r/sharepoint • u/Nautisop • Aug 18 '26
SharePoint Online Why the hell is SharePoint SO difficult to navigate?
Our company transitioned to sharepoint years ago but the struggle to find information is SO REAL.
There is no top layer where I can search through sites. Apart from the "Explore" page It would probably not even help because I have no fkin clue what kind of object or what it's called I am currently in
The URLS are completely useless for navigation
So many search fields where it's not clear what it even searched through
Shared Stuff, additionally to completely useless ids or numbers for sites, puts also "shared files" into the URL with no way to fix broken URLS
I hate this tool soooo much.
Why has it no clear structure? Why is it a must to bookmark every page in order to not loose saiad page in the Microsoft Nirvana?
There are three options:
My company fucked up the structure as much as possible
SharePoint is as chaotic, scattered and shitty as I believe it is
I am a donkey
13
u/toddklindt MVP Aug 18 '26
Of the options, I'll take some from column 1, some from column 2, and I reserve judgment on column 3. :)
I don't know much about how your company structured SharePoint, so I can't really speak to that, but I can say that when folks don't structure SharePoint well, it really bites them in the butt down the road. SharePoint is 25 years old. For much of that time, with the exception of getting rid of subsites, SharePoint's preferred structure has been the same. Scale by Site (or Site Collection in the old days). If you do that, you're generally on the right path. If you don't, the tools won't work as well for you.
You didn't mention whether you're using SharePoint on-prem or SharePoint Online, so I'll assume the latter, since it's most of the user base at this point.
There is a place where you can search through sites. Generally that page is at https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com. That should expand to something that looks like https:/yourtenant.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx/discover. That page has gone through many name changes over the years, but I think of it as the SharePoint home page, or SharePoint landing page. The search at the top of that page will search all of SharePoint. Additionally it will show you content you've been working on, and on the left it will show you the sites you've been to recently as well as any sites you've Starred or Favorited. While you're getting your feet beneath you it's a good place to start.
I also used to recommend folks start their day at https://www.office.com. It used to be the same sort of page, but for _everything_. When you did a search there you got results from SharePoint as well as Exchange and Teams. Very handy if you can't remember where something was. Now that page has been taken over by Copilot, so it's less easy to use.
If you scale by site, your URLs will always look something like https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/HR. That should give you enough information to look at a URL and get a general idea where you're going. If the URL points to a document library or list, that'll be in there too. These days, I don't think anyone really types URLs, we click them from somewhere else. So seeing a URL and being able to decipher it should be good enough. If you have URLs that are specifically troublesome, post one here so we can see what it looks like.
The Sharing Links are being updated. Last year Microsoft announced Hero Links. The big story around Hero Links is they greatly simplify the security of sharing. But, they also simplify the actual URLs that are shared. When Hero Links roll out to your tenant, the links shared will look just like canonical SharePoint links, https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/<site>/<library>/<path>/<filename>
Hope that helps.
2
u/CuriousVisual5444 Aug 24 '26
Thanks for the https:/yourtenant.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx/discover link. Been using sharepoint for a while, we have been through tenancy changes/org changes and many dummy sites/teams being set up and then discarded. This is very handy to keep track of things.
1
u/Nautisop Aug 19 '26
Your post is very informative in regards to understanding why things are like the way they are.
Our site url look like /sites/fourdigits-com-fourdigits Nothing describing
9
u/cward4704 Aug 18 '26
It's all 3 options lol.
SharePoint is not the end all be all, it's not the BEST tool and it's not intended to be a document repository. It's for collaboration and live files, yadda yadda.
That said, 95% of the time it is a shitty structure. People not understanding the difference between a library and a folder, not utilizing metadata, not using hubs correctly (or at all), etc.
Companies frequently move to the system expecting it work just like a file server and the chaotic structure reflects that, especially if they don't validate data before moving files and just do a dump.
Other issue I've seen is too many sites. One department having 10 different sites is ridiculous lol.
It CAN be a good tool, but it's only going to be as good as how it's structured, if that makes sense.
3
u/CuriousVisual5444 Aug 24 '26
If it's not a document repository where are users meant to keep stuff ffs. I've also noticed departments tend to fob off SharePoint management to some poor admin users who has no authority to tell management to update the metadata on whatever they dump there.
5
u/blud_13 Aug 18 '26
Option one, mostly. Its a bit of both but the structure is almost always the company.
Out of the box SharePoint gives you a flat pile of sites with garbage URLs and no top layer, and thats it, building the top layer is ON you. That means a hub site with the other sites associated to it, global navigation configured on the hub, and a home site actually set with Set-SPOHomeSite so the app bar works. Most orgs never do any of it, everybody clicks New Team, and 200 disconnected sites later the whole company is bookmarking things to survive.
Also, search only works if metadata exists. If everything is folders inside Shared Documents then search has nothing to rank on and you get exactly what you described.
That being said, none of this is fixable from your seat, its an IT and governance job. We untangle these for small companies pretty regularly, happy to take it offline if thats easier.
2
u/Nautisop Aug 19 '26
I am just a small gear in IT and not responsible for SharePoint. This governed by an overarching International it department, so basically nothing I can do unfortunately.
4
u/LitleFtDowey Aug 18 '26
Like all other msft tools, SharePoint works perfectly, as long as you use it the way msft designed on paper.
Which means it works well for nobody.
But it's free - after paying for the license-, so good luck using something else
3
u/jlboygenius Aug 18 '26
Microsoft needed to scale it up for cloud use.
They have flatted the sites out, so you can't have nested sites and clean navigation that goes with that.
They removed the advanced search.
Hub sites solve some of it, but since most people can only manage their own sites (it large orgs), nobody sets up the hub sites and attempts to make sense of it that way (and it doesn't solve the issues anyway).
So yeah, removing sub sites totally screws organization and navigation.
2
u/Greeney_Eyes Aug 18 '26
If you're the only person with responsibility for SharePoint at your place, read up on the potential and the benefits, ignoring your current problems. Imagine you're dead excited to start this project and imagine or, even better, build something, from scratch, alongside your current hell hole. Then, when you're ready, present the option to transition to your properly planned, we'll structured version and get all the brownie points that come with that kind of proactive approach. If you throw your hands in the air, you're all stuck in the here and now. I've been a SharePointer for 25 years and, if you do it right, it's transformative. Get it wrong and...
2
u/Greeney_Eyes Aug 18 '26
Find and follow Mark Kashman and Gerry Brimacombe. They're both awesome advocates and have written some incredible stuff on both collaboration and presentation.
1
u/Nautisop Aug 19 '26
I am just a small cogwheel in it and SharePoint responsibility is far away from me so nothing I can do
1
u/Asleep_Stage_451 Aug 18 '26
Uh…… it’s not hard. Take some time to learn the tool(s). Future you will thank current you for making the effort.
1
u/SilverseeLives Aug 18 '26
SharePoint is what you make of it.
As it is a platform, logical, structured site navigation is up to administrators and site designers to create.
In practice, because many SharePoint installations grow organically without effective company-wide procedures, things tend to be all over the place.
1
u/samkwilly Aug 19 '26
Research Sharepoint information architecture. There is no cookie cutter / one size fits all solution, someone needs to do a full environment discovery and create a structured navigation that works for everybody.
1
1
u/EnvisionIT_Tips Aug 19 '26
We work with SharePoint and Microsoft 365 a lot, and many of our customers tell us they get frustrated with it. The good news is that the problem is almost always the first option, not the third, and it can be fixed. SharePoint often gets blamed for choices made long before anyone created the first page.
Many organizations use SharePoint like a regular file server. They add old drives without checking their contents, create too many sites, use lots of nested folders, skip adding metadata, and set up hubs incorrectly. This clutter and lack of organization make it very hard to find anything.
Here are a few important things that can really help:
- Start by fixing the navigation. Organize it as Global, then hub, then local, and use clear, task-based labels like "Benefits & Time Off" instead of general names like "HR Portal." If people can't find what they need in about three clicks, they usually give up.
- Use hubs to connect related sites so they share navigation and search. This way, sites feel connected instead of isolated.
- Cut down on site sprawl. For example, if a department has 10 sites, that's usually a sign there's an issue. It's better to have a few well-managed sites than lots of half-used ones.
- Keep folders simple and add basic details like department, type, or year as metadata. This makes it easier for searches to find what users need.
- Assign a clear owner to every site. Sprawl often happens when no one is responsible.
A note about URLs and IDs: they are not supposed to be used for navigation. Good navigation and search should make them unnecessary. If people rely on them, it usually means the information architecture was not planned well from the beginning.
If you want to learn more about why this happens and how to fix it, we have a full guide here: https://envisionit.com/resources/articles/your-intranet-isnt-broken-because-of-sharepoint-its-because-of-what-came-before-it
Once you give the structure some careful attention and a whole lotta love, it works.
1
u/Sheeebooo Aug 24 '26
I am using SharePoint since 2007 on premise versions and we used to call it SharePoint hell. Indeed, its still the same for alot of people. We used to develop code in .net and made a lot of applications with it. It was a powerful and complex tool then and its still pretty complex now as well. It is a wide spectrum tool and takes patient to get used to it. I love it because it provide you nice platform to start your development on instead of developing apps from scratch and also provides great coolaboration and teams capabilities.
I know the modern tools are far superior in UI and UX but considering the capabilities of SharePoint its pretty awesome once you get a hang of it. The reason of it being slow to move towards modern capabilities are two. its been used in various huge organizations. Changing UI/UX is a resistant in terms of users to learn and secondly, due to its eco system. its connected with various other internal/external services so changing one part breaks other..
1
35
u/GonzoLove2000 Aug 18 '26
Your company has a messed up structure. You should have a hub site that acts as a top layer with a good UI that allows you to browse sites and gives context as needed.
As far as the links go it’s because people use share links that have a lifespan to share things then your permissions and link die with the shared links. Making it feel like you lost access when you really never did.
You should be able to go to the hub (landing) site pick a site from a dropdown or tile. Then on that site be immediately presented with the document libraries, lists and applications pertaining to that sites operations. It’s the whole point that you can functionally access and operate with your data along with collaborate similarly.
Edit: I think the problem is that a lot of site collection administrators know how to navigate via the site contents/address bar and build stuff with too much internal knowledge