Balancing User Experience And Support Risks With Sharepoint Url Rewrites
Improving User Experience with SharePoint URL Rewrites
The URLs that provide access to content and applications within SharePoint significantly impact the end-user experience. Excessively long and complex URLs containing messy query strings or exposed metadata can frustrate users, reduce adoption of solutions, and hamper productivity. With thoughtful URL rewrite rules, organizations can craft clean URL structures optimized for ease-of-use while safeguarding sensitive information from unintended exposure.
The Risks of Unmanaged URL Structures
URL length limits and complex query strings degrade performance
Out-of-the-box SharePoint environments contain auto-generated URLs with seemingly random strings of alphanumeric IDs and verbose query parameters that provide little indication of the associated content or purpose. As an example, the default details view for an item within a SharePoint document library may include a URL such as: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/finance/shared documents/Forms/DocSet.aspx?ID=3857&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fcontoso%2Esharepoint%2Ecom%2Fsites%2Ffinance%2Fshared%2520documents&viewid=d65aff3b-8036-471b-8ccd-f784ae99359a. Excessively long URLs with complex query strings not only frustrate users but can create performance issues by exceeding maximum URL character length constraints.
Information architecture gaps confuse users
By exposing unintuitive IDs and encoded parameter strings, default SharePoint URLs often fail to provide indicators of the associated content, ownership, or purpose. Without contextual clues in the URL, users can easily become confused when navigating complex SharePoint information architectures with thousands of sites and subsites. For example, remembering the difference between https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/finance/docs/fy2021 and https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/finance/docs/fy2022 relies solely upon the user’s memory rather than intuitive information scent provided by the URL structure itself.
Security vulnerabilities from exposing metadata
Verbose SharePoint URLs containing exposed IDs can unintentionally reveal sensitive metadata and relationships providing attackers or unauthorized users with contextual clues to exploit other vulnerabilities. For example, by exposing document IDs in URLs, an attacker could iterate through ID values to identify confidential content that should be access restricted. Likewise, metadata encoded in parameter strings can reveal information about integrated backend systems that creates additional attack surfaces.
Crafting User-Focused URL Structures
Simplicity – Concise and intuitive paths
Well-designed URL structures prioritize simplicity and efficiency for the end user. This means eliminating unnecessary ID strings, parameters, and encoding to produce clean, concise, and intuitive paths to content and applications. Such user-focused URLs leverage keywords and hierarchical paths that closely align to the user’s mental model of the underlying information architecture. For example, https://contoso.sharepoint.com/finance/accounts-payable/invoices/fy2023/april provides strong information scent clues that aid discovery and wayfinding.
Consistency – Standard patterns for consistency
User trust and expectations are reinforced when URL naming conventions have consistent application across all sites, pages, libraries, lists, and list items. By following standard URL path patterns, end users can leverage knowledge gained from navigating and interacting with URLs in one SharePoint context and reliably apply it to others. For example, applying the /{root site}/{department}/{library}/{fiscal year}/{month} pattern used in the accounts payable example above to other areas such as human resource policies at https://contoso.sharepoint.com/hr/policies/employee-handbook/2023/january promotes consistency.
Security – Avoid exposing metadata and IDs
Carefully crafted URL structures segment access to underlying resources by isolating metadata IDs and parameters to avoid unintended security risks. By hiding clues to information that could empower enumeration attacks or exploitation of backend vulnerabilities, purposefully designed URL paths present the simplest access model required for core needs without enabling abuse of the broader system.
Implementing Custom URL Rewrites
URL rewrite rules with regular expressions
SharePoint provides URL rewriting capabilities to intercept requests and redirect them to new destinations based on defined rules and conditions. This functionality allows organizations to translate simple and intuitive user-facing URLs into the complex queries required to access default SharePoint resources. URL rewriting is powered by specifying match conditions using regular expressions combined with associated actions such as redirects or request proxying.
Passing request data to destination URLs
To transparently map clean URLs to default SharePoint URLs, rewrite rules must pass key request data including IDs required for SharePoint to identify and return the correct resources. This is achieved by capturing regular expression groups from the user-facing URL and inserting these dynamically into the rewritten destination URL through dollar sign ($) numbered placeholders.
Example rewrite rule for document library
For example, the following rewrite rule proxies requests for the clean, user-focused URL https://contoso.sharepoint.com/finance/accounts-payable/invoices/fy2023/april/invoice-99 to the required default SharePoint details page URL including the captured document ID:
Monitoring Performance and Usage
Tracking page load times and rewrite usage
Understanding how URL rewriting impacts real-world user experience requires monitoring performance metrics captured from production traffic. By tracking page load times correlated to requests hitting different rewrite rules, organizations can pinpoint issues for optimization and identify rules needing adjustments or exceptions.
Identifying frequently rewritten URLs
Monitoring the volume, trends, and fluctuations in usage across rewrite rules provides indicator of where end users are accessing systems most, along with clues to information architecture gaps or opportunities for consolidations. Identifying the highest traffic URLs being rewritten can guide prioritization for performance improvements or additional enhancements.
Adjusting rules to optimize user experience
Using data collated from production monitoring of rewrite usage and performance, organizations can fine-tune URL structures with incremental enhancements to rules. Adding or modifying conditions and query string handling delivers continuous improvements to end-user experience.
Best Practices for Long-Term Management
Documentation for all implemented rewrites
Maintaining up-to-date documentation covering the purpose, underlying mechanisms, conditional logic, and intendedMappings for every user-facing rewrite rule proves critical for manageability over time. Without clear explanations captured alongside the technical configurations, complexity can quickly escalate causing future admins and support resources to second guess intended functioning.
Automated testing for rule changes
Ensuring updates or additions to URL rewrite rules don’t break existing functionality relies on consistency both in code review and testing processes. Automated regression testing comparing before and after behaviors for key user flows provides safeguards around changes.
Change management policies
Implementing structured change management processes and policies promotes awareness of URL rewriting interdependencies while controlling risk. Change control procedures outlining peer-review requirements, communication plans, and exception handling for unanticipated impacts create accountability across teams managing interconnected SharePoint solutions.
