How to efficiently deploy content types to a Content Type Hub

Question

I have set up a Content Type Hub and tested the syndication is working correctly by creating a test content type and watching it be published to the client site.

Then I deployed the content types I am actually interested in publishing to the hub (by way of a feature) along with the site columns they depend on.

I get the error

Content type '...' cannot be published to this site because feature '...' is not enabled.

I want to deploy content types with features for upgradability and ease of porting between dev, qual and prod environments. But am left not understanding what the benefit of the Hub is.

If I have to activate the deploying feature, the content types will already be on the site before publishing will take place. If I have to manually create the content types on the Hub site with the web UI (yuck!), I have the issue of trying to keep three landscapes manually synchronized.

Is there a way to efficiently manage content type deployment to the Hub while still using the Hub to publish the content types?

Answer 1

The advantage of using the Content Type Hub, is that it allows you to use and reuse your Content Types over multiple site collections and Web Applications throughout your farm.

Because all of your site collections are now using instances of the same syndicated content types, if, in the future, you need to add/remove/rename columns within the content types, this is done as easily as updating the content type, and resubscribing (then allowing sharepoint to run its timer jobs, and double checking that the changes updated because you're a careful SharePoint administrator).

I am not sure which error you are receiving, there simply isn't enough context in your post. However, I think you may be slightly confused on how syndicated content types are published. First, you turn on the content syndication hub publishing feature on the site collection that holds all of the content types you are going to reuse throughout your farm. Next you configure the mixed metadata service, so that SharePoint loads each of your content types "into memory" more or less.

After this step, you get to choose which site collections you want to subscribe to the syndication hub. To do this, you need to turn on the content type publishing site collection feature. Note: If you use blank templates for your sites you may receive a feature error like you've described, due to a "flaw" with blank templates. See my post at: http://www.thesharepointblog.net/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=109

Only AFTER you've turned on the subscribing feature, And content Type Hub timer job has run, AND the subscribing timer job has run, will your site collection see the available content types.

As for manually creating content types on the hub site, the only OOB way of doing this is to use the UI. Personally, I wrote a utility that does everything I just described for me, from creating the initial content types, to creating the syndication hub, publishing them to all of the site collections, and most time consumingly, associating them with all of the lists and libraries on the subscribing site collections. I had intended for my employing company to sell it, but as they don't seem interested, I could open source it if there is enough interest.

Hope this was helpful.

Answer 2

This looks like a shortcoming of the hub, indeed. I've witnessed it before.

If you've deployed your content type to the hub, please check if the INHERITS tag of the content type element is set to TRUE. Otherwise it won't work in a hub.

<ContentType ID="xxxxx"
    Name="xxxx"
    Group="xxxx"
    Description="xxxx"
    Inherits="TRUE"
    Version="0">
</ContentType>