Notifications

Notifications are built into Cortex to help users stay on top of changes within their environments and the platform. Admins can configure notifications for the entire workspace, while users can configure their personal notification subscriptions. See the full list of notification options below under Notification subscription options in Cortex.

Notification markdown limitations

It is possible to use markdown in some fields in Cortex. Some of these fields, such as the description field for a data verification policy, appear in notifications. While Cortex will render markdown as expected in the UI, Slack and email notifications may have issues rendering some markdown. Markdown limitations include, but are not limited to, the following:

The first element in the description cannot start with #.
Slack supports basic lists, but nested lists are not supported.
Multi-line code blocks will lose formatting in Slack.
Inline images with standard markdown (![alt text](./images/url)) will not be displayed in Slack.
Strike-through syntax does not render in Slack.
Line breaks may not render in Slack.
Hyperlinks may not be clickable in emails.

To read about other Slack limitations, please see Markdown Guide’s documentation on using Markdown in Slack.

Setting notifications for the entire workspace

In the Notifications settings page in Cortex, you can enable notifications and refine the types of notifications received by users and teams across the workspace. To set notifications for the workspace, you must be an admin or have a role that includes the Configure Workspace notification settings permission.

Configure allowed notification methods

You can choose whether to allow notifications via the following methods:

Email
- Note that if a user does not have a defined email address, they will not receive email notifications.
Slack
- You must have the Slack integration configured in order to send notifications to entity Slack channels.
Microsoft Teams
- You must have the Microsoft Teams integration configured in order to send notifications to entity Teams channels.

Configure what type of user can receive notifications

You can enable the following options across the workspace:

Enable notifications for non-Cortex users: When you toggle this setting on, it will enable all notifications for people who are not yet Cortex users but are owners of entities in Cortex.
Enable notifications for external members: When you toggle this setting on, it will enable notifications for any Cortex users who are members of an externally-sourced team, such as Workday or Okta.
Limit notifications through CQL: Any entity that does not match the query will be excluded from all notifications. For entities that match the query, Cortex will continue sending out notifications to their entity owners.
- After you enable this setting, a text box appears. Enter your query into the box, then click Save query.

You can configure notification types in the Notification settings page.

Enabling notifications for users, teams, and entities

You can enable or disable notifications in the Cortex UI or in an entity descriptor. Note that users also have the ability to unsubscribe from a notification in their personal settings.

Understanding notification types

Before configuring notifications, it’s important to understand the distinction between notifications being enabled for individual users, teams, or entities:

Notification type	Sent to (options)	Example use cases
Team based These are about the entities owned by a team.	• The Slack or MS Teams channel tied to a team in Cortex • Email addresses of team members	• You enable the Team-based “On-call changes” notification and team itself has a Slack channel linked; When on-call changes for an entity, the team members who own the entity receive a notification.
Entity based These are about the entity itself.	• The Slack or MS Teams channel tied to an entity in Cortex If the entity’s owner and the entity share the same Slack channel, Cortex will only notify the owner; a duplicate notification won’t be sent.	• You enable the Entity-based “On-call changes” notification; When on-call changes for an entity, a notification is sent to the Slack or MS Teams channel linked in the entity’s YAML. • You enable the Entity-based “Initiative Creation” notification; When an entity is included in a recently-created Initiative, a notification is sent to the Slack or MS Teams channel linked in the entity’s YAML. Note that the Initiative must be published, not in draft form.
User based These go to individual users.	• Via DM to the user in Slack or MS Teams (DMs are from the Cortex app) • A user’s email address	• You enable the User-based “Onboarding tips” notification; When a new user is added to your workspace, they receive onboarding tip notifications • You enable the User-based “On-call changes” notification; When a user’s on-call changes, they receive a notification.

Note that some notification types cannot be disabled.

Configure notifications for users, teams, and entities

Expand the tabs below to learn how to configure notifications via the Cortex UI and in an entity’s YAML.

Cortex UI

Configure notifications in the UIOn the notification settings page, after configuring the methods and which type of users can receive notifications, you can enable individual notifications under the tabs for User, Team-based, and Entity-based:

For each notification type in the list, enable the toggle to turn on notifications.

In each row, there are separate toggles for each allowed notification method.

The notification list defaults to user notifications. Click the Team-based and Entity-based tabs to review and enable additional notifications.

Review the notification types table above to understand where notifications are sent.

Read more about each type of notification below under Notification options in Cortex.

Cortex YAML

Define notifications for team members in the entity descriptorIf you are configuring the members list for a team entity via an entity descriptor, you can define the notificationsEnabled field as true or false. When notificationsEnabled=true, users/teams will receive all enabled notification types that apply to them.The example below demonstrates how to configure notifications for team members in the entity descriptor:

  openapi: 3.0.1
  info:
    title: Eng Team
    x-cortex-tag: eng-team
    x-cortex-team:
      groups:
      - name: Engineering
        provider: GITLAB
        description: Our engineering team
      members:
      - name: Maya Chen
        role: Engineering Manager
        email: maya.chen@cortex-labs.com
        notificationsEnabled: true
      - name: Andy Li
        role: Staff Software Engineer
        email: andy.li@cortex-labs.com
        notificationsEnabled: false

You can also enable or disable notifications for a Slack or Microsoft Teams channel associated with an entity, as shown in the examples below.In a service entity:

openapi: 3.0.1
info:
  title: Backend App
  x-cortex-tag: backend-app
  x-cortex-owners:
  - type: SLACK
    channel: engineering
    notificationsEnabled: true
  - name: eng-team
    type: GROUP
    provider: CORTEX
    notificationsEnabled: false

In a team entity:

...
  x-cortex-slack:
    channels:
    - name: team-insights
      notificationsEnabled: true
    - name: escalate-insights
      notificationsEnabled: false

Adjusting your personal notification subscriptions

Notification subscriptions allow users to further refine the notifications they receive. These settings will override workspace notifications, effectively allowing a user to “unsubscribe” from a given notification type. For example, if a workspace admin has enabled Entity evaluation in workspace notifications, but a user has disabled Entity evaluation in Notification subscriptions, the user will not receive updates when Scorecard scores change for their entities. To adjust which notifications you receive:

Navigate to the My notifications page in Settings.
For each notification option, use the toggle switch to enable or disable notifications.

If an admin has disabled a notification type in workspace notifications, users will not be able to enable it. Disabled notification subscriptions will be grayed out. If you hover over the toggle switch, you will see a banner stating, “This notification has been disabled by your Admin.” If a notification type has been enabled, but the notification method (e.g., Slack, MS Teams, or email) is disabled, the same note will appear under the notification method toggle for each notification type.

Notification options in Cortex

Notifications that cannot be disabled

The following notification types cannot be disabled via workspace settings or in an individual user’s notification settings:

API token expiration
On-call assistant
Broken OpenAPI spec
Cortex contract or trial expiration
- This notification goes to users with the Configure settings permission.

Configurable notification options

The configurable notification options are listed below. As described earlier on this page, an admin (or a user with the Configure Workspace notification settings permission) can choose which of these options are available across the workspace. If an entity channel and owner channel are the same, Cortex will not send duplicate notifications; in this case, Cortex will only send the owner a notification. Note that notifications can be sent to private Slack channels, but the Cortex Slack Bot must be a member of the channel in order for the notification to be delivered to the channel.

Entity evaluation (users only)

Entity evaluation notifications go out to users when an entity they own is re-evaluated by a Scorecard due to changes in its cortex.yaml file. This alert will tell you whether the score for that entity has increased or decreased.You will not receive a notification if the score is unchanged after Cortex processes the changes.

Initiative creation (users, teams, and entities)

Draft Initiatives only trigger notifications for users with the Edit Scorecards permission. Notifications for draft Initiatives will not trigger for team notifications.

Initiative creation notifications alert teams when at least one entity they own is included in a recently created Initiative. These notifications include action items associated with entities owned by that team.
Initiative creation notifications are sent to users when entities they own are included in a recently created Initiative. Initiative creation notifications will go to users when an entity is not owned by a team, and/or when the Initiative creation - Teams notification is disabled.
Initiative creation notifications are sent to entity channels when the entity is included in a recently created Initiative. Cortex checks for created Initiatives and sends relevant notifications every 10 minutes.

Initiative custom scheduled reminders (users and teams)

Draft Initiatives only trigger notifications for users with the Edit Scorecards permission. Notifications for draft Initiatives will not trigger for team notifications.Initiative custom scheduled reminders send progress notifications to users that are part of a given Initiative. The Initiative owner can determine the cadence of these reminders when creating or editing an Initiative.

Initiative reminders (users and teams)

Draft Initiatives only trigger notifications for users with the Edit Scorecards permission. Notifications for draft Initiatives will not trigger for team notifications.Initiative reminders alert users 7 days and 1 day before an Initiative’s target date. The notification will include the amount of time that remains for an Initiative and a given user’s uncompleted action items.

Integration configuration errors (users only)

Integration configuration error notifications notify users with Configure settings permissions when the configuration for an integration has been changed and is no longer valid.Cortex runs a nightly cron job that checks to ensure configurations are valid; when it detects a change that makes the configuration invalid, admins will receive a notification around 2 p.m. UTC alerting them to fix it.

Onboarding tips (users only)

Onboarding tip notifications send out important information about getting started with Cortex. This notification can be enabled or disabled for the workspace and your personal notification settings.

On-call changes (users, teams, and entities)

On-call change notifications are sent to users, teams, and/or entities when the appointed user on call changes. These notifications will go out about 1 hour before an on-call shift.

On-call reminder (users only)

On-call reminder notifications notify the user on call for a given entity 7 days and 1 day before an on-call shift. Reminder notifications don’t have to go to a designated entity owner.

New scheduled rules created (users, teams, and entities)

New scheduled rules created notifications go to users, teams, and/or entities when a scheduled rule is added to a Scorecard evaluating an entity they own.Notifications for draft Scorecards will only trigger for users that have the Edit Scorecards permission. Notifications for draft Scorecards will not trigger for team notifications.

Rule exemption request (users only)

Rule exemption request notifications alert users with Configure Scorecards permissions when a rule exemption is requested for a given Scorecard.Cortex checks for requested rule exemptions and sends relevant notifications every 10 minutes.

Scheduled rules reminder (users, teams, and entities)

Scheduled rules reminders are sent to users, teams, and/or entities 7 days and 1 day before a scheduled Scorecard rule impacting one of their owned entities goes into effect.Notifications for draft Scorecards will only trigger for users that have the Edit Scorecards permission. Notifications for draft Scorecards will not trigger for team notifications.

Score drop (teams and entities)

Score drop notifications go to teams and entities after an entity is evaluated by a Scorecard, if its score dropped.

Verification period started (users only)

Verification period started notifications go out to users when a verification period begins that impacts one of their entities.

Verification period reminder (users only)

Verification period reminders go out to users on Mondays with information about entities that require verification during ongoing verification periods.

Weekly report (users, teams, and entities)

Weekly report notifications go out to users, teams, and/or entities on Mondays with information about entities associated with that user. These notifications will let users know how their entities are performing against Scorecards and Initiatives. This will include scores that improved or dropped, pull requests that are open and waiting for your review, and Jira tickets assigned to you.The team-based weekly report notification also includes information about who is on call for entities owned by that team.

Workflow status (users only)

Workflow status updates go out to users if a workflow fails or if someone runs a workflow that requires approval.

How notifications are triggered

Draft Scorecards and Initiatives only trigger notifications for users with the Edit Scorecards permission.

Notification type	Cortex will notify you:
Entity evaluation	When Scorecard scores for a given entity are re-evaluated because of changes to that entity’s `cortex.yaml`
Initiative creation	With information about recently created Initiatives you are a part of
Initiative custom scheduled reminders	Information about a given Initiative’s progress at a cadence defined by the Initiative owner
Initiative reminders	Reminders a few days before a given Initiative expires with the remaining action items
Integration configuration errors	If any of your integration configurations are invalid and need to be updated
Onboarding tips	With a welcome message and important information, including a set of onboarding tips
On-call changes	When on-call changes for an entity you own
On-call reminder	With a reminder a few days before you’re on call
Rule exemption request	When a Scorecard rule exemption is requested
Weekly report	Details about how your entities are tracking against Scorecards and Initiatives (sent on Mondays)
Workflow status	When a workflow fails or someone runs a workflow that requires approval

Troubleshooting and FAQ

I didn’t receive an expected notification. How can I troubleshoot this?

Ensure that the user has an email address defined. Check whether the user has disabled the notification in their My notification settings page. Please also ensure that the user type is allowed to receive notifications, as configured in your workspace notification settings.

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Notification markdown limitations

Setting notifications for the entire workspace

Configure allowed notification methods

Configure what type of user can receive notifications

Enabling notifications for users, teams, and entities

Understanding notification types

Configure notifications for users, teams, and entities

Adjusting your personal notification subscriptions

Notification options in Cortex

Notifications that cannot be disabled

Configurable notification options

How notifications are triggered

Troubleshooting and FAQ

I didn’t receive an expected notification. How can I troubleshoot this?

​Notification markdown limitations

​Setting notifications for the entire workspace

​Configure allowed notification methods

​Configure what type of user can receive notifications

​Enabling notifications for users, teams, and entities

​Understanding notification types

​Configure notifications for users, teams, and entities

​Adjusting your personal notification subscriptions

​Notification options in Cortex

​Notifications that cannot be disabled

​Configurable notification options

​How notifications are triggered

​Troubleshooting and FAQ

​I didn’t receive an expected notification. How can I troubleshoot this?

Notification markdown limitations

Setting notifications for the entire workspace

Configure allowed notification methods

Configure what type of user can receive notifications

Enabling notifications for users, teams, and entities

Understanding notification types

Configure notifications for users, teams, and entities

Adjusting your personal notification subscriptions

Notification options in Cortex

Notifications that cannot be disabled

Configurable notification options

How notifications are triggered

Troubleshooting and FAQ

I didn’t receive an expected notification. How can I troubleshoot this?