Content Types Overview

A content type represents a group of informational items in your organization that share common properties. You can define these properties, which include name, description, a grouping category, to meet your business needs. In addition, you can adjust the properties associated with templates, workflow, site columns, and policy management as well as the settings for the document information panel. You can change these properties at any time and optionally apply those changes to your entire environment.

Tip 

For more on the various content properties and what they do, see the section “The Anatomy of a Content Type.”

SharePoint offers several content types that provide solid foundations for all future content types. You can select one of these content types and use it to create your content type in the central gallery, where you can then apply it to multiple lists and libraries throughout a site collection. By creating new content types, you can apply rules and properties to customize information and tie it to your business activities. Once you define your content type, you can create a new item by selecting the appropriate template from a drop-down menu presented by the New command on your library toolbar (see Figure 6-1). This chapter discusses the various elements of a content type as well as some of the configuration and customization alternatives of the most common content types.

Figure 6-1

Storing Custom Content Type

It’s important where you store a custom content type in the site hierarchy. If you use it throughout your organization in many sites, you should store it in the content type gallery of the top-level site. For more specialized content, you might create content that will apply to a specific site and its subsites.

Most organizations have company rules for storing documents that ensure that documents adhere to the corporate culture and procedures. Such practices are becoming more and more commonplace with initiatives related to new regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires a greater level of accountability regarding information and auditing.

When you create a content type, you must select a parent, from which it will automatically inherit any existing settings for a template, workflow, or metadata columns. You should consider the content types you need for your organization and then identify any relations they may have with each other or inheritances that they share so that you can place similar content types into groups. Using the same parent for each of these content types means you can filter based on the parent and include information from all child content types. For example, to manage your workflow, you company may need a general leave request form that reflects each division. You can create a standard leave request content type and then create each divisional content type using it as the template. All metadata and the form template become automatically associated with each divisional content type; however, you can define a unique workflow process for each child content type to allow different departmental managers to approve requests. You can easily update the form; because each divisional content type is based on the same parent, edits to the parent copy down into each child.

Tip 

In Chapter 7, you review how certain Web Parts support filtering based on content type.

To show you how to use content types, this section presents two Try It Outs. In the first, you see how to create a new content type, and in the second, you see how to edit one of the content types that SharePoint has to offer to suit your needs.

Try It Out-Create a New Content Type

You need to manage your company’s sales proposals in a more organized fashion as well as provide more automated support to the sales team during the proposal creation stage. This includes giving them access to a standard proposal template as well as an automated review and approval workflow process. To reach your goal, you must first create the initial shell of the content type, which you can later modify to include elements such as templates, standard metadata, and workflow processes. In this example, you create a financial report content type based on the document parent content type, and place it in a group.

1. From the top level of your site collection, select Site Actions Site Settings. A Site Settings window appears. If the top-level site is a publishing site such as a collaboration portal, you may also have to select Modify All Settings.

2. Under the Galleries section, select Site Content Types.

3. Click the Create button. The New Site Content Type screen appears, as shown in Figure 6-2.

   
   Figure 6-2

4. In the Name field, type a name for the content type. For this example, use Financial Report.

5. In the Description field, type a description for the content type. For this example, use Financial Report (Spreadsheet).

6. From the Select Parent Content Type From drop-down menu, select the group name for the content type on which you are basing your new content type. For this example, select Document Content Types.

7. From the Parent Content Type drop-down menu, select the name of the content type on which you are basing your content type. All new content types must have a parent, so typically you will select a parent that contains a similar template, a similar workflow process, or similar metadata columns to the item you are creating. For this example, use the Document content type.

8. From the Put This Site Content Type Into section, select either an Existing Group or create a New Group. In this example, use a new group name called Financial Information.

9. Click the OK button to create the custom content type.

How It Works

Site content types allow you to manage multiple document types and templates from a single location. Once you have created a content type and associated it with a group, it becomes available in your list of site content types, which can then be associated with a particular library. Your content type is then accessible via your library’s New drop-down menu (see Figure 6-1).

Try It Out-Edit an Existing Content Type

SharePoint offers many site content types that are preconfigured to support a variety of business situations. To save time, you can use one of these existing content types as a starting point and edit it to suit your own particular organizational needs. Editing an existing content type is easy. Just follow these steps:

Tip 

In steps 6 through 14, you are creating a column to add to your content type. For more on creating columns in SharePoint, see Chapter 4.

1. From the top level of your site collection, select Site Actions Site Settings.

2. Under the Galleries section, select Site Content Types.

3. From the Financial Information Types section, select Financial Report.

4. Select Add from new site column. The New Site Column window appears, as shown in Figure 6-3.

   
   Figure 6-3

5. In the Column Name field, type Owner.

6. From the Type of Information in This Column section, select Person or Group.

7. Create a new group for site columns called “Standard Classifications.”

8. Select Yes for Require That This Column Contains Information.

9. In the Update All Content Types Inheriting from This Type, leave the default value of Yes selected. This ensures that any list or library to which you’ve added your content type will update automatically.

10. Click the OK button to update the content type.

How It Works

For step 4, in the Columns section you will notice there is only one piece of metadata: Title. Most companies require you to supply a document owner. Note that when you select Yes in step 9 and create a new metadata column for this site content type, SharePoint automatically updates all lists and libraries already using the content type (provided the option is selected). This is a fast and effective way enforcing simple rules across multiple lists or libraries.