[2.x] Enable UI Login for Read-only Users (View-only role) without Admin Capabilities

[sanjeev-iafsm]

Use case

We are using InfluxDB OSS v2.8.0 and want to provide InfluxDB UI access to a user who should only be able to:

• View dashboards
• Use Data Explorer for queries (read-only)
• View data from specific buckets

But the user should NOT be able to perform any admin activities like:

• Creating or managing tokens
• Switching organizations
• Creating/modifying buckets
• Changing organization settings
• Creating tasks/alerts (optional restriction)

Currently, we can create a user and add them as an org member, and we can create a read-only token for them.
However, we cannot set a password / enable proper UI login for such read-only users in a clean way, and the UI still exposes admin sections which leads to confusion.

---

Why is this important (helps with prioritizing requests)?

Many organizations want to provide read-only access to non-admin stakeholders (operators, clients, analysts, auditors) directly via the InfluxDB UI.

Right now, the common workaround is:

• Sharing admin login (not secure), or
• Using Grafana (extra dependency), or
• Building custom dashboards

A built-in “UI Read-only User” role would significantly improve security and usability.

---

Proposal

Add a built-in user role such as:

✅ UI Viewer / Read-only UI User

with the following properties:

• Can login to the UI using username/password (or other auth method)
• Can access Data Explorer + Dashboards
• Can query only the buckets they have read permission for
• Cannot access settings pages that allow:
  • Token creation
  • Org management
  • Bucket creation/deletion
  • Secret management
  • User management

Optionally allow granular UI permissions like:

• Allow dashboards only
• Allow Data Explorer only
• Allow notebooks/tasks/alerts or not

---

Current behaviour

• We can create users via API/CLI and add them to the org.
• We can generate read-only tokens for specific buckets.
• But there is no straightforward way to provide a clean UI login + view-only access experience.
• UI navigation still shows admin sections even if actions fail due to lack of permissions.

---

Desired behaviour

• A read-only user should be able to login to InfluxDB UI and only see “read-only” relevant pages.
• Admin and configuration pages should be hidden/blocked.
• No ability to create tokens, switch orgs, or perform any write activity.

---

Alternatives considered

• Grafana dashboards (works, but adds extra dependency and maintenance)
• Sharing admin login (not secure)
• Reverse proxy route blocking (hacky and not ideal)