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Moving from SharePoint on-premises to online is more than just lifting and shifting your documents. For most companies, it represents an chance to improve practices for collaboration, sharing, and records management.

The key to an effective SharePoint migration is consistency. Throughout this process, your team needs to trust they can find the information they want. You can achieve this by implementing a SharePoint global navigation before your move. Even though you’re not thinking about moving to SharePoint Online, creating a SharePoint navigation system helps your team find what they need fast. It could even increase adoption of SharePoint and other tools internally.

In this blog post, we’ll review 3 ways you can use Navo to simplify your SharePoint navigation for a smooth migration process.

Global Navigation in SharePoint

Global navigation in SharePoint refers to a menu that spans across your site collections. Your options for global navigation in SharePoint Online are limited, and relatively non-existent in SharePoint on-premises. This gap is typically filled up with custom code maintained by developers on staff or through expensive third-party systems.

Managed metadata term sets give you the ability to create navigation that becomes contextual to each user. However, it generally does not work on group-connected SharePoint sites. In addition, it requires manually applying the navigation to every site.

Hub sites provide a drop-down menu option that is managed in one place, but it’s not actually global navigation. A site must be associated with the hub to get the menu, and each site can only be associated to 1 hub. There is no global hub site.

Custom code is often an option for SharePoint Online and on-premises. However, it needs a developer to make, support, and maintain code on an ongoing basis and is bound in functionality (and often in user experience and design).

Global Navigation with Navo

That’s why we created Navo. Navo allows administrators to quickly create a company megamenu and display it on any SharePoint site in your tenancy. It’s managed from one easy place with a drag-and-drop editor and design functions to help match your internal branding. The very best part? Navo can be added to your on-premises environment plus your SharePoint Online classic and modern sites. End users will experience constant navigation when you migrate, change, and update sites behind the scenes.

You can find three key uses for our on-premises version of Navo:

- Your company is using SharePoint on-premises with no plans to go online and is looking for a global navigation tool for your on-premises collections.
- Your company is using SharePoint on-premises and is not planning to migrate the websites online. However, any new sites will be created in SharePoint Online. You’d like a global navigation system that can bridge your site collections together.
- Your company is actively migrating to SharePoint Online and requires a global navigation to limit the need to communicate changes as workloads get shifted.

We’re Using SharePoint On-Premises And We’re Not Leaving

Hey, that’s OK! We’re not here to convince anyone to leave your on-premises environment. However, we know that your options for global navigation on-premises are slim-to-none. Navo for SharePoint on-premises gives you to generate your global navigation online using our drag-and-drop editor. Once you’ve created your navigation, export our custom code to increase your SharePoint environment and viola! Seamless, global navigation for your whole team.

We’re Using SharePoint On-Premises And We’re Adding Online

We love that you’re planning on adding new sites and content to SharePoint Online! And we love that Navo offers a bridge between your on-premises and online site collections. Your team will experience a constant navigation without fretting about whether they’re on an on-premises or online site collection. Create your menu using our drag-and-drop editor and quickly deploy to all of your classic and modern sites in SharePoint Online using our tenant wide mode.

Woman on-premises menu, you’ll export a file (in JSON format) to upload into your SharePoint on-premises environment. Your team won't spot the difference when navigating between on-premises and online!

We’re Migrating to SharePoint Online

Yay! SharePoint Online has tonnes of great features (including security trimming) that make it worth the move. Migrations give you a great opportunity to modernize your systems, update procedures, and ensure you’re complying with security and resource management best practices. But migrations can be tricky for reasons beyond their technical nature. Your team may be left feeling lost, unsure of how to locate the various tools and information they need. Determining which sites should be accessed on-premises or online can be confusing and frustrating. Adding global navigation to your migration plan can help ease a lot of your migration stress!

Use Navo to bridge your SharePoint on-premises and online site collections which means that your team has a consistent experience when moving in the middle of your tools. You’ll build your menu system online and export our custom code into the on-premises SharePoint environment. As sites are moved to the cloud, you’ll update the links in Navo. Because of this your team sees the same menu label and icon, however they are directed to the shiny new SharePoint Online site. Once your entire on-premises sites have been replaced, you can retire that tenancy without fretting about team members who might still be trying to access old sites.

ESTABLISHING Migration Navo On-Premises

Establishing Navo on-premises is easy! You’ll use our drag-and-drop editor to generate your navigation menu in only a handful of steps. When you’re finished, automatically apply your menu to all or any of your classic and modern sites online using our tenant-wide mode or pick and choose the sites you want to deploy to.

Next, you’ll export our custom script into the on-premises tenancy to implement your brand-new global navigation menu without coding required! Users can move between SharePoint on-premises and online without saving bookmarks, copying links, or opening multiple tabs.

The benefits of global navigation are endless, whether your planning a migration or not! Your team will get a fast, reliable way to gain access to the various tools and information they want, saving time and frustrations. Give your team a consistent navigation across all of your SharePoint site collections with Navo!