Forum Discussion
Editing Site Columns on Sub-Sites Doesn't modify the parent Site Column
This has always been an issue in SP, the fact the site columns created at the top of the collection are indistinguisable from those created at lower levels makes it very confusing. One thing you can do is create Content Types at the top level to bundle site columns together (or in the Content Type hub) and then train the subsite admins to use the CTs.
Dean_Gross yeah I keep running into the concept of Content Types everywhere I turn. I have read a lot about them but am struggling to figure out how to actually implement them in my situation. Do you know of any good tutorials?
I probably just need to try poking at it until I fumble my way to some sort of understanding - like I am with Site Columns. I think I have remade some of these columns 4 times now..... which means any views I made or metadata I applied is all worthless.
Take a look at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Introduction-to-content-types-and-content-type-publishing-E1277A2E-A1E8-4473-9126-91A0647766E5?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US and https://collab365.community/understanding-content-type-hub-cth-in-sharepoint-2013/. The 2nd article shows how to set up a Content Type hub in SP 2013, but that is done for you in SPOnline so you can just focus on the first few sections of the article.
My strong recommendation is to start with something simple. Just create one CT and play around with it, it is very easy to get too elaborate too soon and this can cause a lot of pain and rework.
Dean_Gross just dipping my toes into content types. I've watched several tutorials and read several articles but haven't come across one thing in particular.
Is there a way to set default lookup metadata on a specific content type?
Think of content types as a set/package of site columns that you can apply to a list or document library all in one go. While the columns can be changed downstream, any changes made at the top-site/source level can be passed down to anything using the content type. In that way, they're very similar to site columns. This saves a lot of time when changing column configurations.
