{"id":1975,"date":"2013-01-04T16:53:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-05T00:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brainlitter.com\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2013-01-04T16:53:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-05T00:53:41","slug":"implementing-custom-business-templates-in-your-sharepoint-2010-departmental-document-libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/brainlitter\/2013\/01\/04\/implementing-custom-business-templates-in-your-sharepoint-2010-departmental-document-libraries\/","title":{"rendered":"Implementing Custom Business Templates in your SharePoint 2010 Departmental Document Libraries"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost 2 years (pathetic). So, after finding it again, I figured I\u2019ll get it out there in case it helps someone.\u00a0 This is an update from my original post some 3 years ago for SharePoint 2007 (and I suppose a 2013 version is due, though would be hardly different from this one).<\/p>\n

Business Requirement<\/h2>\n

Your business needs to configure a document library to use your standard company templates, to create new documents such as Formal Letterhead, Fax Cover Sheets and other ‘pre-baked’ templates. This post will focus on a Business Requirements template that will be used for all new projects.<\/p>\n

The Solution \u2013 Apply Custom Content Types to a Document Library<\/h2>\n

There are a couple of steps necessary to make this happen:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Give some thought to *where* these templates are going. Are you about to place them in the appropriate site and\/or document library? Have you planned this out effectively? Do you need to reuse this template in another site (this would also establish what site you create the content type in; the root, a top level site or just within a single sub site)<\/li>\n
  2. Establish\/Prepare your Document Templates and tuck them in a folder somewhere, ready for upload to your site as the base templates (Leave them in their standard file types, such as a Word .DOC file – they don’t need to be .DOT template files like they would if they were launched in Word). Better still (and too many steps to cover here), store them in a dedicated Document Template Library) and then link to the URL’s, instead of uploading them<\/li>\n
  3. Create your Content Types within the site they will be used, or in the site above (perhaps the top level site collection, if you want to ‘reuse’ the content types in sub sites)<\/li>\n
  4. Configure your document library to ‘manage content types’<\/li>\n
  5. Plug in (add) your content types<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That\u2019s all there is to it.<\/p>\n

    Note that I’m not going to cover customized views or adding metadata (columns) to either the document library or to the Content Types themselves, however, you should note that you can do so much more, to customize your document library and extend it with Content Types, than simply specifying a template to use. And there are several ways to skin this particular cat, but I’m going to provide the quick and dirty approach so you can get back to whatever else you may need to get done.\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n

    Here’s the final result when done<\/h2>\n

    Why not start with the end result, to help clarify what we are intending to accomplish\/build here.<\/p>\n

    \"image\"<\/a><\/u><\/p>\n

    And there it is<\/u>. With some immediate business benefits, including:<\/p>\n