With Central Links you can create company-controlled links to important Internet or Intranet destinations. These Central Links can be placed in any document or web page and even shared with customers. If a destination’s URL changes over time, you can simply edit the central link with the new URL, making sure that all documents containing your central link still work correctly – No more broken links!

Consider the following scenario – your company published a document that contains links to multiple destinations. After a month or two, the URL for some of the links in the document changes, and as a result the document now contains broken, or incorrect links. This can happen with any type of content your company publishes, may it be documents, web articles, Intranet posts, etc. Over time, your company accumulates a lot of published content that contains broken, or incorrect links. It is nearly impossible to track all the documents and articles that contain the broken links, so in most cases they are left ‘as is’, and as a result the information is regarded as increasingly outdated over time.

With Central Links you create a unique shortened-URL ‘Central Link’ based on the link your want to publish (we call it the ‘Source Link’). Then you publish the Central Link in your document, instead of the Source Link. If the Source Link’s URL ever changes, you just update the mapping of your Central Link to the new URL, and all the documents featuring the link remain valid and up to date!

The Central Links administration console is featured entirely within Microsoft Teams and as such you can invite additional people from your organization to collaborate on creating and maintaining your company’s Central Links.

Moreover, the links are searchable and referenceable. You can even add multiple tags to each link to make sure everyone can find relevant links quickly by searching for familiar terms.

When working anywhere within Microsoft Teams, users can lookup important links through the Central Links messaging extension and add them directly into Teams posts, chats and even video chats.

Jane, Joe and Ruth are collaborating on a Microsoft Word document in a Teams chat. Jane is on her computer, Joe is on his iPad, and Ruth is working through her phone. Jane is looking to add an important link to the document, she opens the Central Links interface right in the chat, searches for the correct link using a familiar tag, and adds the Central Link to the chat. The team reviews the link and the context and agree it belongs in the document. Jane adds the Central Link to the document, knowing that if the URL ever changes, the associated Central Link can be quickly updated, and the document will remain valid.

Your central links can be copied and used anywhere! You can add them to web sites, SharePoint pages, and even emails and text messages. If the URL ever changes, all you have to do is update the Central Link, and every location that uses the link will remain valid and up-to-date.