Copying permissions from Profile to Permission Sets

Efficiently managing permissions is a critical aspect of Salesforce administration, ensuring that users have the right access to perform their roles effectively. One common scenario is copying permissions from profiles to permission sets, a process that can save time and enhance consistency across your Salesforce organization. 

In this blog post, we'll walk through the steps to achieve this using Salesforce's VS Code extension pack and CLI.

The steps outlined in this blog can also be applied for copying permissions from a Permission Set to a Profile if the need arises.

Prerequisite

Before diving into the steps, make sure you have a Salesforce org set up, and you have Visual Studio Code (VS Code) installed and authenticated with your Salesforce org. This setup allows you to fetch profile metadata from the org.

Step-by-Step Guide: Copy permissions from Profile to Permission Sets

1. Update package.xml:

• Open your package.xml file in your VS Code project.
• Add the following lines to fetch profile and permission set metadata:

  <types>
      <members>*</members>
      <name>Profile</name>
  </types>
  <types>
      <members>NameOfYourNewPermissionSet</members>
      <name>PermissionSet</name>
  </types>
  

  Ensure you replace NameOfYourNewPermissionSet with the actual name of the permission set you created.
• Save the package.xml file.

2. Retrieve Metadata:

• Use the "SFDX: Retrieve Source in Manifest from Org" command in VS Code to fetch the metadata based on the updated package.xml. This command will pull the profile and permission set metadata into your project directory.

3. Copy Permissions from Profile:

• Open the profile meta XML file (e.g., Admin.profile-meta.xml) located in the profiles directory within your project.
• Copy the entire <userPermissions>, <objectPermissions>, <fieldPermissions>, <pageAccesses>, etc. sections, or select specific permissions based on your requirements.

4. Paste Permissions into Permission Set:

• Open the permission set meta XML file (e.g., NameOfYourNewPermissionSet.permissionset-meta.xml) located in the permissionsets directory within your project.
• Paste the copied permissions into the permission set.
• See the below image for more clarity.
  
  
  
  

5. Deploy the Permission Set:

• Use the "SFDX: Deploy This Source to Org" command in VS Code to deploy the updated permission set back to your Salesforce org.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can efficiently copy permissions from profiles to permission sets, ensuring a streamlined and consistent approach to managing user access in Salesforce.

This process not only saves time but also reduces the risk of overlooking critical permissions when configuring user profiles and permission sets.