What is a Content Type Hub?
A Content Type Hub is a site collection with the Content Type Syndication Hub feature activated.
When activated, content types created in that site collection can be published in all site collections in that environment (as long as the feature is activated). This is used when you need the same content type through all site collections. Any edits or modification made will apply to all applicable site collections.
How to publish a Content Type from the Hub
In the Content Type Hub site collection of your SharePoint version, create your content type. Access the content type settings and click Manage publishing for this content type.
If this is a new content type, select publish and press OK.
If you are making modifications on an existing content type, select Republish and press OK.
Your content type will not be copied right away after publishing, since SharePoint uses timer jobs that take a set amount of time to copy the content type to all site collections. If you want the content type to be copied right away, you will need to run the two following timer jobs in central administration:
- Content Type Hub
- Content Type Subscriber (there is one of these timer jobs for each web app, so run the job on the web app of the site collection with the needed content type).
You can't run these timer jobs in Microsoft 365, so you will have to wait for the timer jobs to execute themselves (the longest it can take is 1 hour).
Does the ShareGate migration tool auto-publish migrated content types to the Content Type Hub?
The ShareGate migration tool will only migrate content types, not publish them.
It is possible to migrate content type from a site collection to a content type hub, but you will need to manually publish post-migration.
Migrating a site collection with a content type from a Content Type Hub.
When publishing a content type from a Content Type Hub, the content type is copied to the site collection. So when copying the site collection to another web app, the content type will also be copied.
If the destination has a Content Type Hub with a content type that has the same name as one in the migration source, the ShareGate migration tool will not copy the content type to the Hub. This is because the Content Type Hub works with the unique content type IDs to differentiate content types, and the ShareGate migration tool does not preserve those IDs and will go with the name alone.
Publishing a content type that already exists in a site collection.
SharePoint checks if there are already content types with the same name in the subscriber site collections. If there is a match, SharePoint will not publish the content type on that site collection. As mentioned, this is because the Content Type Hub works with the unique content type IDs to differentiate content types, and the ShareGate migration tool does not preserve those IDs and will go with the name alone.
What if we migrate a content type to a site collection that subscribes to a Content Type Hub, and this content type already exists and is pulled from the Hub.
The ShareGate migration tool only merges content types. This means that the content type ID will not be modified. However, content types from the Hub are Read-Only by default. When merging to a Read-Only content type, we skip information about the content type.
You can remove the Read-Only constraint on the content type at destination, then do a merge to get information from the content type at the source. The content type ID is kept, so on the next publish on the Hub, the content type will be overwritten by the content type on the Hub. Removing the Read-Only constraint does not detach the content type from the Content Type Hub.
What if we migrate a content type to a Content Type Hub?
The ShareGate migration tool can only merge content types. The content type on the Hub is not read-only, so we will pull information from the source content type, but we will keep the ID intact. You will need to republish the content type manually if you want to apply this change to all subscriber site collections.
Can I migrate a Content Type Hub?
Yes, but there are manual operations required for the Content Type Hub to work.
Create a new web application, and copy the site collection and Content Type Hub to the web app. You'll need to activate the Content Type Syndication Hub feature manually in SharePoint. Create a Managed Metadata Service in your Central Administration (this service is needed to publish content types to site collections).
Important information on the Content Type Hub
- Content types in a site collection that are from the Content Type Hub will be read-only by default.
- Content Type Hubs are only available in SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2016 and Microsoft 365
- A republish of the Content Type is needed after modification, otherwise changes will not be pushed to your site collections.