Showing the Intranet’s Link in the App Bar’s Global Navigation

Here’s a quick tip to improve your Global Navigation for the new SharePoint App Bar.

From what I’ve seen, most organizations will use the Hub or global navigation for the App Bar’s home link – which is the Global Nav. The root site of the tenant should be a Home Site and also a Hub Site. Then the Hub Site nav makes good sense to show as the Global Nav in the App Bar.

Here’s my demo site’s Home Site navigation, which is the Hub Site navigation. It looks lovely, doesn’t it?

Problem is, the Intranet link doesn’t show up in the App Bar’s Global Nav. It doesn’t matter as long as I’m hanging out in the Hub Site or its associated sites, but if I’m off in a Team Site somewhere, I’ll get lost.

By default, the Hub name is shown in the Hub Site navigation. That makes total sense, at least it did in the slightly older world. But it doesn’t show up in the App Bar’s Global Nav.

The trick is to go into the Hub site settings and not show the Hub name in the navigation.

But wait, now I can’t even navigate back to the Home Site from the Home Site! The trick is to add the Hub Site’s link to the navigation manually.

The result looks exactly the same in the Home Site and its Hub Site navigation. (No, you don’t see a difference, even if you think you do. Maybe a pixel of spacing or something, but really no difference.)

BUT, now that Intranet link is visible in the App Gar’s Global Nav as well. Easy, peasy. All the planning for the App Bar in the world may have missed that!