Forum Discussion
Where is the root site to create Site Columns and Content Types for the /Sites Subsites?
I am attempting to create some standardized Site Columns and Content Types that would be accessible in any of the Sites that full under the /Sites tier of the template (Including the ones that belong...
You may have seen this because you were creating sub-sites in the past and if you created columns or content types at the "root," they would be visible in all the sub-sites. In the flat world of modern SharePoint where each team site and comm site are independent site collections, the current way to share Content Types across sites would be via the Content Type Hub. That said, if you want to share values for a column that you create on each site, you can use tenant-wide managed metadata.
It's possible to manually create columns in the hub and "reuse" them in team sites if the columns have exactly the same name.
Example
1. Create a column in the hub site and name it "MyDocTypeChoice"
2. Rename it to a friendly name, like "Document Type". The internal name is still "MyDocTypeChoice".
3. Create a column in the hub connected team site with the same: MyDocTypeChoice"
4. Rename the team site column to "Documnet Type"
The document property (column) follows Office documents and is displayed in all libraries that have a MyDocTypeChoice column.
Works fine with choice columns btw.
- It depends on your goal. You can definitely copy content types and columns using a site script so that when a site is associated to the hub, they get a copy of the columns and content types you want to replicate. If the VALUES of choice columns are managed metadata, then updating the values will update the values in all the sites that use the column. Updates do not work with regular choice columns because each site has its own list of values (but you could always run the script again if you make changes). You can also use a content type hub that all of the sites “subscribe” to. Neither of these approaches is quite the same as what we could do with sub-sites, but depending on what your goal is, you can get there in many different ways.
I am hoping that sharing columns and content types will be part of a future enhancement to hub sites.- Ya me too. It's going on 2022 and still..................squat. No surprise
- It depends on your goal. You can definitely copy content types and columns using a site script so that when a site is associated to the hub, they get a copy of the columns and content types you want to replicate. If the VALUES of choice columns are managed metadata, then updating the values will update the values in all the sites that use the column. Updates do not work with regular choice columns because each site has its own list of values (but you could always run the script again if you make changes). You can also use a content type hub that all of the sites “subscribe” to. Neither of these approaches is quite the same as what we could do with sub-sites, but depending on what your goal is, you can get there in many different ways.
I am hoping that sharing columns and content types will be part of a future enhancement to hub sites.
