Why you typically need many content types
As your organization begins to get Office 365 up and running and implementing SharePoint as an ECM (Enterprise Content Management) platform, questions regarding content types always arise when deploying sites and building libraries to host documents and sharing contents, such as:
What are content types?
Why use content types?
When to use content types?
How many content types do I need?
What are content types?
A content type is a reusable collection of metadata (columns) and settings for a list or a document library.
For example, you can have an “Invoice” document content type that have the following metadata (columns) to help group, sort, or filter invoices:
Vendor – to group or filter invoices by vendor
Invoice Number – to search for a specific invoice quickly
Invoice Date – to find invoices within date ranges, and group or filter by month, quarter, or year
Paid/Unpaid – to group or filter invoices based on payment status and help accounts payable to keep track of what is paid and unpaid
Why use content types?
At Gravity Union, we recommend creating and managing content types through a Content Type Hub, and then published and reused across the entire organization.
This allows you to:
Govern who can create and manage content types while making sure content types have defined use case scenarios and a good naming convention.
Have a one stop shop to see all the content types listed on one site.
Centrally manage and update all the content types, custom columns, and settings, rather than having the columns added locally at the library or list level. This way, if changes are required for a content type, you don’t have to go to each of the libraries or lists containing it to change it.
Avoid duplication of content types. When you have the same type of content, for example, meeting minutes or presentations, that have the same metadata (columns) requirements but live on different sites, by publishing and using the same content type, you won’t need to duplicate or add the same columns to its library each time.
Easily identify types of content for searchability. Users can surface all content with the same content type across the entire organization by using the Highlighted content webpart.
Utilize content types for conditional logic in your flows and classifications for retention policies.
When do you use content types?
We recommend getting into the habit of using content types and building a hierarchy of inheritance from the SharePoint core content types.
Even if you are not adding any custom metadata (columns) to a list or document library, it is still best practice to use content types. This allows a level of separation from using the core SharePoint “Document” and “Item” content types, while future-proofing your solution. For example, if your organization decides to add custom column(s) for all content within the organization, such as “Department” or “Function”, they can do so at the “[Organization Name] Document” level without having to add these columns to the core SharePoint “Document” or “Item” content types.
You can build your content type hierarchy by creating an “[Organization Name] Document” content type inheriting from “Document” for a document library, and an “[Organization Name] Item” content type inheriting from “Item” for a list. Then have all your other organizational content types inheriting from it, as shown below:
How many content types do you need?
Overall, content types fall under these two categories:
1. Generic Content Types
The column combination for the content is generic enough to be used across the entire organization regardless of department or type of content
Example: “Document by Year”, which contains the custom column “Year”
2. Specific Content Types
Exclusive to one type of content, where the column combination is so specific that it cannot be used for any other types of content
Example: “Invoice Document”, which contains the custom columns “Vendor”, “Invoice Number”, “Invoice Date”, and “Paid/Unpaid”
Generic content types usually make up 20-30% of total content types, while specific content types make up the rest. Specific content types are created by interviewing your business and understanding their business needs. The combination of metadata (columns) should reflect work processes and business requirements. Therefore, it is totally normal and okay to have hundreds of specific content types tailored to business needs depending on the size of your organization and the complexity of the solution.
Although you should not limit the number of specific content types if there is a need for it , you should still evaluate the metadata requirements to examine if other departments also have the same needs. If so, you can create a generic content type instead of making one for each department. An example would be meeting minutes, where you can use a generic “Meeting Minutes” content type for the whole organization, rather than having a “Finance Meeting Minutes”, “HR Meeting Minutes”, “IT Meeting Minutes”, etc., when the combination of the metadata (columns) required are the same.
That being said, if the metadata requirements for meeting minutes do vary by department, but also share a core set of metadata, you can create a “Meeting Minutes” content type that contains the shared metadata, and have Finance, HR, IT Meeting Minutes inherit from it, so that each department can add on their own specific metadata column(s) that only applies to that department.
In conclusion
In summary, here are some tips and best practices on content types:
Have one (1) content type per Library or List so users don’t need to pick which content type applies when they create or upload content
Group your content types by site or department to easily manage them in the Content Type Hub
Give your content type names that are easy to understand
Always check for an existing Content Type to reuse where appropriate
Always create content types centrally in the Content Type Hub and follow proper hierarchy
Content Types must be published before they come available on your sites, and republished if you make any changes