managing the relationship between Parent and its child content type

Question

I am a bit confused about the relation between Parent and child content type.

Now I want to create a new content type that have the Issue as its parent content type. So how I should be managing the two content types (parent and child) in the following scenarios:-

• If I want to add a new site column to the child content type, should I add it directly to the child content type or I should added to the parent content type?

• If I want to change the “Column Settings” for a field such as if it is optional, required, hidden should I do it at the parent or at the child content type.

• Let say I created 3 issue tracking lists based on the custom content type which i have created and which have the Issue as it parent content type. Where each issue tracking list will have different values for the Priority site column. So is it a bad practice to modify the Priority values at each list level , where the Priority will have different values at each of the list levels ? Or it is better to create a new Priority site columns for each list. in other word should I always create new site columns or it is better to modify the same site column at the list level ?

Can anyone advice ?

Answer 1

When working with parent/child content types, I do this: The parent has only the fields that will exist in all child content types. Then each child content type only has the fields in it that are needed and are not inherited from the parent. So if your children each have different priority values, then each one would have their own priority field that is unique to their content type.

Example: 2 Content types contain shared field, customer, and each child has a unique field.

Parent content type contains customer field. Child content type 1 is created from parent and a new column is added into that. Child content type 2 is created from parent and a new column is added into that.

Answer 2

attempting to answer your questions specifically

• when adding a new column, you'll want to add it to the parent if you want the parent and subsequent children to have the same column. If your parent is an OOTB SharePoint CT, then only add it to your child. I don't recommend modifying SharePoint content types, you never know what Microsoft might do, plus these content types are used across all lists and libraries, even ones you may not see. Inherit from it, and make that new child your new parent for all of your needs.
• Same thing here, dont mess with the parent, make your own parent (inheriting from an OOTB CT) and do what you will
• You can take this two ways: 1) edit the columns in the lists accordingly, no biggie there or 2) create your base CT inherit from issue, then create separate CTs for each use. Its more work but is more flexible, allowing you to reuse the CTs, and easily search and roll up those CTs specifically, if necessary.

Answer 3

The hierarchical relationship allows you to reuse the settings (fields) defined in one content type (parent) in other (child) content types. The hierarchy of content types can be extended to an infinite width and depth, but the best practice is to use 3-level parent-child hierarchy.

You could read more best practices on how to manage content types and documents here >>

Hope it will make more sence for you to make a right decision in your situation.

Edited acording disscusion: You could create general columns in Site collection level and add to CT. Then create a fresh subsite, create other columns you need on this subsite level and add those to list with your site collection columns (CT). Then to save this site as template. And I suspect that all sites created from this site template will have two types of columns: Site collection columns, which you could manage from "backend" and apply modifications; and Site level columns. So subsite admins could modify subsite fields as they need. I think this option would work for your.