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User roles and permissions in Azure SRE Agent

Your agent can investigate issues, take actions on production infrastructure, and access sensitive data across your environment. Access control determines who can request actions, who can approve them, and who can modify the agent's configuration.

Access control overview

Access control works across three layers:

Layer Controls Configured at
User roles (this page) What users can do with the agent Azure IAM on the agent resource
Run modes Whether the agent asks before acting Per response plan and per scheduled task
Agent permissions What the agent can access on Azure, with on-behalf-of (OBO) authorization as a fallback RBAC roles on resource groups

Four built-in roles

Role Can do Can't do
SRE Agent Reader View threads, logs, incidents Chat, request actions, modify anything
SRE Agent Standard User Chat, run diagnostics, request actions, manage scheduled tasks, upload knowledge documents, add code repository connectors Approve actions, create custom agents, delete resources
SRE Agent Author Create custom agents, author response plans, configure incident management Chat, approve actions, upload knowledge documents, add code repository connectors, create scheduled tasks, delete resources
SRE Agent Administrator Approve actions, manage connectors, delete resources —

The user who creates the agent automatically receives the SRE Agent Administrator role.

Caution

The SRE Agent Author role alone can't add repositories or upload knowledge in the portal. These operations require the Microsoft.App/agents/memory/write data action, which the Author role doesn't include. The Author role also doesn't include threads/write, so an Author can't chat.

To customize the agent and connect repositories or upload knowledge, assign both SRE Agent Standard User and SRE Agent Author, or assign SRE Agent Administrator. Azure Owner and Contributor roles don't replace these roles because they grant control-plane actions, not SRE Agent data actions.

Note

You can also manage repository and GitHub credential resources through the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) extension paths under Microsoft.App/agents/{agent}/repositories and Microsoft.App/agents/{agent}/githubAuths. These paths use extendedAgents permissions, which the Author role includes. As a result, an operation can succeed through ARM but fail in the portal for an Author. Assign SRE Agent Standard User when the user needs the supported portal workflow.

Who should have which role?

Role Give to
SRE Agent Reader Auditors, compliance teams, stakeholders who need visibility
SRE Agent Standard User L1/L2 engineers, first responders, anyone who diagnoses issues
SRE Agent Author SRE engineers who create custom agents, response plan authors, team members who customize agent behavior
SRE Agent Administrator SRE managers, cloud admins, incident commanders

How the portal enforces permissions

The portal checks your Azure role assignments when you access the agent. Access is enforced at two levels.

No agent access

When you have no SRE Agent role assignment, the portal shows an Access Required screen with a shield icon and a Go to Access Control button that opens the Azure IAM blade. If you have Azure Owner or Contributor on the resource, you also see a banner offering to auto-assign the Administrator role.

Backend enforcement

When you have an SRE Agent role but attempt an action beyond your permissions, the backend blocks the action with a 403 error. For example, a Reader can't send a message, a Standard User can't create a custom agent, and an Author can't approve an action or add a repository connector in the portal. The portal might let you navigate to a page or select a button, but the operation fails when it reaches the server. The 403 response might have an empty body, so verify the user's SRE Agent role before troubleshooting Key Vault, ARM, or networking.

Note

Some portal features proactively disable buttons when you lack write permissions. However, this isn't yet consistent across all features—the backend always enforces the correct permissions regardless of what the UI shows.

What each role can access

Area Reader Standard User Author Administrator
Chat View threads (read-only) Send messages, start threads View threads (read-only) Full access, approve actions, delete threads
Agent Canvas View custom agents View custom agents Create, edit, delete custom agents Create, edit, delete custom agents
Knowledge base Browse documents Browse + upload documents Browse documents Upload + delete documents
Code repository connectors View connectors View + add, edit connectors View connectors Add, edit, delete connectors
Response plans View plans View plans Create, edit, delete plans Create, edit, delete plans
Managed resources View resources View resources View resources Add, remove resources
Scheduled tasks — Create, edit, delete tasks — Create, edit, delete tasks
Settings View settings View settings View settings Modify settings, stop or delete agent

Assign roles

Assign roles through the Azure portal (Access control (IAM) > Add role assignment) or Azure CLI:

az role assignment create \
  --assignee user@company.com \
  --role "SRE Agent Administrator" \
  --scope <agent-resource-id>

Replace the role name with SRE Agent Author, SRE Agent Standard User, or SRE Agent Reader as needed.

To find the agent resource ID, run:

az resource show \
  --resource-group <RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME> \
  --name <AGENT_NAME> \
  --resource-type Microsoft.App/agents \
  --query id -o tsv

How roles work together

Step Who Action
1 Engineer (Standard User) "Fix the config issue"
2 Author Builds a custom agent with a response plan for configuration fixes
3 Agent Drafts a remediation plan
4 Agent Can't execute because the action requires Administrator approval
5 Manager (Administrator) Reviews and approves
6 Agent Executes the fix by using its managed identity or OBO authorization

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