Web part name (as shown in web part properties) to which you’re suggesting an enhancement
What is current web part behavior (or look) that doesn’t work for you?
> Have a screenshot (please do not include confidential info in your screenshots)?
What would you like the web part behavior (or look) to be?
> Have a sketch or a mockup?
What is the scenario for which you need the suggested new look/behavior?
Navigation
We love the navigation and all the customization options, however, we would like a simpler solution to deploy it to sites within our tenant. We have been using SharePoint for a few years now, and have a large amount of sites. It is nearly impossible to go through and add this to each one. A simpler way to deploy this to all sites, for example from a hub, would really help not only with existing sites, but also ensure that sites created in the future inherit the existing navigation from the hub they will be associated with. Is this possible, or is there an easier way to deploy this to sites that we are missing?
Thank you @kwilson , great to hear you’re enjoying Origami Navigation and its customization options!
The reason the Navigation requires to be manually enabled per site is because when you add it, at first it would appear blank until it’s connected to the appropriate navigation source (hub or another site). We want to avoid showing blank navigation on every single page in the tenant as many Origami users would not be happy about that.
That said, there is a solution we can recommend for you. Many customers use PowerShell to automate adding the navigation web part to existing sites in bulk. This would be done by your IT. This approach can save a significant amount of time for large deployments.
Thanks again for this suggestion. It’s a great idea, and we’ll keep this suggestion open for future consideration, if the better approach becomes available.
Okay, thank you for the reply. We have looked into the Powershell approach, but the way we understand it this will only allow us to add the app to each site. Is there a way to point the URL to the navigation site as well, or would that have to be manual? This is the biggest problem we see as, again, we have many sites and would not be able to go to each one to add the URL.
If you’re already considering PowerShell as an option, then you can also automate setting URL for the navigation site (this value shown below):
Here is more information to pass along to your PowerShell developer.
Origami Navigation stores some configurations inside a list on each site called
Navigation for each of the sites where Origami Navigation is enabled on.
You can check the schema for this list (what columns it has etc) by going to one of the sites where navigation is already installed.
You will see that Navigation list will have a list item called _Config
In the “Description” field of the _Config list item you will see how Navigation Site URL is saved:
To automate provisioning of the navigation, follow these high-level steps in PowerShell:
- Create a list called Navigation with all the necessary columns and provision _Config list item into it.
- Set “siteUrl” value inside the _Config list item to the site where your navigation is defined
- Provision and activate Origami Navigation app on the site. The app will look for config list and will know where to pick up navigation items.
If your script works for one of the test sites, loop the same steps for several more sites and test it with users to ensure they can see the navigation.
