For years, one of the most fundamentally powerful capabilities in SharePoint has been Content Types. Content Types should underlie all good information architectures, along with customised metadata (Site Columns) and managed metadata which embodies the taxonomy for *your* organisation. Yet far too often, SharePoint users simply upload Documents into Document Libraries and wonder why no magic happens. In this session, we’ll demystify some of these basic SharePoint capabilities to show you how you can really make your Intranet, Team Site, or Publishing Sites sing. It doesn’t matter if you’re on SharePoint 2007, 2010, or 2013, or on SharePoint Online in Office365. With search underlying so much of the value that SharePoint offers these days, a good understanding of these concepts is imperative to ensure your success.

1. Content Types: Love Them
or Lose It
Marc D Anderson

2. Who Is Marc?
•

3. Session Overview
 For years, one of the most fundamentally powerful capabilities in
SharePoint has been Content Types. Content Types should underlie all
good information architectures, along with customized metadata (Site
Columns) and managed metadata which embodies the taxonomy for your
organization. Yet far too often SharePoint users simply upload Documents
into Document Libraries and wonder why no magic happens.
 In this class, we’ll demystify some of these basic SharePoint capabilities to
show you how you can really make your Intranet, Team Site, or Publishing
Sites sing. It doesn’t matter if you’re on SharePoint 2007, 2010, or 2013, or
on SharePoint Online in Office365. With search underlying so much of the
value that SharePoint offers these days, a good understanding of these
concepts is imperative to ensure your success.

9. You See Content Types Every Time You Use
SharePoint
The out of the box Content Types are generic and don’t
represent your business objects
Item Document
Event Announcement
Task

10. What Is a Content Type?
A collection of structured and unstructured data that
taken together represents a business object
Inherits from an existing Content Type and is built up by
adding additional Site Columns

11. What Is a Content Type NOT?
 It’s not a file type, e.g., DOCX or XLSX
 It’s not [usually] just a media type, e.g., movie, document, etc.

12. When in Doubt, Use a Content Type
 Benefits
‒ Consistent structure
‒ Easier management
‒ Improved search
‒ Move content through a process with workflow
 Downside
‒ Up front planning and implementation work

13. Content Types are Collections of Site Columns…
Inherited
columns
Content Type
specific
columns
System-
managed
Name

14. …Plus Some Other SharePoint Goodness
 Workflows
 Retention policies
 Site Columns become managed properties for search

15. New Content Types Inherit from Existing Content
Types
Inherited
columns
Content Type
specific
columns
System-
managed
Name

16. Content Types Enable You to…
 Show me all of the Proposals we lost in the last month
 How many Status Updates has Ralph authored?
 Let’s show Announcements from across the departments on the
home page
 We should start tracking revenue for each type of Contract

17. Be a Little Pedantic
 Content Types are singular, e.g., Item, Document, Event
 List and Libraries are plural: e.g., Shared Documents,
Announcements
 Contrary to common belief, words matter

18. Content Type Hub
 The Content Type Hub lets you shared information architecture
across Site Collections
 Hidden Site Collection on Office365 at
https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/contentTypeHub/
Hidden Content Type Hub on Office365 Tenants http://sympmarc.com/2014/11/25/hidden-content-type-hub-on-office365-tenants

19. Recognizing the Content Type Hub

20. Publishing a Content Type

21. Tips and Tricks: Management
 Create groups for Site Columns and Content Types with leading
underscores _

22. Tips and Tricks: Maintenance
Document
Org Base Document
Contract
SharePoint Content Type
Interstitial Content Type
Useful Content Types Real Estate Contract Employment Contract
Parent Content Type

23. Tips and Tricks: Reference Data
 Use Site Columns in the root of the Site Collection for lookups
‒ Centralizes reference data for management
‒ Can’t be in the Content Type Hub, sadly
 Managed metadata vs. List-based lookups

24. Demo

25. Thank you to our sponsors!

26. Contact Information
Email marc.anderson@sympraxisconsulting.com
Twitter @sympmarc
Blog http://sympmarc.com
SPServices http://spservices.codeplex.com
SPXSLT http://spxslt.codeplex.com
Books http://sympmarc.com/books
The Middle Tier Manifesto http://bit.ly/middletier