Role assignment

As a super admin, you can assign admin permissions to principals so they're able to perform tasks and access resources. Principals can be users, groups of users, or client apps. You can assign standard roles, or create custom roles that limit an admin’s access to a subset of permissions (opens new window) and resources.

This page discusses the concepts of role assignment through APIs. For role assignment through the Admin Console, see Custom administrator roles (opens new window).

Standard role assignment

See the following references for a list of standard role types:

Standard Role Assignment steps

Perform a standard role assignment:

Assign a role to a user, group, or client. The user now has access to the admin permissions and resources for the role.
(Optional) If the role supports targets, use one of the target operations (user role targets (opens new window), group role targets (opens new window), or client role targets (opens new window)) to indicate which specific resource the admin can manage.

The following are the entities involved in a standard role assignment:

Role: Identified either by type or ID returned from the listing API (opens new window)
Principal: Either a user, group, or client app
Resource (optional): When using target operations (user role targets (opens new window), group role targets (opens new window), or client role targets (opens new window)), the resource can be either an app or a group

Custom role assignment

You can build custom roles by selecting Permissions (opens new window). After a custom role is built, you can use its id or label to assign to admins:

Create a custom role.
Create a resource set.
Bind the admin with the role from step one that targets the resource set from step two.

An assignment of a role to an admin is called a Binding (opens new window), which you can identify by its unique ID. A binding represents a single unique combination of principal, resource set, and custom role. A given resource set can have multiple bindings. The resource allows for different combinations of principals and roles to grant permissions to the encompassing resource.

Therefore, when dealing with custom roles, these three entities always exist:

Role: Identified by its label or id
Principal: Either a user, group, or client - known as a member of the binding
Resource set: Identified by its id

Custom role assignment for IAM-based standard roles

When using IAM-based standard roles the same concepts as custom roles apply with the following distinctions:

IAM-based standard roles can only be used with predefined resource sets.
For both IAM-based standard roles and resource sets, there’s a predefined constant id. This id is always the type of the role or resource set.

Role id (type)	Applicable resource set id (type)
`ACCESS_CERTIFICATIONS_ADMIN`	`ACCESS_CERTIFICATIONS_IAM_POLICY`
`ACCESS_REQUESTS_ADMIN`	`ACCESS_REQUESTS_IAM_POLICY`

Resource sets

A resource set is simply a collection of resources. There are two types of resource identifiers: an Okta Resource Name (ORN) or by a REST URL format.

Okta Resource Name (ORN)

The primary resource identifier is the ORN. ORNs uniquely identify Okta resources.

ORN format

ORN identifiers are in the following format:

orn:{partition}:{service}:{tenantId}:{objectType}:{objectId}

Partitions

The partition is specific to your Okta environment. The following are the supported partitions:

Partition	ORN partition value
Preview environments	`oktapreview`
Production environments	`okta`

Service

The service that the resource belongs to. Each resource belongs to only one service. The following are the supported services:

Service	ORN service value
Directory	`directory`
Identity Provider	`idp`
Workflow	`workflow`
Governance	`governance`

tenantId

The identifier for the tenant that is using the service. This is typically your org ID (opens new window).

objectType

The object type that's specific to the service. For example, object types users or groups are used for the directory service. For examples of object types, see Supported resources.

objectId

The object's identifier. For examples of object identifiers, see Supported resources.

contained_resources

The contained_resources ORN property indicates to target all resources within the container resource. For example:

orn:{partition}:directory:{yourOrgId}:groups:123:contained_resources

Group 123 is the example container resource. Since :contained_resources is specified, the resource includes the users in the group, rather than the group itself.

Not all resources support this property, see Supported resources for container resources.

REST URL

If the resource has a corresponding Okta API, you can specify the resource by its REST URL. Use the ORN format to specify resources that don't have corresponding Okta APIs.

Supported resources

See Supported resources (opens new window) in the API documentation.

Binding member identifiers

To specify binding members, use the REST URL of the corresponding Okta API:

A specific user (opens new window)

https://{yourOktaDomain}/api/v1/users/{memberUserId}

A specific group (opens new window)

https://{yourOktaDomain}/api/v1/groups/{memberGroupId}

Early Access

A specific client app (opens new window)

https://{yourOktaDomain}/oauth2/v1/clients/{clientId}

The following resource sets are currently supported out of the box and can be used to assign admins only when used with their associated roles. Standard resource sets and roles are always identified using their type as id.

Resource set ID/type	Applicable role ID/type	Resources
`ACCESS_CERTIFICATIONS_IAM_POLICY`	`ACCESS_CERTIFICATIONS_ADMIN`	All users, all groups, all Apps, all access certifications
`ACCESS_REQUESTS_IAM_POLICY`	`ACCESS_REQUESTS_ADMIN`	all users, all groups, all access requests, access request app

Only Okta manages standard resource sets, so you can't update or delete them.

Custom vs. standard

An admin can have both standard role assignments and custom role bindings. Privileges granted to an admin are an aggregate of the following:
- Standard roles directly assigned
- Standard roles granted through group membership
- Custom roles directly assigned
- Custom roles granted through group membership
As a result, if an admin was granted a standard role that is limited to a single group, and received group management privileges on all groups in the org through a custom role, the ultimate outcome is group management on all groups.
You can't assign a custom role without a resource set. The custom role is applicable only to a subset of resources. Standard roles, however, are initially granted to the entire org. You can only scope standard roles to specific resources by invoking target operations (user role targets (opens new window), group role targets (opens new window), or client role targets (opens new window)).

Permission types

See Permissions (opens new window) in the API documentation.

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