Content Type Syndication

I wanted to write about Content Type Syndication for some time and did not get a chance to spend some quality time writing about this. But I feel the time spent is worth because during this time I had an opportunity to implement content type syndication in couple of different environment and will try to share those scenarios here so we can understand how content type syndication is useful in achieving desired outcome.

Content Type syndication is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 that helps sharing of content types across sites. This was a needed feature in SharePoint to become a complete Enterprise Content Management System (ECM). In order to achieve content type syndication there is another service that Microsoft introduced in SharePoint 2010 which is Metadata Management Services (MMS).

What is Content Type Syndication hub and why is it necessary for ECM systems?

Well, for ECM or Web Content Management (WCM) there are situations where content is shared across multiple site collections.  Content Type is a better way to organize content in a site collection and also have templates (Word template or Excel Template) associated which makes the content creator life easier. Content Types are one the foundation for better document management. You can read more about content type here.

Content Type Syndication is a step forward in achieving Content Management capabilities because it lets you create the content type and share it across web application. You can even extend it to share across multiple farms.  This is will help in managing content type efficiently and effectively. Further, Content Type syndication helps in solving one of the most common and ubiquitous problem in SharePoint environment i.e uncontrolled prolific growth. This also helps in SharePoint governance and administration.

Two scenarios that I mentioned earlier in the post where I used content type syndication are

·         Regulatory System

·         External Facing Portal

Let me now tell you why we decided to use content type syndication in these scenarios. First of in the regulatory environment the system is completely validated and there should be no unwanted modifications in the system, further the documents in Regulatory systems are created in another environment. The other environment is used for Document Management and here is where the documents are created on a day to day basis. Once the documents are approved ready to be sent to the regulatory agencies these are converted to PDF and pushed into Regulatory System from where it will be published to regulatory bodies across the world. You could clearly see the need to share content type between 2 of these systems. If this was to be done in 2007, we would have to create content types in 2 separate environment (there are different ways to do it but I am not going in to this now) and if there is a need to change any content type or add new content type in future then validation needs to be done again on regulatory system. This is going to cost more but with Content type syndication now we enabled regulatory and document management system to consume content type from the hub and we now have single source and huge cost saving.

Content Type Syndication Part-2