CRM 2013+: Where did my Security menu option go?!

We’ve been working with our migration from CRM 2011 to 2015, and in the process we realized that we lost the Security option from the navigation. It was gone. Lost. Nowhere to be found. How are we going to edit security roles and related items? Hairs were pulled. Questions were asked. And finally, we found the reason why.

If you remember, the Security option is not part of the original CRM 2011 options, since user management was under the Administration area. That was the first clue.

In addition to that, we have been including the Site Map in our master solution since day one into all our environments. That meant that the Site Map is being overwritten with our old navigation! In the process, the Security option was cut out! To fix our new and shiny 2015 organization, we need to manually edit the Site Map. To do so, we need to do the following:

1. Create a new solution.
2. Add the Site Map to the solution.
3. Export.
4. Unzip the solution and open the customization.xml file.
5. Include the missing option nodes in the appropriate area.
6. Save the file.
7. Zip the solution with the modified file.
8. Import the solution with the modified customizations.xml file.

In our case, below is the XML line we needed to add (highlighted in white):

This work was facilitated by the wonderful software known as Araxis Merge. Don’t have Araxis? Go get it now. It’s fantastic.

Maybe an easier way to deal with this is to compare your existing Site Map with the one from the newly-minted organization, and note the differences. If something is missing from the old one, include it. Another way to do it (and maybe the easiest one) would be to exclude the Site Map from your main solution.

Whatever approach you take, now you know why some menu options can disappear from your new organization installation.

Have fun!