How to Configure Content Type Hub in SharePoint Online?

What is Content Type Hub in SharePoint Online?

In SharePoint, The content types you create in one site collection can be used only within that site collection. To reuse them across different site collections in the tenant and standardize them, we’ve to use the content type hub. The Content Type Hub is a centralized location to manage content types in SharePoint Online. A content type hub is a special site collection configured to provide content types to other site collections. Without a content type hub, You’ll end up re-creating the same content type and site columns again and again on all the site collections.

How to Create a Content Type Hub in SharePoint Online?

In SharePoint On-premises, we create a site collection, activate the “Content Type Syndication Hub” feature, and configure it in the MMS service application to create a content type hub (How to Create Content Type Hub in SharePoint?). However, In SharePoint Online, Content type hub site collection is automatically provisioned when you create the tenant (But doesn’t appear in the site collections list of SharePoint Admin Center!) at https://YourDomain.sharepoint.com/sites/ContentTypeHub

Get Content Type Hub URL in SharePoint Online:

How to determine the URL of the content type hub in SharePoint Online? Well,

1. Go to any of your SharePoint Online site collection >> Site Settings
2. Click on the “Content Type Publishing” link under “Site Collection Administration”

This gets you the content type hub URL in SharePoint Online.

How to Create and Publish a Content Type in the Content Type Hub?

When you create or modify a content type in the hub, the changes are automatically propagated to all sites connected to the hub. This makes it easier to manage content types and ensures that they are consistent across your organization. Content types must be created and published from the content type hub.

1. Go to the Content Type Hub Site >> Click on Site Settings >> Site Content Types >> Click on the “Create” link, name your content type, add required columns, template, etc.
2. Publish the Content Type: In the content type settings page, click on “Manage Publishing For this Content Type”,
3. On the Content Type Publishing page, choose the “Publish” option and hit the “OK” button to publish the content type in SharePoint Online.

   

Content types must be published on an individual basis. If you make changes to a content type in the content type hub, you will need to republish the content type for your changes to propagate. Similarly, if you no longer want your content type to be available, you can unpublish the content type. However, unpublishing will not remove the content type from a subscriber site if that content type is already in use.

Publish a Content Type in SharePoint Online Content Type Hub

A content type published in a content type hub can be used in any site collection under the tenant. The typical steps that you would have to perform to publish content types are as follows:

1. Create all content types that you want to reuse across site collections, in the content type hub site.
2. Publish the content types at the content type hub. The published content types will become available in the consuming site collections after the content type hub timer jobs run.

Subscribe to Content Type Hub SharePoint Online:

All site collections in the SharePoint Online tenant are subscribed to the content type hub by default. Once you have published the content type in the Content Type hub, You can go to the Site Collection, where you want to use the new Content Type,

1. Click on Site Settings >> Click on “Content Type Publishing” under Site Collection Administration,
2. Enable the checkbox to “Refresh all published content types on next update”. 
3. Click on OK.

This updates all published Content Types the next time the Content Type Subscriber timer job runs (it can take up to Four Hours in my experience!).

When a content type is published from the hub to a site collection, the published copy of the content type is considered to be “sealed,” meaning that it cannot be modified. All modifications to this content type must occur within the context of the content type hub.