Tracy van der Schyff

#Office365Challenge Today I want to chat about using the Term Store for Navigation – and I don’t mean in the Global Top Navigation, I mean in Libraries / lists. Thanks to Rheem and Paul for being the inspiration for this blog.

Relevant posts: 

Around the Office in 365 Days: Day 101 – Term Store Management in Office 365 Part 6 Using Synonyms for Terms

My passion is to make things easier for people, help them adopt systems ONLY when it actually works for them. That’s why I’m quite happy to write today’s post – as it will solve some of the issues even I have with SharePoint. Again – be reminded that we normally have issues with things because we lack the knowledge or know how to make it better and use it correctly.

This blog requires Term Sets and Terms in your Term Store – if you’re not sure how that works, refer to my blog above – which has links to other blogs as well on planning and building your term store.

The scenario I have in my example is that I would like to link my documents to different levels for classification. These levels has relationships which is what causes the complexity. You don’t want your users to end up adding 4 or 5 columns of metadata as that will only frustrate them and add no value.

I’ve built a Term Set in my Term Store that represents the different levels of my classification for SHEQ and how they relate to each other:

In my library, I’ve added a Managed Metadata column and selected the SHEQ level from my Term Store, for it to expand on.

Now before we can use Managed Metadata for Navigation – there’s a couple of features that must be switched on (or you won’t see this setting in your library settings).

Go to your Site Settings > Manage Site Features:

Under Site Features, ensure that your Publishing Features are activated:

Wait for it to activate, go back to Site Features and activate the Metadata Navigation and Filtering:

Now the feature will be available to configure in your library / list. Go to your library settings (either on the Settings Wheel or by going to the Library Tab > Library Settings):

Click on Metadata Navigation Settings:

Configure the Navigation Hierarchies to point to your Term Store Column:

Now configure the Key filters if necessary. Save your changes:

In the library, you will now see the navigation on the left:
When you expand and click on any of these levels on the left – it will filter the data in the library (or list).

Adding 3 or 4 separate columns would not have allowed for the relationships. Just adding the managed metadata column also only shows one value (one column) – so to build views on these to group by first, then by second level is not possible.

I think this is pretty awesome – and will be a great value add for business to easily navigate based on hierarchy!

Overview of my challenge: As an absolute lover of all things Microsoft, I’ve decided to undertake the challenge, of writing a blog every single day, for the next 365 days. Crazy, I know. And I’ll try my best, but if I cannot find something good to say about Office 365 and the Tools it includes for 365 days, I’m changing my profession. So let’s write this epic tale of “Around the Office in 365 Days”. My ode to Microsoft Office 365.

Keep in mind that these tips and tricks do not only apply to Office 365 – but where applicable, to the overall Microsoft Office Suite and SharePoint.