SharePoint information architecture

SharePoint information architecture is the practice of designing how content is organised across sites — what becomes its own site, how sites relate via hubs, how navigation works, where common content lives. Done well, users find things. Done badly, the intranet feels chaotic and useless.

The modern building blocks

Modern SharePoint Online is built from a few units:

• Sites — each its own site collection in modern SharePoint, with isolated permissions, lifecycle, and quota.
• Hub sites — sites others can associate with, getting shared navigation, theme, and search scope.
• Home sites — the tenant's designated landing page, often with Viva Connections integration.
• Navigation — global (Viva Connections / home site), hub-level, and per-site navigation.

The older nested-subsite pattern is deprecated for new content.

A typical IA pattern

A common shape that scales for most organisations:

Home site (corporate intranet)
├── HR hub
│   ├── HR team site
│   ├── HR communication site (HR portal)
│   ├── HR policies communication site
│   └── HR projects team sites
├── IT hub
│   ├── IT service catalog (communication site)
│   ├── IT operations (team site)
│   └── IT documentation (communication site)
├── Engineering hub
│   ├── Engineering team site
│   ├── Engineering documentation
│   └── Project sites
├── Sales hub
│   └── ...
└── Other functional hubs

Each hub has its own navigation, theme, and search scope. Sites associate to one hub. The home site provides global navigation across the whole intranet.

Designing hubs

A few principles for hub design:

• One hub per logical business unit — department, function, business unit.
• Avoid hub sprawl — too many hubs (>30) make global navigation cluttered.
• Hub-to-hub associations — for very large intranets, hubs themselves can associate to parent hubs (two levels deep typically).
• Naming consistency — HR Hub, IT Hub, Engineering Hub is clearer than mixed naming.

Communication sites vs team sites

• Communication sites — broadcasting information to wide audiences. Polished page layouts. Used for hub centres, departmental portals, intranet news hubs.
• Team sites — workspaces for collaborating groups. Backed by Microsoft 365 Groups (and often Teams teams). Used for project work, department workspaces, working files.

A typical hub combines both: a communication-site hub centre plus many team sites associated to it.

Permissions design

• Group-driven — site members come from Microsoft 365 Group membership for team sites.
• Audience-targeted — communication sites visible to broader audiences with restricted edit rights.
• Sensitivity labels at the container level set sharing posture per site.
• Avoid item-level permissions — they create audit nightmares.

Common pitfalls

• Over-engineering early — designing for 1,000 sites when you have 5. Start simple, evolve.
• Building a tree of subsites — modern SharePoint doesn't reward this. Use flat hub structures.
• Inconsistent naming — HR Department, Human Resources, and HR Team all referring to the same thing.
• No ownership — sites need accountable owners; orphaned sites accumulate.
• Skipping global navigation — users get lost without it.

Migration considerations

When migrating from legacy SharePoint or file shares:

• Don't replicate folder structure 1:1 — flatten and use metadata where possible.
• Identify natural site boundaries — usually department-aligned.
• Plan navigation up front — restructuring later is painful.
• Communicate the new structure before, during, and after migration.

For an organisation building or rebuilding its Microsoft 365 intranet, IA design is the most consequential decision. Spend time on it; document it; revisit annually.