The following blog is a tutorial on creating administrator links in Microsoft Project Online by Erik van Hurck, originally published on his blog The Project Corner. It has been reproduced here with the author’s permission as an example of the versatility and simplicity of Syncfusion Metro Studio 5, a free collection of more than 7,000 icon templates. You can learn more about Metro Studio and download it here.
This post is about creating Microsoft Project Online administrator links, a promoted links list with some of the most used administrator actions in Project Online. I’ve created administrator links in Project Online, but they can also be created in much the same way in Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management 2013 and 2016.
Preparing the Project Online administrator links
To set up promoted links for the Project Online administrator, there are a few things you should be aware of and do first.
First: The URL you will use is different from the one I have. Project Online uses a syntax that is similar to this: HTTPS://<Tenant>/Sites/<PWA name>. I will use the text <Prefix> as a placeholder throughout this post, and you should replace that with your PWA URL. For example, <Prefix>/_Layouts/15/PWA/Admin/Admin.aspx could be https://yourtenant/sites/yourPWA/_Layouts/15/PWA/Admin/Admin.aspx.
Second: You will need to be an admin to set all the actions in place as described in this post.
Third: Create a folder on SharePoint to store the icon images. You can download a zip file with all these icons through this link.
Building the promoted list
Okay, let’s have a go at building the promoted links. Log into your PWA environment as an administrator. Click the gear icon at the top right, and select Add an app.
Now find the app called Promoted Links and give it an awesome name, such as “The Administrator Links,” as shown in the following screenshots.
This will create an empty list that you can manipulate to your liking by opening the List tab in the ribbon and selecting All Promoted Links from the Current View drop-down.
Now, open a new browser window and navigate to the image library you created in the third prep step. I (still) like to use the old SharePoint layout because it provides an easy URL for copying images. Store all the links in Notepad for later reference.
Navigate back to the original browser window and click Edit List to open the grid view that is easy to edit.
The columns “Background Image Location” and “Link Location” actually require two values, so be aware of this. Also, I like to have my links open in a new tab, but that’s just a personal preference.
The image URLs are the ones you gathered earlier. The link locations are listed as follows (don’t forget to replace <Prefix> with your own PWA URL):
- Admin Home: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/Admin/Admin.aspx
- Manage Force Check in: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/Admin/ForceCheckin.aspx
- Manage Queue: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/Admin/queue.aspx
- Act as Delegate: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/userdelegation/ManageDelegations.aspx?mgm=false
- Manage Custom fields and look up tables: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/Admin/CustomizeFields.aspx
- Manage Views: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/Admin/ViewsMain.aspx
- Time Reporting Periods: <Prefix>/_layouts/15/pwa/Admin/TimePeriod.aspx
The end result should look similar to my version of the list: