# Exclude index patterns

**URL:** <https://forum.opensearch.org/t/exclude-index-patterns/2930>\
**Category:** Security\
**Created:** [May 29, 2020, 12:59pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/exclude-index-patterns/2930 "2020-05-29T12:59:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![robmartin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3ec8ea/32.png) [@robmartin](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/robmartin)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 12:59pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/exclude-index-patterns/2930/1 "2020-05-29T12:59:50Z")

</div>

is it possible to apply exclude index patterns to an index permission?  
For example

```
 "index_permissions": [
        {
            "index_patterns": [
                "*",
                "~documents*"
            ],
            "fls": [],
            "masked_fields": [],
            "allowed_actions": [
                "read"
            ]
        }
    ]

```

I tried this but it didn’t work

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@mee](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/mee)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2021, 2:09pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/exclude-index-patterns/2930/2 "2021-02-01T14:09:16Z")

</div>

Were you able to solve this? What version are you running?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mussorgsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/87869e/32.png) [@Mussorgsky](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/Mussorgsky)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 4:22am UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/exclude-index-patterns/2930/3 "2021-02-04T04:22:22Z")

</div>

When defining roles you’d typically declare what permissions (or action\_gourps) are granted at the cluster or index level; and with more recent versions, you could also define what permissions (or action\_groups) are excluded both at the cluster and index level as well.

In `roles.yml` you’d have something similar to this:

```
complex-role:
  cluster_permissions:
  - ...
  exclude_cluster_permissions:
  - ...
  index_permissions:
  - index_patterns:
    - ...
    allowed_actions:
    - ...
  exclude_index_permissions:
  - index_patterns:
    - ...
    actions:
    - ...

```

Using these “excluded” permissions, you could define one or more roles to restrict access to your indices.