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Introduction

Tyk Dashboard provides you with the ability to manage Users, Teams and Permissions enabling organizations to maintain robust control over access and visibility. These capabilities empower teams to manage large-scale API portfolios, mitigate risks of unauthorized access, and reduce operational complexity. In this section, we delve into the following key topics:
  1. Managing Users: Streamlining user administration by creating, updating, and deactivating accounts within the Tyk Dashboard using both the UI and API, including password management, password policy and user search.
  2. Managing User Permissions: Configuring and enforcing role-based access control for users within the Tyk Dashboard, using both the API and UI.
  3. Managing User Groups/Teams: Organizing users into groups or teams to simplify role assignment, permissions management, and collaborative workflows within the Tyk Dashboard.
  4. Configuring API Ownership: Applying role-based access control to APIs to govern visibility and manageability for specific teams or users.
  5. Managing Users across Multiple Tyk Organizations: Administering user access and roles across multiple organizations, ensuring consistent and secure management in multi-tenant setups.
  6. Single Sign-On: Integrating and configuring Single Sign-On (SSO) solutions to streamline authentication and enhance security across the Tyk Dashboard.

The availability of some features described in this section depends on your license.
For further information, please check our price comparison or consult our sales and expert engineers:

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Understanding “User” in Tyk

In the context of Tyk, a User refers to an individual responsible for managing, configuring, and maintaining the Tyk API Gateway and its related components. These users interact with the Tyk Dashboard and API to control various aspects such as API management, user permissions, security policies, and organizational settings. This term does not refer to end-users or consumers of the APIs managed through Tyk but specifically to administrators and developers operating the Tyk ecosystem.

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Initial Admin User Creation

When you start the Tyk Dashboard the first time, the bootstrap process creates an initial “user” for you with admin permissions, which allows them access to control and configure everything in the Dashboard (via the UI or Tyk Dashboard API).

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Manage Tyk Dashboard Users in Multiple Organizations

If you have deployed multiple Tyk Organizations, you may have users that need access to more than one Organization (known as a “multi-org user”). This functionality requires a specific Tyk license. To support multi-org users, you must first enable the feature in your Dashboard configuration by setting either of the following to true:
  • "enable_multi_org_users" in tyk_analytics.conf
  • TYK_DB_ENABLEMULTIORGUSERS environment variable
You then must create users in both Organizations with identical credentials. During the login flow the user will see an additional page asking them to pick which available Organization they wish to log into. Once logged in, the user will have an additional drop-down in the top right navigation menu allowing them to switch between Organizations quickly.
A user that does not belong to an Organization is sometimes referred to as an unbounded user. These users have visibility across all Organizations, but should be granted read-only access.

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Single Sign-On Integration

Tyk Identity Broker (TIB) enables Single Sign-On (SSO) for Tyk Dashboard, allowing users to authenticate with an external identity provider instead of a separate Dashboard account.
By default, users who log in via SSO are granted admin permissions. You must configure either default permissions or a default user group to prevent this. See Dashboard SSO for full details on configuring SSO behavior, user permissions, and user group mapping.
For full SSO documentation including setup guides for specific identity providers, see: