When a standard users clicks on Sites within the Office 365 portal they will see something like the above. Across the top are a number of ‘Promoted Sites’ that provide quick access to different URLs (typically SharePoint Online sites).
An administrator can control these ‘Promoted Sites’ via a number of different methods. The first is to access the Office 365 portal as themselves and select the Sites option from the toolbar across the top.
The difference when they do this from an ordinary user is that administrators will have the link Manage the promoted sites below as noted above.
Selecting that link will place the bar into edit mode as shown above. All you need to do to edit an existing entry or add a new ‘Promoted Site’ is select the appropriate tile.
Doing so will pop up a dialog box like shown above where you can makes changes including setting the Title, Description, URL (which can be any valid URL including one outside Office 365 if desired) and even the background image. You can also remove the link if you don’t want it to appear.
Once you have finished editing you can select the click here to stop editing option to save and update the changes for all users.
The other way that you can manage these promoted sites is via the SharePoint Admin center. To access this select the Admin option from the options across the top of the page and then select SharePoint.
In the SharePoint Admin center select user profiles form the menu that appears on the left.
Then select Manage Promoted Sites from under the My Site Settings in the middle of the page.
You’ll now see a list of the ‘Promoted Sites’ as shown above. Press the edit icon (the small icon with the pen, just under the check box at the left) to make changes.
You can now again make any changes you require to the entry. However, using this method you will see that you have an additional option available to you, that being Target Audiences. This allows you to show certain promoted site only to a certain set of SharePoint users determined by the audience feature. To learn more about this feature have a look at the following article:
You can of course add and remove ‘Promoted Sites’ using the option on the menu bar at the top.
So there you go, two easy ways to manage the ‘Promoted Sites’ that users see when they select Sites in Office 365.
CIAOPS 