Attaching and detaching tag policies

You can use tag policies on an entire organization as well as on organizational units (OUs) and individual accounts.

• When you attach a tag policy to your organization root, the tag policy applies to all of that root's member OUs and accounts.

• When you attach a tag policy to an OU, that tag policy applies to the accounts that belong to the OU. Those accounts are also subject to any tag policy attached to the organization root.

• When you attach a tag policy to an account, that tag policy, applies to the account. In addition, that account is subject to any tag policy attached to the organization root, plus any tag policy attached to an OU that the account belongs to.

The aggregation of any tag policies the account inherits, plus any tag policy directly attached to the account is the effective tag policy. For more information, see Understanding policy inheritance.

Important

Untagged resources don’t appear as noncompliant in results.

Minimum permissions

To attach tag policies, you must have permission to run the following action:

• organizations:AttachPolicy

AWS Management Console

You can attach a tag policy by either navigating to the policy or to the root, OU, or account that you want to attach the policy to.

To attach a tag policy by navigating to the root, OU, or account

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the AWS accounts page, navigate to and then choose the name of the root, OU, or account that you want to attach a policy to. You might have to expand OUs (choose the ) to find the OU or account that you want.

3. In the Policies tab, in the entry for Tag policies, choose Attach.

4. Find the policy that you want and choose Attach policy.

   The list of attached tag policies on the Policies tab is updated to include the new addition. The policy change takes effect immediately.

To attach a tag policy by navigating to the policy

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the Tag policies page, choose the name of the policy that you want to attach.

3. On the Targets tab, choose Attach.

4. Choose the radio button next to the root, OU, or account that you want to attach the policy to. You might have to expand OUs (choose the ) to find the OU or account that you want.

5. Choose Attach policy.

   The list of attached tag policies on the Targets tab is updated to include the new addition. The policy change takes effect immediately.

AWS CLI & AWS SDKs

To attach a tag policy to the organization root, OU, or account

You can use one of the following to attach a tag policy:

• AWS CLI: attach-policy

  The following procedure shows how to attach the tag policy you just created to a single test account.

  • Attach the tag policy to your test account by running a command like the following:

    $ aws organizations attach-policy \
        --target-id <account-id> \
        --policy-id p-a1b2c3d4e5

    This command has no output if it is successful.

• AWS SDKs: AttachPolicy

The policy change takes effect immediately.

What to Do Next

After you attach a tag policy, you can find out how compliant your resources are with that tag policy. To do this, use the Resource Groups console. For information, see Evaluating an Account's Compliance in the AWS Resource Groups User Guide.

Detaching a tag policy

When you sign in to your organization's management account, you can detach a tag policy from the organization root, OU, or account that it is attached to. After you detach a tag policy from an entity, that policy no longer applies to any account that was affected by the now detached entity. To detach a policy, complete the following steps.

Minimum permissions

To detach a tag policy from the organization root, OU, or account, you must have permission to run the following action:

• organizations:DetachPolicy

AWS Management Console

You can detach a tag policy by either navigating to the policy or to the root, OU, or account that you want to detach the policy from.

To detach a tag policy by navigating to the root, OU, or account it's attached to

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the AWS accounts page navigate to the Root, OU, or account that you want to detach a policy from. You might have to expand OUs (choose the ) to find the OU or account that you want. Choose the name of the Root, OU, or account.

3. On the Policies tab, choose the radio button next to the tag policy that you want to detach, and then choose Detach.

4. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Detach policy.

   The list of attached tag policies is updated. The policy change takes effect immediately.

To detach a tag policy by navigating to the policy

1. Sign in to the AWS Organizations console. You must sign in as an IAM user, assume an IAM role, or sign in as the root user (not recommended) in the organization’s management account.

2. On the Tag policies page, choose the name of the policy that you want to detach from a root, OU, or account.

3. On the Targets tab, choose the radio button next to the root, OU, or account that you want to detach the policy from. You might have to expand OUs (choose the ) to find the OU or account that you want.

4. Choose Detach.

5. In the confirmation dialog box, choose Detach.

   The list of attached tag policies is updated. The policy change takes effect immediately.

AWS CLI & AWS SDKs

To detach a tag policy from the organization root, OU, or account

You can use one of the following to detach a tag policy:

• AWS CLI: detach-policy

• AWS SDKs: DetachPolicy

The policy change takes effect immediately.