Managing Content Types


An important aspect of managing a SharePoint site or environment is to understand how to combine and manage the information that a team or group shares. In this section, you discover some of the common management tasks that ensure that users in your organization can easily share and use your content types.

Enabling Content Type Management on a Library

While many things have changed in the 2007 version of SharePoint Products and Technologies, Microsoft has maintained a consistent experience for users moving from one version to another. For this reason, content types unavailable in previous versions are not enabled on a document library by default. Luckily, enabling content type management on a library is easy, as the next Try It Out demonstrates.

Try It Out-Enable Content Type Management on a Library

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For this example, you enable content management on a previously created document library. Once you do so, you can manage multiple unique content types and their associated elements from the document library settings page. Until this feature is enabled on a document library, the functionality related to content type management are hidden.

  1. Select the document library on which you want to enable Content Type Management.

  2. From your document toolbar, select Settings image from book Document Library Settings, as shown in Figure 6-18.

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    Figure 6-18

  3. Select Advanced Settings from the General Settings section of the Customize page. The Advanced Settings window appears, as shown in Figure 6-19.

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    Figure 6-19

  4. In the Allow Management of Content Types section, select the Yes option.

  5. Click the OK button.

How It Works

SharePoint supplies several default content types based on common business patterns such as announcements,tasks,and issues.In addition,any Site content types that you have created on the current site or a parent site will also be available for you to add to your document library.See Figure 6-20 for a view of the administrative page of a document library after content types have been enabled and added to the library.

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Figure 6-20

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Managing Multiple Content Types in a Library

Today’s technology requires working with various types of content, which means managing many document templates, business processes, and information policies. Previous versions of SharePoint Products and Technologies meant you could only associate a single document template with a document library, so you had to have a large number of document libraries just to accommodate unique document templates and classification requirements. By associating multiple content types with a document library in SharePoint 2007 (shown in the next Try It Out), however, you can freely manage all important information from a single location. These can be different types of templates using the same format, or completely different applications such as Excel, InfoPath, PowerPoint, or Word. This means you can save a tremendous amount of time because you can edit and share multiple types of documents from the same location.

Try It Out-Associate Multiple Content Types with a Library

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You can set up multiple content types on a single library by following these steps:

  1. From the document library on which you want to enable multiple content types, select Settings image from book Document Library Settings.

  2. From the Content Types section, select Add from Existing Site Content Types.

  3. To make content types easier to locate and associate, SharePoint places them in groups. Select Document Content Types from the Select Parent Content Type From drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 6-21.

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    Figure 6-21

  4. From Available Site Content Types, select Basic Page and Web Part Page and then click Add.

    Tip 

    You can hold the Ctrl or Shift keys to make multiple selections.

  5. Click the OK button to complete the process.

How It Works

When you associate multiple content types with a document library, they become available in the drop-down menu of the New item on your document library toolbar where you can select the type of document you want to create. For example, you might have a content type for Meeting Minutes associated with a Word template and a Financial Report content type associated with an Excel spreadsheet, as shown in Figure 6-22.

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Figure 6-22

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Customizing List or Library Views Based on Specific Content Types

Although managing and creating multiple types of content from a single list or library is a powerful feature, it can also make things difficult to manage. As information builds up in the library, you should identify what views and reports your users will require and create custom views that only display items from a specific content type. A view is a way of displaying a customized subset of items from a larger set of items in a list or library.

For example, a document library on a project management site might contain a variety of project artifacts such as project plans, scope documents, and status reports. Each of these categories represents unique content types. The following Try It Out shows how to configure a custom view.

Try It Out-Configure a Custom View Based on Content Type

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One of the most powerful features of tagging items with metadata is creating custom views of content so that only a subset of the documents displays based on certain criteria being met. In this example, you create a custom view that only displays items from a specific content type.

  1. Following the steps previously outlined in “Create a New Content Type” Try It Out at the beginning of the chapter, create a content type called Project Scope Document and associate a Word document as a template.

  2. Associate your Project Scopes Document content type with a document library as discussed in the “Associate Multiple Content Types with a Library” Try It Out.

  3. From the document library’s toolbar, select Settings image from book Create View, as shown in Figure 6-23.

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    Figure 6-23

  4. From Choose a View format, select Standard View.

  5. In the View Name section, type Project Scope Documents.

  6. Scroll down to the Filter section and select Content Type from the Show Items drop-down menu.

  7. In the field below Is Equal To, select Project Scope Document as shown in Figure 6-24.

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    Figure 6-24

  8. Scroll to the bottom and click the OK button.

How It Works

After creating a view, it becomes available in the View drop-down menu on your document library toolbar. Selecting the Project Scope Documents view will show only the items created using the Project Scope Documents content type. See Figure 6-25.

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Figure 6-25

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Beginning SharePoint 2007. Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007
Beginning SharePoint 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007 (Programmer to Programmer)
ISBN: 0470124490
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 131

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