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With the Tailscale integration, you can granularly manage SSH access within your tailnet:
  • Allow users to request just-in-time access to resources on your tailnet from the web and Slack
  • Set the right resource owners to delegate approvals to those with the most context
  • Configure day-one access to Tailscale resources with groups from your identity provider
  • Automatically escalate and revoke privileged resource access based on on-call schedules, e.g., PagerDuty or Opsgenie

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Supported resources

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Requirements

Before you begin this guide, you’ll need a tailnet and an Opal account. To learn how to create a tailnet, see the Tailscale quickstart.

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Configuration steps

To use Opal with Tailscale:
  1. Generate an OAuth client from the OAuth clients page of the admin console and give the policy file the write scope.
    1. Using an API key instead of an OAuth client is deprecated. They are still supported but not recommended, as they have a maximum expiry of 90 days and must be refreshed manually.
    2. To upgrade a Tailscale app that uses an API key, find the app in Inventory, then select Setup > Edit. Add the OAuth credentials and remove the API key. After you save the settings, check the App validations section to confirm your app authenticated correctly. No further action is needed after you add valid credentials.
  2. In Opal, go to Inventory, click on the + App icon, and select Tailscale. Set the following fields.
  1. Import Tailscale resources to Opal by selecting … > Import items.
For each ACL tag that is selected, Opal automatically parses the existing access rules and SSH access rules that apply to that tag, and which groups have access to the tagged sources using those rules. Users can now request access or SSH access to a specific tag in Tailscale or to join a specific group.
Last modified on November 5, 2025