James Callaghan

Tag: Navigation

  • Replicate SharePoint Hub site navigation to other Hub sites

    Replicate SharePoint Hub site navigation to other Hub sites

    I have been working with a large government department where Microsoft Services helped them transform their intranet to SharePoint Online leveraging all the modern capabilities available as well as rethinking what an intranet was. This work included envisioning to fully exploit all of Office 365 and a crucial Information Architecture (IA) design which also mapped their existing, complex and poorly performing hierarchy of subsites to several new hub sites and a completely flattened site structure. I hope to write more about this work soon.

    Primary intranet site navigation provider

    To create a consistent user experience, the look and feel for several hub sites was replicated, creating the feel of a single intranet. The hub site navigation also needed to be replicated, and that is wherein the challenge lay. The navigation cannot be easily copied from one site to another, let alone between hub sites, and thus this solution was born.

    We decided to create a dedicated hub site that only the intranet team can access. Within this hub site, we were then able to create the intended intranet navigation and get the headings, order and links just right without troubling anyone. Once we were happy with the navigation and testing successfully passed, the idea was that we would be able to replicate the hub site navigation to all our other hub sites. More importantly, the process could be easily repeated, keeping the intranet navigation updated across many hub sites. The task could also be automated but we opted to leave it as a manually initiated task.

    Script to replication hub site navigation to other sites

    The solution to the problem is a PowerShell script made up of two functions. One function that gets the navigation from the hub site acting as the master or primary navigation provider (supplied from a parameter). The other function replicates the navigation to other hub sites. The Get-SPOHubSiteNavigation function exports the hub site navigation from the site provided to a CSV file. The CSV file is then used by the Copy-SPOHubSiteNavigation function to replicate the navigation links to other sites. The process could be hijacked somewhat to add hub site navigation from a CSV file rather than reading it from an existing hub site. We found it was easier to get a feel for the navigation in a real SharePoint site rather than work with the information in a spreadsheet.

    Screen recording of the Copy-SPOHubSiteNavigation replicating navigation between two hub sites.
    Screen recording of the Copy-SPOHubSiteNavigation replicating navigation between two hub sites.

    You can also disable the export process by setting the -Export parameter to -Export:$false. This switch makes the Get-SPOHubSiteNavigation quite useful for displaying the hub site navigation in an accessible collection. This collection can be used with pipe functions, to filter or sort the collection, for example. This collection is also much easier to work with than using the Get-PnpNavigationNode -Location TopNavigatioBar -Tree cmdlet and parameters to show the full navigation structure.

    Hub site navigation collection displayed in a table.
    Hub site navigation collection displayed in a table.

    Observations

    As with many of my posts, I like to share any observations I have made during the work.

    • The cached Hub navigation appears to refresh every 30 minutes if left unchanged. You can force the cache to refresh by editing the links and then clicking cancel.
    • A JSON file gets saved to the /_catalogs/hubsite library which could be related to the cached navigation. It has a GUID based name e.g. 20d31c78-8a8c-499a-b953-ecc673344cef.json and appears to get modified by the System Account when changes to the hub site navigation are saved.
    • The cached JSON file looks like this:
    • This JSON file, in theory, could be read from a source site and the navigation element copied and injected into the JSON on a target site through manipulation of the JSON payload and the /_API/navigation/SaveMenuState API.
    • When trying to add a new navigation node using the Add-PnpNavigationNode cmdlet. If the parent node was invalid I got the following error. This wasn’t because the URL linked to a file or folder that didn’t exist as the error below suggests. Dave Garrad kindly calls out the fix for this. The fix is to add -External to the Add-PnPNavigationNode cmdlet to tell PowerShell that the link is not in the same site collection.
    Add-PnPNavigationNode error
    Add-PnPNavigationNode : error when no resource or file is available from the Url supplied.
    • The script could benefit additional error handling, particularly to ensure the target site(s) provided are registered as hub sites.
    • Bonus tip! If you find you have lost changes to the navigation, this same JSON file is part of a library where version history is enabled. This file appears in hub sites and sites associated with a hub site. The version history might help you recover from any loss, but you won’t be able to restore it as the library appears to be read-only.
    Version history available for JSON file which I suspect ins the cached hub site navigation
    Version history available for JSON file which I suspect ins the cached hub site navigation

    I hope you find this post useful. As always #SharingIsCaring

  • Event Receiver to Remove “Recent” from SP2013 Quick Launch

    Event Receiver to Remove “Recent” from SP2013 Quick Launch

    I’m sure removing the Recent heading from the Quick Launch in SharePoint 2013 has been talked about a million times over since SharePoint 2013 was launched. It’s been solved in this way and that way, by hand, with javascript and programmatically. In this post, I share the code to remove the heading with the ListAdded event receiver.

    With and without the Recent heading on the Quick Launch navigation.
    With and without the Recent heading on the Quick Launch navigation.

    Event receiver code

    It’s based on code provided as an answered on the SharePoint StackExchange website by Remko van Laarhoven. I’ve then wrapped in a list added event receiver so that it is executed each time a new list or library is added. As the list/library is then not available on the Quick Launch I’ve added a couple of lines to then show it.

    Update (22nd June 2014): since creating this solution I have since discovered that the Recent heading still is created even with the event receiver triggering when lists/libraries created from templates. I resolved this by adding a sleep before the code to remove the heading is executed.
    [code language="c"]
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1500);
    This in conjunction with the jQuery method prevent users from ever seeing the Recent Heading whether they are viewing the page or editing the links on the page.
    [code language="js"]
    // Hide Recent on Quick Launch
    $("#ctl00_PlaceHolderLeftNavBar_QuickLaunchNavigationManager .ms-core-listMenu-root li:contains('Recent')").children().remove();
    $("#ctl00_PlaceHolderLeftNavBar_QuickLaunchNavigationManager .ms-core-listMenu-item:contains('Recent')").remove();
    [code language="c"]
    public class ListAddedEventReceiver : SPListEventReceiver
    {
    public override void ListAdded(SPListEventProperties properties)
    {
    base.ListAdded(properties);
    SPWeb web = properties.Web;
    if (web != null)
    {
    //Sleep
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1500);

    //Remove heading
    var title = SPUtility.GetLocalizedString("$Resources:core,category_Recent", null, web.Language);
    SPNavigationNodeCollection nodes = web.Navigation.QuickLaunch;
    foreach (SPNavigationNode node in nodes)
    {
    if (node.Title.ToLower().Equals(title.ToLower()))
    {
    // Delete the recent heading node
    node.Delete();
    break;
    }
    }
    // Show list on the quick launch
    SPList list = web.Lists[properties.ListId];
    list.OnQuickLaunch = true;
    list.Update();
    }
    }
    }

    Download Remove Recent Heading Solution

    For those who don’t want to create the event receiver themselves in Visual Studio or don’t know how to, I have a packaged the solution so that you can deploy the WSP to your environment. For those who don’t know how to use this code, I will write a post explaining how to create this event receiver using Visual Studio from an IT Pros perspective very soon.

    jcallaghan.removerecentheading.wsp

    As with anything you download from the internet remember to review, rename and test this code/solution before using it in a production environment.

  • Security trimmed top navigation links

    Security trimmed top navigation links

    I was asked to review a client environment yesterday to find out why the links in their top navigation bar were displaying for users that did not have permission to the particular sites.

    Creating sites

    It turns out that when sites were being created by the client on SharePoint Foundation 2010 they were being created without the ‘include on the top navigation bar’ check box ticked. As a result, the link was then not automatically added to the top navigation bar but instead later manually added and so was not security trimmed link.

    Display this site on the top link bar of the parent site
    Display this site on the top link bar of the parent site

    It was then after removing permissions to the various sites that it became clear that users were able to see the top navigation bar link to the sites even though they did not have access.

    Obviously, there are situations when users don’t have permissions to a site and you don’t want them to see that the site even exists. An example of this might be in an extranet scenario when you have third parties accessing project sites and you don’t want those third parties seeing the names of other project sites that may exist let alone the content…so how do we prevent this?

    Identifying security trimmed links

    By reviewing the URLs of the links in the top navigation bar I was able to identify whether the links were security trimmed or not. If the field for the URL is disabled then the link is security trimmed and most probably created when as the site was created.

    Custom top navigation link that is not security trimmed
    Custom top navigation link that is not security trimmed
    Security trimmed top navigation link
    Security trimmed top navigation link

    Adding new security trimmed links

    After identifying the problem, I then had to make the existing links security trimmed. I did this in two stages. The first was to make a note of the position of the link that needed to be replaced. I then deleted it from the top navigation bar using the ‘Top Link Bar’ site settings page (_layouts/topnav.aspx). The second stage was then to create the new security trimmed link by using the PowerShell code below.

    Modify the $SPWeb and @(“Site Name”, “/sitename/default.aspx”) arguments as required and run the code for each of the top navigation bar links that need to be security trimmed. Remember the old link will need to be removed and the new one ordered as required.

    Conclusion

    It appears SharePoint, specifically SharePoint Foundation 2010 only honours security trimmed links in the top navigation when the links are created automatically as opposed to being created manually.

    Note: this post specifically targets SharePoint 2010 Foundation which does not include the extended navigation that is included as part of the Publishing feature.

  • Clear the SharePoint Quick Launch using PowerShell

    Clear the SharePoint Quick Launch using PowerShell

    Today I had a requirement to remove all the headings and links from the quick launch navigation of hundreds of SharePoint sites. The sites were being provisioned as part of a PowerShell deployment script that was deleting the default list and libraries. Going through each of these sites manually was not an option – so I edited the deployment script to include a function to remove the headings for me.

    SharePoint Quick Launch with Headings
    SharePoint Quick Launch with Headings

    I remembered doing something similar to this back on SharePoint 2007 but I didn’t have access to the previous script or project and instead had to research the subject for a while to find what I needed.

    Solution

    A post from Get-SPScripts supplied me with what I was after, although it was part of a much larger script. So I picked away at their code and made it into the following PowerShell function to re-use in other projects.

    The above Remove-SPQuickLaunchLinks function will remove all headings and links from the SharePoint quick launch for a particular site.

    Empty SharePoint Quick Launch
    Empty SharePoint Quick Launch

    Remember to review, rename and test this script before using it in a production environment.