Content types are a fundamental concept of SharePoint foundation. Any data that you put inside
SharePoint gets associated with some content type. Any content type gives you a number of reusable
settings. The reusable settings consist of the structure of information, associated workflows, information management policies, field rendering templates, and in the case of documents—document information panels and document formats and templates.
As an example in your organization, you may produce proposals for clients or software defect bug
reports. It is possible that both of these are Word documents, but their meanings are quite different. The workflows that they need to be routed through are quite different and the associated collected metadata on each of these can also be quite different. Therefore, it makes sense to differentiate between them as their own content types.
SharePoint gets associated with some content type. Any content type gives you a number of reusable
settings. The reusable settings consist of the structure of information, associated workflows, information management policies, field rendering templates, and in the case of documents—document information panels and document formats and templates.
As an example in your organization, you may produce proposals for clients or software defect bug
reports. It is possible that both of these are Word documents, but their meanings are quite different. The workflows that they need to be routed through are quite different and the associated collected metadata on each of these can also be quite different. Therefore, it makes sense to differentiate between them as their own content types.
