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Configure Custom Database Roles

You can create custom roles in Atlas when the built-in roles don't include your desired set of privileges. Atlas applies each database user's custom roles together with:

  • Any built-in roles you assign when you add a database user or modify a database user.

  • Any specific privileges you assign when you add a database user or modify a database user.

You can assign multiple custom roles to each database user.

Note

Free Cluster, Flex cluster, Shared Cluster, and Serverless Instance Limitation

Changes to custom roles might take up to 30 seconds to deploy in M0 Free clusters, Flex clusters, M2/M5 Shared clusters (deprecated), and Serverless instances (deprecated).

The privilege actions available for custom roles and the custom roles API represent a subset of the privilege actions available for built-in roles.

To review the list of custom role privileges, see the API reference.

Considerations

Important

You must use the Atlas CLI, Atlas Administration API, Atlas UI, or a supported integration to add, modify, or delete database roles on Atlas clusters. Otherwise, Atlas rolls back any role modifications.

  • You can assign up to 20 custom roles to a single database user and can create up to 100 custom roles per project. If you require more custom roles per database user or per project, contact Atlas support.

  • Atlas audits the creation, deletion, and updates of custom MongoDB roles in the project's Activity Feed.

  • If you assign multiple roles to a user and those roles grant conflicting permissions for an object, Atlas honors the highest permissions within any role.

    Example

    You create two custom roles and assign both to User A:

    • The first custom role grants only read privileges on your database. It also grants bypassDocumentValidation on your database.

    • The second role grants dbAdmin privileges on your database. It doesn't grant bypassDocumentValidation, which is an implicit denial of bypass permissions.

    User A would have all of the dbAdmin privileges for your database, since dbAdmin is the higher database access permission. User A would also have bypassDocumentValidation, since bypassDocumentValidation is the higher bypass permission.

Required Access

To configure custom database roles, you must have Organization Owner, Project Owner, or Project Database Access Admin access to Atlas.

Add Custom Roles

To create a custom database role for your project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas customDbRoles create <roleName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas customDbRoles create.

To create custom roles through the Atlas Administration API, see Create One.

Follow these steps to create a custom role through the Atlas UI:

1

In Atlas, go to the Database Access page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Database Access under the Security heading.

    The Database Access page displays.

2

Open the Add Custom Role dialog box.

  1. Click the Custom Roles tab.

  2. Click Add New Custom Role.

3

Enter role information.

Field
Description

Custom Role Name

Name of your custom role.

IMPORTANT: The specified role name can only contain letters, numbers, underscores or hyphens. Additionally, you cannot specify a role name that meets any of the following criteria:

  • Is a name already used by an existing custom role in the project

  • Is a name of any of the built-in roles

  • Is atlasAdmin

  • Starts with xgen-

Action or Role

Privileges granted by the role. Click the dropdown to view the list of available privilege actions and roles.

Atlas groups the actions and roles into the following categories:

  • Collection Actions,

  • Database Actions and Roles,

  • Global Actions and Roles,

  • Custom Roles (if any)

Select the action or role from a single category. Once you select an action or role, Atlas disables the other categories with the following exception. If you select an action/role from the Global Actions and Roles, you can still select actions/roles from Custom Roles.

To grant actions and roles from a different category, click Add an action or role to add a new row.

Atlas disables actions not available to any cluster version in your project. Custom roles are defined at the project level, and must be compatible with each MongoDB version used by your project's clusters.

Database

Database on which the selected actions and roles are granted, if applicable.

To specify the database, type the database name or select Apply to any database.

Warning

If you select Apply to any database, the roles grants permissions for actions on the admin, local, and config databases. We don't recommend writes to these databases.

This field is required for all roles and actions under the Collection Actions and Database Actions and Roles categories.

Collection

Collection within the specified database on which the actions and roles are granted, if applicable.

To specify the collection, type the collection name or select Apply to any collection.

Warning

If you select Apply to any collection, the roles grants permissions for actions on the collections in the admin, local, and config databases. We don't recommend writes to these collections.

This field is required for all roles and actions under Collection Actions.

To grant the same set of privileges on multiple databases and collections, click Add a database or collection.

4

Click Add Custom Role.

View Custom Roles

To list all custom database roles for your project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas customDbRoles list [options]

To return the details for a single custom database role in the project you specify using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas customDbRoles describe <roleName> [options]

To learn more about the syntax and parameters for the previous commands, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas customDbRoles list and atlas customDbRoles describe.

Tip

See: Related Links

To view custom roles through the Atlas Administration API, see Get All.

To view your custom roles through the Atlas UI:

1

In Atlas, go to the Database Access page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Database Access under the Security heading.

    The Database Access page displays.

2

Click the Custom Roles tab.

Modify Custom Roles

To update a custom database role for your project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas customDbRoles update <roleName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas customDbRoles update.

To modify custom roles through the Atlas Administration API, see Update One.

Follow these steps to modify a custom role through the Atlas UI:

1

In Atlas, go to the Database Access page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Database Access under the Security heading.

    The Database Access page displays.

2

Modify the custom role.

  1. Click the Custom Roles tab.

  2. Click Edit next to the role you want to modify. You can modify the following components of the role:

    • The actions or roles the custom role inherits.

    • The databases and collections on which those privileges apply.

  3. Click Update Custom Role to save the changes.

Delete Custom Roles

To delete a custom database role from your project using the Atlas CLI, run the following command:

atlas customDbRoles delete <roleName> [options]

To learn more about the command syntax and parameters, see the Atlas CLI documentation for atlas customDbRoles delete.

To delete custom roles through the Atlas Administration API, see Remove One.

Follow these steps to delete a custom role through the Atlas UI:

1

In Atlas, go to the Database Access page for your project.

Warning

Navigation Improvements In Progress

We're currently rolling out a new and improved navigation experience. If the following steps don't match your view in the Atlas UI, see the preview documentation.

  1. If it's not already displayed, select the organization that contains your project from the Organizations menu in the navigation bar.

  2. If it's not already displayed, select your project from the Projects menu in the navigation bar.

  3. In the sidebar, click Database Access under the Security heading.

    The Database Access page displays.

2

Delete the custom role.

  1. Click the Custom Roles tab.

  2. Click Delete next to the role you want to delete.

  3. Click Delete in the dialog box to confirm deletion.

You cannot delete a custom role in the following scenarios:

  • When deleting the role would leave one or more child roles with no parent roles or actions.

  • When deleting the role would leave one or more database users with no roles.

Assign Custom Roles

You can assign custom roles in the Atlas UI when you add a database user or modify a database user. To assign custom roles through the Atlas Administration API, see Create a Database User or Update a Database User.

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