SharePoint Content Types - FULL Walkthrough Series!

if you struggle with the concept of SharePoint content types or wondered what they even are I'm going to teach you in this video there's a lot of features inside SharePoint online content types are one of the Lesser understood features with most new SharePoint administrators and S owners it's a shame really because understanding this one concept changes how you build environments sites and internets what used to be very tedious and frankly boring work because a way to empower your site owners better yet it helps to organize information in a way that makes retrieving it much easier no matter what site that information was stored on content types are one of the core foundations of your SharePoint knowledge and much of what you learn will build on this let's get into it you're probably already familiar with creating SharePoint lists in libraries and adding custom Fields things like document category Department due date and so on you're probably used to Simply adding them to the document Library itself well that works fine but what if you want to add those fields to another Library if that library is on the same site you'll just go to the other library and repeat the same actions right that's where content types can be a huge timesaver here's how it works I'm not doing a demo of this in a live SharePoint environment because I think it's easier to understand the concept on paper or digital paper in this case instead of adding Fields directly to the library you going to create something called a content type A content type is essentially just a structure that defines your data a news article is an example it would have Fields like title category publish date expiration date and status when you create a content type it's empty without any Fields it's kind of like a container What it lets you do is add your custom Fields right inside that container when you do that everything gets packaged together this new package is how you'll save time you can go to a library that needs those fields and simply add the content type to it as soon as you do that all those custom Fields get added to the library automatically there's no need to add the fields individually if another Library needs them add the same content type to that Library too using content types let you rubber stamp your custom data structures as needed you can even add multiple content types to the same list or Library each with their own set of fields as opposed to what you might have been doing creating columns directly inside the list and libraries content types use site columns they're just like lists and Library columns but the main difference is reusability site columns can be used anywhere on the same SharePoint site including in our custom content type we also get additional benefits inside of SharePoint search which is the topic I'll cover in another video so now you know what content types are and how they're used but what's the real point to using this instead of adding columns directly to list and libraries sure you save time with content types but what else is there is there a bigger picture what's the endg game with content types if you create your content type on a site it could be reused on on any list or library on that site just like with site columns but if you create it in the content type Hub which sits above all your sites you could use that content type everywhere in your SharePoint environment that makes it possible to Define standards for storing data and makes the lives of your site owners much easier less work for you less work for them defining standards for storing common types of data like policies procedures news articles or any other type of data likely to be used across your environment is important it's also crucial for presenting that information in a common Hub like an Internet by adopting a common data structure across your internet you can more easily roll up content to display all news across your departments for example in other words you'll be able to execute a SharePoint search across all your environment and find all the data that used that content type this is one of the big ways you could start unleashing the power that SharePoint has storing information is important but the whole point of storing it is to find and retrieve that information as quickly and easily as possible all that starts with organization and content types are one of the best ways to organize your information I hope this has helped you better understand what content types are and how they help help you work better if you like this video please click that Thumbs Up Button And subscribe to the channel for more videos like this also let me know in the comments whether this has helped you and if there's a topic you'd like to see are you trying to set up content types for the first time this video is for you in my last video I talked about what content types are how they're best used and what the ultimate goal is if you haven't seen that catch up by clicking the link right there in this video we're going to go through the process and create some content types apply them to a library so we can see everything in action so what I've got here is just a sample site it's a communication site um doesn't really matter that much what template it is but we're going to go through the process what you need to do first and you might already be familiar with this you might not but go up to the gear icon and you're going to go to site contents there's a couple of other ways to get to it but this will work fine click on site settings up in the top right corner in the web designer galleries you're going to see the site columns and the site content types you can add the site columns by themselves first then add them to a content type what I prefer to do is just go straight into the content types so in the content type Gallery as you saw in the previous video there's all the content types that are already in the system in this case it was when the site was created it's just all the built-in content types so to create a new one we're going to click on create content type uh we'll call this one [Music] presentation so we're going to be building a document library that contains presentations manuals maybe just you know anything else that we could think of but we want to you know break out those particular content types to keep them you know better organized so we're going to call this presentation It'll ask you for for the category where does this need to get f filed it'll default to custom content types and that'll be fine for our purpose uh the next thing is what is a parent content type so we're going to be basing this off of an existing content type whether that's something like item for list items or document or a particular type of document maybe you're going to create a different type of page so you can have different types of SharePoint pages so we're going to be basing this one off of a document content type cuz I would imagine this would be like a PowerPoint presentation so for the content we're going to base this off of document so we're going to click on create here and so here's our bare content type it gives us one option title already there so what we need to do is we're going to add in an additional column uh notice here it'll let you create a brand new site column or pick an existing one if you've already created those in the site columns section of site settings so I'd like to create them all here so I'm going to create a new site column we'll call this one topic so the topic of the presentation just so maybe users can find or or organize their presentations by topic again uh category we're going to be just sticking with the default custom columns uh to kind of keep everything you know a little more separated from the uh the core and the system type uh categories for the field type if you look you got the same types of fields uh that you would creating columns in the list and Library so this one I will leave as a single line of text we could look at more options maybe I want this to be required that there is some sort of a topic if you giving a presentation there's probably going to be a topic so we're going to have that required and I think that'll be all we need we're going to click on Save and there is our new topic site column for our custom content type so you can continue adding more Fields but what I'm going to do is go back to the content type gallery and create my next content type this one I'll just call manual uh maybe we're storing product manuals in this uh in this document Library I I've kind of envisioned it you know some sort of a departmental document Library so this will kind of identify all the different manuals that we have so we can quickly find those if we need to again put this in the custom content types category again we're going to base this off of document types and document so we'll click create and we're going to add a column for uh let's call it product um because the manual is going to be based on some sort of a product so make this one required as well and all of that looks good we'll click save and there we have it we've got our two custom content types created ready to apply to a library if you're getting value from this video please do me a favor and click that like button so let's go next to Pyon contents and let's create a new library to house these so we're Insight contents now we're going to create a new document Library um we'll call this team files no we'll call this department [Music] files and what I want to do I don't like spaces in the URL so we're going to create this without the space and then we're going to go into Library settings CU we have to go to library settings anyway to add the content types we'll go in here and we'll add this space back that way the URL stays clean and we have a nice looking title once we're here the next step we have to go is to go into advanced settings we need to turn on the ability to add content y if you notice all we can do here is really just add columns there's no option to do anything with content types until we enable that feature so for that we're going to go into advanced settings and the very first option is what we're looking for allow management of content types now this is going to let us add and remove content types to our library all we need to do right now is just click yes on this and then just hit okay and now we've got a new section for Content types and it's already got the default one in there for just the generic document this will be kind of our catch all so I think we'll leave document in here and we'll just add our two new ones so if you're adding something that's not a presentation and it's not a manual then it would just default to document to add new content types what we're going to do is click on the add from existing content types [Music] button we'll go to custom content types and we see our two new types right here so we'll just click on each one of them and add them and click okay when we're done and there we are we have three content types now um you notice it'll it'll let you pick which uh should be visible on the new button so when someone clicks on new which ones should be allowed to show up so you may want to hide some uh and then the default content type by default if if you just drag and drop a document on onto the library what is that content type going to be and we'll see that in action because we're going to drag a document on here and see what happens and go through the process of of switching that so we've got our content types added as I mentioned in my last video If you scroll down you will see that our new fields that were on the content types have been added we have product here and it shows that it's used in the manual content type [Music] we've got topic let's use on presentation so if we go back up to Department files we are ready to start trying out these features if you look on the new button we see our content types now the one of the issues is presentations are going to be PowerPoint files that's you know kind of what I've already envisioned for this so we we don't need a word icon up there we really need a PowerPoint icon so how do we get this well what we need to do is we need to go back to library settings for presentations we can click on [Music] this and this will take us to the instance of the content type that's been applied to the library again think of a hierarchy uh with how these are being applied but if we change it at this level it'll apply it just to our document library and I think for that for this demonstration I think that's what we want to do we're just going to update this library for that we're going to go to advanced settings and we're going to pick the PowerPoint template just a normal PowerPoint file and then we're going to click okay so now our presentation content type has a default template let's see how that looks we're going to go back to Department Department files and we're going to check the new button now that looks better so now that we're here let's go through the process of creating a new presentation so we're going to click on the [Music] link and it takes us into the PowerPoint so we'll type in a little bit of text this is a test of content types and then don't forget to give it a good [Music] name and that'll be good so with that we'll go back to SharePoint it still showing the default name so I'll just give it a refresh and there's a new file now if you notice it's saying there's a problem we're we're missing required information and we know we've got a custom field on there so if we click on this and go to the info panel and we'll see our topic there's our custom field uh so for the topic of this I'll put in [Music] SharePoint all right now that that's done the other thing I wanted to demonstrate is uploading a file let's say we've got that manual somewhere and we're going to upload a manual so I've got a test file that we'll use as our manual I'm uploading it and here's our new file over in the info panel you will see that it defaulted to that document content type and this is going to be a manual so we're going to change this and you'll see our other content types here we'll change it to manual and you'll see our new product field here so here's where we can start really utilizing those custom fields for our custom content types and for this it was a manual for product X so for the product I'll just put in product X so we've got our two files here we need to kind of see those custom fields in my opinion so let's edit the view and let's add in [Music] product and [Music] topic so you see we could have both fields on here even though they're only applying to one particular content type and you see that they only put in the information needed for that content type so you have two content types sitting side by side on here and everything's working fine taking this one step further what we really want to do is have new views created so that people can go just see the manuals just see the presentations so let's create some new views [Music] so we've got our manuals let's go edit this and add a [Music] filter for the filter we're just going to specify the content type and then just set it equal to manual all right that's done let's make a copy of this call this [Music] presentations and let's update the [Music] filter we'll set that equal to presentation so we've got views set up to show our new custom content types users can click between them and find what they need to find they can still go back to all documents and they can see everything and that's all there is to it I hope this has been useful and that you've learned something let me know your thoughts down in the comments below check the videos above for more content and don't forget to like this video And subscribe to the channel for more content like this want to know how to create and deploy content types across your whole environment we're covering that in today's video stay until the end for a huge tip that you don't want to miss let's get into it continuing in this process we're talking about publishing content types for all your sites to use let's use a corporate PowerPoint template as an example we're going to create a content type that'll house a branded PowerPoint template this could apply to many situations though like a sales quote template to start we're going to go into the SharePoint admin Center under content Services you will find the content type gallery now this is where all the content types are defined with which are available to all sites in the template so let's create the new content type we've seen this form before so I won't explain all the options uh to see a more in-depth guide of this process check out the second video in this series for now I'm going to create corporate presentation and we'll make this big based on [Music] document okay now that that's created let's add our custom template so for that we'll go up to settings and advance settings and let's upload our [Music] template all finished uh but now we need to publish this so it's available for all the sites to use uh so let's go ahead and do that we go up to publish and the only option is publish so we click save and now that it's published we can go to the site we've been working on and apply it to a library so we'll go to site content and we we have the documents Library here uh I think this would be fine to use so let's add a content type to this and we enable that in advanced [Music] settings and then if we go to add existing content types there's our corporate presentation so we click on ADD [Music] and let's test it to make sure it works icon's looking good already let's see how it works and that's all the really is to it um you could add this to sites as needed or incorporate it into a P&P template to add it with Powershell um so let's say you get a content type published uh and now you need to update that template uh maybe there's been a rebranding so here's how you do that so we're going to go back to the admin Center where our our content type lives um and we're going to update it here so we can go back to advanced settings and we're just going to upload a new one and I've got a slightly rebranded version of that template so we've saved that change but now we need to republish this content type so under publish we have the option to republish uh since we've made changes uh you could have added uh Fields um you know pretty much anything you would normally do to a content type you could do at this point but it'll still be required to republish this so we're going to click save so now we republish the content type uh but there is another step that's needed you're going to need to pull that content type from all your sites you could probably script this with Powershell but this is how Microsoft currently recommends performing this update so if we go to the site that's using our content type we're going to go into site settings and we're going to go under site collection Administration to content type publishing and from here you could see any content types that this is currently used that were that were published from the uh content type Gallery in SharePoint admin here we see that we've got our one content type what we're going to need to do is put a check here and refresh all published content Types on next update and then click okay what this is going to do is that there's a timer job that's running on the tenant uh I believe it runs every 4 hours the next time that job runs it's going to refresh the content type on this site so the update should have finished by now and let's see if the new template's showing up yep and there's the new template that was pushed into the content type Hub and pulled from this site and that's all there really is to it for the bonus tip I'm going to show you what you can do with these content types once you've got them deployed we're going to go into Library settings and we're going to click on corporate presentation if you look in the URL you'll see the content type ID for this content type and this live Library if you wanted to find all the content through search that's in this Library matching that content type you could simply search using that ID in a kql statement now if you wanted to find all the corporate presentations in your environment regardless of what library they're in you don't use this content type ID since this is scoped specifically for this Library instead you go to the SharePoint admin Center where we have our corporate presentation content type defined we're going to click on the content type and you'll see this content type ID notice how the first part is identical to what we have in our library that's how SharePoint builds out the content type IDs so using these IDs you could search your entire environment based off of this or you could search a particular site based off of this and that's how you Unleash the Power of SharePoint search and content types if you get value from this video please click that like button and subscribe to the channel for more content like this

Channel: Steve Corey - MVP

Views: 2,863

Keywords: sharepoint content types best practices, sharepoint content types list, sharepoint content types examples, sharepoint content types explained, content type in sharepoint online, overview of content type in sharepoint online, Sharepoint content type not updating, sharepoint content types vs metadata, sharepoint content type id, sharepoint content type, sharepoint online content type, sharepoint content type gallery, sharepoint content type heirarchy, Sharepoint content type hub

Id: x8jhmOZKe9Y

Length: 26min 7sec (1567 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 06 2023