Creating an Access List with the Custom Form

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The web UI's Custom Form creates an Access List by directly assigning existing roles to members and owners. Unlike the guided flows (Standing and Just-in-Time), it does not generate roles for you — you pick from roles that already exist in the cluster.

This guide will help you:

Decide when the Custom Form is the right fit
Create an Access List with the Teleport Web UI, tctl, or Terraform
Verify that members get access on login

When to use this flow

Use the Custom Form when:

You already have roles in the cluster that capture the access you want to grant, and you'd rather assign those roles than have the guided flow generate new ones.
You need fine-grained control over the role and trait grants that isn't exposed in the guided flow.
You're comfortable editing the underlying roles yourself.

If you'd rather have Teleport generate the roles for you from a resource picker, use the Standing Access Guide (access on login) or the Just-in-Time Access Guide (access on request).

Prerequisites

A running Teleport Enterprise cluster accessible at a hostname with a valid TLS certificate. If you want to get started with Teleport, sign up for a free trial or set up a demo environment.
The tctl and tsh clients, required only if creating the list with tctl or Terraform.
Installing tctl and tsh clients
1. Determine the version of your Teleport cluster. The tctl and tsh clients must be at most one major version behind your Teleport cluster version. Send a GET request to the Proxy Service at /v1/webapi/find and use a JSON query tool to obtain your cluster version. Replace teleport.example.com:443 with the web address of your Teleport Proxy Service:
  - Mac/Linux
  - Windows - Powershell
  TELEPORT_DOMAIN=teleport.example.com:443
  TELEPORT_VERSION="$(curl -s https://$TELEPORT_DOMAIN/v1/webapi/find | jq -r '.server_version')"
2. Follow the instructions for your platform to install tctl and tsh clients:
  - Mac
  - Windows - Powershell
  - Linux
  Download the signed macOS .pkg installer for Teleport, which includes the tctl and tsh clients:
  curl -O https://cdn.teleport.dev/teleport-${TELEPORT_VERSION?}.pkg
  In Finder double-click the pkg file to begin installation.
  danger
  Using Homebrew to install Teleport is not supported. The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport and we can't guarantee its reliability or security.
Connecting with TLS routing disabled
This guide's commands assume your Teleport cluster uses TLS routing (proxy_listener_mode: multiplex), where the tctl and tsh clients reach every Teleport service through the Proxy Service's web address on port 443. If you're not sure whether this applies to your cluster, check with whoever manages it.
If your cluster uses separate listener ports instead, adjust ports as follows:
- tsh commands (e.g., tsh login --proxy=...): continue using the Proxy Service web address on port 3080 (or 443 if behind a load balancer). Do not change these to port 3025.
- Direct tctl or Auth Service API commands: use port 3025 for the Auth Service gRPC listener:
  tctl status --auth-server=teleport.example.com:3025

At least one user who will be a member of the list, preferably a user with no access to resources to verify the access flow later.
At least one resource enrolled in the cluster for the Access List to grant access to.

Permissions to create Access Lists, users, and roles. These are included in the preset editor role, or you can copy and paste the following into your own role:

allow:
  rules:
  - resources:
    - access_list
    - user
    - role
    verbs:
    - read
    - list
    - create
    - update
    - delete

Step 1/2. Create the Access List

Choose how to create the list.

Web UI
tctl
Terraform

In the Teleport Web UI, hover over Add New from the sidebar menu then click Access List.

Enter a name and optional description for the list, then click Use Custom Form Instead.

The Custom Form is a single page split into three sections. Fill them out top to bottom, then click Create Access List at the bottom.

Basic Information

Title — required. The display name of the list.
Description — optional context.
Review recurrence — how often the list must be reviewed (frequency and day of month). Periodic reviews are how owners reaffirm that the right members are still on the list.
Deadline for first review — the first review date. Pick a date in the future.

List Owners

Owners manage members and membership requirements, and conduct periodic access reviews.

Eligibility (required roles) (optional) — restrict who can be added as an owner. A Teleport user assigned as an owner takes effect only if they hold every role listed here; if they later lose one, ownership has no effect until it is restored.

Owners — the users to enroll as owners.

Grants (optional) — roles an owner receives by being an owner. Typically used to grant the ability to review Access Requests for this list — the preset reviewer role is a common choice.

Members

Members are the users who receive the list's grants. Granting members access is the primary purpose of most Access Lists.

Eligibility (required roles) (optional) — restrict who can be a member. A user added as a member takes effect only if they hold every role listed here; if they lose one later, the list's grants no longer apply to them until it is restored.

Members — the users to enroll as members.

Grants — the roles members receive by being on the list.

tctl acl create was introduced in tctl v18.10.3. On earlier versions of tctl, use the Web UI.

The following command creates a list that grants the support-engineer role to bob, and lets alice own and review it. Substitute the usernames and role names with ones that exist in your cluster:

tctl acl create \    --title "Production access for support engineers" \    --description "Grant access to production to engineers in the support rotation." \    --audit-frequency 6 \    --audit-day 1 \    --owners alice \    --owner-required-roles manager \    --members bob \    --member-required-roles engineer \    --member-grant-roles support-engineer

See tctl acl create for the full list of flags, including the trait equivalent of each grant and eligibility flag above.

Every list-valued flag takes a comma-separated string, for example --members bob,carol. Members can also be added after the fact with tctl acl users add.

tctl acl create accepts --output terraform as of tctl v19.0.0. On earlier versions of tctl, write the Terraform configuration by hand as described in Creating Access Lists with IaC. The Custom Form does not generate Terraform; only the guided flows do.

Generate the configuration

The tctl acl create --output terraform command will not create anything, but instead prints a Terraform module describing the Access List the other flags define, which you can write straight to a file.

The following command generates a module for a list that grants the support-engineer role to bob, and lets alice own and review it. Substitute the usernames and role names with ones that exist in your cluster:

tctl acl create \    --title "Production access for support engineers" \    --description "Grant access to production to engineers in the support rotation." \    --owners alice \    --owner-required-roles manager \    --members bob \    --member-required-roles engineer \    --member-grant-roles support-engineer \    --output terraform > access-list.tf

See tctl acl create for the full list of flags, including the trait equivalent of each grant and eligibility flag above.

The dry-run is a complete module: a provider block, the Access List itself, and one member resource per user you passed to --members. The provider's addr is filled in from the cluster tctl is talking to, so your output will be similar to the following:

terraform {
  required_providers {
    teleport = {
      source  = "terraform.releases.teleport.dev/gravitational/teleport"
      version = "~> 19.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "teleport" {
  addr = "teleport.example.com:443"
}

resource "teleport_access_list" "acl-0a1b2c3d-4e5f-6789-abcd-ef0123456789" {
  header = {
    kind    = "access_list"
    version = "v1"
    metadata = {
      name = "0a1b2c3d-4e5f-6789-abcd-ef0123456789"
    }
  }

  spec = {
    description = "Grant access to production to engineers in the support rotation."
    owners = [{
      membership_kind = "1"
      name            = "alice"
    }]
    membership_requires = {
      roles = ["engineer"]
    }
    ownership_requires = {
      roles = ["manager"]
    }
    grants = {
      roles = ["support-engineer"]
    }
    title = "Production access for support engineers"
    type  = "static"
  }
}

resource "teleport_access_list_member" "acl-member-bob_86c6a0d4" {
  depends_on = [teleport_access_list.acl-0a1b2c3d-4e5f-6789-abcd-ef0123456789]

  header = {
    kind    = "access_list_member"
    version = "v1"
    metadata = {
      name = "bob"
    }
  }

  spec = {
    access_list     = "0a1b2c3d-4e5f-6789-abcd-ef0123456789"
    name            = "bob"
    membership_kind = "1"
  }
}

Note the type = "static" field. Access Lists managed with Terraform must be static so that Terraform can own their membership, and static lists do not support periodic auditing. To learn the differences, see Static versus default Access Lists.

Apply the configuration

Log in to your cluster, assigning teleport.example.com:443 to your Teleport proxy address and email@example.com to your Teleport username:

tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com:443 --user=email@example.com

Generate temporary credentials for the Terraform provider:

eval "$(tctl terraform env)"

Initialize Terraform, preview the changes, and apply them:

terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

The Access List is created once terraform apply completes.

note

The steps above use tctl terraform env to issue short-lived credentials, which is convenient for trying things out locally. For remote environments such as CI/CD pipelines or cloud VMs, see the Terraform provider documentation for guidance on setting up the provider.

To write the configuration by hand instead of generating it, or for the full set of fields on the teleport_access_list and teleport_access_list_member resources, see Creating Access Lists with IaC.

Step 2/2. Verify the access

Log in as one of the members you added. The resources granted by the roles you assigned should appear in the resource list and you should be able to connect to them.

Next steps

Create an Access List whose members get access on login with the Standing Access Guide.
Create an Access List whose members request temporary access with the Just-in-Time Access Guide.
Group members by inheriting access from other lists with nested Access Lists.
Manage the list from the command line after creating it — tctl acl get, tctl acl update, tctl acl users, and tctl acl rm are documented in the tctl reference.
Learn more about managing Access Lists as code with the Terraform provider and Kubernetes operator.

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When to use this flow​

Prerequisites​

Step 1/2. Create the Access List​

Basic Information​

List Owners​

Members​

Generate the configuration​

Apply the configuration​

Step 2/2. Verify the access​

Next steps​