The My Links Web Part – It’s Not Just for My Sites #sharepoint

I’ve talked to a number of folks in recent months that have wanted to add the links stored in a user’s My Links list in their My Site to other SharePoint pages that weren’t in the My Site site collection. Up until yesterday, I had always thought this would require some custom programming.
If you aren’t familiar with My Links, it’s a great place to store those things you might normally store in your Internet Explorer Favorites or Firefox Bookmarks. The advantage to using My Links is that they are always available to you anywhere you are logged into SharePoint. So, if you log in on a different computer, your links are there. And the links can go anywhere; they don’t have to be links to SharePoint locations. Here is a screenshot of how My Links is usually accessed in SharePoint.

Yesterday, just for fun, I decided to try an experiment; and my experiment worked! I added a My LInks web part to my My Site. Then I exported it and saved it to my desktop.

Next I went to the home page of my portal, made the page editable, and clicked on Add a Web Part for one of the web part zones. I closed the Add Web Parts dialog by clicking on the link at the bottom for the Advanced Web Part gallery and options. This opened the Add Web Parts Tool Pane in the right-hand side of my browser. At the top I clicked on the down arrow beside Browse and selected Import.

I browsed to and selected the My_Links.dwp web part I had saved to my desktop and clicked the Upload button.

To finish, I just drug the My Links web part where I wanted it on the page and published the page. All my links were then showing up on the page and as I logged in as different test users, their links showed up as well, as expected.

SharePoint Workflow and InfoPath Training… Online! #sharepoint

For a couple of reasons, Mission: Automation – SharePoint Workflow and InfoPath is one of my favorite classes to teach.

1. The student feedback is incredible. Everything in this class is something they can put to work right away. You can see the light bulbs come on as students learn things they will utilize as soon as they get back to their office.
2. The courseware is just terrific. The author of Mission Automation, Ricky Spears, has set the bar high in terms of quality content and hands-on labs. You may see only one module that specifically mentions SharePoint Designer Workflows, but don’t be fooled. In each successive module you will put more and more complex SPD workflows under your belt. Fun stuff.

Now Ricky has done it again. With the release of Essentials of InfoPath and SharePoint Workflows, you can learn a ton of useful InfoPath and SharePoint workflow information. Information you will be able to put to work right away. And the best thing about it, you can take this class online, right from your desk. The class is taught over five days with three hours of lecture and live demos in the morning and two to three hours of lab assistance in the afternoon.

I don’t know where you plan to be on May 18th but I will be online, learning even more about InfoPath and SharePoint Workflow as Ricky Spears teaches this class.