> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.cortex.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Adding and removing users

> Check seat usage, add users to your Cortex workspace, and understand what happens when you delete a user.

Users join your Cortex workspace by logging in through your identity provider, and you can remove them from the **Permissions** page. This page covers checking how many seats you're using, adding users, and what happens to a user's data, ownership, and tokens when you delete them.

## Checking your seat usage

To see how many seats your workspace is using:

1. From the main sidebar, click your avatar in the bottom-left corner.
2. Select **Settings**.
3. From the **Setting** menu, locate the **Workspace** section, then select **General**.
4. On the **General** page, locate the **Billing** section:
   * **Total seats** - The number of seats in your plan.
   * **Users who have accessed Cortex** - Users who have logged in.
   * **Users receiving notifications** - Users who receive Cortex notifications but haven't logged in.
   * **Remaining seats** - Seats still available.

## Adding a user

To add a user, ask them to log in to your organization's Cortex workspace. If their email address uses an allowed domain, Cortex creates their account automatically and assigns them your workspace's [default role](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/managing-users/permissioning/assigning-roles.md#setting-the-default-role-for-new-users).

If the user sees an "access denied" error, they aren't authorized to access Cortex through your single sign-on (SSO) provider. Ask your SSO administrator to give them access. To manage access centrally, see [Configuring SSO](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/managing-users/configuring-sso) and [Provisioning users with SCIM](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/managing-users/scim/provisioning-users-with-scim).

After the user logs in, you can [change their roles](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/managing-users/permissioning/assigning-roles.md#adding-or-removing-roles-for-a-user).

### Adding a secondary email domain

Cloud customers who need to add a secondary email domain can contact Cortex's [Customer Engineering team](mailto:help@cortex.io). This doesn't apply to self-hosted customers.

## Deleting a user

Before you delete a user, read [what happens when you delete a user](#what-happens-when-you-delete-a-user). In particular, any integrations that use their personal access tokens will stop working.

1. From the main sidebar, click your avatar in the bottom-left corner.
2. Select **Settings**.
3. From the **Settings** menu, locate the **Security and access** section, then select **Permissions**.
4. On the **Permissions** tab, find the user, then click the **trash icon** in their row. The **Confirm user deletion** window opens.
5. Click **Delete**.

To delete several users at once, select the checkbox next to each user, then click **Delete user(s)** in the toolbar that appears at the bottom of the list.

## What happens when you delete a user

Deleting a user removes their ability to log in and permanently deletes their personal access tokens. Everything else they created stays in Cortex.

### Data the user created

Scorecards, entities, Workflows, and other configuration the user created stay in Cortex and keep working normally.

> [!WARNING]
>
> Any integrations or scripts that use the deleted user's [personal access token](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/api-keys/personal-tokens.md) will stop working. Switch them to a different token before you delete the user.

### Ownership and team membership

Ownership and team membership are stored separately from user accounts, so deleting a user doesn't remove their email address from:

* **Entity ownership** - Owners set in the Cortex UI or in `x-cortex-owners` in YAML.
* **Team membership** - Members set in the Cortex UI, in YAML, or synced from an external system such as GitHub, PagerDuty, or Opsgenie.
* **Notification targets** - Notification rules, Workflow steps, and on-call references that use the user's email address.

To fully remove someone as an owner or team member, update those fields in the Cortex UI, in your YAML, or in the external system that syncs the data.

Depending on your workspace settings, deleted users may still appear on team pages. Contact [Customer Engineering](mailto:help@cortex.io) if you need deleted users to stay visible on teams for ownership tracking.

### If the user logs in again

If a deleted user regains access through your identity provider (for example, Okta or Google) and logs in with the same email address, Cortex creates a **new** account for them with your workspace's default role. Any ownership or team membership that still references their email address reconnects to them automatically.

If someone has left your organization and no longer exists in your identity provider, they can't log in to your Cortex workspace.


## Related topics

- [Managing users and roles](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/managing-users.md)
- [Assigning roles to users and teams](https://docs.cortex.io/configure/settings/managing-users/permissioning/assigning-roles.md)
- [Team roles](https://docs.cortex.io/ingesting-data-into-cortex/entities-overview/entities/adding-entities/teams/team-roles.md)