Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Grafana Enterprise

Fine-grained access control

Provisioning roles and assignments

Enterprise Open source

Provisioning

You can create, change or remove Custom roles and create or remove built-in role assignments, by adding one or more YAML configuration files in the provisioning/access-control/ directory. Refer to Grafana provisioning to learn more about provisioning.

If you want to manage roles and built-in role assignments by API, refer to the Fine-grained access control HTTP API.

Configuration

The configuration files must be placed in provisioning/access-control/. Grafana performs provisioning during the startup. Refer to the Reload provisioning configurations to understand how you can reload configuration at runtime.

Manage custom roles

You can create, update, and delete custom roles, as well as create and remove built-in role assignments.

Create or update roles

To create or update custom roles, you can add a list of roles in the configuration.

Every role has a version number. For each role you update, you must remember to increment it, otherwise changes won’t be accounted for.

When you update a role, the existing role inside grafana is altered to be exactly what is specified in the YAML file, including permissions.

Here is an example YAML file to create a local role with a set of permissions:

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# Roles to insert into the database, or roles to update in the database
roles:
  - name: custom:users:editor
    description: "This role allows users to list, create, or update other users within the organization."
    version: 1
    orgId: 1
    permissions:
      - action: "users:read"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:write"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:create"
        scope: "users:*"

Here is an example YAML file to create a global role with a set of permissions, where the global:true option makes a role global:

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# Roles to insert into the database, or roles to update in the database
roles:
  - name: custom:users:editor
    description: "This role allows users to list, create, or update other users within the organization."
    version: 1
    global: true
    permissions:
      - action: "users:read"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:write"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:create"
        scope: "users:*"

The orgId is lost when the role is set to global.

Delete roles

To delete a role, you can add a list of roles under the deleteRoles section in the configuration file. Such a deletion is performed after a role is inserted or updated.

Here is an example YAML file to delete a role:

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# list of roles that should be deleted
deleteRoles:
  - name: custom:reports:editor
    orgId: 1
    force: true

Assign your custom role to specific built-in roles

To assign roles to built-in roles, add said built-in roles to the builtInRoles section of your roles. To remove a specific assignment, remove it from the list.

For example, the following role is assigned to an organization editor or an organization administrator:

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# Roles to insert/update in the database
roles:
  - name: custom:users:editor
    description: "This role allows users to list/create/update other users in the organization"
    version: 1
    orgId: 1
    permissions:
      - action: "users:read"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:write"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:create"
        scope: "users:*"
    builtInRoles:
      - name: "Editor"
      - name: "Admin"

Manage default built-in role assignments

During startup, Grafana creates default built-in role assignments with fixed roles. You can remove and later restore those assignments with provisioning.

Remove default assignment

To remove default built-in role assignments, use the removeDefaultAssignments element in the configuration file. You need to provide the built-in role name and fixed role name.

Here is an example:

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# list of default built-in role assignments that should be removed
removeDefaultAssignments:
  - builtInRole: "Grafana Admin"
    fixedRole: "fixed:permissions:admin"

Restore default assignment

To restore the default built-in role assignment, use the addDefaultAssignments element in the configuration file. You need to provide the built-in role name and the fixed-role name.

Here is an example:

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# list of default built-in role assignments that should be added back
addDefaultAssignments:
  - builtInRole: "Admin"
    fixedRole: "fixed:reporting:admin:read"

Full example of a role configuration file

# config file version
apiVersion: 1

# list of default built-in role assignments that should be removed
removeDefaultAssignments:
  # <string>, must be one of the Organization roles (`Viewer`, `Editor`, `Admin`) or `Grafana Admin`
  - builtInRole: "Grafana Admin"
    # <string>, must be one of the existing fixed roles
    fixedRole: "fixed:permissions:admin"

# list of default built-in role assignments that should be added back
addDefaultAssignments:
  # <string>, must be one of the Organization roles (`Viewer`, `Editor`, `Admin`) or `Grafana Admin`
  - builtInRole: "Admin"
    # <string>, must be one of the existing fixed roles
    fixedRole: "fixed:reporting:admin:read"
    
# list of roles that should be deleted
deleteRoles:
  # <string> name of the role you want to create. Required if no uid is set
  - name: "custom:reports:editor"
    # <string> uid of the role. Required if no name
    uid: "customreportseditor1"
    # <int> org id. will default to Grafana's default if not specified
    orgId: 1
    # <bool> force deletion revoking all grants of the role
    force: true
  - name: "custom:global:reports:reader"
    uid: "customglobalreportsreader1"
    # <bool> overwrite org id and removes a global role
    global: true
    force: true

# list of roles to insert/update depending on what is available in the database
roles:
  # <string, required> name of the role you want to create. Required
  - name: "custom:users:editor"
    # <string> uid of the role. Has to be unique for all orgs.
    uid: customuserseditor1
    # <string> description of the role, informative purpose only.
    description: "Role for our custom user editors"
    # <int> version of the role, Grafana will update the role when increased
    version: 2
    # <int> org id. will default to Grafana's default if not specified
    orgId: 1    
    # <list> list of the permissions granted by this role
    permissions:
      # <string, required> action allowed
      - action: "users:read"
        #<string> scope it applies to
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:write"
        scope: "users:*"
      - action: "users:create"
        scope: "users:*"
    # <list> list of builtIn roles the role should be assigned to
    builtInRoles:
      # <string, required> name of the builtin role you want to assign the role to
      - name: "Editor"
        # <int> org id. will default to the role org id
        orgId: 1        
  - name: "custom:global:users:reader"
    uid: "customglobalusersreader1"
    description: "Global Role for custom user readers"
    version: 1
    # <bool> overwrite org id and creates a global role
    global: true
    permissions:
      - action: "users:read"
        scope: "users:*"
    builtInRoles:
      - name: "Viewer"
        orgId: 1        
      - name: "Editor"
        # <bool> overwrite org id and assign role globally
        global: true

Supported settings

The following sections detail the supported settings for roles and built-in role assignments.

Refer to Permissions for full list of valid permissions.
Check Custom roles to understand attributes for roles.
The default org ID is used if orgId is not specified in any of the configuration blocks.

Validation rules

A basic set of validation rules are applied to the input yaml files.

Roles

name must not be empty
name must not have fixed: prefix.

Permissions

name must not be empty

Built-in role assignments

name must be one of the Organization roles (Viewer, Editor, Admin) or Grafana Admin.
When orgId is not specified, it inherits the orgId from role. For global roles the default orgId is used.
orgId in the role and in the assignment must be the same for none global roles.