MSDN defines a content type as “a reusable collection of metadata (columns), workflow, behavior, and other settings for a category of items or documents in a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 list or document library.” Of course, metadata is a key component of highly relevant enterprise search for SharePoint. Together with taxonomy and the Term Store, metadata can be implemented to render very large repositories of documents, data stored in lists, etc into readily accessible information. A process of quickly identifying required information and, in turn, easily locating it is the type of capability that translates into substantial cost savings for organizations implementing SharePoint 2010 enterprise when a majority of users, regardless of technical aptitude, are capable of managing it.
Our video tutorial, Publish InfoPath form through a site Content Type provides viewers with specific procedures to create custom content types and, subsequently, to publish forms to these content types. Our intended audience for this video tutorial are SharePoint Administrators, developers and architects. The procedures included in this instruction topic are considered advanced; therefore, caution should be exercised to ensure that users with appropriate permissions obtain access to this instruction. In fact, content types, as we have just alluded, play a significant role in organizing unstructured data into useable information within a SharePoint 2010 Enterprise computing environment.
This short video tutorial demonstrates how fields in forms created with InfoPath 2010 (for example, “Name”, “Title”, “Department”) can be promoted to actual site columns within a custom content type. As site columns, the same labels can be reused, as required throughout a site which provides a uniformity to data, which will support the prompt search process that we have referred to at the start of this post. We also show users with required permissions to check site settings to ensure that a content type has been added for each and every InfoPath 2010 form published with this method.
Once a new content type has been added to our SharePoint site, we then demonstrate how to apply the new content type across other document libraries by adding it, as required. Naturally, where an organization would like to apply uniformity to data, it would make sense to add one content type to each library, list, etc. Our video tutorial demonstrates the required steps.
If your organization is working on a method to successfully implement metadata, the Term Store and Taxonomy to build a highly relevant search feature and would like to learn more about using InfoPath 2010 forms as a method of building lots of custom content types, please do reach out to us. You can either telephone us at +1 630-786-7026 or contact us via email with any questions you may have about this video, the InfoPath 2010 set, and possible applications for individual as well as organizational-level viewing and use.
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