Centralized Content Type Hub for publishing

This article will demonstrate the steps to create a central repository for storing all the content types in a single Site collection and allow it to be used by all the Site Collections (from any Web Application in the farm).

This feature is new in SharePoint 2010. In MOSS third party components had to be used to achieve this kind of support.

In order to achieve the below steps needs to be followed:

1. Configure the Metadata Service Application (Properties). Type the site collection URL which will be used for publishing all the Content Types. Make up your mind to use that site collection as a Hub as there is no modifying feature of the hub. You will have to create another Metadata Service Application to change the hub.

Ex of URL is http://mtalt005:85/sites/hub/

2. Configure the Connection of the Metadata Service Application (Properties). You can find this below the Managed Metadata Service Application. Enable the Site collections to be able to consume Content Types from the above hub.

3. Enable the Site Collection Feature "Content Type Syndication Hub" of the Hub Site collection.

4. Now create a Content Type in the hub site collection. Site Settings > Site Content Types > Create

Say, you give an AircraftImage whose Parent Content Type is an Image from the Digital Asset Content Types group.

5. Once the Content Type is created you will be able to publish them for other site collections to consume. To publish, go to the content type created and under the settings "Manage Publishing for this content type" select OK. If it is already published then you will have options to unpublish (existing content types consumed will de-linked and become local copies) or republish (in case of updates to the content type). All subscriptions are driven by the timer jobs.

The below Jobs have to be started forcibly (through Run Now) or wait till the scheduled time.

Central Admin > Monitoring > Review Job Definitions.

Content Type Hub 

Content Type Subscriber 

Note: You may still need to wait until the previous jobs are run. It is a queue basis. So have patience.

If you don't see the jobs running then, Ensure that the SharePoint timer is running. Check your Windows Service status of "SharePoint 2010 Timer".

This is the cpu intensive service. I always prefer to keep it OFF on my dev box.

6. Once the Synchronization is done you should be able to see the Content Types in any of the Site collections (Team Sites) from any web application that has been configured for the Subscription (i.e the Content Type Subscriber Job for that web application has run).

To see the subscribed list of Content Types,

Site Settings > Site Collection Administration > Content Type Publishing

With this now you are ready to have a centralized Content Type publishing. This will help you in managing the updates for each of the content types.