If you are working in a multi-stage environment, it is important to “master” your custom asset types, taxonomies, and association types on one stage and then promote them to the other stages. Do not attempt to manually define these objects in each stage. Doing this will create objects that are equivalent, but not identical. That is, the objects will have the same attributes, but they will not have the same Universally Unique Identifier (UUID). It is the UUID that uniquely distinguishes an object in the registry.

When objects are imported into CentraSite (either through an import process or a promotion process), CentraSite uses the UUID to determine whether an object that you are importing already exists on the target instance of CentraSite. If the UUID does not already exist, CentraSite adds the imported object to the registry. If an object with the same UUID exists in the target registry, and the object that you are importing has a more recent timestamp than it, CentraSite automatically replaces the object in the target registry with the one that you are importing.

When you promote an asset from one stage to another, CentraSite also promotes the asset's type and the taxonomies that it uses. If you have manually defined these objects on the target instance of CentraSite, they will be duplicated, instead of replaced, during the promotion process. This will create a confusing situation wherein you have two instances of the same asset type and/or taxonomy on the target instance of CentraSite.

To avoid this condition, always create your custom asset types, taxonomies, and association types on the first stage of a multi-stage deployment and export those objects to the registries that host the subsequent stages of the lifecycle.