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 and successful implementation, most of our customers partner with Cortex Professional Services (PS) for expert guidance and hands-on assistance. If you've already purchased a PS engagement, your dedicated team will be reaching out soon to kick things off.

If you haven’t engaged with PS yet, don’t worry—you can still take advantage of our expertise! Reach out to learn how we can support your implementation and adoption journey so you get the most out of Cortex.

Looking for a quick introduction to Cortex? Check out the Cortex 101 video in Cortex Academy.

Getting started in Cortex

Step 1: Log in to 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.

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

We recommend configuring at least one integration from each of the following categories:

• Git providers: Azure DevOps, Bitbucket, GitHub, or 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.
• On-call providers: PagerDuty, Opsgenie, Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps), or xMatters

  • Configuring an on-call provider allows you to map services and other entities to the proper on-call rotations and manage alerts.

• Communication providers: Slack or Microsoft Teams

  • Configuring a communication provider allows you to receive timely notifications and collaborate seamlessly with team members.

• Teams and ownership providers: Azure DevOps, BambooHR, Entra ID, GitHub, GitLab, Google, Okta, Opsgenie, ServiceNow, and Workday

  • Connecting your teams and team members in Cortex allows you to efficiently track ownership of entities.

Go further

It would also be beneficial to configure integrations for categories such as:

• Infrastructure: AWS, Azure Resources, Google, and Kubernetes
• Issue tracking: BugSnag, ClickUp, Jira, Rollbar, Sentry
• Code quality and security: Checkmarx, Codecov, Mend, Snyk, SonarQube, Veracode, Wiz

Step 3: Import your first entities

After you’ve configured some basic integrations, you can start importing your entities. Connecting your entities to Cortex allows you to easily track ownership and create Scorecards to enforce standards and track progress on related projects.

Step 3.1: Define entities

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.

Step 3.2: Import entities

1. Navigate to Catalogs > All entities.

2. Click Import entities.

3. Follow the on-screen prompts to import the entities that Cortex discovered from your integrations.

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 3.3: Import teams and team members

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.

Cortex supports connecting teams from the following integrations:

• Azure DevOps
• BambooHR
• Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory)
• GitHub
• GitLab
• Google
• Okta
• Opsgenie
• ServiceNow
• Workday

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.

Step 4: Create an onboarding 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:

1. From the main nav, click Scorecards.

2. Click Create Scorecard.

3. Cortex offers templates to help you get started with common use cases. Click the Onboarding Scorecard.

4. 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.

5. Configure your Scorecard, making any modifications necessary.

   • For in-depth instructions on creating Scorecards, see Creating and editing Scorecards.

6. 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.

Step 5: Explore additional resources

Congratulations - you are on the path to achieving engineering excellence with Cortex!

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!