Content types seem to be a “hot” item in SharePoint. But customers sometimes get confused about when to use content types. Content types can contain custom metadata requirements, but as we’ve mentioned custom columns is normally the way to get metadata into SharePoint. Custom columns work great if all of the documents in your document library will have the same metadata fields, but what happens if I want to collect different metadata for documents in the same document library? That’s where content types come in.
Content types are a means of encapsulating a data schema and making it independent of a SharePoint document library. A content type can include the following information:
- The metadata, or properties, you want to assign to this type. These are represented by columns added to the document library when you add the content type.
- Custom New, Edit, and Display forms to use with this content type.
- Workflows available for items of this content type.
- For document content types, the document template on which to base documents of this type.
- Any information necessary for custom solutions associated with this content type. You can store this information in the content type as one or more XML documents.
Consider a document library for all documents that relate to a legal department. The library may contain contracts and also legal guidelines. For contracts we may want to collect the signing authority as metadata. For legal guidelines we may want to collect the department it was written for. We won’t want to prompt the user for a signing authority when they create a new Legal Guideline, as that metadata is only applicable to contracts. The solution to this problem is to create two content types. In this scenario we will want to create a Contract content type and a Legal Guideline content type. When a new document is created, SharePoint will prompt the user for the content type (contract or legal guideline), and once selected, the appropriate metadata prompt will be displayed. The examples below show the metadata prompt when a new contract, or legal guideline is created.
Content types by themselves can also be considered metadata. Knowing the content type will tell you something about the document. For example, knowing the document is of content type “Contract” tells you something about that document. You may want to sort or search based on this content type e.g. find all Contract content types in the Legal document library. So content types by themselves, even without additional custom columns, also act as valuable metadata.
Content types can be defined at the site level so that they can be reused in many document libraries. Custom columns can be defined at either the document library or the site level. I would recommend you use content types if you non-standardized metadata, or if you have templates or workflow you want to associate with certain types of documents. If you have standardized metadata or a classification taxonomy you want to apply to all the documents in your organization, I would use custom columns defined at the site level.
To define a content type, go into Site Settings, select Site content types, and click the Create icon. Once you have given the content type a name and clicked OK, you will be able to define advanced properties. Scroll down this page and add the columns you want to collect as metadata for this content type.
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