Content types allow you to organize, manage, and manipulate content consistently across sites. By defining content types for specific document types or information products, you can ensure that each content group is managed consistently. This article explains basics about content types and how content type publishing can be used to share content types across site collections.
In this article:
- What is a content type?
- Works as inheritance type content
- How Inheritance Works for Site Content Types
- How Inheritance Works for List Content Types
- Content-Type Publication
What is a content type?
When doing business, a typical organization produces several different types of content; for example legal contracts, marketing proposals, product design specifications, manufacturing process documents, etc. While these different types of documents can share a small set of common properties, each type of content has unique attributes, and each can be created, used, shared, and maintained in different ways. An organization may want to keep different types of metadata about these different types of content or may want to apply different types of retention or confidentiality policies to them.
Organizations can define each of these different sets of documents as one type of content. A content type is a group of reusable settings that describe the shared attributes and behaviors of a particular content type. Content types can be defined for any type of item, including documents, list items, media files, and folders.
You can specify the following attributes for each content type:
- The columns (metadata) to be assigned to items of this type.
- The New, Edit, and View custom forms to use for this content type.
- The workflows that are available for items of this content type.
- The solutions or custom features that are associated with items of this content type.
- The information management policies that are associated with items of this content type.
- The Document Information Panel displayed incompatible Microsoft Office programs for items of this type of content.
- The document template for new items of this type (document content types only).
- The document conversions that are available for items of this content type (document content types only).
Content types give businesses a way to consistently manage and organize content between sites, lists, and libraries, and also make it possible for a single list or library to contain multiple item types or document types.
If a library has been configured to support multiple content types, the New Document menu will give users a list of available content types, and they can select the type that matches the type of document they want to create.
How Content Type Inheritance Works
Content types are organized into a hierarchy that allows one content type to inherit its characteristics from another type of content. This allows document categories to share attributes within a company while allowing teams to customize those attributes for particular sites or lists.
There are two basic types of content types: site content types and list content types.
Types of site content Content types that are defined at the site level are called site content types, and they are managed in the Site content type gallery for a site. Types of site content are available for use on any subsites of the site for which they were defined. For example, if a site content type is defined in the Site content type gallery for the top-level site in a site collection, it is available for use in lists and libraries on all sites in that site collection.
If content type publishing has been configured and in this site, the collection is a hub for content type publishing, these types of site content can be published to subscribe Web sites and applications.
List Content Types When you add a site content type to a list or library, it is called a list content type. List content types are children of the types of site content from which they are created.
How Inheritance Works for Site Content Types
When you define a new type of custom site content in the Site Content Type Gallery for a site, you choose an existing parent site content type in the Site Content Type Gallery as a starting point. You have access to a large number of standard website content types that you can use to create your own custom site content types. The new type of site content you create inherits all the attributes of your parent content type, such as the document template, the read-only setting, or the columns. Once you've created your new type of site content, you can make changes to any of these attributes.
Whenever you make changes to a site content type, you can specify whether you also want to update the child site or the list content types that inherit their attributes from the type of site content that you are upgrading. You can only update attributes that the child site or list content types share with a parent content type. If a child site content type was customized with additional attributes that the parent site content type does not have (for example, additional columns), those customizations are not overwritten when the child site content type is updated. Changes made to a site content type do not affect the parent site content type from which it was created.
The following figure shows how content type inheritance works. The Site Content Type Gallery for this top-level site contains three types of site content: Document, Design Spec, and Memo. The Design Spec and Memo content types are children of the Document content type and both share the Author column because they inherit it from the Document content type. On a subsite of this site collection, the Design Spec content type was used to create a new child content type, called Product Product X, which contains an additional column. Instances of new site content Product Spec X and the Memo content type are added to a library, where they function as list content types. The library contains columns relevant to both content types, including the Author column,
1. Type of site content with columns is represented by text in italics.
2. list content type
3. The library to which both types of content has been added columns displays relevant to both and items of each content type have metadata in the specific columns that are relevant to them.
How Inheritance Works for List Content Types
If a list or library is set to allow multiple content types, add content types to that list or library from the group of site content types that are available to your site.
When a content type is added to a list or library, it is possible that this list or library contains items of this type. The New Item or New Document command in this list or library allows users to create new items of this type. One of the major advantages of list and library content types is that they make it possible for a single list or library to contain multiple item types or document types, each of which may have unique metadata, policies, or behaviors.
When you add a content and site type to a list or library to make it available for use in that location, it is known as a list content type and is the child of the site content type from which it was created. This type of list content inherits all attributes of its parent site content type, such as its document template, read-only definition, workflows, and columns.
You can customize a list content type for the specific list or library to which it was added. These customizations do not affect the type of parent site content. If the parent site content type for a list content type is updated, its list content type will inherit those changes (if the person holding the site content type chooses to apply the updates to all types of content children).
If you have customized attributes shared by your list content type with your parent site content type, your customizations are overridden if updates to the parent site content type are forced for all content types that they inherit. If you customize your list content type by adding attributes that the parent content type does not have.
Content-Type Publication
Organizations can share content types across site collections in your deployment by using a Managed Metadata service application to configure content type publishing. Content-type publishing helps organizations manage content and metadata consistently across their sites because content types can be created and updated centrally, and updates can be served to multiple subscription site collections or to applications Web.
To configure content type publishing, the farm administrator must create a Managed Metadata service and configure it to designate a specific site collection as a hub for content type publishing. After the Managed Metadata service has been created and configured, the farm administrator will publish it. The farm administrator can use this published URL to connect other Web applications to this Managed Metadata service application and subscribe to their content types.
Your organization can configure multiple Managed Metadata services to share content types from multiple site collections. Individual Web applications can also have connections to multiple Managed Metadata services and subscribe to content types from multiple Hub sites.
The Managed Metadata service must be configured by an administrator.
If content type publishing has been configured for the Metadata service managed by an administrator, you can publish content types from the Site Content Type Gallery in a hub site collection to other subscription site collections. After a content type is published, it becomes read-only on subscription sites (although users can change their read-only status and make updates). Subscription site owners can use the content type as they are adding it to lists or libraries, or they can extend it by creating a new site or new types of list content based on it.
When the published content type is updated in the Site Content Type Gallery of the hub site, updates can be republished on subscription sites. The content type publication is managed by a timer job, which can be configured by the administrator. Depending on the frequency configured to run the timer job, there may be a gap between the publication of an updated content type and when subscription sites receive the updates.
Local versions of published content types are read-only on subscription sites (although users can change their read-only status and make updates). This helps organizations use content-type publishing to consistently support cross-site content management. If you delete a published content type in the Content Type Gallery from Sites for the hub site, any published version of it in subscription sites is not deleted. They will simply lose their read-only status and become editable.
Comments
Post a Comment