Add shortcuts to Craft's control panel

Only prerequisite for this is that you have a Yii module in the project you're building. Then, in the Module's init() function, we'll use the EVENT_REGISTER_CP_NAV_ITEMS event to add one or more links: use Craft; use craft\web\twig\variables\Cp; use craft\events\RegisterCpNavItemsEvent;

    Event::on(Cp::class, Cp::EVENT_REGISTER_CP_NAV_ITEMS, function (RegisterCpNavItemsEvent $event) {
        if (Craft::$app->getConfig()->getGeneral()->allowAdminChanges) {
            $event->navItems[] = [
                'url' => 'settings/fields',
                'label' => 'Fields',
                'icon' => '@appicons/field.svg',
            ];
         }
    });Each item we add needs to have 3 properties: a url, a label and an icon. Url & label speak for themselves, for the icon you can reference an svg icon of your own - or you can piggy-back of the icons that come with Craft. 

This is the way I prefer to set things up, as keeping the icons for fields/sections/sites etc the same makes it easier recognise. In /craftcms/cms/src/icons, you can find all the SVG icons that come with Craft CMS, and you can use them through the @appicons alias, like in the example above.