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About this lesson
Get to know SharePoint Online by exploring the interface and navigations menus.
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Quick reference
Exploring the SharePoint Online Interface
Get familiar with the layout of SharePoint Online and how to access different parts of the application using the navigation menus.
When to use
Ensure you are familiar with the SharePoint Online interface prior to creating a new site.
Instructions
Accessing Existing SharePoint Sites
- From the SharePoint start screen, access an existing site by clicking on the site name underneath Recent, Following, or My Sites.
- Alternatively, if we have received a direct link to a SharePoint site via an email or messenger application, click the link.
The Header Area
The header area contains the site name, our company logo, the search bar, and access to site settings via the cog icon.
The Main Menu
Located on the far left-hand side of the screen, this floating menu of icons lets us jump back to the SharePoint start screen, gain quick access to any sites we've created, access any news items, and browse our files.
The Quick Launch Menu
The Quick Launch Menu contains menu items that help us navigate and access different parts of our SharePoint site. The menu items we can see here are partly determined by the site template but also contain links that we've manually added. Use this menu to access lists, libraries, discussion boards, calendars, and other web pages.
Horizontal Menu
When using the modern experience in SharePoint, each page has a horizontal menu. This menu contains actions specific to the page we are on. Use this menu to add lists, libraries, apps, pages, news posts, and news links.
The Home Page
The Home Page contains the content. It's the hub for all information and contains web parts and app parts to display lists, libraries, activities, events, and many other different types of content. The home page is completely customizable using the Edit button in the top right-hand corner.
Hints & tips
- The classic experience has a slightly different interface to the modern experience. In general, instead of horizontal menus on each page, we have access to a ribbon-style menu system similar to that in other Microsoft applications.
- 00:04 In the last lesson I showed you how to access SharePoint.
- 00:07 Now what I want to do is, jump into a SharePoint site and
- 00:11 take a look around the interface.
- 00:13 So, we really want to become familiar with the different parts of
- 00:18 a SharePoint site and how to navigate.
- 00:21 So currently, I'm at the SharePoint start screen.
- 00:24 And this is where you can see an overview of all of the sites that you've recently
- 00:28 accessed and all of the sites that you follow.
- 00:31 And I'll talk more about following a bit later on.
- 00:33 So if you take a look at my start page, you can see I have a recent section.
- 00:38 And this is showing me all of the different sites that I've accessed
- 00:42 recently.
- 00:43 And then right at the top here,
- 00:44 it's telling me that I'm following the Microsoft 365 rollout site.
- 00:49 And this is actually the site that I'm going to be using throughout this course.
- 00:53 This is a site that I created in a similar way to the practice site.
- 00:57 And because I created it, I'm automatically following it.
- 01:01 So, let's click on the link and dive into the team sites.
- 01:04 So this is basically the structure that all of the home pages for
- 01:08 each site take on.
- 01:09 And if you remember, right in the introduction, I mentioned that there
- 01:12 are two different ways that you can view a SharePoint site, classic and modern.
- 01:16 Now, the way that I have my SharePoint set up, is to default to the best view for
- 01:21 the particular page that I'm on.
- 01:23 And currently, I can see that my home page is showing using the modern experience.
- 01:28 And as we go through you'll learn to differentiate between modern and classic.
- 01:31 The classic experience does look a little bit more old school then this nice, slick,
- 01:36 modern interface.
- 01:38 So, running across the top we have the header.
- 01:40 We know that we're in SharePoint, I have a search bar at the top,
- 01:44 which we can use to search for files, and documents, and people, and
- 01:47 all different kinds of things within SharePoint.
- 01:51 And then over on the right hand side, we have a little cog icon where we can access
- 01:55 our settings and we're going to be diving in and out of here.
- 01:59 We have a little help button.
- 02:01 And then I have access to view my account and my profile.
- 02:05 Then all the way over on the left hand side, we have this main menu.
- 02:10 This is how I like to think of it.
- 02:11 We have the main menu and then we have our site menu.
- 02:15 So, if you ever want to get back to that SharePoint start page,
- 02:19 you can click that home icon and you can then dive in to a different site.
- 02:24 The icon underneath is going to show you all of your sites.
- 02:27 So, this is the My Sites button,
- 02:29 is going to show you all of the sites that you've created.
- 02:33 So whilst you might be a member of all these different sites, you're only going
- 02:38 to find the ones that you have specifically created underneath My Sites.
- 02:42 The next button down is going to show any news.
- 02:46 And you can see here, there are two news articles that I've posted to this site.
- 02:51 And then finally at the bottom, we have a My Files section.
- 02:54 So, any files that we have within this site, you can access them very quickly and
- 02:59 easily from here, so a super useful little menu bar.
- 03:03 Now, let's just jump back into our site again and
- 03:06 take a look at this secondary menu.
- 03:08 So this menu just here is what we call the Quick Launch menu.
- 03:12 And it allows you to dive in and dive out of different parts of your site.
- 03:17 Now, I will say that when you're looking at your practice site, it's probably not
- 03:22 going to look exactly like mine does just here because I've added in lots of things.
- 03:26 I've added in some lists, I've added in some libraries.
- 03:29 I've done a certain amount of customization.
- 03:31 And I'm going to show you how to do all of these things as we go through the course.
- 03:36 What you should see at least, is home, conversations, documents, notebook, pages.
- 03:42 You won't see any of these, but you will see site contents and
- 03:46 recycle bin and these are all links to different things.
- 03:50 And right to the bottom, we have a little edit button as well.
- 03:54 So if I decide that I want to rename any of these pages, I can,
- 03:58 simply by double clicking and changing the display name.
- 04:01 I can do things like reorder, so I can move up, move down.
- 04:05 I can do things like make them sub links, or
- 04:08 I can remove items from this quick launch menu as well.
- 04:11 And we're going to be doing a lot of that as we go through this course.
- 04:15 So everything in this menu is editable.
- 04:18 Running horizontally across the top, we then have another menu.
- 04:21 This a very menu driven system.
- 04:24 And this menu will change depending on the part of SharePoint
- 04:27 that you're currently in.
- 04:29 So, because I'm on the homepage when I click the New button, it says you can
- 04:34 create a new list, document library, page, news post, so on and so forth.
- 04:39 I can see the page details if I want to.
- 04:42 And if I'm interested in data analytics for this particular page, I can pull up
- 04:46 a nice little analytics viewer that's going to show me things like page views,
- 04:51 page viewers, average time spent on pages, things like that.
- 04:55 And because I'm the only one using this site,
- 04:57 then this isn't particularly insightful.
- 05:00 But if you have a site that has many different members,
- 05:02 this can be super helpful.
- 05:04 And then finally in the middle the main bulk of this page,
- 05:08 is made up of different web parts.
- 05:11 I'm going to talk about web parts a lot later on in the course.
- 05:14 I can add news to this homepage, I can see all of my recent activity.
- 05:19 I can add some quick links to important sites in the top right hand corner, and
- 05:24 I can also store documents in here in a document library and easily access them.
- 05:30 And everything on this page is customizable.
- 05:32 You'll see that we have an edit link in the top right hand corner,
- 05:36 which will allow us to add and remove different web parts and
- 05:40 rearrange everything that we see on here.
- 05:42 And of course, we can also customize the theme, the look and
- 05:46 feel, the colors that we're using, and brand and
- 05:49 style the entire site to match our organization or our project.
- 05:53 Now, you will find as we click on different parts of the SharePoint site,
- 05:57 there are different menus that come up.
- 05:59 But I'll talk about those and when we get to that.
- 06:02 But for now, that is your basic navigation when it comes to your SharePoint site.
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