The Managed Metadata Service is a highly configurable service application that controls three distinct features: keyword store, managed terms and content type publishing. The access to and control of these three features needs to be considered individually when determining the structure of the service applications and connections among the various web apps in the farm(s).
The content type hub is designated at the Managed Metadata Service (MMS) service application level which creates a whole new shift for managing content types that is a vast improvement over SharePoint 2007. Content types are created, edited and removed from the hub site and any subscribing site collection has a read-only version that is modified accordingly. To be a subscribing site, the web app the site collection is in just needs a connection to the MMS service application proxy. This is very easily configured through Central Administration.
So what are the considerations for content type hubs and subscribers to a Managed Metadata Service? There are many different scenarios that could be employed when publishing and managing content types, but the two driving factors are going to be keyword/term management and content type administration.
Keyword/Term Management
The MMS service application can house keywords and managed terms in addition to designating the content type publishing hub. This means that if the MMS service application is the keyword store as well as the content type publishing service, then all web apps that have a connection to the service application will not only subscribe to content types, but they will also have access to the keyword store and managed terms.
I think this puts forth a good case for creating multiple MMS service applications in order to separate content type publishing, keyword store and managed terms. Let’s apply this to a real-world scenario.
Example
I have two web apps. One web app houses my Internet and the other web app houses my Intranet. The Intranet has a site that has been developed to manage property listings. The site contains five custom content types. What we would like to do is allow some users from the Internet site to enter property listings.
Scenario #1
In SharePoint 2007 this would have meant creating five content types that duplicate what we have in the Intranet site and then ensuring that any future changes are made in both the Intranet and Internet sites. However, with SharePoint 2010 we can set the Intranet site as the content type hub in our MMS service application and then the Internet web app would only need to have a connection to the MMS service application proxy to be a subscriber to the Intranet content types. This would allow the Intranet site to publish the five custom content types to the Internet where they would be read-only. It also allows and changes to the content types to be made from the Intranet site and then re-published (updated) to the Internet site as necessary.
Scenario #2
The rub here is that we do not want the keyword store or managed term sets of the Intranet site to be accessible to the Internet. This means we should create two MMS service applications for the Intranet web app – one for the keyword store and managed term sets and the other for content type publishing.
Scenario #3
Now we have two MMS service applications for our Intranet – one for content type publishing and the other for the keyword store and managed term sets. The property system that was created on the Intranet uses some custom forms that have columns that rely on managed terms. The managed terms allow for consistency in data and better organization of the property content. Therefore, we want to continue that approach with users entering property listings on the Internet.
In this case, we still want to setup multiple MMS service applications, but with a slight twist from Scenario #2. The first MMS service application for the Intranet would house the keyword store. The second MMS service application would control content type publishing and house the managed term sets. This would allow the Internet site to subscribe to the content types from the Intranet as well as consume the managed terms used in the custom forms.
Conclusions
The Managed Metadata Service controls three distinct features. Not all web apps will need to share all three types of content, so it will be necessary to map out content availability between web apps during the architecture planning process.
Another consideration for content type publishing is administration. Read Part II of this blog
