integrated experiences for navigating workspaces.

43. Design and implement a simplified experience that gives you quick access to teams, sites, communities,
and more. Complimenting your Intranet and Digital Workplace Strategy. www.M365Sprawl.com

44. M365Sprawl.com

45. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

46. SOLUTION: AUDIENCE TARGETING?
Targeting audiences for pages allows for roll up and display control while not restricting based
on permissions. This applies to all news and pages and can enable some great new scenarios.
Out Of The Box
●
This targeting can
be great to improve
focus and priority
on what to display.
Useful, but it’s not
personalization is it?
Necessary but not
sufficient.

47. The design of your audience system should allow user agency over what filters or audiences are
applied to them.

48. A way to easily move between your Intranet environments for larger or more diversified customers.
Easily move between overarching portals within a single environment,
each with their own independent navigation experience

49. Portal toggle redirects you to the landing page of that portal and launches its own navigation
Each portal can have their own visual
identity and independent set of links

50. Keep in mind that while we should absolutely leverage audiences in the navigation, that when we do
it is a great opportunity to get feedback on how well designed our audiences are.
View All Links (Without Audiences) - Great To Track If People Click Through Here To Navigate
(Indicates Audience Filter Might Be Over Filtering Or Incorrect)
How Has This Been Filtered? (These Are Your Applied Audiences
& Option To Share Feedback To Improve Audience Alignment Or
Optimally Provide Self-Service)

51. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

52. PROBLEM: ITS OVERWHELMING…
Think about your typical Intranet. How many different things are organizations trying to
squeeze into that homepage when you open your browser?
Out Of The Box
●
These are all news
web parts.
There are also
multiple event web
parts and many other
roll ups on a typical
Intranet. Too much?

53. SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER FEEDS!
Often customers might create their own visualization for news, events or activities rolling up
within their Intranet which drives greater usability, engagement, integration and more.
Clearer categories
and sources, greater
at a lance insights
such as comment
count can increase
engagement and
you can even color
code and style it the
way that best helps
the user.
This can bring together events,
different types of news,
spotlights, 3rd party activity
highlights, existing capabilities
like saved for later, and much
more into a single design.
Requires Customization
◔

54. SOLUTION: PERSONALIZED!
Sometimes the capabilities built in aren’t quite enough (or may be years away from meeting your
needs) so it might make sense to add your own web part and targeting/personalization capabilities.
Requires Customization
◔

55. Just like the design of audience control subscription models can be leveraged to improve navigation
of content, spaces and more.

56. SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER NAVIGATION!
Navigation can also display more ways for users to personalize and manage their apps,
resources, tools, places they work and more.
Requires Customization
◔
Requires Customization
◔
Personalization options that
allow users to define their links,
apps, tools and resources can
make a global navigation that
much more helpful.
This doesn’t have to be in
the core menu design and
could always be a header or
footer control.

57. Effectively combining a user’s personal links with links that have been promoted by the organization.
The user can pin Promoted Links suggested by the
organization as useful.
The user can add Personal Links of their choosing.
Sorting based on user’s preferences

58. Promoted Links
can be made
mandatory for all
users
Users can
pin/unpin optional
promoted links
Personal Links
can be created
by the end user
Effectively combining a user’s personal links with links that have been promoted by the organization.

59. Omnia has several components that present personalized navigation. My Links will show any link
that is followed by, targeted or is mandatory as an example for the user.

60. A user’s language preference is recognized
and the appropriate labels are displayed
Adapting navigation labels to individual users’ needs

61. Flexibly move between available languages of a given page
Leveraging the ootb Microsoft
multilingual page publishing experience
ensures we are consistent with the
broader multilingual roadmap.
The user’s profile language continues to
drive their platform-level solution
experience such as interface components
and labels (MUI).

62. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

63. SOLUTION: HOW ABOUT SHAREPOINT HOME?
Office 365’s SharePoint home is now a more modern site directory experience that is more
personalized and dynamic. From recent sites you visited to recent activity relevant to you.
Out Of The Box
●

64. SOLUTION: HOW ABOUT SHAREPOINT HOME?
It’s a little hidden and most users don’t know it exists. Even when trained users often forget to
use it, because you have to navigate away from the places you work to visit it.
Out Of The Box
●
How do users get to it?
So… it’s another place to go?

65. SOLUTION: BRING IT INTO GLOBAL NAV!
While structured and managed navigation is still valid in today’s world it is also important to
improve navigation with powerful capabilities like search and dynamic navigation.
SharePoint Home In The Global Navigation
Bring the power of that dynamic
personalized navigation into the
global/top nav experience.
Requires Customization
◔
You can improve what MSFT
provides with icons, more filters,
more personalization, and your
own styling.

66. SOLUTION: DESIGN BETTER NAVIGATION!
Navigation can be targeted and dynamic. Consider even having individual results show in the
global navigation around key and frequently accessed resources for that user.
Consider bringing targeted,
personalized documents, forms,
policies and content to the user
inside the navigation experience.
Requires Customization
◔

67. Coaching users to ensure they are getting the most of the solution
Introduce users to getting around
with the help of handy coachmarks
or learning bubbles.

68. Top 7 Ways To Improve Navigation
Maximize Out Of The Box
Leverage Less Landing Pages
Manage Sprawl With Directories
Advance Audience Targeting
Prioritize Personalization
Design For Dynamic (Not Static)
Improve Integration

69. SOLUTION: MORE INTEGRATION!
You can always build your own webparts, solutions and controls to make things easier and improve
the end user experience. As an example you could bring information into the nav menu.
Requires Customization
◔

70. SOLUTION: MORE INTEGRATION!
As another example you could bring key information into the Intranet via a custom SharePoint
Framework webpart on a key page, or across pages via the header or a panel design.

71. SOLUTION: MORE INTEGRATION!
As another example you could bring key information into the Intranet via a custom SharePoint
Framework webpart on a key page, or across pages via the header or a panel design.

72. Being able to see a related team's channel in the context of a page of news, around a product, or
something else entirely is possible with Omnia as an example today.

73. Giving critical announcements high visibility
Integrate high visibility alerts into the persistent
header to flag critical announcements and
ensure they are seen and read

74. Exposing one or more corporate stocks
Add the ability for users to monitor
company performance across one or
more stocks

75. Plan for extensibility to introduce modular functionality that can be integrated into the navigation.
Objectives
 Extensions are created and deployed
using a consistent model for integration
into the existing Waypoint solution. This
enables flexibility in how they are used
across the environment, better and
easier maintainability.
 Extensions are designed to account for
new Microsoft365 patterns as well as
known roadmap (e.g., Viva Connections)
implications and opportunities that
would promote better longevity of the
individual solutions.
 Prioritize and move your extensions
within the solution to meet your needs.
Extensions
My Links
Alerts
Stock
World Clock
Teaching Bubbles
User Preferences
Your custom needs

76. EXPLORE 700+ PAGES OF
FREE EXPERT GUIDANCE…
M365Intranets.com
M365Sprawl.com
M365Campaigns.com
M365Metrics.com
M365Resources.com
SharePointMigrations.com
& Many More At 2toLead.com

77. Thank You!
Omnia&Y
ouForMakingThisPossible…
200+AwesomePresentationsAt.. Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
300+PagesOfWhitepapersAt.. 2toLead.com/Whitepapers
M365Intranets.com M365Resources.com
M365Metrics.com Office365Campaigns.com
SharePointMigrations.com M365Sprawl.com
Message Me On LinkedIn or Email Richard@2toLead.com
CTO & MVP | SPEAKER & AUTHOR | SUPER FRIENDLY
Let’s connect and find ways to do more and work together.

78. Thank you!