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.

Documentation Grafana documentation Administration Permissions

Permissions

Grafana users have permissions that are determined by their:

• Organization Role (Admin, Editor, Viewer)
• Via Team memberships where the Team has been assigned specific permissions.
• Via permissions assigned directly to user (on folders or dashboards)
• The Grafana Admin (i.e. Super Admin) user flag.

Organization Roles

Users can be belong to one or more organizations. A user’s organization membership is tied to a role that defines what the user is allowed to do in that organization.

Admin Role

Can do everything scoped to the organization. For example:

• Add & Edit data sources.
• Add & Edit organization users & teams.
• Configure App plugins & set org settings.

Editor Role

• Can create and modify dashboards & alert rules. This can be disabled on specific folders and dashboards.
• Cannot create or edit data sources nor invite new users.

Viewer Role

• View any dashboard. This can be disabled on specific folders and dashboards.
• Cannot create or edit dashboards nor data sources.

This role can be tweaked via Grafana server setting viewers_can_edit. If you set this to true users with Viewer can also make transient dashboard edits, meaning they can modify panels & queries but not save the changes (nor create new dashboards). Useful for public Grafana installations where you want anonymous users to be able to edit panels & queries but not save or create new dashboards.

Grafana Admin

This admin flag makes a user a Super Admin. This means they can access the Server Admin views where all users and organizations can be administrated.

Dashboard & Folder Permissions

For dashboards and dashboard folders there is a Permissions page that make it possible to remove the default role based permssions for Editors and Viewers. It’s here you can add and assign permissions to specific Users and Teams.

You can assign & remove permissions for Organization Roles, Users and Teams.

Permission levels:

• Admin: Can edit & create dashboards and edit permissions.
• Edit: Can edit & create dashboards. Cannot edit folder/dashboard permissions.
• View: Can only view existing dashboards/folders.

Restricting Access

The highest permission always wins so if you for example want to hide a folder or dashboard from others you need to remove the Organization Role based permission from the Access Control List (ACL).

• You cannot override permissions for users with the Org Admin Role. Admins always have access to everything.
• A more specific permission with a lower permission level will not have any effect if a more general rule exists with higher permission level. You need to remove or lower the permission level of the more general rule.

How Grafana Resolves Multiple Permissions - Examples

Example 1 (user1 has the Editor Role)

Permissions for a dashboard:

• Everyone with Editor Role Can Edit
• user1 Can View

Result: user1 has Edit permission as the highest permission always wins.

Example 2 (user1 has the Viewer Role and is a member of team1)

Permissions for a dashboard:

• Everyone with Viewer Role Can View
• user1 Can Edit
• team1 Can Admin

Result: user1 has Admin permission as the highest permission always wins.

Example 3

Permissions for a dashboard:

• user1 Can Admin (inherited from parent folder)
• user1 Can Edit

Result: You cannot override to a lower permission. user1 has Admin permission as the highest permission always wins.

• View: Can only view existing dashboars/folders.
• You cannot override permissions for users with Org Admin Role
• A more specific permission with lower permission level will not have any effect if a more general rule exists with higher permission level. For example if “Everyone with Editor Role Can Edit” exists in the ACL list then John Doe will still have Edit permission even after you have specifically added a permission for this user with the permission set to View. You need to remove or lower the permission level of the more general rule.

Data source permissions

Permissions on dashboards and folders do not include permissions on data sources. A user with Viewer role can still issue any possible query to a data source, not just those queries that exist on dashboards he/she has access to. We hope to add permissions on data sources in a future release. Until then do not view dashboard permissions as a secure way to restrict user data access. Dashboard permissions only limits what dashboards & folders a user can view & edit not which data sources a user can access nor what queries a user can issue.