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Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

RBAC lets you define custom roles with granular permissions and assign them to users. This restricts what each user can see and do in Pulse.

Requires: Pro, legacy Pro+, Cloud, MSP, or Enterprise/custom license with the rbac capability.

For plan details, see PULSE_PRO.md. For API endpoints, see API Reference.

Concepts

Roles

A role is a named set of permissions. Each permission is an (action, resource) pair:

  • action: read, write, delete, or admin
  • resource: A Pulse resource type (e.g., alerts, settings, nodes, ai)

Pulse ships with built-in roles: admin (full access), operator (manage alerts and resources), viewer (read-only), and auditor (audit log access). You can create additional custom roles for more granular control.

Role Assignment

Users can hold multiple roles. Their effective permissions are combined across all assigned roles. Explicit deny rules take precedence over allow grants.

OIDC Group Mapping

When using OIDC/SSO, roles can be automatically assigned based on group membership. See OIDC Group-to-Role Mapping for configuration.

Quick Start

  1. Activate a Pro, grandfathered Pro+, Cloud, MSP, or Enterprise/custom license in Settings → Plans & Billing.
  2. Go to Settings → Security → Access Control.
  3. Create roles with the permissions you need.
  4. Assign roles to users.

Managing Roles

Creating a Role

UI: Settings → Security → Access Control → Create Role

API:

curl -X POST http://localhost:7655/api/admin/roles \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "id": "operator",
    "name": "Operator",
    "description": "Can view and manage alerts",
    "permissions": [
      {"action": "read", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "write", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "read", "resource": "nodes"}
    ]
  }'

Listing Roles

curl http://localhost:7655/api/admin/roles \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

Updating a Role

curl -X PUT http://localhost:7655/api/admin/roles/operator \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Operator",
    "description": "Updated description",
    "permissions": [
      {"action": "read", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "write", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "read", "resource": "nodes"},
      {"action": "read", "resource": "ai"}
    ]
  }'

Deleting a Role

curl -X DELETE http://localhost:7655/api/admin/roles/operator \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

Managing User Assignments

Listing Users and Their Roles

curl http://localhost:7655/api/admin/users \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

Setting Roles for a User

Role assignments are set as a complete list — the user's roles are replaced with the provided set:

curl -X PUT http://localhost:7655/api/admin/users/jane/roles \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"roleIds": ["operator", "viewer"]}'

To remove all custom roles from a user, send an empty list:

curl -X PUT http://localhost:7655/api/admin/users/jane/roles \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"roleIds": []}'

Note: Users cannot modify their own role assignments (self-escalation prevention).

Automatic Role Assignment via OIDC

If you use an OIDC identity provider, Pulse can automatically assign roles based on group membership on each login.

UI: Settings → Security → Single Sign-On → Group Role Mappings

Environment variable (legacy env-configured OIDC provider only — it does not apply to providers created through the UI or the SSO provider API):

# Format: group1=role1,group2=role2
OIDC_GROUP_ROLE_MAPPINGS="oidc-admins=admin,oidc-operators=operator,oidc-viewers=viewer"

How it works:

  • On each login, Pulse reads the user's groups from the OIDC groups claim.
  • Matching groups are mapped to Pulse roles.
  • A user can receive multiple roles from multiple group mappings.
  • Once a provider has any group role mappings configured, the mapping is authoritative: on every login the user's role assignments are replaced with whatever the mapping resolves to. A login that matches no mapped group resolves to an empty set, which clears the user's existing role assignments. Watch for identity providers that silently drop the groups claim (see the Entra ID group overage warning in OIDC.md) — to Pulse that looks the same as losing every group.
  • Role changes are logged to the audit log as oidc_role_assignment events.

See OIDC documentation for full configuration details.

Organization Roles (Enterprise/Internal Multi-Org)

In Enterprise/internal multi-organization deployments, each organization has its own role hierarchy:

Role Permissions
Owner Full control. Can transfer ownership and delete the org.
Admin Manage members, shares, and org settings. Cannot transfer ownership.
Editor Read/write access to org resources. Cannot manage members.
Viewer Read-only access to all org data.

These organization roles are separate from the RBAC custom roles described above. Organization roles control access within a specific internal organization, while RBAC roles control access to Pulse features globally.

Provider-hosted MSP uses a different boundary: each client workspace is its own isolated Pulse runtime. RBAC inside that runtime controls access for that client, and the provider control plane handles account-level staff access and handoff.

See Multi-Tenant Organizations for details.

Example: Team Setup

A typical team configuration:

User Role Access
alice admin Full access to everything
bob operator Can view nodes/VMs and manage alerts
carol viewer Read-only access to monitoring views and metrics
monitoring-bot API token with monitoring:read scope Automated alert polling

Related Documentation