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Enforcing policies for GitHub Actions in your enterprise

In this article

You can enforce policies for GitHub Actions within your enterprise's organizations, or allow policies to be set in each organization.

Who can use this feature

Enterprise owners can enforce policies for GitHub Actions in an enterprise.

About policies for GitHub Actions in your enterprise

GitHub Actions helps members of your enterprise automate software development workflows on GitHub Enterprise Server. For more information, see "Understanding GitHub Actions."

If you enable GitHub Actions, any organization on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance can use GitHub Actions. You can enforce policies to control how members of your enterprise on GitHub Enterprise Server use GitHub Actions. By default, organization owners can manage how members use GitHub Actions. For more information, see "Disabling or limiting GitHub Actions for your organization."

Enforcing a policy to restrict the use of GitHub Actions in your enterprise

You can choose to disable GitHub Actions for all organizations in your enterprise, or only allow specific organizations. 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 Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.

  3. Under " Policies", click Actions.

  4. Under "Policies", select your options.

    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."

    Note: To enable access to public actions, you must first configure your GitHub Enterprise Server instance to connect to GitHub.com. For more information, see "Enabling automatic access to GitHub.com actions using GitHub Connect."

  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 Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.

  3. Under " Policies", click Actions.

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

Enforcing a policy for artifact and log retention in your enterprise

GitHub Actions can store artifact and log files. For more information, see "Downloading workflow artifacts."

By default, the artifacts and log files generated by workflows are retained for 90 days before they are automatically deleted. You can change this retention period to anywhere between 1 day or 400 days.

When you customize the retention period, it only applies to new artifacts and log files, and does not retroactively apply to existing objects. For managed repositories and organizations, the maximum retention period cannot exceed the limit set by the managing organization or enterprise.

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

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.

  3. Under " Policies", click Actions.

  4. Under Artifact and log retention, enter a new value.

  5. Click Save to apply the change.

Enforcing a policy for fork pull requests in your enterprise

You can enforce policies to control how GitHub Actions behaves for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance when members of your enterprise run workflows from forks.

Enforcing a policy for fork pull requests in private repositories

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 enabled for an enterprise, the policy can be selectively disabled in individual organizations or repositories. If a policy is disabled for an enterprise, individual organizations or repositories cannot enable it.

  • 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.

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

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.

  3. Under " Policies", click Actions.

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

  5. Click Save to apply the settings.

Enforcing a policy for workflow permissions in your enterprise

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 enterprise, organizations, or repositories. If you choose a restricted option as the default in your enterprise settings, this prevents the more permissive setting being chosen in the organization or repository 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 Enterprise settings.

    Screenshot of the drop-down menu that appears when you click the profile photo on GitHub Enterprise Server. The "Enterprise settings" option is highlighted in a dark orange outline.

  2. In the enterprise account sidebar, click Policies.

  3. Under " Policies", click Actions.

  4. 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.

  5. Click Save to apply the settings.