How to Add Child Links Under Top Level Global Navigation Headers in Online Sharepoint 2013 Usinge PowerShell V 3.0?

Question

I am stuck on a PowerShell V3.0 problem for programmatically adding Child Links to the Global Navigation bar in our Online SharePoint 2013 (Office 365-Azure) site.

I have found code that works for me to add Headers, to my top link global navigation bar, but I cannot find anywhere, how to add children links (such as Child1 in my attached photo) under a given header (such as Hello1 in image) on the global navigation bar. I am using CSOM libraries to do this.

I have been Googling for days on this, and cannot find anything that shows me what to do with the code to make the child links. Everything I have found either uses PS snapins from Sharepoint 2010 (which I cannot download and use in Sharepoint 2013 Online – unless someone knows of a way to do that), or is written in C# or VB and I am unable translate the code into PowerShell.

Is there any chance that someone would know how or be able to point me to a resource that would help me solve this issue? The following code snippets work well to add the top level links/headers to the global navigation bar for me but how to add sub links under these headers, programmatically using PowerShell v3.0?

I put the following in a foreach-object loop reading the information from an XML file…this all works well, for adding top level headers/links. I believe I just need to make slight alterations to this code to add sub-links under my global nav headings, but cannot figure out how:

$siteUrl = $_.Url
$siteTitle = $_.Title
$context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($siteUrl) 
$context.Credentials = $credentials 
$context.RequestTimeOut = 5000 * 60 * 10; 
$web = $context.Web 
$site = $context.Site 
$context.Load($web) 
$context.Load($site) 
$context.ExecuteQuery()  

$NavBar = $context.Web.Navigation.TopNavigationBar 
$NavigationNode = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.NavigationNodeCreationInformation
$NavigationNode.Title = $ItemName
$NavigationNode.Url = $ItemUrlPath
$NavigationNode.AsLastNode = $true           
$context.Load($NavBar.Add($NavigationNode)) 
$context.ExecuteQuery()   

Answer 1

You were very close, since navigation has a hierarchical structure in order to create a child node the parent node should be determined first.

The following example demonstrates how to create a child (Link) node under Heading node in Global navigation:

Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"


Function Get-SPOContext([string]$Url,[string]$UserName,[string]$Password)
{
   $context = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($Url)
   $SecurePassword = $Password | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
   $credentials = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($UserName, $SecurePassword)
   $context.Credentials = $credentials
   return $context
}


Function FindNavigationNodeByTitle([Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.NavigationNodeCollection]$Nodes,[string]$Title)
{
      $context = $Nodes.Context
      $context.Load($Nodes)
      $context.ExecuteQuery()
      $node = $Nodes | Where-Object { $_.Title -eq $Title }
      return $node
} 


Function AddNavigationNode([Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.NavigationNode]$ParentNode,[string]$Title,[string]$Url){
   $context = $ParentNode.Context
   $Node = New-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.NavigationNodeCreationInformation 
   $Node.Title = $Title
   $Node.Url = $Url 
   $Node.AsLastNode = $true
   $context.Load($ParentNode.Children.Add($Node))
   $context.ExecuteQuery()
}


$tenantUrl = "https://tenant.sharepoint.com/"
$userName = "[email protected]" 
$password = "password"

$Context = Get-SPOContext -Url $tenantUrl -UserName $userName -Password $password

$NavBar = $Context.Web.Navigation.TopNavigationBar 
$Context.Load($NavBar)
$Context.ExecuteQuery()


$parentNode = FindNavigationNodeByTitle -Nodes $NavBar -Title "Hello"
if($parentNode) {
   AddNavigationNode -ParentNode $parentNode -Title "Tasks" -Url "/sites/news/Lists/Tasks/AllItems.aspx"
}


$Context.Dispose()

Result