Migration of defined permissions support not only default VIVO permission annotations, but also customized VIVO instances enhanced with Advanced Role Management.

The previously defined permissions in VIVO version prior to 1.15.0 are automatically transferred into new permission sets in accordance with the Access control ontology after upgrading to VIVO 1.15.0 and restarting the server. 

In the case, there is some issue with migration, please check whether startup_listenter.txt includes AuthMigrator (see the listing below).

...
edu.cornell.mannlib.vitro.webapp.migration.auth.AuthMigrator

edu.cornell.mannlib.vitro.webapp.auth.RootUserSetup
...

Also check that new policy configurations were copied into VIVO home directory path, check that directory vivo-home/rdf/accessControl/firsttime/ exists and contains policies, allowed entities and templates. If directory doesn't exist it means that during deployment those files weren't copied.

This directory is essential for the migration. If those files weren't copied, you can copy them manually and restart migration.

To restart migration you can remove access-control graphs, which would trigger migration on next VIVO startup.
You can do so by logging in as a root user on Manage Jena Models page (Site Admin → Ingest tools → Manage Jena Models → Configuration models)
Click clear statements first for http://vitro.mannlib.cornell.edu/default/access-controlFirsttimeBackup model and then for http://vitro.mannlib.cornell.edu/default/access-control model.
Restart VIVO to start migration process.