Menu reports

Owned by Charlotte Armstrong
Last updated: Mar 26, 2024 by Ashley Walls
3 min read

The WCMS 3 menu report is a CSV file that lists every menu link on the site, inclusive of disabled menu links. It also displays useful information such as menu name, Link ID, and Parent link. Site owners can download the file and open it using Excel. 

What information the menu report contains

  • Menu name shows which menu each page is on. A WCMS site has two separate menus: the Main menu and the Information for menu. Every site has a Main menu but not every site uses the Information for menu. On the menu report, the Main menu is listed as ‘menu’ and the Information for menu is listed as ‘uw-menu-audience-menu’.  

  • Link ID shows an identification number that is unique to each page. 

  • Parent link shows the node number of the parent page. 

  • Alias shows the URL for each page that has a node number. Listing pages such as Blog and News are automatically created in WCMS 3. They cannot be edited and do not have a node number, so these pages will have a blank alias. 

  • Link path shows the path to each page as a node number. Listing pages do not have node numbers so their name is displayed.  

  • Title shows the title of each page as it appears on the site. 

  • Has children shows whether a page has children underneath it. It does not display how many children there are but it displays if there are children or not.

  • Part 1-Part 9 columns can be used to determine hierarchy. Each column shows the link ID of a page, and each subsequent column shows the link ID of its children. Collectively, these columns show how many levels of navigation there are. Each ‘part’ is one level below its predecessor. By checking the Link ID column, you can determine the identity of the pages whose numbers are listed in these columns. 

Note: Best practices are to have no more than 3 levels of navigation. On the menu report, the values for parts 4-9 would be 0.  

What Information the menu report does not contain

Some information is not displayed in the menu report and can be checked by navigating to the menu from the Dashboard. To change the arrangement of pages in the menu, review How to rearrange Menu items. 

  • Weights (the order in which pages are displayed on the site’s menu) 

  • If a page is enabled or not. A page that is enabled in the menu will have its link displayed in the menu of the site. A page that is not enabled will retain its location in the hierarchy and the structure of its URL alias, but it will not be visible on the menu. Disabled pages still appear on the menu report because it displays all of the site’s hierarchy, not just what users can see. 

How to Access the menu report

  1. From the administration bar, select Workbench, and then select My Dashboard.

  2. Navigate to Site management menu.

    Screenshot of Site management menu

  3. Select Menu report (CSV). 

  4. The Menu report will automatically download as an Excel spreadsheet.