Use App Icon within site

Question

I've created numerous SharePoint sites, and I always create the landing page as a dashboard, with minimalistic views of the critical lists and libraries within that particular site - including project calendar.

Essentially, what happened is that my customer clicked on the "Site Contents" link, saw all the pretty little icons, and now wants the landing page to look like the Site Contents page. Problem is, I don't see an easy way to re-use those icons within the site, and I can't set the Site Contents page to be the site's "home" page.

Right now my 2 options are to either copy/save all of the app icon files, and upload them as site resources, and create them as hyperlinks to the different lists... or to point all links that normally point to the "home" page and redirect them to the Site Contents page. Neither one is a really good prospect. Please, anyone have a better idea?

Thank you! Matt

Answer 1

Check out using Promoted Links app (assuming you're on SP2013). This list and it's associated web parts, let's you add the larger tile look.

A rough example here, plus a method to make the icons display vertically http://davidlozzi.com/2014/08/15/vertical-promoted-links-in-sharepoint-2013/