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Projects

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Projects are an organizational layer within a Temporal Cloud Account that groups related resources into a single operational boundary. With Projects, you can organize Namespaces, Nexus endpoints, and Connectivity Rules around how your organization operates: by team, environment, service, or business unit.

Projects make it easier to delegate ownership, manage access at scale, and organize resources without creating additional Cloud Accounts. As your organization grows, Projects help align your Temporal Cloud resources with your organizational structure while reducing operational overhead.

Projects are for organization and authorization. They don't change how Workflows execute inside a Namespace.

Enable Projects on your Account

While Projects is in pre-release, it is not enabled by default. Contact Support to request enabling Projects for your account.

Once Projects are enabled, existing Accounts receive a Default Project, and new Accounts are created with one automatically. For existing Accounts, all existing resources are automatically placed in the Default Project. Existing role assignments and effective permissions remain unchanged. For new Accounts, the Default Project is created automatically. New resources are automatically placed in the Default Project unless you specify otherwise.

Default Project and Project names

Every Temporal Cloud Account includes a Default Project. The Default Project is not a special type of Project. It behaves like any other Project for managing resources. The main difference between the Default Project and any Projects you create is that the Default Project is automatically created for you as a starting point and provides backward-compatible behavior for existing resources and operations that do not specify a Project. Otherwise, it supports the same resource-management capabilities as other Projects.

If you don't need the organizational boundaries offered by Projects, continue to use the Default Project for all your resources. You can always create a new Project later if you need it.

All Projects are identified by immutable IDs, and by display names, which can be edited.

Namespaces cannot be moved between Projects currently, meaning all existing Namespaces will exist in the Default Project. You can create a new Project and place a new Namespace in that Project.

For limitations on the number of Projects per Account and number of resources per Project, see Project-level limitations.

Create a new Project

Create a Project when a set of resources has a distinct owner or access model, separate from the Default Project. A good Project represents a stable ownership boundary, not just a folder.

Start with one Project for a team or application with clear ownership. Add more only when needed.

To create a Project using the Temporal Cloud UI:

  1. Select Projects at the top of the left navigation bar.
  2. Click the Create Project button to create a new Project.
  3. On the Create Project page that appears, give the Project a name (limited to 64 characters) and an optional description (limited to 255 characters).
  4. Click Create.

After creating the Project, add new Namespaces and other supported resources within it. You cannot yet migrate resources from one Project to another.

Add Resources to a Project

After creating a Project, you can create Project-scoped resources such as Namespaces, Nexus Endpoints, or Connectivity Rules within it.

In Temporal Cloud UI:

  1. Open the Project.
  2. Select Namespaces (or Nexus Endpoints) in the left navigation.
  3. Click Create Namespace (or Nexus Endpoints) to add to the project.

Connectivity rules cannot currently be created via the UI. Connectivity rules and the Namespace they attach to must reside in the same Project.

Manage Project Access

Users, groups, and Account-scoped Service Accounts can be granted Project-level roles. Each Project role applies to the Project and, depending on the role, may grant inherited access to resources within it.

To manage Project access in the Temporal Cloud UI:

  1. Open the Project.
  2. Click the Project Identities tab in the left navigation. The Project Identities page has three tabs, for Users, Service Accounts, and Groups.
  3. Click the Manage Identities button to add (or remove) users, groups or service accounts, and assign desired Project Roles from the drop-down list. You can also modify or remove an existing principal's role in the same view.

Similar to Namespace-scoped Service Accounts, a Project-scoped Service Account is an identity bound (or scoped) to a single Project. Use it for workers, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform, or operational automation that should not access resources outside that Project. Project-scoped Service Accounts are not created automatically with Project creation. Create them only when needed.

To create a Project-scoped service account in this Project, click Project Identities in the left navigation. Then click the Service Accounts tab to create a Project-scoped service account.

After creating the Service Account, you can optionally create one or more API keys for it. Each API key inherits only the permissions of its associated Service Account. If the Service Account is deleted, all of its API keys are deleted automatically.Project-scoped Service Accounts count toward the Project's Service Account limit.

A Project-scope Service Account:

  • Can only bound (or scope to) exactly one Project. Each project can contain multiple Project-scoped Service Accounts.
  • Cannot be moved to another Project after it is created.
  • Counts toward the Project's Service Account limit.
  • Must be deleted before the Project can be deleted.

Unlike an Account-scoped Service Account, a Project-scoped Service Account cannot access resources outside its Project. For automation that needs access across multiple Projects, use an Account-scoped Service Account and grant it the appropriate Project roles.

Project roles

The following roles are available at the Project level for users, groups, and service accounts:

  • Project Admin: Complete access to the Project resource itself and all resources in it.
  • Project Write: Write access to all the Namespaces and other resources in a Project, but cannot add other users.
  • Project Read: Read-only access to all the resources in a Project, including viewing the actual contents of a Workflow.
  • Project Contribute: Can create new Namespaces, and list all Project resources, but without access to Workflow contents.
  • Project List: List-only access to metadata for all the resources in a Project, but without access to Workflow contents.
  • Project Member: Minimal Project-level access; used when a user already has explicit Namespace-level access and only needs to be represented at the Project level
Project Developer

Project Developer is a compatibility role that is automatically inherited by users with the Account Developer role. It allows them to create Namespaces (and manage them) without automatically granting access to all existing Namespaces in the Project. This role cannot be assigned directly. For new role assignments, assign Project Write or Project Contribute as appropriate.

A principal automatically inherits a Project-level access from their Account-level role. For example, a Global Admin automatically inherits the Project Admin access for every Project in the Account.

Project-level permissions are additive. Granting a Project-level role does not reduce permissions inherited from Account-level or Namespace-level roles. A principal's effective permissions are the union of all applicable Account-, Project-, and Namespace-level role assignments.

Modify an existing Project

To modify an existing Project, click Project Settings in the left navigation. The Project Settings page appears, with the General tab selected by default. Here, you can change the name or description of your Project. You can also access your Project's unique ID. You can copy the ID, but you can't change it.

Delete a Project

A Project must be empty, meaning it contains zero Namespaces, Nexus Endpoints, Connectivity Rules, or Project-scoped Service Accounts, to be deleted.

An Account must always contain at least one Project. If the Account contains two or more Projects, you can delete the Default Project. If the Default Project is deleted, Temporal does not automatically designate a new Default Project. If the Default Project is deleted, API calls that do not specify a Project (by providing a Project ID) will fail.

To delete a Project, click Project Settings in the left navigation and then click the Delete Project tab. Click the Delete button to permanently delete the Project.

Use the Deletion Prevention slider to set the Deletion Protection flag for this Project. Once set, the Project can't be deleted unless the flag is deliberately disabled.

Projects support a delete protection flag, similar to Namespaces. When this flag is enabled, the Project cannot be deleted until the flag is disabled. This flag is enabled for the Default Project. The flag is disabled for any new Project created by a user. This flag is not inherited by the Namespaces within the Project. Namespace delete protection can be managed per-Namespace. If a Project is the only one remaining in an Account, that project cannot be deleted, regardless of the status of the Deletion Protection Flag.