Local Navigation

Menus used to have one level. A feature shipped, an item got appended to the top bar, and two years later that bar held twelve or eighteen items. More items doesn't make things easier to find; it makes nothing stand out.

Concretely: put member management, permission rules, billing, and audit logs all on the top bar, and someone who came in to write a document reads past that list every single time. The four items are needed by exactly one person, the administrator, so the most expensive real estate on the screen gets handed to that one person four times over.

Cutting items alone removes the path to the feature entirely. So menus got split into levels: one visible from every screen, and one that appears only inside a particular area. Local navigation is the name of the second level.

It appears after entering an area from the level above and disappears on leaving it. Four things to decide.

1. Which area it attaches to. Usually one item in the global navigation defines one area — enter Team and members, permissions, and billing appear.
2. The item count can be generous. The always-visible level has to stay within five to seven, but this one is seen only by people who entered the area, so passing ten costs little.
3. Keep its position consistent across areas. Vertical on the left or horizontal tabs under the page title, either is fine, but if the position changes per area the user re-hunts for the menu on every move.
4. Mark which item you're on. Without the current position emphasized, the user can't tell whether the thing they just clicked actually opened.

One condition comes attached. Anything a first-time user must pass through does not go on this level. It's invisible to anyone who hasn't entered the area, so they never learn the feature exists. Things everyone has to do once, like initial setup, get surfaced from the always-visible level or from a guided screen instead.

"Don't put this on the top bar, drop it into local nav under Team."

Few people need it, so it shouldn't occupy expensive space.

"It's in local nav, so a new user doesn't even know the feature is there."

The price of putting it on an unexposed level, now visible.

"It's on the left in Documents and on top in Team. These have to match."

Menu position differing per area adds a cost to finding it.

Pagedeck keeps members, permissions, billing, and audit logs in the Team area. All four are administrator-only screens. Inviting members is the exception, since every new team has to do it, so Mia pulled that one out into the initial setup guide.