Wednesday, June 25, 2008
EndUserSharePoint.com: A Beginner’s Guide to Content Types
This week’s screencast, A Beginner’s Guide to Content Types, walks through the process of creating Content Types to help manage a Documentation Library. This is a continuing series of screencasts that started with Doug Cornelius ‘ case study and another screencast, Overview of Content Types.
This week’s screencast should give you a basic idea of how you might consider implementing Content Types in your SharePoint project. Beginning End Users have a hard time with this concept, so if you have a case study example of a use for content types, it would be very much appreciated.
Please let me know how you liked the screencast. — Mark
Awesome! Two comments:
(1) Instead of creating a subpage for every type of item (let’s say you had 50 items, that would be a lot of manual labor!), can’t we just create one subpage and dynamically set the type that is used to filter the views in the web parts when you select an item from a list? Like in regular web programming when you pass a parameter to the web page and the content is dynamically generated.
(2) Would it be possible to use a site column (of type choice) to categorize the data instead of content types?
Marc, your latest content type screencast already helped me in 2 minutes solve a problem I was facing for 3 hours !
Much appreciated, thx a lot :-)
Excellent article. I am just learning about content types, so this has helped greatly.
One thing I am not so sure on – what is the difference between a publishing page and a web part page? Does publishing prevent end users from checking out? What is the benefit to a publishing page?
I think I answered my own question (#1). If you use a query string filter web part, then you should be able to create a web part page that contains your list, and depending on the value you provided in your parameter string, you will filter your list.
I need to figure out a way to dynamically derive a link when a user chooses a value from a list of choices, so that selecting from the list will call the page that has the query string filter web part and provide it with the appropriate value.
@Mark, your #1 and #2 questions are actually linked!
Yes, you can use query strings (like many web applications) to send data to a page and have it filter results. There are several ways to do this: manually typed links, calculated columns, SharePoint designer’s Data View Web Part, or XSL (see below)–to name a few.
To answer #1, my favorite method to generate a dynamic link involves manipulating the data from a list or document item using XSL and the Content Query Web Part (CQWP). I don’t have to “unghost” my page, I can reuse the web part, and I don’t need special software (notepad works fine).
But to do this, the data must have a content type. So, to answer #2, you could use metadata to separate and filter records, but content types give you a framework to build on later.
Jen, a Publishing page is provided by MOSS, nota available in WSS only, it has the additional edit toolbar, is stored in special Pages library,can be submitted/routed through a content approval process prior to publishing. There are several page templates available to control the layout of a Publishing page.
HTH
Dean
love the screencast.
Personally, I find the use of content types to be very valuable when use multiple document libraries to reunite the information.
For a single document library like I (and you) set up for “Using Your Computer” I find the column and view sorting to work just fine without the content type. If I had the documentation spread across other sites or other libraries, then I would use content types. I find the power of content types to be their ability to unite information spread across the site collection into one place.
I like that you added a visual to the start page for using your computer. Personally, I would have used the small icons and text that you have in the flowchart. Then you could get much more information above the fold. You would also combine the good visuals of the icon with the text for sorting.
@Mark
I am not a big fan of the dynamically generated webpart.
The advantage of having the separate page is findability. You get a simple URL for the page. And the page comes back great in the search results.
Using the multiple pages feeding from a single document library, you have the ease of administering just one library to keep your documents up to date.
Your dynamic page will not come back poorly in search results. If I search for powerpoint tips would I find your dynamic page?
Sure it takes more effort to create the separate pages. But you only have to administer the content in the single documentation library.
I never use OOB content types in production when I have a choice.
It’s a lot more work to add a site column to a new content type then change the type of every document you own than just start with a child of Document from the start.
Users should not be able to use Document in a controlled setting, that allows them to avoid site column policies set by administrators (administrators should not change Document).
@Doug
Keywords, Best Bets, Authoritative Pages, and search scopes should be used to control user search experience, you can’t rely on metadata and page names alone.
There are a couple of reasons for this: PowerPoint and Excel files are ranked higher than HTML or Word documents.
Second, a primary factor for ranking results is text analysis. Someone looking for “tips” will often find the resource that uses “tips” more frequently. If I create a page that aggregates your tips and my tips, my page comes up first.
Third, URL matching ranks items with the search term in the URL higher than others. So a subsite or library called “tips” will push those pages higher in the results. If you rest on your metadata, you could get outranked when the site collection grows.
If you avoid content types, someone could easily name their column (or a site column) the same thing as your library. This could dramatically change search result rankings and even confuse users about what they’re seeing in search results.
If someone sets an authoritative page for “tips”, the closer you are to that page, the higher your ranking. Again, IT could setup “tips” for SQL databases and use an authoritative page. If you just rely on metadata, you will fall in the rankings.
AutoSponge, thanks for the advice. I don’t seem to have a Content Query Web Part available to me, so I can’t test that out.
Doug, I think you are right that a dynamic page will not come up in an SP search. But I may be indexing my SP site with another indexing engine, that will simply follow links. If the landing page of my site has a list of links to each dynamic page (http://site/page.aspx?hotel=Hilton, http://site/page.aspx?hotel=Sheraton, etc.), then the indexer will be able to crawl every dynamic “page”.
What I would really like to do is be able to provide a list of values (Hilton, Sheraton, etc.), say from a database or choice field, and then have a web part that iterates through the list and creates a link to every dynamic page. Kind of like a Links web part on steroids. There must be a simple way to do this, but I have not figure it out yet.
@autosponge
I did not follow all of your reasons. I agree that you cannot rely on a page name alone. Having a page full of related documents works really well. The separate page works for findability, both browsing and searching.
I am not advocating to ignore content types. I just thought it was overkill for this particular use.
And I do not know the finer points of content types. Perhaps Mark will do some posts on intermediate and advanced uses of content types.
@mark
You can do what you want with CQWP or, possibly easier, Dataview Web Part in SPD. Manipulate the base URL and your variable with the concat() XSL function for the results you seek.
@doug
I admit; I’m biased because I wear all the hats on my server. I’m the administrator, developer, architect, and [power] user.
Trying to enforce policies without content types is nearly impossible. And, without code, I haven’t found a way to switch types in bulk (data view will not allow you to change it).
Great overview for those of us who are learning. I have inherited the maintenance of a document collaboration site and should like to switch the parent site into a publishing site, is that possible?
Julie – I’m going to use this as the Question of the Day because it is an important one.
Thanks for the question.
Mark
Mark,
While my work in SharePoint has been limited, my supervisor wants me to view this presentation and duplicate the site. I am running into a few problems:
1] when I try to create a new SharePoint Site and select the Publishing tab template, the only thing that appears there is “News Site.” Where do I find the templates for “Publishing Site” and “Publishing Site with Workflow?”
2] if I try to create the site using the News Site I get the following error message “The Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature must be activated at the site collection level before the Publishing feature can be activated.”
I do have some administrative rights, but when I can go to the Site Features page and try to activate the “Office Sharepoint Server Publishing” feature, I get the following error message – “Required Features One or more features must be turned on before this feature can be activated. Office SharePont Server Publishing Infrastructure. Provides centralized libraries, content types, master pages and page layouts and enables page scheduling and other publishing functionality for a site collection.”
Office SharePont Server Publishing Infrastructure does not appear in my list of features. Is that something I need to have my systems administrator activate and where do we find that?
I appreciate any assistance you can offer.
Thanks, Lee
Lee,
Check with the site collection admin and verify all publishing features have been activated.
Mark