Environment Cortex works in

Every answer Cortex gives in Chat runs in one environment of your organisation. That environment decides which connected accounts Cortex can reach, which models it may call and which tool policies apply. An organisation admin chooses it under Settings → Governance → General → Environment Cortex works in.

Who can change it

Only organisation admins and owners can read or change this setting. Other members do not see it. Changes are recorded in the audit log. If the audit entry cannot be written, the change still applies and the failure is logged.

Production is the default

Production (prd) is preselected and marked Default while nothing has been written down for your organisation, and Cortex works in Production. An organisation that gets Cortex after this release is set to Production before its first room exists, so it shows Production without the Default mark: the setting was written down for it. Saving a choice, Production included, also replaces the mark.

Choosing an environment

The dropdown lists the environments your shared workspaces have. Personal workspaces are not listed. Pick one and select Save. From the next message on, Cortex answers in the new environment in every room it answers itself. Personas keep their workflow's environment. A save can take up to about ten seconds to reach every room.

What a reply that is already under way does depends on the room:

• In a workspace room, it finishes in the environment it started in.
• In an organisation room, the reply is a single model call, made in the environment the setting names when the call starts.
• In your personal chat, Cortex reads the setting again for each tool call, so tool calls made after you save can already use the new environment.

Before you save, the panel shows what the choice leaves out:

• Workspaces without this environment. In these workspaces' rooms Cortex answers with a notice until an admin adds the environment to the workspace or chooses another one. Cortex never works in a different environment instead.
• Products Cortex cannot use here. None of these products' connections reaches the chosen environment, so Cortex has no tools from them. A connection set to every environment (*) counts only when your organisation allows connections to fall back to *.

If the panel cannot read your connections, it says so where the product list would be, and you can still choose and save an environment.

The panel checks each connection's environment. It does not check a connection's clearance, so a product the panel does not list can still be left out of an answer, as Clearance describes.

Where the choice applies

Clearance

Cortex asks for tools as the person who asked. A product whose connections require more clearance than that person holds is not offered to them in that answer. This applies in workspace rooms and in your personal chat, the places where Cortex has tools. An organisation room offers none. In an organisation that sets a required clearance on its connections, Cortex can therefore offer fewer tools than it did before this release. Before, Cortex looked for tools without the asker's clearance, so no connection was left out for it. Nothing about a connection's own settings changed.

The notice

When Cortex has no environment or no model it may use in a room, it answers:

No answer: Cortex has no model or environment it may use here. An administrator can set one up, or choose another environment for Cortex under Governance. Nothing was changed.

There is no Clear button

The setting always names an environment, so the panel has no Clear button. To stop Cortex using an environment, choose another one.

Organisations that used Cortex before this setting

• When this release reached your organisation, an explicit choice was written down for it: the default environment that most of your shared workspaces use. On the built-in environment ladder that is Development. An organisation with no shared workspace was given Production. A workspace whose own default is that environment works as before. In any other workspace, Cortex now works in the workspace's environment with that name, with that environment's connections, models and tool policies. If the workspace has none, its rooms answer with the notice instead of an answer, until an admin adds an environment with that name to the workspace or chooses another environment here. The panel lists the workspaces that have no environment with the chosen name. Your personal chat also uses the connections of the chosen environment now.
• If an admin had already chosen an environment for rooms without a workspace, that choice is kept. It now applies to every room Cortex answers itself, workspace rooms included, with the effect on a workspace that has no environment with that name described above.
• If an admin had cleared that setting, it counts as never set, as it did before: it was written down the same way as in the first point, with the same effect on a workspace whose own default is another environment.
• An organisation that gets Cortex after this release is set to Production before its first room exists. The upgrade writes a choice only for organisations that have no setting yet, or whose setting was cleared.

Related

• Matrix workspace: how conversations work in Chat, including how a room's workspace connection is shown.
• Policy issues: your organisation's declared environment ladder. This setting lists the environments your shared workspaces actually have, which can differ from the ladder.