Manage users and groups

This guide walks you through identity directory operations inside Charmed Authentik, explaining core identity concepts and administrative workflows for user creation, group creation, and membership assignment.

Core identity concepts

Charmed Authentik serves as your unified identity source of truth. Key identity concepts include:

  • Users: Identity entities representing real-world users, system operators, or programmatic consumers. See the Upstream User Overview.

  • Groups: Logical collections of users used to streamline policy application, role-based access control (RBAC), and user attribute mapping. See the Upstream Group Overview.

  • Service Accounts: Programmatic user accounts designed to authenticate background processes and integration services without interactive login prompts.

Basic identity management workflows

Directory structures and memberships are managed from the Authentik Admin Interface under the Directory section.

Create a new user

  1. Log in to the Authentik dashboard and navigate to the Admin Interface.

  2. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, expand Directory and select Users.

  3. Select Create at the top of the pane.

  4. Fill in the user profile:

    • Username: The unique login identifier (e.g., jdoe).

    • Name: The display name (e.g., John Doe).

    • Email: The user’s corporate email address.

  5. Select Create to register the account.

  6. Set Password: By default, new users do not have a password set. To assign one:

    • Select the newly created user in the list.

    • Go to the Actions menu and select Set Password.

    • Enter a password or select Generate and save.

Create a new group

  1. Expand Directory in the sidebar and select Groups.

  2. Select Create at the top of the pane.

  3. Fill in the group configuration:

    • Name: Specify a descriptive name (e.g., Platform Engineers).

    • Parent Group: (Optional) Assign to a parent group to establish hierarchical access.

  4. Select Create to save.

Assign users to a group

You can manage group membership either from the Group view or the User view:

From the User view

  1. Under Directory → Users, select the specific user.

  2. Navigate to the Groups tab.

  3. Select Add to group.

  4. Select the target group and select Add.

Next steps