How Amazon Lex works with IAM

Before you use IAM to manage access to Amazon Lex, learn what IAM features are available to use with Amazon Lex.

IAM features you can use with Amazon Lex

IAM feature	Amazon Lex support
Identity-based policies	Yes
Resource-based policies	No
Policy actions	Yes
Policy resources	Yes
Policy condition keys (service-specific)	Yes
ACLs	No
ABAC (tags in policies)	Partial
Temporary credentials	Yes
Principal permissions	Yes
Service roles	Yes
Service-linked roles	Yes

To get a high-level view of how Amazon Lex and other AWS services work with most IAM features, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policies for Amazon Lex

Supports identity-based policies: Yes

Identity-based policies are JSON permissions policy documents that you can attach to an identity, such as an IAM user, group of users, or role. These policies control what actions users and roles can perform, on which resources, and under what conditions. To learn how to create an identity-based policy, see Define custom IAM permissions with customer managed policies in the IAM User Guide.

With IAM identity-based policies, you can specify allowed or denied actions and resources as well as the conditions under which actions are allowed or denied. You can't specify the principal in an identity-based policy because it applies to the user or role to which it is attached. To learn about all of the elements that you can use in a JSON policy, see IAM JSON policy elements reference in the IAM User Guide.

Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Lex

To view examples of Amazon Lex identity-based policies, see Identity-based policy examples for Amazon Lex.

Resource-based policies within Amazon Lex

Supports resource-based policies: No

Resource-based policies are JSON policy documents that you attach to a resource. Examples of resource-based policies are IAM role trust policies and Amazon S3 bucket policies. In services that support resource-based policies, service administrators can use them to control access to a specific resource. For the resource where the policy is attached, the policy defines what actions a specified principal can perform on that resource and under what conditions. You must specify a principal in a resource-based policy. Principals can include accounts, users, roles, federated users, or AWS services.

To enable cross-account access, you can specify an entire account or IAM entities in another account as the principal in a resource-based policy. Adding a cross-account principal to a resource-based policy is only half of establishing the trust relationship. When the principal and the resource are in different AWS accounts, an IAM administrator in the trusted account must also grant the principal entity (user or role) permission to access the resource. They grant permission by attaching an identity-based policy to the entity. However, if a resource-based policy grants access to a principal in the same account, no additional identity-based policy is required. For more information, see Cross account resource access in IAM in the IAM User Guide.

Policy actions for Amazon Lex

Supports policy actions: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Action element of a JSON policy describes the actions that you can use to allow or deny access in a policy. Policy actions usually have the same name as the associated AWS API operation. There are some exceptions, such as permission-only actions that don't have a matching API operation. There are also some operations that require multiple actions in a policy. These additional actions are called dependent actions.

Include actions in a policy to grant permissions to perform the associated operation.

To see a list of Amazon Lex actions, see Actions defined by Amazon Lex in the Service Authorization Reference.

Policy actions in Amazon Lex use the following prefix before the action:

lex

To specify multiple actions in a single statement, separate them with commas.

"Action": [
      "lex:action1",
      "lex:action2"
         ]

You can specify multiple actions using wildcards (*). For example, to specify all actions that begin with the word Describe, include the following action:

"Action": "lex:Describe*"

Policy resources for Amazon Lex

Supports policy resources: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Resource JSON policy element specifies the object or objects to which the action applies. Statements must include either a Resource or a NotResource element. As a best practice, specify a resource using its Amazon Resource Name (ARN). You can do this for actions that support a specific resource type, known as resource-level permissions.

For actions that don't support resource-level permissions, such as listing operations, use a wildcard (*) to indicate that the statement applies to all resources.

"Resource": "*"

An Amazon Lex bot resource ARN has the following format.

arn:aws:lex:${Region}:${Account}:bot:${Bot-Name}

For more information about the format of ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) and AWS Service Namespaces.

For example, to specify the OrderFlowers bot in your statement, use the following ARN.

"Resource": "arn:aws:lex:us-east-2:123456789012:bot:OrderFlowers"

To specify all bots that belong to a specific account, use the wildcard (*).

"Resource": "arn:aws:lex:us-east-2:123456789012:bot:*"

Some Amazon Lex actions, such as those for creating resources, can't be performed on a specific resource. In those cases, you must use the wildcard, (*).

"Resource": "*"

To see a list of Amazon Lex resource types and their ARNs, see Resources defined by Amazon Lex in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions you can specify the ARN of each resource, see Actions defined by Amazon Lex.

Policy condition keys for Amazon Lex

Supports service-specific policy condition keys: Yes

Administrators can use AWS JSON policies to specify who has access to what. That is, which principal can perform actions on what resources, and under what conditions.

The Condition element (or Condition block) lets you specify conditions in which a statement is in effect. The Condition element is optional. You can create conditional expressions that use condition operators, such as equals or less than, to match the condition in the policy with values in the request.

If you specify multiple Condition elements in a statement, or multiple keys in a single Condition element, AWS evaluates them using a logical AND operation. If you specify multiple values for a single condition key, AWS evaluates the condition using a logical OR operation. All of the conditions must be met before the statement's permissions are granted.

You can also use placeholder variables when you specify conditions. For example, you can grant an IAM user permission to access a resource only if it is tagged with their IAM user name. For more information, see IAM policy elements: variables and tags in the IAM User Guide.

AWS supports global condition keys and service-specific condition keys. To see all AWS global condition keys, see AWS global condition context keys in the IAM User Guide.

To see a list of Amazon Lex condition keys, see Condition keys for Amazon Lex in the Service Authorization Reference. To learn with which actions and resources you can use a condition key, see Actions defined by Amazon Lex.

The following table lists the Amazon Lex condition keys that apply to Amazon Lex resources. You can include these keys in Condition elements in an IAM permissions policy.

Amazon Lex Condition Key	Description	Value Type	Permission
lex:associatedIntents	Scopes the set of intents that can be used when creating or modifying the definition of a bot.	Array of strings	lex:PutBot
lex:associatedSlotTypes	Scopes the set of slot types that can be used when creating or modifying the definition of a slot type.	Array of strings	lex:PutIntent
lex:ChannelType	Scopes the type of bot channel association that a user can create, get, or delete.	String	lex:CreateBotChannelAssociation lex:DeleteBotChannelAssociation lex:GetBotChannelAssociation

ACLs in Amazon Lex

Supports ACLs: No

Access control lists (ACLs) control which principals (account members, users, or roles) have permissions to access a resource. ACLs are similar to resource-based policies, although they do not use the JSON policy document format.

ABAC with Amazon Lex

Supports ABAC (tags in policies): Partial

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is an authorization strategy that defines permissions based on attributes. In AWS, these attributes are called tags. You can attach tags to IAM entities (users or roles) and to many AWS resources. Tagging entities and resources is the first step of ABAC. Then you design ABAC policies to allow operations when the principal's tag matches the tag on the resource that they are trying to access.

ABAC is helpful in environments that are growing rapidly and helps with situations where policy management becomes cumbersome.

To control access based on tags, you provide tag information in the condition element of a policy using the aws:ResourceTag/key-name, aws:RequestTag/key-name, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

If a service supports all three condition keys for every resource type, then the value is Yes for the service. If a service supports all three condition keys for only some resource types, then the value is Partial.

For more information about ABAC, see Define permissions with ABAC authorization in the IAM User Guide. To view a tutorial with steps for setting up ABAC, see Use attribute-based access control (ABAC) in the IAM User Guide.

You can associate tags with certain types of Amazon Lex resources for authorization. To control access based on tags, provide tag information in the condition element of a policy by using the lex:ResourceTag/${TagKey}, aws:RequestTag/${TagKey}, or aws:TagKeys condition keys.

For more information about tagging Amazon Lex resources, see Tagging Your Amazon Lex Resources.

To view an example identity-based policy for limiting access to a resource based on the tags on that resource, see Use a Tag to Access a Resource.

The following table lists the actions and corresponding resource types for tag-based access control. Each action is authorized based on the tags associated with the corresponding resource type.

Action	Resource type	Condition keys	Notes
CreateBotVersion	bot	lex:ResourceTag
DeleteBot	bot	lex:ResourceTag
DeleteBotAlias	alias	lex:ResourceTag
DeleteBotChannelAssociation	channel	lex:ResourceTag
DeleteBotVersion	bot	lex:ResourceTag
DeleteSession	bot or alias	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when alias is set to $LATEST. Uses tags associated with the specified alias when used with other aliases.
DeleteUtterances	bot	lex:ResourceTag
GetBot	bot or alias	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when versionOrAlias is set to $LATEST or numeric version. Uses tags associated with the specified alias when used with aliases
GetBotAlias	alias	lex:ResourceTag
GetBotChannelAssociation	chanel	lex:ResourceTag
GetBotChannelAssociations	chanel	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when alias is set to "-". Uses tags associated with the specified alias when a bot alias is specified
GetBotVersions	bot	lex:ResourceTag
GetExport	bot	lex:ResourceTag
GetSession	bot or alias	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when alias is set to $LATEST. Uses tags associated with the specified alias when used with other aliases.
GetUtterancesView	bot	lex:ResourceTag
ListTagsForResource	bot, alias, or channel	lex:ResourceTag
PostContent	bot or alias	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when alias is set to $LATEST. Uses tags associated with the specified alias when used with other aliases.
PostText	bot or alias	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when alias is set to $LATEST. Uses tags associated with the specified alias when used with other aliases.
PutBot	bot	lex:ResourceTag, aws:RequestTag, aws:TagKeys
PutBotAlias	alias	lex:ResourceTag, aws:RequestTag, aws:TagKeys
PutSession	bot or alias	lex:ResourceTag	Uses tags associated with the bot when alias is set to $LATEST. Uses tags associated with the specified alias when used with other aliases.
StartImport	bot	lex:ResourceTag	Relies on access policy for the PutBot operation. Tags and permissions specific to the StartImport operation are ignored.
TagResource	bot, alias, or channel	lex:ResourceTag, aws:RequestTag, aws:TagKeys
UntagResource	bot, alias, or channel	lex:ResourceTag, aws:RequestTag, aws:TagKeys

Using temporary credentials with Amazon Lex

Supports temporary credentials: Yes

Some AWS services don't work when you sign in using temporary credentials. For additional information, including which AWS services work with temporary credentials, see AWS services that work with IAM in the IAM User Guide.

You are using temporary credentials if you sign in to the AWS Management Console using any method except a user name and password. For example, when you access AWS using your company's single sign-on (SSO) link, that process automatically creates temporary credentials. You also automatically create temporary credentials when you sign in to the console as a user and then switch roles. For more information about switching roles, see Switch from a user to an IAM role (console) in the IAM User Guide.

You can manually create temporary credentials using the AWS CLI or AWS API. You can then use those temporary credentials to access AWS. AWS recommends that you dynamically generate temporary credentials instead of using long-term access keys. For more information, see Temporary security credentials in IAM.

You can use temporary credentials to sign in with federation, assume an IAM role, or to assume a cross-account role. You obtain temporary security credentials by calling AWS STS API operations such as AssumeRole or GetFederationToken.

Cross-service principal permissions for Amazon Lex

Supports forward access sessions (FAS): Yes

When you use an IAM user or role to perform actions in AWS, you are considered a principal. When you use some services, you might perform an action that then initiates another action in a different service. FAS uses the permissions of the principal calling an AWS service, combined with the requesting AWS service to make requests to downstream services. FAS requests are only made when a service receives a request that requires interactions with other AWS services or resources to complete. In this case, you must have permissions to perform both actions. For policy details when making FAS requests, see Forward access sessions.

Service roles for Amazon Lex

Supports service roles: Yes

A service role is an IAM role that a service assumes to perform actions on your behalf. An IAM administrator can create, modify, and delete a service role from within IAM. For more information, see Create a role to delegate permissions to an AWS service in the IAM User Guide.

Warning

Changing the permissions for a service role might break Amazon Lex functionality. Edit service roles only when Amazon Lex provides guidance to do so.

Choosing an IAM role in Amazon Lex

Amazon Lex uses service-linked roles to call Amazon Comprehend and Amazon Polly. It uses resource-level permissions on your AWS Lambda functions to invoke them.

You must provide an IAM role to enable conversation tagging. For more information, see Creating an IAM Role and Policies for Conversation Logs.

Service-linked roles for Amazon Lex

Supports service-linked roles: Yes

A service-linked role is a type of service role that is linked to an AWS service. The service can assume the role to perform an action on your behalf. Service-linked roles appear in your AWS account and are owned by the service. An IAM administrator can view, but not edit the permissions for service-linked roles.

For details about creating or managing Amazon Lex service-linked roles, see Using Service-Linked Roles for Amazon Lex.