While casting about for today's blog topic, I realized that it had been a while since I'd dressed up my My Site with some new bling. This being the case, I decided to treat myself to a new Web Part, and while scrolling through the available options, my eye was drawn to the promise of a simple yet useful add-on for one's My Site: the My Links Web Part.
The My Links Web Part is exactly what it sounds like, a Web Part which you can customize to display any set (or sets) of links you desire. Think of it is as an at-a-glance "favorite places" module. Naturally, you're not limited to SharePoint sites on your intranet, and you can include any Internet URL that you wish.
To add the My Links Web Part to your My Site, begin by choosing the Edit Page menu option from the Site Actions dropdown button:
On the resulting Edit Mode rendering of your page, choose your preferred Zone for placement of the Web Part (I chose the Middle Right Zone), and click the Add a Web Part button for that Zone:
On the resulting popup, locate My Links in the list of available Web Parts, select the checkbox, then click the Add button at the bottom of the list:
Your page will automatically refresh (still in Edit Mode) with the default instance of the My Links Web Part placed accordingly:
Remaining in Edit Mode, it's now time to populate your links. To do so, simply click the Add Link hyperlink (as pictured above), which will render the Add Link page:
As you can see, the basic Link Information requirements are to provide a title and URL for each link. Additional options include Privacy and Grouping, which enable you to limit who can see your links, and to place those links into groupings. Any New group that you add in the input field will appear in the Existing group dropdown thereafter. Once you've typed (or pasted) the information for your first link, click the OK button. Note: Doing so will refresh the page, exiting Edit Mode in the process.
I added a new grouping called Blogs, and added a link to SharePoint Blank, so when my page refreshed, the Web Part looked like this:
To add additional links and/or groupings to the Web Part, simply rinse and repeat the above process by clicking the Add Link hyperlink again. To modify existing links, use the Manage Links hyperlink.
And that's pretty much the scoop on the My Links Web Part. It may not be the flashiest Web Part on the block, but it'll work for your love.
The "Pimp my My Site" series:
Posted
Dec 02 2008, 05:43 PM
by
John Anderson
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Bamboo Nation's de facto managing editor and, while he has learned much about SharePoint in his first year, he gleefully awaits the release of SharePoint 2010, and the reset button that release will represent for SharePoint Blank.