Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

How Resource Groups works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Resource Groups, you should understand what IAM features are available to use with Resource Groups. To get a high-level view of how Resource Groups and other Amazon services work with IAM, see Amazon Services That Work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Resource Groups identity-based policies

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. Resource Groups supports specific actions, resources, and condition keys. To learn about all of the elements that you use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON Policy Elements Reference in the IAM User Guide.

Actions

Administrators can use Amazon JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated Amazon API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

Policy actions in Resource Groups use the following prefix before the action: resource-groups:. Tag Editor actions are performed entirely in the console, but have the prefix resource-explorer in log entries.

For example, to grant someone permission to create a Resource Groups group with the Resource Groups CreateGroup API operation, you include the resource-groups:CreateGroup action in their policy. Policy statements must include either an Action or NotAction element. Resource Groups defines its own set of actions that describe tasks that you can perform with this service.

To specify multiple Resource Groups and Tag Editor actions in a single statement, separate them with commas as follows:

"Action": [
      "resource-groups:action1",
      "resource-groups:action2",
      "resource-explorer:action3"

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word List, include the following action:

"Action": "resource-groups:List*"

To see a list of Resource Groups actions, see Actions, Resources, and Condition Keys for Amazon Resource Groups in the IAM User Guide.

Resources

Administrators can use Amazon JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

The only Resource Groups resource is a group. The group resource has an ARN in the following format:

arn:${Partition}:resource-groups:${Region}:${Account}:group/${GroupName}

For more information about the format of ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and Amazon Service Namespaces.

For example, to specify the my-test-group resource group in your statement, use the following ARN:

"Resource": "arn:aws-cn:resource-groups:us-east-1:123456789012:group/my-test-group"

To specify all groups that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*):

"Resource": "arn:aws-cn:resource-groups:us-east-1:123456789012:group/*"

Some Resource Groups actions, such as those for creating resources, cannot be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "*"

Some Resource Groups API actions can involve multiple resources. For example, DeleteGroup deletes groups, so a calling principal must have permissions to delete a specific group or all groups. To specify multiple resources in a single statement, separate the ARNs with commas.

"Resource": [
  "resource1",
  "resource2"
]

To see a list of Resource Groups resource types and their ARNs, and learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions, Resources, and Condition Keys for Amazon Resource Groups in the IAM User Guide.

Condition keys

Administrators can use Amazon JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, Amazon evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, Amazon evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

Amazon supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all Amazon global condition keys, see Amazon global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

Resource Groups defines its own set of condition keys and also supports using some global condition keys. To see all Amazon global condition keys, see Amazon Global Condition Context Keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of Resource Groups condition keys, and learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions, Resources, and Condition Keys for Amazon Resource Groups in the IAM User Guide.

Examples

To view examples of Resource Groups identity-based policies, see Amazon Resource Groups identity-based policy examples.

Resource-based policies

Resource Groups does not support resource-based policies.

Authorization based on Resource Groups tags

You can attach tags to groups in Resource Groups, or pass tags in a request to Resource Groups. To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys. You can apply tags to a group when you are creating or updating the group. For more information about tagging a group in Resource Groups, see Creating query-based groups in Amazon Resource Groups and Updating groups in Amazon Resource Groups in this guide.

To view an example identity-based policy for limiting access to a resource based on the tags on that resource, see Viewing groups based on tags.

Resource Groups IAM roles

An IAM role is an entity within your Amazon account that has specific permissions. Resource Groups does not have or use service roles.

Using temporary credentials with Resource Groups

In Resource Groups, you can use temporary credentials to sign in with federation, assume an IAM role, or to assume a cross-account role. You obtain temporary security credentials by calling Amazon STS API operations such as AssumeRole or GetFederationToken.

Service-linked roles

Service-linked roles allow Amazon services to access resources in other services to complete an action on your behalf.

Resource Groups does not have or use service-linked roles.

Service roles

This feature allows a service to assume a service role on your behalf.

Resource Groups does not have or use service roles.