How to use a Hyperlink column on a Custom List to organize links to SharePoint sites

Today I want to share a cool trick with you, which you can use to organize your SharePoint sites. For most of the operational types of sites, I am sure you will build some sort of Hub Navigation. However, let’s say you also have sites that are temporary in nature that you only use for a period of time. I am talking about Project Sites, Legal Case Sites, Client Sites, etc. Something with a definite start and end date. You might have tens or even hundreds of these sites. Creating links on the global Hub Navigation is not practical,  as the drop-down navigation menu will be impossible to manage and navigate. Luckily, we have an alternate way to organize such links via a Hyperlink column on a Custom List.

Step 1: Create a Custom List

There are many different ways to create a custom list in SharePoint. Please reference this post to learn about all the options. For my example, I created a list to track Projects, so I created the following columns:

• Project Name (Text)
• Project Manager (People)
• Client Name (Choice)
• Status (Choice)

Step 2: Create a Hyperlink column on a Custom List

We now need to create a Hyperlink column that will capture the URL of a Project site. Here is how to do this:

1. Click +Add column > Hyperlink
2. Give your column a name, click Save
3. Re-arrange the order of the columns on your Custom list by dragging the column left or right
4. Add a new entry and populate the URL for the site, the text description for the link. Click Save.
5. Repeat for the other rows in your list. This is what the finished product looks like when some data has been entered. Now, when users click on a link, it will open up a site for that project or row entry.
6. And of course, the whole reason why we created the custom list for this is so that we can filter our sites by Status and other metadata