Managing Content Types is essential to effectively managing records in SharePoint.  Think of Content Types as templates that allow you to assign metadata properties and sample content to a document.  For instance, you may have a document called Purchase Order that a number of your end users create with certain regularity.  You can create a  Content Type called Purchase Order Content Typethat has all the metadata relavant to a Purchase Order and associate a sample Purchase Order document to it.  This way whenever a new Purchase Order is created, your end users just go to the appropriate Document Library, click on ‘New’, select the Purchase Order Content Type, fill in the necessary metadata and create the document. 

Content Types play a big role in Records Management because SharePoint uses the document’s Content Type to determine which Records Center Library the document belongs in when it is declared a record.  (This is configured in the Records Routing table, which we will talk about in future posts.) 

Keeping with the example from above, you may have a Records Center Library called Purchase Orders which contains records of all the Purchase Orders created in your organization.  Expiration assigned to this Library may be ‘Destroy 5 Years after Creation’.  When your end user has completed the new Purchase Order and is required to declare it a record in your Records Center, all he or she must do is right-click the record and select the ‘Send to Records Center’ option.  The document will be copied into the appropriate Records Center Library based on its Content Type.  (This process also creates two documents in the Records Center Library that are associated with the new record.  One document contains all the original metadata assigned to the document and the other contains a complete audit trail of the document.  Both these documents can be used for evidentiary purposes.) 

This is how Content Types work with the Records Center out-of-the-box.  There are a number of additional ways to utilize Content Types to improve your Records Management solutions, and I will discuss them here soon.