Role management in the Console

Use the Cloudinary Console to define and manage roles that control access to features, settings, assets, and other types of content. Roles are reusable sets of permissions that you assign to users and groups to manage access within the Console, or to API keys to control what developers and applications can do via Cloudinary's APIs.

To view and manage roles, go to the Role Management page in Console Settings and select the Global Roles, Folder Roles, or Collection Roles tab.

Manage roles

You can:

• View system roles
• View create, update, and delete custom roles

The following sections explain how to handle roles of all different types.

View all roles

The Role Management page has a separate tab for Global, Folder, and Collection roles. Each tab shows a count at the top and filters tailored to the role type.

Global role management:

Folder role management:

Collection role management:

Perform actions on roles

You can manage global, folder, and collection roles from the corresponding tabs in the Role Management page.

View details, edit, and create roles

When creating or editing custom roles, or viewing system roles, you'll see similar fields across types.

All roles:

Global roles only:

Create global roles Create folder roles

Assign roles

You can assign roles to groups, users, product environment API keys, and account API keys.

Assignment considerations

You can assign roles to groups, users, product environment API keys, and account API keys.

All role types can be assigned to any of these entities. However, some assignments may have no practical effect, depending on scope or context:

• Scope matters: If you assign an account-level role to a product environment API key, the permissions won’t apply.
  For example, if you try to grant product environment API keys permission to provision users via the Provisioning API, the assignment won't have any effect.

• UI-based permissions: Some roles grant access to areas of the Console, such as viewing dashboards or reports.
  Assigning these to an API key won’t have any effect, since API keys can’t interact with the UI.

See the full permissions list for details on which permissions are available by scope and applicable to each entity type.

Assign roles to users and groups

To fully manage role assignments for users, these are the key aspects to understand:

• How to grant product environment access to users
• How to assign roles to groups
• How to assign global roles to users (including new and existing users, directly and via group membership)
• How to assign content (folder and collection) roles to users

Grant product environment access to users

Selecting product environments when assigning roles only won't actually grant acctss to the product environment.

You need to grant product environment access to users directly by going to User Management > Users, clicking the edit icon in the Product Environments column, and selecting the product environments to assign.

Assign roles to groups

Group roles allow all group members to inherit the same permissions, making it easier to manage teams with shared access needs.

Assign roles to new or existing groups from User Management > Groups by clicking + Create a Group or selecting Assign Roles from a group's context menu.

1. Select a Permission level, either Account, All product environments, or a specific product environment.
   • If you select the system product environment Master Admin role, All product environments is selected and can't be changed.
   • If you select a system account-level role, Account is selected and can't be changed.
2. Choose one or more roles to assign. Only roles relevant to the selected permission level are shown.

Assign global roles to users

You can assign roles to users when inviting them, or by editing their profile later, both directly, and by adding users to groups.

New users

Grant permissions at the time of invitation by going to User Management > Users and clicking + Invite.

You can optionally assign the new user to one or more groups. The user will automatically inherit all roles assigned to those groups.

To assign roles directly:

1. Select a Permission level, either Account, All product environments, or a specific product environment.
   • If you select specific product environments (or all), the user is granted access to them as part of this flow.
   • If you select the system product environment Master Admin role, All product environments is selected and can't be changed.
   • If you select a system account-level role, Account is selected and can't be changed.
2. Choose one or more roles to assign. Only roles relevant to the selected permission level are shown.

Existing users directly

To assign or edit roles for an existing user, go to User Management > Users and click Assign Roles from the user's context menu.

Choose the Permission level (either Account, All product environments, or a specific product environment), and assign one or more roles.

Existing users via group

Users inherit all roles from the groups they belong to. Managing user roles via groups streamlines permission granting because it allows you to add roles to multiple users at once. It also helps apply governance standards by controling permissions via groups of users.

To assign or edit roles for an existing user, go to User Management > Users and click Edit Details from the user's context menu. Select one or more groups.

Assign content roles to users

Content roles apply to specific folders or collections. These roles can be assigned from the Media Library using the Share menu, or via the Permissions API.

• Folder sharing and permissions
• Collection sharing and permissions

Assign roles to API keys

Product environment API keys

You can assign product environment API keys roles that apply to their specific environment and support programmatic access. These roles can include global roles (e.g., transformations, upload presets) or folder-level roles (e.g., upload, download, rename, move). API keys are typically used with the Admin and Upload APIs to access media and metadata.

• Assign global roles from Settings > API Keys.

• Assign folder roles from the relevant folder in the Media Library. For more information, see Folder sharing and permissions.

Account API keys

Account API keys support only account-level global roles that can be used programmatically, such as user provisioning. These keys are primarily used for provisioning and Permissions API operations.

• Assign account-level global roles from Settings > Account API Keys

Use cases

Give developers broad access to metadata and assets

A developer building internal tools or dashboards may need access across multiple folders. You can create a custom global role scoped to a product environment that grants:

• View all assets
• Manage tags and metadata
• Access usage reports

Then assign the role to their API key via the Console or API Keys page.

Assign roles to match team structures

Map roles to internal groups like “Creative,” “Marketing,” or “Staging” for folder-specific access. For example:

• Creative team: Full access to /Creative
• Marketing: Read-only access to /Creative, full access to /Marketing

Steps:

1. Create user groups in User Management
   
2. Create custom folder roles
   
3. Assign them via the Share button in the Media Library

Grant access for platform administration

DevOps or technical admins may need to manage users, groups, product environments, and security settings, without media access.

Create a global role scoped to the account, with permissions like:

• Manage users and groups
• Manage product environmens
• Manage account security settings

Then assign it via User Management or the Permissions API.