Modify SP Start Page in SharePoint Online

Question

In O365, if I click the grid navigation and select SharePoint, I go to a start page of mydomain/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx rather than the home page of your main SharePoint site. I am looking for a way to either, add a more obvious link to our main SP site, or have it redirect to our main site instead of the start page. This page doesn't seem to be based on a master page I have access to (our usual way of customization). With SP Online, I don't seem to have access to the _layouts folder.

We have added a link to our main SharePoint site in the "promoted sites." The new SP start page MS is rolling out, buries promoted links in the left column as a basic looking link. It's very easy to miss.

A possible workaround is to hide the SharePoint tile, add a custom tile with the same name, and link it to our main SP site. This looks to be my best option right now. Any other suggestions?

Answer 1

You could add a custom tile to the app launcher

To do so follow these steps:

• Select Admin in app launcher (left top corner)
• Settings - Organization profile - add custom tiles for your organization
• Add a custom tile
• Enter Tile name, URL and Image URL and hit "Save"

Answer 2

I don't think you can change this, however you can change where the root url points to by using the script found on my GitHub and then adding a JS redirect onto the new default page shown below.

window.location.replace("http://stackexchange.com/");