For most organisation, standard documents are used across multiple departments, which usually consist of a template and one or two fields of metadata. To save having to add the same template and columns over and over in each Team Site and each library, we use the Content Type Hub to create it in one place and push it down to the team sites. This requires the correct permissions and a good level of SharePoint knowledge to be able to then add those Content Types to libraries.
Historically, the solution to make this easier would be a Site Template to create the libraries and add the content types. However, even then we had an issue whereby we had to wait for the Content Types to be published to the site, so we could then add them to the library. This could be a wait of anything from ten minutes to a couple of hours.
Now, Microsoft have updated the way Content Types are published from the Content Type Hub. Instead of them being pushed down to all team sites, now you “pull” the content types down from the hub that you need. This means they are available instantly. So when using the site template the content types can be added immediately.
There is one thing to be aware of though. If you are using a site template, you will need to add the Content type IDs in your SiteScript before you create the library. I use a JSON schema for mine using the verb – addContentTypesFromHub.
But let us take this a step further. A team is just a SharePoint Team Site – so by adding a site template when you create the team you can make your standard document templates readily available in Teams straight from the New Button on the Files Tab menu. Neat! Standard templates are managed in one central location and various site templates can be applied depending on the type of team required.
We have added this into our Teams Request process, which includes, request form, an approval workflow, and automated Teams creation.
