Service Principal access notebooks created under /Workspace/Users

DineshOjha
New Contributor III

‎03-23-2026 03:53 PM

What permissions does a Service Principal need to run Databricks jobs that reference notebooks created by a user and stored in Git?

Hi everyone,

We are exploring the notebooks‑first development approach with Databricks Bundles, and we’ve run into a workspace‑permissions challenge involving Service Principals.

Our setup

  1. Developers create notebooks under their personal workspace paths:
    /Workspace/Users/<user_email>/project/notebook
  2. These notebooks are synced to Git using Databricks Git folders.
  3. We want to create Databricks Bundles jobs that reference these notebooks and
    run them using a Service Principal (SP) for production automation.

The problem

A Service Principal cannot access user workspace paths such as:

/Workspace/Users/<user_email>/...

We also cannot:

  • Move the notebook into /Workspace/Shared/...
  • Grant the SP access to individual user workspace directories

So the SP has no way to read or execute the notebook, and therefore cannot run the job.

Our question

How should we structure our workspace, Git folders, or permissions so the Service Principal can run Bundle‑based jobs, without granting SP access to personal user directories?

 
 
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