Scoping new content item creation to specific content type(s) in the content hub

Have you considered using workspaces?

• Workspaces can visually clean up the Content hub by keeping bulk content that isn't often edited in a separate location.
• You don't have to use workspaces as a content permission control system.
• You can always move content between workspaces to re-organize at a high level.
• Each workspace has its own smart and content folders, meaning you can tailor each workspace to its purpose.

Hi Sean,

Thanks for your response!

Workspaces are definitely useful for organizing content at a higher level, but they’re not quite what we’re aiming for in this case. Our goal isn’t just to visually clean up the Content Hub — we want to guide users toward creating content items of a specific type based on where they are in the folder structure.

We’ve created a content type for each of our custom tables, and corresponding content items for each type. However, when users go to add a new item, they always have to manually select the correct type. Ideally, we’d like to “scope” folders so that when a user is inside a specific folder, they can only create items of a predefined type — similar to how channels or child type restrictions worked in previous versions.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Best regards,
Remy

Edit - fixed typo and link

Ah! That is not possible in Xperience by Kentico today.

Since folders don't scale very well we aren't prioritizing adding features to them. I know many teams are familiar with these kinds of static folders, but they have some inherent problems.

Combining taxonomy fields (which could be populated for marketer content organization only) with smart folders is a very different approach... but a better one, in my experience.

For several months, I tried adopting content folders in the Kentico Community Portal and our Kbank demo environment when they were released because they were a familiar concept. Due to the issues I mentioned in the conversation I linked above, I don't use them anymore.

There's a reason we allow teams to completely disable content folders.

Hi Sean,

Appreciate the reply.

I'm not sure I follow, you mention some inherit [sic I think] issues with folders, but I'm not sure what you mean by this (the link you provide goes to a community portal helper file on github)? We've never had issues with folders, but we could be an exception I suppose?

As for your next remark:

"Combining taxonomy fields (which could be populated for marketer content organization only) with smart folders is a very different approach... but a better one, in my experience."

This feels like you're confusing content delivery with content editing here. Unless I misunderstand. Smart folders / taxonomy fields aren't going to help our content editors create (reusable) content items of the correct type.

Our issue isn't with selecting the right content when displaying/delivering this on our website. We can do this using folders (what we're used to), tags, smart folders or any combination thereof.

Our issue is that when someone wants to add a couple items (to what used to be a custom table) / of a reusable content item.. they are presented with a selection field of 60+ content types (or however many we will end up when all is said and done) and we really don't want to burden them with this huge selection every time and it feels like we shouldn't have to.

Are you truly telling me that you think it's 'a better experience' to have to pick 'the right one' every time you add a content item rather than the system narrowing down your options to the relevant ones? I find that hard to believe, but perhaps we're not seeing the missing link here?

Thanks again in advance. Really hoping we're just missing something here!

/edit:

What a 'minimal effort, great result' change would be, in my opinion: extend the smart folder functionality a tiny bit onto the 'create new content item' form. When you set up a smart folder you define content type(s) it should show. This works fine. Now, when adding a new content item (when you're looking at a smart folder) have it filter the list of available content types based on the definition of the smart folder. It feels like a really obvious (and minor) change.