Consuming SharePoint Content Types in Office 2010

This post was originally published at EndUserSharePoint.

One of the many requests that users frequently inquired about was the ability to create SharePoint content from within the Office client applications. Instead of a user needing to navigate to a library to create particular item based on a Content Type it would be great if this could be done directly through Word, Excel, One Note or Powerpoint.

Not only would this save time but the ability to control and define templates within SharePoint, while allowing users the option to create to these Content Types from the Office would be very beneficial for user engagement with the platform. Add to that the governance or control aspects and we quickly have a very engaging solution.

In SharePoint the improved integration between SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 makes this possible! Essentially what this means is that a user can ‘subscribe’ to a document library and have those content types available within the Office clients.

So how is this done? Well lets assume that we have the following document library with the Content Types defined as below:

Now the user wants to be able to access these Content Types from Office 2010 clients. But how? Well it’s surprisingly easy! All you have to do is to click on the icon below:

This will add the Document Library to the Quick Links section. You can also click on the ‘Manage SharePoint Sites’ link to see what other site you have listed as well.

Now if you open one of the Office client applications, click on the ‘New’ button, you will see a new section called ‘SharePoint Templates’:

Click on the particular Document Library that you have subscribed and you will see a list of the Content Types that have been consumed:

The templates are available with full fidelity including any metadata attached to the Content Type, workflows and everything else. The other great integration piece is that if a user clicks on Save something really cool happens! SharePoint will save the content directly to the document library that the Content Types are subscribed to! Thats right there is no need to browse to the correct document library as it will open automatically.

As you can see in this demonstration we have used Word 2010 but it will work the same for the entire Office suite. Another great piece of integration that can really be leveraged within an organisation.

Tags: ecm, featured, office 2010

Category: General