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Cortex supports several ways to assign owners to an entity: accepting an automated recommendation, defining owners in the entity descriptor YAML, adding them directly in the UI, or syncing them from an integration. For most teams, a combination is common: automated recommendations to tackle unowned entities at scale, YAML for entities managed through GitOps, and the UI for quick edits.

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Types of owners

Owners can be defined as:
  • A team (recommended)
    • If you link a group from an external platform (such as Okta), Cortex automatically updates team membership when someone leaves your organization and is removed from your identity provider.
  • An individual user
An entity can also inherit owners from a parent entity, such as a domain. See Ownership inheritance.

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Methods for assigning ownership

Owners can be assigned:
  • By accepting Cortex’s automated recommendations for owners, based on signals from across your catalog
  • By pulling information from third-party integrations in the entity’s YAML
  • Directly in the Cortex UI
  • Automatically if Cortex detects that an entity is owned by a team that does not yet exist in Cortex
    • If an entity’s YAML references a team, but that team doesn’t have a corresponding entry within Cortex, Cortex automatically creates the team. A label next to the team name denotes that team was Automatically created by Cortex.

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Assigning ownership via Cortex recommendations

Cortex’s ownership recommendations uses a machine learning model to suggest team owners for entities in your catalog. It draws on the context of all the data in your catalog, including code contribution activity, the owners of related services, entity names and descriptions, domain structures, metadata, and connections to other tools, such as on-call and issue tracking tools. The model works even with very little data to start. The richer and better connected your catalog is, the more the model can extend that signal to the rest of your catalog, and the more accurate its recommendations are.
Ownership tool previewNot seeing the results you expect? This is an early version of the Ownership tool. Please submit feedback via this form. Note the following considerations:
  • To get recommendations, you must have teams configured in Cortex, and your team members must have Git identity mappings. The more teams and people you map, the better your recommendations.
  • To accept or reject the recommended owner, the user must have the Edit Entities permission (Edit and create entities in Roles and permissions).
  • If you are using GitOps, you can view recommendations, but you cannot accept them from the UI.
When Cortex has an ownership recommendation for an entity, it surfaces in the following places: the Ownership tool (Tools > Ownership), the Owners section of the entity’s details page overview, the Owners block in the entity’s metadata sidebar, and the import flow when adding entities.

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Reviewing recommendations per entity

You can review and accept recommendations from an entity’s details page in one of two ways: via the Owners block in the metadata sidebar and via the entity’s settings. Prerequisites
  1. UI editing must be enabled for the entity type
  2. The user must have entity-level access via RBAC or fine-grained access control
  3. The user must have the Edit Services and Edit Catalog roles.
To review and accept ownership recommendations via the metadata sidebar:
  1. Navigate to the entity’s details page.
  2. Make sure the metadata sidebar is expanded.
  3. In the Owners block, click the Recommendations button.
  4. Review the suggested owners. Do one of the following:
    • To accept a recommendation, click the checkmark next to that entity.
    • To accept more than one recommendation, select the checkboxes next to those entities, then click Apply.
    • To remove a recommendation, click the X next to the entity.
    • To remove more than one recommendation, select the checkboxes next to those entities, then click Reject.
    • To remove all recommendations, click Dismiss all.
To review and accept ownership recommendations via the entity’s settings:
  1. Navigate to the entity’s details page.
  2. In the upper-right corner, click Configure entity.
  3. From the left entity details sidebar, click Owners.
  4. Review the suggested owners. Do one of the following:
    • To accept a recommendation, click the checkmark next to that entity.
    • To accept more than one recommendation, select the checkboxes next to those entities, then click Apply.
    • To remove a recommendation, click the X next to the entity.
    • To remove more than one recommendation, select the checkboxes next to those entities, then click Reject.
    • To remove all recommendations, click Dismiss all.

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Reviewing recommendations on the Ownership page

The Ownership page shows the teams Cortex recommends as owners for your entities, so you can review and accept them in one place. To open it, go to Tools > Ownership in the main sidebar.
The Ownership page in Cortex.
The page has two panes:
  • Left pane - Lists the entities or teams you can review, grouped by status.
  • Right pane - Shows the recommendations and current owners for whatever you select in the left pane.
Entities and Teams tabs The tabs at the top of the left pane let you review ownership from either side.
  • Entities - Lists entities, grouped into Missing Team Owner and Has Team Owner. Select an entity to see the teams recommended to own it, how confident each recommendation is, and its current owners. Click Open Entity to go to the entity’s details page, or click the repository link to open it in your git provider.
  • Teams - Lists teams, grouped into Has recommendations and No recommendations. Select a team to see the entities recommended for it and the entities it already owns. Click Open Team to go to the team’s details page.
Each group shows a count next to its name. Click the arrow next to a group to expand or collapse it. All and Mine tabs Below the Entities and Teams tabs, you can choose how much of the list to show:
  • All - Shows every entity or team in your workspace.
  • Mine - Shows only the entities or teams associated with you.
Sort, filter, and search the list Use the icons to the right of the All and Mine tabs to narrow the list. To sort the list:
  1. Click the sort icon.
  2. Select Name, or select Recommendations to sort by confidence (high to low). Click the arrows next to the selected option to reverse the order.
To filter the list:
  1. Click the filter icon.
  2. In the left side of the filter panel, click + next to a field you want to filter by:
    • Domains - Available on the Entities and Teams tabs.
    • Entity types - Available on the Entities tab only.
  3. Choose one or more values from the Select dropdown.
  4. Click Apply.
To remove a filter, click the trash icon next to it. To clear all of them, click Reset filters. To search the list, click the search icon and enter a name. Accepting or rejecting recommendations The Recommendations to review table lists each recommended team (on the Entities tab) or entity (on the Teams tab) with a confidence level of High or Low. To accept or reject a single recommendation:
  1. In the left pane, select an entity or team.
  2. In the Recommendations to review table, find the recommendation:
    • To accept it, click the checkmark.
    • To reject it, click the X.
To accept or reject several recommendations at once:
  1. Select the checkbox next to each recommendation you want to act on. To select all of them, select the checkbox in the table header.
  2. In the action bar at the bottom of the table, click Apply to accept the selected recommendations, or click Reject to reject them.
To clear your selection, click the X on the right side of the action bar. To dismiss all recommendations for the selected entity or team, click Dismiss all at the bottom of the table. To add an owner manually, click Add in the Owners panel (Entities tab) or the Owned entities panel (Teams tab). On the Teams tab, click the trash icon next to an owned entity to remove it.

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Assigning ownership via an entity’s YAML

Use the x-cortex-owners field to define owners directly in your entity’s YAML. Each owner is either a group (a team from Cortex or a connected integration) or an individual identified by email. Each owner entry requires the type field, set to either group or email. For group owners, the name and provider fields are also required. For email owners, the email field is required. Cortex recognizes groups from the following integrations: Azure Active Directory, Azure DevOps, BambooHR, GitHub, GitLab, Google, Okta, Opsgenie, ServiceNow, and Workday.
The provider field tells Cortex which system the group comes from. Supported values are: ACTIVE_DIRECTORY, AZURE_DEVOPS, BAMBOO_HR, BITBUCKET, CORTEX (use for teams defined natively in Cortex, including teams Cortex creates automatically from Workday), GITHUB, GITLAB, GOOGLE, OKTA, OPSGENIE, SERVICE_NOW, and WORKDAY. The name field is case-sensitive. What it refers to depends on the provider:
The description field is optional on any owner entry and is purely for human reference.

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Assigning ownership via the Cortex UI

Users with the Edit Entities or Edit Catalog role can assign ownership via the Cortex UI.
  1. From the main sidebar, expand Catalogs, then select All entities.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • Select the All tab to search and filter across all of your organization’s entities.
    • Select the Mine tab to search and filter only the entities you own.
    • Note that Cortex saves your selection and restores it the next time you open this page.
  3. Select the entity whose ownership you want to edit.
  4. In the upper-right corner, click Configure entity.
  5. From the left entity details sidebar, click Owners.
  6. Do one or both of the following:
    1. To assign a team ownership:
      1. Locate the Teams section, then click Add.
        The Add button next to Teams.
      2. In the Add Teams side panel, select the team from the drop-down menu.
      3. Optionally, enter a description for the team.
      4. Click Add.
    2. To assign an individual user ownership:
      1. Locate the Users section, then click Add.
        The Add button next to Users.
      2. In the User side panel, do one of the following:
        1. Select a Cortex user from the drop-down menu. To find a user not shown in the list, use the Search field.
        2. To add a user who is not listed in Cortex, enter their email address into the Email address field. The drop-down populates with the user’s email address.
      3. Optionally, enter a description for the user.
      4. Click Add.
Last modified on October 7, 2026