Disabling or limiting GitHub Actions for your organization

About GitHub Actions permissions for your organization

By default, after GitHub Actions is enabled on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, it is enabled on all repositories and organizations. You can choose to disable GitHub Actions or limit it to actions in your enterprise. For more information about GitHub Actions, see "Learn GitHub Actions."

You can enable GitHub Actions for all repositories in your organization. When you enable GitHub Actions, workflows are able to run actions located within your repository and any other public or internal repository. You can disable GitHub Actions for all repositories in your organization. When you disable GitHub Actions, no workflows run in your repository.

Alternatively, you can enable GitHub Actions for all repositories in your organization but limit the actions a workflow can run.

Managing GitHub Actions permissions for your organization

You can choose to disable GitHub Actions for all repositories in your organization, or only allow specific repositories. You can also limit the use of public actions, so that people can only use local actions that exist in your enterprise.

1. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

   

2. Next to the organization, click Settings.

3. In the left sidebar, click Actions, then click General.

4. Under "Policies", select an option.

   If you choose Allow select actions, actions within your enterprise are allowed, and there are additional options for allowing other specific actions. For more information, see "Allowing select actions to run."

5. Click Save.

Allowing select actions to run

When you choose Allow select actions, local actions are allowed, and there are additional options for allowing other specific actions:

• Allow actions created by GitHub: You can allow all actions created by GitHub to be used by workflows. Actions created by GitHub are located in the actions and github organizations. For more information, see the actions and github organizations.

• Allow Marketplace actions by verified creators: This option is available if you have GitHub Connect enabled and configured with GitHub Actions. For more information, see "Enabling automatic access to GitHub.com actions using GitHub Connect." You can allow all GitHub Marketplace actions created by verified creators to be used by workflows. When GitHub has verified the creator of the action as a partner organization, the badge is displayed next to the action in GitHub Marketplace.

• Allow specified actions: You can restrict workflows to use actions in specific organizations and repositories.

  To restrict access to specific tags or commit SHAs of an action, use the same syntax used in the workflow to select the action.

  • For an action, the syntax is <OWNER>/<REPO>@<TAG OR SHA>. For example, use actions/javascript-action@v1.0.1 to select a tag or actions/javascript-action@a824008085750b8e136effc585c3cd6082bd575f to select a SHA. For more information, see "Finding and customizing actions."

  You can use the * wildcard character to match patterns. For example, to allow all actions in organizations that start with space-org, you can specify space-org*/*. To allow all actions in repositories that start with octocat, you can use */octocat**@*. For more information about using the * wildcard, see "Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions."

This procedure demonstrates how to add specific actions to the allow list.

1. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

   

2. Next to the organization, click Settings.

3. In the left sidebar, click Actions, then click General.

4. Under "Policies", select Allow select actions and add your required actions to the list.

5. Click Save.

Enabling workflows for private repository forks

If you rely on using forks of your private repositories, you can configure policies that control how users can run workflows on pull_request events. Available to private and internal repositories only, you can configure these policy settings for your enterprise, organizations, or repositories.

If a policy is disabled for an enterprise, it cannot be enabled for organizations. If a policy is disabled for an organization, it cannot be enabled for repositories. If an organization enables a policy, the policy can be disabled for individual repositories.

• Run workflows from fork pull requests - Allows users to run workflows from fork pull requests, using a GITHUB_TOKEN with read-only permission, and with no access to secrets.
• Send write tokens to workflows from pull requests - Allows pull requests from forks to use a GITHUB_TOKEN with write permission.
• Send secrets to workflows from pull requests - Makes all secrets available to the pull request.

Configuring the private fork policy for an organization

1. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

   

2. Next to the organization, click Settings.

3. In the left sidebar, click Actions, then click General.

4. Under Fork pull request workflows, select your options.

5. Click Save to apply the settings.

Setting the permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN for your organization

You can set the default permissions granted to the GITHUB_TOKEN. For more information about the GITHUB_TOKEN, see "Automatic token authentication." You can choose a restricted set of permissions as the default, or apply permissive settings.

You can set the default permissions for the GITHUB_TOKEN in the settings for your organization or your repositories. If you select a restrictive option as the default in your organization settings, the same option is selected in the settings for repositories within your organization, and the permissive option is disabled. If your organization belongs to a GitHub Enterprise account and a more restrictive default has been selected in the enterprise settings, you won't be able to select the more permissive default in your organization settings.

Anyone with write access to a repository can modify the permissions granted to the GITHUB_TOKEN, adding or removing access as required, by editing the permissions key in the workflow file. For more information, see permissions.

Configuring the default GITHUB_TOKEN permissions

1. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your profile.

2. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

   

3. Next to the organization, click Settings.

4. In the left sidebar, click Actions, then click General.

5. Under "Workflow permissions", choose whether you want the GITHUB_TOKEN to have read and write access for all scopes, or just read access for the contents scope.

6. Click Save to apply the settings.

Preventing GitHub Actions from approving pull requests

You can choose to allow or prevent GitHub Actions workflows from approving pull requests.

By default, when you create a new organization, workflows are not allowed to approve pull requests.

1. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your profile.

2. In the top right corner of GitHub Enterprise Server, click your profile photo, then click Your organizations.

   

3. Next to the organization, click Settings.

4. In the left sidebar, click Actions, then click General.

5. Under "Workflow permissions", use the Allow GitHub Actions to approve pull requests setting to configure whether GITHUB_TOKEN can approve pull requests.

6. Click Save to apply the settings.