Create And Configure Content Type Hub In SharePoint

Content Type is a reusable collection of site columns, workflows, forms and other behavior related to list/library. Say we have a business requirement to implement recruitment for Admin, HR and QA departments. Each department will have its own lists to store information and business logic. Admin, HR, and QA will have the same set columns for capturing employee information but different workflows that are triggered upon item creation to handle recruitment process. In order to handle this scenario we can have a Parent Content Type, Say: Employee Information that holds columns specific to employee information like Name, Address, Experience, Previous Company etc. Then we can create Individual Content Types for Admin, HR and QA that will inherit from Employee Information. Specific workflows that define the recruitment process can be attached to each of the child Content Types. Content Types thus promotes reuse as well as caters to specific project requirements.

What is the use of Content Type Hub?

Content Type Hub was introduced in Share Point 2010 to work around an issue that existed in SharePoint 2007. The issue was we cannot reuse Content Types created in one Web Application in another Web Application. With Content Type Hub a centralized web application manages the Content Types. Other Web Applications can now subscribe to Content Type Hub and receive the published Content Types. Any updates to the Content Types in the CT hub are pushed to the subscribed web applications.

Let’s see how we can create a Content Type Hub.

Create a new Web Application and Site Collection under it.
Specify the name of the Site Collection and chose a site template

This will create a root site collection under the web application.
Go to the Site settings -> Site Collection Features and activate Content Type Syndication Hub feature. By doing this the Site is provisioned as a Content type hub.
Now go to Site settings -> Site Content Types. You will be able to see the default content Types. Click on Create to create a new Site Content Type.

Specify the Name, Parent Content Type and the Content Type collection group.
Click on OK. This will create the Content Type. Now click on Manage publishing for this Content Type.
Click on Publish so that it is available for all other Web applications subscribes to the CT Hub.

Now go to Central Administration -> Monitoring . You can see the below two Timer Jobs,

Content Type Hub
Content Type Subscriber
Run both of these jobs so that the timer job would pick up the recently created Content Types and push it to the subscribed web application.

Now go to one of the Sites which has subscribed to the CT Hub. You can see the new Content type listed in the Site Content Types.

Types

How to update an already created Content Type?

Let’s add new columns to the Content Type in the Content Type Hub and push the update to the subscribed web applications.

Types

Click on Add from new site column. Specify the Columns name and data type and click OK.

Add

Click on Manage publishing for this Content Type.

Manage

Now instead of Publish select Republish so that the updates will be pushed to the subscribed sites.

Publish

Go back to the Central Admin and run the Content Type Timer jobs.

Admin

This will push the changes to the subscribed Web applications. Thus the changes in the Content Type hub will be propagated to the subscribed sites.