In the previous article, we have seen SharePoint Link lists in details. In this article, we will explore SharePoint Promoted Link Lists in details and try to understand the importance of Promoted Link list and when we can use this. In this article, we will see the below points

What is Promoted Link List in SharePoint?
How to create Promoted Link lists?
Adding new link in Promoted Link List
Comparison of Link List and Promoted Link List.
Summary

What is Promoted Link list?

As we have seen in the previous article, SharePoint provides a list template to manage the links. In that, we were able to add the links and description and the link was displayed in a listing format.

But in most of the cases, we want to display an image and on clicking on image, the link should redirect. Or sometimes, we need to open the link to the new tab instead of the same tab. These features are missing in the Link List template.

Promoted Link List also does similar kinds of tasks that Link List does, but it has some advanced options. Promoted Links allow users to choose the behaviour of the link. In other words, a user can control which image should be displayed in the link and also, should the link open in the same tab as a dialog or in a new tab. These configurations are managed by the user in Promoted Links List.

How to create Promoted Link List?

In order to create a promoted link list, please follow the below-given steps.

Step 1

Open the Site Content page by clicking on the "Settings" icon and then clicking “Site Contents”.

Working With Promoted Link List In SharePoint

Step 2

This will open the "Site Contents" page. Click on the “Add an app” icon from this screen.

Step 3

Search for the promoted list in the search box and then click on the “Promoted List” icon link.

Step 4

Then, enter the name for the Promoted Link list and hit the "Create" button.

Step 5

Promoted link list will be created.

Adding a new link to Promoted Link List

As we have seen that we can give an image to the link in a promoted link list, let’s see how. When you open the promoted link list for the first time, you will see the below screen.

It means that you have to add a new link to see the View. Click on the “Items” tab in the ribbon and then click on “New Item”. Here, click on the “New Item” link as shown in the figure.

When you click “New Item”, it will show the below form.

Let’s understand each of the fields involved here.

TITLE: This column is used to assign a title to the link.
Background Image Location: Here, you can specify the image URL which you want to show as a link. For now, I have captured a live URL. What you can do is, you can download any image and upload that image to SharePoint document library or site assets folder and then, you can get the link to that image and provide in this column.
Description: This will be the description for the link.
Link Location: This is the actual link which will be opened when the icon is clicked.
Launch Behaviour: This was missing in Link list. This has 3 parameters.

In Page Navigation: It means it will open the given URL in the current window.
Dialog: It means it will open up the link in the current window but as a new dialog box.
New Tab: It means the link will be opened in a new tab.

ORDER: This will define the order of the promoted link to be displayed in the View.

Once we hit the “Save” button, the details entered will be saved and the default view will now look like below.

Here, you can see that the image is displayed as a link and hovering this image will show the description text as shown in the given figure.

Comparison between Link List and Promoted Link List

There are several points of comparison between Promoted Link List and Link List. Let’s check a few of them.

Link List	Promoted Link List
The default View is Grid layout.	The default layout is Icon layout.
It does not allow us to display an image for the link.	It allows us to configure the image icon for individual links.
It does not provide any control on the link opening behaviour. This will always open the new link in the current window.	Here, we can configure whether the link should be opened in the same window, in a dialog, or in a new tab.
This does not provide any default ordering columns.	This provides Order column to ensure that the links should be displayed in a configured order.

Summary

In this article, we have seen what Promoted link lists are and how we can use them to configure the user’s dashboard with links having image. We have also seen various options using which we can control the behaviour of the link opening.

In the next article, I will explain the discussion lists in SharePoint. If you have any query related to this article or SharePoint, please let me know in the comment section.