Quick Tip – Using the Resources List in Central Administration

Let’s face it, both in SharePoint 2007 and 2010, Central Administration does require a bit of clicking around. Some features and functionality you will use on a daily basis, but others, not so much. While the UI for Central Administration got a great overhaul, navigating around can be tedious.

Not that it is any rocket science here either, however, I rarely come across client environments where this is used at all. The list was available in 2007, as well as 2010. When you log into Central Administration, you’ll see the Resources link list web part off to the right. So the quick tip of the day is – make use of this!

For instance, if you need to get down to the user profile service administration screen… you need to do the following:

1. Click on Application Management > Manage service applications
2. Locate the service application, and click it
3. Then you’re there.

However, just adding a link to the Resources list for this, and other commonly used items, saves both time and effort, especially if you have trouble locating your service applications. So just copy the URL, go back out to the main page, and add it in as a link.

More ideas? Maybe you need to look at the Job History for your web application each day. Instead of doing the following:

1. Click on Monitoring > Check job status
2. Clicking on Job History on the quick Launch
3. Selecting Web Application from the View drop down

Just copy out the link, and add it into the Resources list for a quick link http://servername/_admin/TimerJobHistory.aspx?View=2

Now, there are many other possibilities to store these links – your bookmarks for example – while that works for you, it does not work for anyone else who needs access to Central Admin.

If you wanted to build a feature or two, you could also implement some Custom Actions here as well…