What is best way to export and import security permissions across environments?
tridion
Solution
I once wrote a tool that allowed you to describe your desired permissions settings as JSON, and apply them via the API. To be honest, if you were to write a DTAP-security tool, I'd follow a similar approach. Start by being able to express your desired settings in an open, text-based format, then write a tool that imports them. Once you have this, you can easily build a tool that exports them.
Problem
We have large number of publications and currently we manually apply the CMS permissions across multiple environments (UAT and PROD mainly). This is tedious and often times error prone. We are trying to export and import the CMS permissions across multiple environments, so this could be done once manually and ported to other environments using some sort of tool. Environment: Tridion 2011 SP1 + IIS 7.5 + SQL Server 2008 r2 In Old PowerTools (VBScript) there used to be some tool to manage Access management which could be handy, still error prone. We are not interested to use the OLD powertools for obvious reasons and it is recurring operation function so DB option is ruled out as well. We are considering to build a tool using Core Service, that could export and Import the permissions. We have the same Groups, Publications and Folder structure across these environments. Has anyone tried this before? What are the experiences or practices that other fellow Tridioneers used in large implementations.? Any view points are greatly appreciated.