Preparing for implementation

Complete these prerequisites with Cognite before implementation work starts. Named role assignments vary by engagement — record them at kickoff. See Roles in a CDF implementation and Who creates what.

Before you start

Confirm the identity provider and CDF projects exist.

Task	Who
Customer identity provider tenant and an initial admin group are in place. See Configure access management.	Customer IT
CDF organization and projects requested — typically `dev`, `test`, and `prod` on the agreed cluster and region.	Cognite

Kickoff decisions

Agree these choices so later setup is unblocked. Use the customer’s existing standard when they have one.

Task	Who
Naming convention source — customer standard or Cognite default.	Cognite and customer
Access-control model — persona-based is the default.	Cognite and customer
Single-site vs. multi-site. Default to single-site unless more than one site has independent data ownership.	Cognite and customer
Three-environment intent: `dev`, `test`, and `prod`.	Cognite and customer
Secret store for credentials (for example a cloud secret store or your CI/CD secret store).	Cognite and customer
CI/CD platform. See Establish deployment workflows.	Cognite and customer
Named contacts per role, plus how users request access.	Cognite and customer
List of data sources approved.	Customer

Identity and access

Work through Configure access management. At a minimum:

Task	Who
Create the admin group in Microsoft Entra ID. Add Cognite users as guests.	Customer IT
Consent to Cognite applications (CDF portal and API).	Customer IT
Link the CDF organization to the customer identity provider.	Cognite
Capture deploy credentials for CI/CD. Store them in the secret store agreed at kickoff — not in the repository.	Cognite and customer

Infrastructure

Review the planned CDF integration architecture so hosts and network access are ready before delivery starts.

Task	Who
Present and approve the CDF integration architecture.	Cognite and customer
Identify data source endpoints and agree network and firewall access.	Customer
Confirm live vs. extract per data source.	Cognite and customer
Provision extractor hosts. See Cognite extractors overview.	Customer

Data sets

Task	Who
Agree the data source and export list for assets in scope.	Cognite and customer
Name a data owner per data set.	Customer
Agree the landing zone (for example RAW, blob storage, or data modeling).	Cognite and customer
Agree data quality expectations.	Cognite and customer

Next step

When the checklist is complete, install the Cognite Toolkit. The Foundation pack deploys CDF groups bound to the Entra ID object IDs from Configure access management.

​Before you start

​Kickoff decisions

​Identity and access

​Infrastructure

​Data sets

​Next step