Chapter 18. Implementing Content Types

Document management really hit the scene in the early ‘90s and began to have a big impact in the legal industry and other heavily regulated environments. As more and more digital content was created, organizations strained to manage the growing volume of content; therefore, document management systems and other electronic content management applications have gained popularity.

The best document and content management systems have evolved to map templates and other system behaviors to types of content. The core of most systems have the ability to tag content with metadata so that management “actions” can take place on or in relation to the content. In some cases it is a workflow that requires approval; in other cases the content needs to be moved into long-term storage.

This chapter explores how content types and site columns in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provide a centralized structure for managing content and the related metadata. We answer the question, “What are content types?” and review the types of workflows and content types that are available out of the box. We also explore the ability to create custom Content Types to help you solve the unique business problems you have in your organization.