đź“Ś What is the Breadcrumb feature?
The Breadcrumb is a navigation aid that shows users a trail of links reflecting their location within the intranet.
It helps users:
Understand where they are.
Navigate back easily to higher-level pages.
Visualize the structure of the site as they browse.
This improves usability, especially on sites with deep or complex navigation.
⚙️ How to enable Breadcrumb
You can activate the Breadcrumb feature directly in Powell Manager:
Go to Site collection settings → Environment configuration → Breadcrumb.
Enable the feature.
Choose how you want the breadcrumb to build its navigation trail:
Based on site hierarchy
Based on site navigation
Below, we explain the difference between these two modes.
🏛 Breadcrumb based on site hierarchy
When you select site hierarchy, the breadcrumb automatically displays links based on the SharePoint page tree structure.
âš Note: In modern SharePoint environments, pages often exist in a flat structure without real subpages, so this method may not always produce meaningful breadcrumb paths.
đź“‚ Breadcrumb based on site navigation
In this mode, the breadcrumb trail is built by matching page URLs to your site’s navigation menu.
For example, suppose your site navigation is structured as follows:
Department
↳ HR
↳ Company Rules
When a user visits the “Company Rules” page, the breadcrumb system checks the page URL and tries to match it with items in the navigation menu.
If a match is found, the breadcrumb displays:Department → HR → Company Rules
⚠Note: This method does not work with dynamic navigation nodes that are generated by search queries, because those nodes don’t have static URLs that can be matched.