In SharePoint 2010, Microsoft introduced a great new feature for publishing and subscribing to content types called the content type hub. If you’re unfamiliar with the feature, read this.
With SharePoint 2010 or 2013 on-premises, you would create a new site collection, turn on the features and configure the managed metadata service. Easy! When you try to do that in SharePoint online however, you’ll notice there isn’t a way to configure the managed metadata service with the hub URL. Hmmmm, strange. So you try to create a content type and publish it in the new hub you’ve created and BAM!
What happened?!?! If you dig into the error you will find that the managed metadata service isn’t wired up to the content type hub you created, so you can’t publish. We kind of knew that since we couldn’t find the settings in the managed metadata service that we see on-premises. So, what’s the deal?
Every SharePoint Online tenant has a content type hub pre-built! It exists at https://<tenant>.sharepoint.com/sites/contenttypehub
When you view the list of site collections in your tenant, the hub isn’t there either. Hmmm, strange. I have no idea why it doesn’t show, but if I ever get an answer, I will certainly fill you in! I guess it’s just one of those weird things in SharePoint Online. So when publishing content types in SharePoint Online, be sure to use your pre-built content type hub!
For more information on content type publishing, visit here.
