Sharepoint 2013 : Content Model and Managed Metadata - Content Type Hubs

Content types provide a powerful classification of contents in SharePoint, if it is a document, an article of list, a page of edition, or external data. Most contents of SharePoint the satisfied types some share implies. SharePoint 2007 presented the satisfied types, and the users of SharePoint never did not look at behind since.However, in SharePoint 2007, content types had a major limitation—the scope of a content type went no higher than a site collection. SharePoint best practice is to use multiple site collections in large content systems to distribute content across content databases. This made for a major headache in managing content types in a large enterprise content management system. SharePoint 2010 and 2013 solve this issue with content type hubs.

During the creation process, SharePoint allows the administrator to specify the site collection as a content type hub. As long as the Managed Metadata Service administrator has Site Collection Administration rights to a site collection, he or she can specify this site collection as the hub for all new content types. The content type hub is effectively the authoritative site collection for the management of content types, and all other content types that subscribe to the same Managed Metadata Service may share content types from the hub.

Note  When delegating a site collection as a new content type hub, I recommend leaving the option to Report Syndication Errors so that the log contains important errors if content types fail to synchronize across site collections.

The following steps confirm the existence of a content type hub for an existing Managed Metadata Service Application, or the option to delegate a site collection as a content type hub:

1. Open Central Administration.
2. Click the Manage Service Applications link.
3. Scroll down to the Managed Metadata Service (or name you gave it).
4. Select the service (do not click it) and then click the Properties icon from the ribbon.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the dialog that appears in the content type hub section (Figure 1).

   

   Figure 1. Configure the content type hub in the Managed Metadata Service

6. Ensure that a URL of a site collection exists in the field.
7. Ensure that the check box for Report Syndication Errors is checked.

Note  Ensure that you enable the Content Type Hub Syndication feature for the site collection that is to act as a content type hub.

With the hub established, head over to the site collection content type hub and see the introduction of new site collection settings.

1. Navigate to the Content Type Hub Site Collection URL in your browser.
2. Access the Site Settings page and scroll to the Site Collection Administration section.
3. You should notice two links: Content Type Publishing and Content Type Service Application Error Log.

SharePoint manages publication of content types from the hub and subscription to published content types from consumers of the hub via two timer jobs. The content type hub job publishes all new content types from the hub where the site collection administrator has marked a content type for publishing. This job also manages the syndication error log. The content type subscriber job exists for all applications where a contained site collection subscribes to the hub for a published content type.