I’m a SharePoint Admin but I Can’t Access the Content Type Hub
As SharePoint Administrators, we ought to be able to access the Content Type Hub out-of-the-box. But I’ve found in multiple tenants over the years that I can’t. One of the first indications of the problem is when I try to create a new Content Type in the SharePoint Admin Center and get this error.
You might say “But they modernized Content Type management and moved it into the SharePoint Admin Center. Why would you need permissions on the Content Type Hub?”
Well, this is a classic “💄on a🐷” thing. Yes, they modernized things, but in fact, the Content Type Hub is still the place where enterprise information architecture you manage through the Content Services section of the SharePoint Admin Center actually lives. The Content Type Hub is a SharePoint Team Site with special superpowers and it lives at /sites/ContentTypeHub in your tenant.
The Content Type Hub used to be visible in the Active Sites listing in the SharePoint Admin Center, but around the time they applied the💄, they hid it. Huh.
Note: In some environments, you may want some people to be able to work on the enterprise IA but NOT make them SharePoint Admins. That causes some problems I won’t go into here, but if you grant them access to the Content Type Hub, they can set up enterprise Content Types without access to the SharePoint Admin Center.
There really should be an Enterprise IA Center which is separate from the SharePoint Admin Center.
To give yourself permission, replace TenantName in the URL below with your tenant name and navigate to that page.
https://TenantName-admin.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/online/TA_SiteCollectionOwnersdialog.aspx?site=https://TenantName.sharepoint.com/sites/contentTypeHub
You should land on a page which looks something like this:
Since you may not be the only SharePoint Administrator, don’t just give yourself permissions, give the SharePoint Administrator role those permissions. That way, all SharePoint Admins will be able to access the Content Type Hub.
Once you save, things should be right as rain.
Have you ever been caught by this? One reason I’m writing it up is so I can find my own post the next time it happens!
Thanks for a great article, Marc. Yes I have seen this before, but had forgotten it, so thanks for the reminder. Just a tips to avoid confusion when you look at the admin link in the article : For older tenants, you may find the old admin roles: “Company Administrator” instead of todays “Global Administrator”, and “SharePoint Service Administrator” instead of todays “SharePoint Administrator”
Why would not replace Global Admin with SPO Admin? Why should the GA have access to the SPO Content Hub?
Well, the Global Admin role is a very important one in that they essentially have access to everything. In fact, in many cases, it may be the Global Admin helping to solve something like this.
Maybe the same question back to you: why would you not want them to have that access?