Deploying page layouts

Question

This is probably a quick question : Some of our page layouts have been changed directly in Production. We now would like for them all to be in synch with our sandbox. The differences will mostly be in location of sections, column order in related lists and other stuff like that. Instead of going through the individual page layouts I would like to just deploy all of them into Production.

My question is this : Is it still necessary for me to include the Profiles in the deployment in order for this all to register properly in the Profiles ? What I will be changing will have no bearing on field security or assignment. It will just be the physical appearance of the page layout.

I ask because each deploy takes twice as long when profiles are included.

Thank you.

Answer 1

If the page layout assignment has not changed then i would not include profiles as the metadata of the page layout assignment is still same .

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Profile xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
 <!-- Field permissions --> 
  <!-- Layout Assignments
  <layoutAssignments>
 <layout>Account-Institution</layout>
 <recordType>Account.Institution</recordType>
 </layoutAssignments>
 <!-- object permssions -->
 <!-- Record Type visibilities -->

,

so if record type association and layout assignment has not changed you can skip migrating profiles

Answer 2

No, as long as you are not altering page layout assignments or the API name of the layouts, then you need not deploy profiles along with your layout changes.

Answer 3

Fields distribution comes from PageLayout component and Page layout assignment information comes from profiles. So until and unless you are not changing any assignment no need to include profiles. Including Pagelayout is sufficent for your requiremnt