Managing Organisational Document Templates - SP Foundation 2010

[SimonPGreen]

Hi all,

Appreciate if anyone could give me a heads up on how (if?) this sort of thing is best handled using Sharepoint.

We have a set of standard organisational document templates that are used for our ISO processes as well as other organisational communications/processes.

We would like to store the master templates for these documents in a dedicated library with version control and change management so that we can control them. What we would also be great however is to control the metadata and (potentially) routing of these templates when used to create working documents and I envisaged that using content types would achieve this. The problem is however that when creating content types the source template document needs to be uploaded and hence whilst we can control changes to the templates we cannot force any way (as far as I can see) of changing a content type to have the latest version of the template.

Basically it would be great if the templates could be controlled and stored within one repostory and contect types driven from these templates changed when the template update is complete.

Appreciate any thoughts or advice on this.

Regards,

Simon

 

[ehaze]

Let me know if this is what you are thinking about.

We do sort of the same thing with InfoPath forms.
We use a central document library to store all of our form templates, and have versioning enabled.

From other form libraries, we can can reference the form templates as content types. By doing this, the user is always getting the latest published form. And, we can also reference several content types to enable one library to handle several different forms.

If this sounds like something that will work, I'd be happy to flow-out greater details.

http://www.sharepointed.com/

 

[SimonPGreen]

Thanks for the post.

Sound's like the concept I was thinking of although we dont use (or have any great knowledge of) Infopath.

Really appreciate if you could give me a heads up on how you achieved this.

Regards,

Simon

 

[ehaze]

Try this.
Create a blank site to play with or use your My Site.

I created three document libraries:
myTemplates
restaurant
sports

On my desktop I created five Word docs:
restaurant menu A
restaurant menu B
restaurant menu C
Football
Baseball

Uploaded all the Word docs to the myTemplates library.

Next I created the content types and linked to the Word docs in the myTemplates library.
* Site Actions --> Site Settings --> Site content types.
* Create -->
Name: restaurant menu A
Select parent content type from: Document Content Types
Parent Content Type: Document
Put this site content type into: i left this as custom content types.

Once the content type has been created, navigate back to the Site Content Types page and click on your newly created content type.
(Site Settings > Site Content Types > restaurant menu A )
With this page open, click on Advanced settings.
In the 'Enter the URL of an existing document template:' box, you will want to enter the url for the restuarnt menu A doc.
mine looks like this:
/personal/mysite/subsite/myTemplates/restaurant menu A.docx
Once you have added the URL, click OK.

(do the above steps for the remaining Word docs or move on to the next step.)

Now we want to link the newly created content type with the restaurant library.

navigate to your restaurant doc library.
with the library open, click on Library Settings, then click on Advanced settings. Allow management of content types? select Yes, and click OK.

Still in the Document Library Settings page, under Content Types, click on Add from existing site content types. From the drop down, select Custom Content Types, then select restaurant menu A.

Navigate back to your library, click New Document, and restaurant menu A will be listed.


Now, if restaurant menu A is updated in the myTemplates library, it will be transparent to the people that use the restaurant library.


This sounds a little long, but it took me twice as long to write this as it did to create the site, content types, and libraries...

this will work in SP2007 and SP2010.

http://www.sharepointed.com/

 

[SimonPGreen]

That's fantastic - appreciate you posting as it's just what I am looking for.

I've configured it however the only issue I have is with respect to the URL for the document as I can't seem to generate a URL that works! I have a document library called shared documents in a site called QMS (I'm using this to store the source template documents) - I am entering a URL in the format /qms/shared documents/asset record.dotx (with the spaces) when specifing the content template however when I attempt to create a new document in the alternate library and I select the asset record document template I am first prompted with a request for credentials (even though I am in the site owners group) and then am prompted that that the document couldn'tbe opened and that I should try and repair. I get the feeling that these point to incorrect specification of the template URL.

For clarity I have two document libraries in a site entitled QMS.

'Shared Documents' contains template documents
'QMS Documents' has content types pointing to the documents stored in 'Shared Documents'

Any help on the URL would be most appreciated!

Simon

 

[SimonPGreen]

Scrap the above - just making a hash of the URL - open library in explorer was my saviour here!

Again thanks so much for the post it works a treat.

Simon

 

[ehaze]

happy to help!

http://www.sharepointed.com/