Content Organizer / Metadata Routing in SP2010

CodeProject Clients don't bother about content types and sub-sites. All they want is a User-Interface, where they simple upload / download their documents, do some simple tasks.

As a part of Sharepoint application setup or usage, end users will be uploading loads of documents on to the site. So, its our job to make them organized and and easily fectchable.

Content Organizing / Metadata Routing is one of the key Features of Sharepoint 2010, which made developer's and contributer's life easy in this Aspect.

Let me demonstrate the how to configure the Content Organizer for your ease of document management.

I have a SharePoint application "PROFILER" for the new Joiners of a company.
I have 3 separate sub-sites one for each department, said "Human Resources","Corporate Responsibility" and "Tax". Each site has a picture library with name "Profiles".

PROFILER (Main Site Collection) will collect all the profile details like, Employee name, Employee id, Employee Department and Employee picture.  So, when a new Joiner creates his profile, all the details will be saved to "Profiles" libraries in respective sites based on their department.

Step 1:
First, enable the content Organizer Feature on all 4 sites (1 Main site, and 3 Subsites).
Sit Seetings => Manage Site Features => Activate "Content Organizer" feature.

once you enable this features, you will see a couple of new things in your site.
New options will be displayed under Site Administration, for content organizing.
New Library will be created with name Drop Off Library.
 We will see about "Drop Off Library" after looking at content organizer Settings and Rules.

Step 2:
Go to Main Site collection to which Users will be uploading their profiles Via a Custom web part or may be direct upload or by some other means.

Open Content Organizer Settings. (Main site Collection's)

 The below attribute has to be checked based on whethers users upload directly to different libraries, or the profiles will be uploaded programatically to one library.

As we are trying to move the profiles from this site to subsites, check the below attribute.
Verify who got assigned as a Rule manager, the one who can create or drop Content Ogranizer Rules.
Save and go back to site settings.

Step 3:
Go to Receiver site, i.e., Tax site's Content Organizer settings screen, there will be a "web service URL"at bottom. Copy it.
 Open Central Admin => General Application Settings => External Service Connection => Click on "Configure Send To Connections"
Send Connection configuration screen will be opened now. Select the source site which want to send the content across.
 Name the Send-To connection. I named it as "Profile Content Source". Paste the web service url you copied earlier. Select what kind of action you want. Move/ Copy / Move leaving Link to New Location.
Add the connection.
Step 4:
Go to Source site, i.e., Main site collection in my case, and create a new content organizer rule.

Give the Name to the rule.
Select the Content type of the submissions, on which you want o apply this rule.

As we are targeting the destination out of the scope of current site, instead of selecting the list, we need to opt for "Another Content Organizer in Different site". A drop down will be there with all available external  Content Organizers, in our case "Tax Content Receiver".

Step 5:
With this, the Profiles added in Source site will be moved to destination's(Tax site) "Drop off Library".
One more step of configuring a Content Organizing rule to fetch records from Drop Off Library to Profiles Library.

Perform similar steps as we did in step4, but select the local destination and select "Profile" library as destination.


Step 6: 
Go to "Drop off Library" in your Source site, add a new item. Select the Picture, give other detials and select department as Tax.
Once you click Submit, you will get a message as shown below, and the profile was saved to "Profiles" library in Tax site.
 If you haven't performed the step 5, the confirmation message would be like below, and the profile will be saved to "Drop Off Library" in Tax Site.
Open Tax site and Open "Profile" library. We had successfully organized content from main site to another site based on Managed Metadata.
Result:
Note : We did Content Organizing only 1 site (Tax). So, you have to repeat this to handle multiple sites.

Is it helpful for you? Kindly let me know your comments / Questions.