Cortex Quick Start
We’re excited for you to start using Cortex to achieve engineering excellence! If you don’t have an account yet, sign up for a demo.
This guide walks through setting up your account, configuring your first integrations, and connecting your entities — services, infrastructure, teams, and more — with Cortex. After you’ve followed these steps, reach out to the Cortex team with any questions you have.
Need additional guidance?
To ensure a smooth implementation, partner with Cortex Professional Services (PS) for expert guidance and hands-on assistance with data modeling, entity ownership, and more. Reach out to [email protected] to learn how we can support your implementation and adoption journey.
Looking for a quick introduction to Cortex? Check out the Cortex 101 video in Cortex Academy.
Getting started in Cortex
When you first log in to your Cortex workspace, you are prompted through the steps of configuring your account and connecting data. See the video below for a demonstration:
Following the streamlined onboarding
Step 1: Log in and configure your workspace
You can access your Cortex workspace using the workspace ID provided to you by your Cortex team. Or, if you are deploying Cortex on-premises, the Cortex team will provide you with access to an installer.
SSO setup
Your initial login will be configured to use Google for Single Sign-On (SSO).
If you do not use a Google domain email address, work with the Cortex team on initial access and configuring an alternate SSO provider.
Add users
After accessing your account, you can add users to your Cortex workspace.
We recommend having at least two users with the Admin role configured to ensure redundancy of access.
Customize the look and feel
Customize the appearance of your Cortex workspace. Under the general settings, you can:
Upload your company logo
Enter a workspace name
Select a brand color
Go further
We recommend reviewing the following resources:
Onboarding management: Stay informed about onboarding status for users in Cortex.
Roles and permissions: Assign default roles to users or create and assign custom roles with granular permissions.
IP allowlist: You can use the IP allowlist to control where your Cortex workspace can be accessed from.
Step 2: Configure integrations
Before importing entities, you may want to think through your data modeling approach. Learn more below under Data modeling.
You will be prompted to connect your tools:
Integrate with version control and teams
Version control: Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab
Configuring a Git provider allows you to discover and track ownership of entities, view important information about your repositories in Cortex, and use git data in Eng Intelligence to understand key metrics.
After you connect version control, Cortex will scan for repositories. You can choose whether to import all, or only selected, repositories.
Teams and ownership: Azure DevOps, BambooHR, Entra ID, GitHub, GitLab, Google, Okta, Opsgenie, ServiceNow, Workday
Connecting your teams and team members in Cortex allows you to efficiently track ownership of entities. Learn more below under Tracking ownership with teams.
Configure other integrations
You can then configure additional integrations, such as:
On-call: PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps), xMatters
Configuring an on-call provider allows you to map services and other entities to the proper on-call rotations and manage alerts.
Project management: GitHub, Jira, Azure DevOps, ClickUp
Connecting project tracking tools allows you to link entities with their roadmaps, tickets, and initiatives.
Communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams
Configuring a communication provider allows you to receive timely notifications and collaborate seamlessly with team members.
As you integrate additional tools with Cortex, it can also become possible to streamline work during an incident, efficiently track issues, monitor your code for vulnerabilities, and more. See the documentation for a full list of available integrations.
Step 3: Configure identity mappings and review services
Configure identity mappings
After connecting version control and teams, you will be prompted to configure identity mappings for users, allowing you to match user identities across different systems.
Review mapped services
Cortex will recommend connections for your services. For example, if you connected PagerDuty, Slack, and Jira, then Cortex will recommend an entity's on-call service, Slack channel, and Jira project. You can change these details before confirming the import.
Step 4: View catalog or create a Scorecard
Congratulations - you are on the path to achieving engineering excellence with Cortex!
After completing the onboarding flow, you will be prompted to create your first Scorecard or to view your catalog.
For additional information and resources, see the section below: Additional information.
Create your first Scorecard
You can use Scorecards to establish best practices, track migration, promote accountability among teams, enforce standardization across entities, or define maturity standards.
When you first start using Cortex, we recommend creating an onboarding Scorecard to ensure that your entities are configured with the basics.
To get started:
From the main nav, click Scorecards.
Click Create Scorecard.
Cortex offers templates to help you get started with common use cases. Click the Onboarding Scorecard.
Review the default integrations, levels, and rules that are included in the template. You’ll get a chance to edit these on the next page. Click Continue.
Configure your Scorecard, making any modifications necessary.
For in-depth instructions on creating Scorecards, see Creating and editing Scorecards.
When you are finished, click Save Scorecard.
Go further
Use Initiatives to prioritize specific rules in a Scorecard and set deadlines for team members to accomplish tasks.
Additional information
Data modeling
Before importing entities, consider your data modeling approach.
Identify the key entities that you want to represent in your Cortex catalogs.
Read more about entities and the default entity types in the Entities documentation.
If needed, create custom entity types.
Create catalogs to track and store information about the entities that make up your infrastructure.
Tracking ownership with teams
Teams serve as both an entity representing your organization in Cortex and as owners for entities in the catalogs. Ownership is a core use case of Cortex, as organizations seek to establish clear ownership of services, data, and other entities. Ownership also drives which users will receive notifications from Cortex, including alerts for on-call changes, when an entity is re-evaluated and its Scorecard changes, and more.
Teams can be assessed via Scorecards, interact with integrations, and leverage custom data. They can also be configured in a hierarchy. In addition, team data can be tracked and analyzed in Eng Intelligence. You can manually create teams in Cortex or you can pull in teams from integrations.
Go further
Create groups to segment your entities.
Enhance your entities with custom data to provide additional context and improve searchability.
Add external documentation to entities to keep everyone informed.
Explore additional resources
Now that you’ve completed your first steps, we recommend exploring the following topics:
GitOps: You can manage your entities directly in the browser-based Cortex workspace, or you can follow a GitOps approach. We recommend starting in your Cortex workspace, then if desired, switching to GitOps before a broader rollout at your organization.
Workflows: Automate running sequential actions and development workflows based on contextual data that exist inside your workspace.
Reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information on enabling this feature.
Plugins: If you have a unique use case for tools or work with third parties that Cortex does not have an integration with or needs to pull in data from internal systems, we offer the option to build a plugin.
Eng Intelligence: View key metrics and high-level data to gain insights into services, bottlenecks in the pull request lifecycle, incident response, and more.
Reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information on enabling this feature.
Workspace settings: Learn about additional settings and features to further customize your experience: API keys, audit logs, notifications, and more.
Go further
Ready to learn more? Check out the Cortex Academy to explore courses across core product areas and build expertise on the Cortex platform!
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