Managing the “Projects” App-Launcher tile for multi-PWA tenants

If you have multiple (or custom named) Project Online instances in your Office 365 environment, the App Launcher tile is probably causing you some issues.

Pain point

The “Project” tile presented in the App Launcher will always default to the out of the box Project Online site collection that was created when Project Online was licensed in your tenant (/sites/PWA).

If you have multiple instances or you’ve called your Project Online Site Collection a custom name, the tile can be very confusing for users.

Solution

You can easily solve this issue by using the standard tile location as a landing page for Project Online users. Here are four foolproof steps to do this:

Note: if you only have one custom named instance you don’t need to complete steps 3 and 4, simply forward the new site to your custom named Project Online site collection. This way the “Projects” tile will take the user directly to your custom instance.

Step 1

Delete the original (empty) Project Online Site Collection (example.sharepoint.com/sites/PWA). Do not delete this if in use! Only delete if you are using other custom named instances for Project Online.

1. 1. Empty the recycle bin (you can’t create a new site collection if the name is already in use – even if it’s in the recycle bin)
   2. Click ‘delete’ in the site collection management ribbon
   3. Select the checkbox for the site collection (/sites/PWA) that you want to delete from the list of active site collections
   4. Open SharePoint Administration page from the Office 365 Admin Centre
      1. 1. In SharePoint Online Powershell window execute the following “Remove-SPODeletedSite -Identity http://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/sitetoremove”
         2. Steps for deleting this site collection are here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161368.aspx

Step 2

Create a new basic team site called “Anything”. Make sure it’s located at /sites/PWA (this is where the default “Project” Tile resolves to).

Step 3

In this new site create three (or more depending on your situation) new promoted links lists. The following are examples only (we recommend using separate lists as they can be “Audienced” to specific user groups as needed).

1. 1. Production – URL: http://example.sharepoint.com/sites/PPM
   2. Test – URL: http://example.sharepoint.com/sites/TestPPM
   3. Development – URL: http://example.sharepoint.com/sites/DevPPM

Step 4

Add each Promoted Links list to the landing page of this new /PWA site (Audience them if you want to hide specific environments as needed).

Note: Make anyone who has access to Project Online a visitor of this new site – this will be the landing page everyone will hit when they click “Projects” in the app launcher.

And now you are ready to enjoy your “Project” tile again without confusion!