Content Porter ports the Categories but not the Permissions added to different Groups in it

Question

Using 8.5 Content Porter, when we port new Categories created in a lower environment to a higher one, it does port the Categories but not the Permissions added to different Groups inside it. So we are forced to manually add Permissions to the Groups in each Category (security tab) at the higher environment. The SDL documentation list for Non-exportable items does not contain category permissions.

So we are expecting that Content Porter should be able to port Categories permissions too. Any comments on this?

Answer 1

It looks like this is an error in the documentation.

The Non-exportable items page lists the items that will not be included in the Content Port. This list includes:

Permissions for Publications, Folders, and Structure Groups

However, permissions are not ported between environments for any ‘organisational item’. This includes Categories. Therefore, I think that the Non-exportable items page should say:

Permissions for Publications, Folders, Structure Groups and Categories

I've added a comment to this page in the Tridion 8.5 documentation to suggest that the information is incorrect and should be updated.

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To get around this, you could use a custom Core Service script to copy the Category permissions from one environment to another (or to grant 'Everyone' permissions on every Category).

Answer 2

Besides everything Jonathan said in his answer, I would like to clarify a bit what is the purpose of Content Porter and how it works. It is used for transferring mainly components, templates or pages to ease out the DTAP deployment. What is more important, during import/export current security model on server is applied. So in your case, you would try to override current security model with yours during import.

This de facto will leave system vulnerable and prone to security attacks. For import/export, you can import some dependencies per type, and they are explained here.

If you don't like how Content Porter works, you can use Import Export service, but it behaves in same principles as Content Porter.

As Jonathan said, if you want to replicate security model from one environment into another, use Core Service. Entire security is exposed over it, you can even watch following video from last years Tridion Developer Summit 2017 on how it's done.