Sean Wallbridge
If you have seen any demo’s of the new SharePoint 2013 Team Site, you will already be familiar with Promoted Links. If you aren’t, here’s a good introduction.
Figure 1: Promoted Site Links, as you’d find them in your Team Site
But I’m going to take a moment to discuss “Promoted Sites” as I went looking for a quick overview and didn’t see much of anything anywhere … not even on TechNet yet.
Here’s the Central Administration Description – Use this list to promote certain sites to users. Sites added here will appear on Sites page in user’s My Sites. Use audiences if you want a link to only appear for a specific set of users.
Promoted Sites … Yum
In a picture, these are are Promoted Sites (Below)
While they look the same, the difference is:
- Promoted Links – Promoted Links are a list, sorry, an App that you create in a site/web and sprinkle on your team page (or wherever you want. Easy to work with and might be different, all over the place
- Promoted Sites – Promoted Sites are created by your (farm or whomever designated) admin, centrally, in the User Profile Service Application Settings, and displayed centrally (and targeted, if you want by Audiences) to give a consistent set of dynamic links/icons to recommend key sites to your users when they click on the “Sites” navigation. I.e you will follow sites, SharePoint will suggest sites based on what it knows about you but you can also provide a tidy, graphical (sexy) interface for the most important site links you want to suggest.
Cool. What do I need? Where do I go? What do I do?
Ok. First off, I’m assuming you have SharePoint 2013 Standard at a minimum as Foundation won’t provide you with the User Profile Service Application. Next, you need to have a healthy User Profile Service Application (I’ll save you some time, everyone goes to that “purple site” for the best way to employ UPS).
Once UPS is up and running, My Sites are rolling, etc. you then want to:
- Open Central Administration
- Open Managed Service Applications
- Manage your User Profile Service Application
- Choose “Managed Promoted Sites” under “My Site Settings”
- Create your links and you are good to go. What follows is a quick visual tour from step 4 on…
These are the two links I’ve employed so far.
Hope this helps clarify what/how Promoted Sites work. Happy Holidays everyone!
Sean
Interesting article. Was helpful. I have a question though. Is there a way I can change the order of the promoted sites? I have 5 at the moment, and I would to show them in a certain order.
I have the same issue as Gert —
I can’t figure out how to rearrange my promoted sites. My only option seems to be to remove the links and add them in a specific order each time..
As far as I could play around with links ordering, the latest you add will become the first the user will be presented.
I’d like to know how to use “open in a new…” (tab/window) function in the UPS application. This is available if you create a new app but I couldn’t find it for UPS.
As far as I could play around with links ordering, the latest you add will become the first the user will be presented.
I’d like to know how to use “open in a new…” (tab/window) function in the UPS application. This is available if you create a new app but I couldn’t find it for UPS.
Thanks.