Create and manage config policies

Cloud

Enable or disable policy evaluation for an organization

Control whether policy evaluation is applied to pipeline configurations within your organization using the --enabled flag.

To enable policy evaluation run the following command. This sets --enabled to true, which means project configurations will be evaluated against your organization’s policies when pipelines are triggered.:
```
circleci policy settings --enabled=true --owner-id <your-organization-ID>
```
Example output:
```
{
  "enabled": true
}
```
To disable policy evaluation run the following command. This sets --enabled to false, which means project configurations will not be evaluated against your organization’s policies when pipelines are triggered.:
```
circleci policy settings --enabled=false --owner-id <your-organization-ID>
```
Example output:
```
{
  "enabled": false
}
```

The organization ID is required, and is provided with the --owner-id flag. To find your organization/user ID, select Organization Settings in the CircleCI web app side bar.

screenshot showing where to find your organization ID

Create a policy

Ensure you have authenticated your version of the CLI with a token, and updated the CLI, before attempting to use the CLI with config policies. See the Installing the Local CLI page for more information.

Follow these steps to create a policy that checks the version of CircleCI config files to ensure it is greater than or equal to 2.1.

Enable config policies for your organization

circleci policy settings --enabled=true --owner-id <your-organization-ID>

Example output:

{
  "enabled": true
}

Create an empty directory to store your policies. For example:
```
mkdir ./config-policies
```
Inside your new directory create a Rego file for your new policy. Call it: version.rego.

Add the following content to version.rego:

# All policies start with the org package definition
package org

policy_name["example"]

# signal to circleci that check_version is enabled and must be included when making a decision
enable_rule["check_version"]

# signal to circleci that check_version is a hard_failure condition and that builds should be
# stopped if this rule is not satisfied.
hard_fail["check_version"]

# define check version
check_version = reason {
    not input.version # check the case where version is not in the input
    reason := "version must be defined"
} {
    not is_number(input.version) # check that version is number
    reason := "version must be a number"
} {
    not input.version >= 2.1 # check that version is at least 2.1
    reason := sprintf("version must be at least 2.1 but got %v", [input.version])
}

Upload your policy to your organization:
```
circleci policy push ./config-policies --owner-id <your-organization-ID>
```
Now, when a pipeline is triggered within your organization, the project’s .circleci/config.yml will be validated against this policy.

Update a policy

To illustrate making a change to an existing policy, suppose you made an error when creating the policy above. You realize that some project configurations in your organization are using CircleCI config version 2.0, and you want your policy to reflect this.

Change the last check of your rule definition in your version.rego file to:

{
    not input.version >= 2.0 # check that version is at least 2.0
    reason := sprintf("version must be at least 2.0 but got %v", [input.version])
}

Push the policy directory containing the updated policy file using the CLI (verify the diff, and choose yes when prompted):
```
circleci policy push ./config-policies --owner-id <your-organization-ID>
```

Manage policies with your VCS

CircleCI policies are managed by pushing directories of policies to CircleCI via the CLI. The recommended method for managing your policy directory is by storing them in a repository in your VCS, within your organization. This is how policies are managed internally at CircleCI. Pushing a policy bundle is done by triggering a CircleCI pipeline.

We recommend creating a bot account for pushing policies, and using its associated CircleCI personal API token for authentication. For maximum security the token should be stored as an environment variable within a context, and that context should be restricted to groups that are responsible for managing policies. For more information, see the Using Contexts page.

Set up a config policies CI/CD pipeline

Set up repository in your VCS to manage policies.
Create a directory in your new repo for your Rego policy files, for example:
```
mkdir ./config-policies
```

Create a .circleci/config.yml file for your new policies repository, and copy and paste the config example below. This example pushes policies to CircleCI on commits to the main branch, and shows a diff of the policy bundle on commits to all other branches:

The context for each job is shown as <my-context>. This context name is arbitrary, but it must be active and declare the following environment variables:

CIRCLECI_CLI_TOKEN with the value of a personal API token to authenticate the CLI
ORG_ID with the value of the organization ID

version: 2.1

orbs:
  circleci-cli: circleci/circleci-cli@0.1.9 # Use orb to make the `circleci-cli/default` executor available for running jobs

workflows:
  main-workflow:
    jobs:
      - diff-policy-bundle:
          context: <my-context>
          filters:
            branches:
              ignore: main # on all branches other than main
      - push-policy-bundle:
          context: <my-context>
          filters:
            branches:
              only: main # only on the main branch

jobs:
  diff-policy-bundle:
    executor: circleci-cli/default
    resource_class: small
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run:
          name: Diff policy bundle
          command: circleci policy diff ./config --owner-id $ORG_ID # show a diff of the policy bundle

  push-policy-bundle:
    executor: circleci-cli/default
    resource_class: small
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run:
          name: Push policy bundle
          command: circleci policy push ./config --no-prompt --owner-id $ORG_ID # push the policy bundle to CircleCI

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