# What permissions/roles should I assign to create a read-only Kibana user?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-permissions-roles-should-i-assign-to-create-a-read-only-kibana-user/97108
**Category:** Kibana
**Created:** [August 15, 2017, 1:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-permissions-roles-should-i-assign-to-create-a-read-only-kibana-user/97108 "2017-08-15T13:57:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@TimWard](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TimWard)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2017, 1:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-permissions-roles-should-i-assign-to-create-a-read-only-kibana-user/97108/1 "2017-08-15T13:57:14Z")
One who can read all my indices, see all my visualisations and dashboards, but not be able to change any visualisations or dashboards?
The built-in kibana\_user role doesn't do it, because that lets the user destroy things. But if I reduce the privileges on .kibana\* to just "read" (and add "read" to indices "\*" for access to the actual data) I just get a blank screen.
(Yes I know there are many similar such questions, but I can't find one that has an actual answer.)
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### Author:  [@TimWard](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/TimWard)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-permissions-roles-should-i-assign-to-create-a-read-only-kibana-user/97108/2 "2017-08-15T14:17:32Z")
The one you seem to need is "view\_index\_metadata".
Although the user interface is very poor - it will let you put loads of effort into, say, editing a dashboard, and only tell you that you don't have permission at the point of trying to save.
The usual approach is to block off disallowed actions in the user interface _as well as_ (obviously) rejecting them at the back end. It doesn't look to me like this feature has been finished yet?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [September 12, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-permissions-roles-should-i-assign-to-create-a-read-only-kibana-user/97108/3 "2017-09-12T14:17:36Z")
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