By: Omar Stewart

 

MyLinks is a feature that lets users create a personalized list of links, accessible throughout a farm. The functionality still  exists in SharePoint 2010, however, it takes a little more work to make it accessible to a site.

 

In this tutorial I'll show you how to re-add a link to MyLinks on the user menu, as well as how to get the MyLinks WebParts back in the Webpart Gallery.

 

First We'll add MyLinks to the users drop down menu.

 

Launch Visual Studio.

 

Create an empty SharePoint project

 

 

We'll make this a farm solution

 

 

Right Click on the project Node, then click Add Item

 

 

Select to add an Empty Element

 

Then we just drop in the xml to declaratively add a custom action,  and point it to the Personal Actions Group.

 

Laura Rogers wrote a great article pointing out that MyLinks still exist in SharePoint 2010. The list can be accessed from an application page @ "_layouts/MyQuickLinks.aspx". We'll just point our new button to that link.

 

<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">

  <CustomAction

  Id="myLinksButtonLink"

  GroupId="PersonalActions"

  Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"

  Sequence="1000"

  Title="MyLinks"

  Description="Open Your custom page"

  ImageUrl="/_layouts/Images/MyLinks/MyLinksIcon.png" >

    <UrlAction Url="~site/_layouts/MyQuickLinks.aspx"/>

  </CustomAction>

</Elements>

 

I've added an image by right clicking on the solution then clicking Add SharePoint "Images" Mapped Folder

 

 

We'll just hit F5 to deploy our solution. If we navigate to our team site, click our user name, we can see that the MyLinks has been added to the available options.

 

 

If we click on the link, it takes us to the MyLinks Application Page.

 

 

Now to re-add the MyLinks WebParts, just navigate to SharePoint's WebPart Gallery.

(Site Actions >> Site Settings >>  Galleries: Web parts)

 

 

Then click the New Document Button, if you scroll down, you'll see 3 Webparts related to MyLinks

 

QuickLinksMacroView, QuickLinksMicroView, QuickLinksPublicView. Check all three then click Populate Gallery.

 

 

If you navigate back to your home page, edit the page, then click Insert: WebPart. In the Miscellaneous section, you should see all three MyLinks WebParts listed.

 

 

 

These are all now accessible to your site.

 

Here's a link to the WSP and VS Solution Project, if anyone is interested. Hope this has been helpful.

 

By: Omar Stewart