RBAC provides a standardized way of granting, changing, and revoking access when it comes to viewing and modifying Grafana resources, such as dashboards, reports, and administrative settings.
Role-based access control (RBAC) provides a standardized way of granting, changing, and revoking access so that users can view and modify Grafana resources, such as users and reports.
Basic roles are the standard roles that are available in Grafana OSS. If you have purchased a Grafana Enterprise license, you can still use basic roles.
You can use RBAC to modify the permissions associated with any basic role, which changes what viewers, editors, or admins can do. You can't delete basic roles.
For more information about the permissions associated with each basic role, refer to [Basic role definitions]({{< relref "./rbac-fixed-basic-role-definitions/#basic-role-assignments" >}}).
To interact with the API and view or modify basic roles permissions, refer to [the table]({{< relref "./manage-rbac-roles/#basic-role-uid-mapping" >}}) that maps basic role names to the associated UID.
You cannot use a service account to modify basic roles via the RBAC API. To update basic roles, you must be a Grafana administrator and use basic authentication with the request.
Grafana Enterprise includes the ability for you to assign discrete fixed roles to users, teams, and service accounts. This gives you fine-grained control over user permissions than you would have with basic roles alone. These roles are called "fixed" because you cannot change or delete fixed roles. You can also create _custom_ roles of your own; see more information in the [custom roles section]({{< relref "#custom-roles" >}}) below.
Assign fixed roles when the basic roles do not meet your permission requirements. For example, you might want a user with the basic viewer role to also edit dashboards. Or, you might want anyone with the editor role to also add and manage users. Fixed roles provide users more granular access to create, view, and update the following Grafana resources:
To learn more about the permissions you can grant for each resource, refer to [RBAC role definitions]({{< relref "./rbac-fixed-basic-role-definitions/" >}}).
Custom roles contain unique combinations of permissions _actions_ and _scopes_. An action defines the action a use can perform on a Grafana resource. For example, the `teams.roles:read` action allows a user to see a list of roles associated with each team.
A scope describes where an action can be performed. For example, the `teams:id:1` scope restricts the user's action to the team with ID `1`. When paired with the `teams.roles:read` action, this permission prohibits the user from viewing the roles for teams other than team `1`.
- Grafana provisioning: You can use a YAML file to configure roles. For more information about using provisioning to create custom roles, refer to [Manage RBAC roles]({{< relref "./manage-rbac-roles/" >}}). For more information about using provisioning to assign RBAC roles to users or teams, refer to [Assign RBAC roles]({{< relref "./assign-rbac-roles/" >}}).
- RBAC API: As an alternative, you can use the Grafana HTTP API to create and manage roles. For more information about the HTTP API, refer to [RBAC API]({{< relref "../../../developers/http_api/access_control/" >}}).
If you set [folder permissions]({{< relref "../../user-management/manage-dashboard-permissions/#grant-dashboard-folder-permissions" >}}) for a folder named `General` or `general`, the system disregards the folder when RBAC is enabled.
