Custom Ordering for the Global Navigation in the Microsoft Term Store

Introduction

Microsoft have recently made it possible to re-order all levels of the Atlas Global Navigation through the Modern Term Store. This was previously not possible in the Modern interface and could only be done through the Classic view, so this is a welcome improvement and will enable Atlas clients to specify the ordering of all menu items across all levels, rather than alphabetically from levels 2 and lower.

This is straight forward to do and is the same instruction to how you order the first-level of the main menu - which has always been possible to do from within the Modern Term Store, however please see the instructions below for detailed overview of how to configure this custom ordering.

Method

Firstly, you will need to navigate to the Term Store in your 365 tenant (instructions here if you are unsure) as the Atlas Menu as well as the taxonomy are managed from here.

If you are unfamiliar with the Term Store, Atlas Menu or Atlas Taxonomy please get in touch with your Atlas representative for a refresher.

The following instructions take place within the 'Atlas Navigation' term group, underneath the 'Global term groups' heading option at the top of the Term Store options, which is where the Atlas menu configuration is built and managed.

Expand this Atlas Navigation option and you will see the Global Navigation option which should contain all of your Atlas menu level 1 options, which can be seen across your Atlas menu horizontally.

Now, each term (menu item) you click on will have a tab named Usage Settings. When you select this, there will be an option in the bottom-left area called 'Sort Order'. This is where the ordering for options contained below that menu option term can be ordered.

Please note, like in the example below, if there are no options (in this instance, no options below Home) the Edit button next to Sort Order will not appear, as there's no options to sort within this term.

Selecting 'Usage Settings' from a Global Navigation term which has options beneath it in the menu structure will display an Edit button in this area

From here you can then stipulate you would like a customer sort order as by default Alphabetical will be selected, and you can then drag the various options into the correct order.

In the above option, My Home appears first at the top. This would not be the case if Alphabetical was left on. Once you are happy with your changes, click Save. Once saved, you can close this browser screen. 

NOTE: In order for users to see your applied changes, they will need to clear their Atlas Cache.

Considerations

Although this option is available and easy to use, we do not recommend you do this en-masse to all areas of your menu. There is good reason for this...

• Users expect to see menu options alphabetically
  • If you produce a 'custom' ordering, users won't actually know in which order they are going to be, and by default will expect the A, B C, D options, etc, to appear first. So this may become confusing to them.
• If you main menu is currently in use, your users know the menu ordering and are used to it. Altering this may create adverse impacts to learnt user behavior so far, and it will take time for users to re-learn the new menu ordering.
• Opening up the ability to 'custom sort' creates a priority queue for what people think should go first, but how do you judge this? Who gets final say, and is this decision in the users' best interests? In our experience, some stakeholders think their department should go first as it's the biggest, others think that theirs should go first because it makes the most money or is, in their opinion, more vital to operations, etc. We have seen this happen. It can become very hard to decide what is right or what should go first - when in reality, it doesn't impact the user experience all that much.
  
  

Our Guidance

Our guidance is to always ensure the first level of the main menu has custom ordering so you can specify the primary options. We then recommend to be careful with what you re-order and only decide to do so in the areas which truly require it and provide true benefit to the user experience. 

We recommend that Departments, Practice Groups/areas, Sectors, Offices, etc, are left in alphabetical ordering as users would expect this as those options come from a defined list, and in other systems and documents they will also appear alphabetically.

It's the unique 'custom' menu options you decide as a firm, which has unique terminology, which may need to be re-worked. For example, Know-How or Knowledge Management options, depending on what it contains, could be re-ordered so that 'recent knowledge contributions' becomes the first level and 'knowledge documentation' then becomes second - as it is more beneficial for the user experience, and has been mutually decided that, this option will take up 80% of clicks within this sub-menu option and therefore should be listed first.

Still need help?

If you have any questions or need additional guidance, please do not hesitate to get in touch.