Technical Specification and Network Whitelisting

Cognexo is a cloud-hosted solution that relies on email and secure web connections to deliver daily questions, surveys, and broadcasts.
To guarantee users receive their content and can log in without issue, your IT team must confirm that Cognexo’s URLs and domains are permitted through your organisation’s network and spam filters.

Completing this step ensures:

• Daily questions reach inboxes and MS Teams without disruption

• Learners can register and access the Intelligence Portal

• Data and analytics flow securely between your users and Cognexo servers

System Requirements Overview

Cognexo System Test

Before whitelisting, confirm that your network can receive Cognexo test messages.

1. Your Cognexo contact will send a test email from hello@cognexo.com (or legacy domain @cognito-il.co.uk).

2. Open the email and click “Verify this link.”

3. If you see a confirmation screen stating “Your systems are ready,” your network already allows Cognexo traffic.

4. If you receive a warning or blocked-content message, proceed with whitelisting below and retest.

⚠️ Do not mark Cognexo emails as spam or quarantine — this prevents users from receiving their daily questions.

Whitelist Cognexo Domains and URLs

Your IT team should allow the following URLs and subdomains through any firewalls, spam filters, or email security systems:

Tips:

• If you use Mimecast, Proofpoint, or similar, add these to your “Permitted Senders” or “Approved Domains” list.

• Ensure port 443 (HTTPS) is open for outbound connections.

Whitelist Email Addresses and IPs

To prevent Cognexo emails from being blocked or flagged as phishing, allow the following senders and IPs through your spam filter:

If your organisation uses SPF or DKIM validation, include Cognexo’s mail servers in your allow list.
Your Cognexo contact can provide dedicated sending IPs if required for strict email policies.

SSO Troubleshooting for Admins

Several customers have reported SSO sessions dropping unexpectedly, requiring them to enter their email address on every visit to the Intelligence Portal even though SSO is configured. This section explains the most common causes and what to check before raising a support ticket.

Why does SSO appear to have stopped working?

SSO sessions can drop for several reasons:

• Your browser session has expired and the Identity Provider (IdP) is not re-authenticating silently. This is the most common cause — it happens when a session that was active the previous day is loaded in a fresh browser tab.

• A change was made to your Azure AD / Entra ID configuration — for example, conditional access policies, MFA requirements, or token lifetimes were updated.

• The Cognexo SSO claim mapping has changed (e.g., email attribute changed). If your users' email addresses in Cognexo do not exactly match the email used to log in to your IdP, SSO will fail silently.

• The SSO certificate or metadata has expired on either the Cognexo side or your IdP side.

What to check first

1. Try opening the portal in a fresh incognito/private browser window. If SSO works there, the issue is cached session data — clear your browser cache and cookies.

2. Check that the email address in the user's Cognexo profile exactly matches their Azure AD / IdP login email. Even a capital letter difference will cause a failure.

3. Ask your IT team whether any Azure AD conditional access policies, MFA enforcement, or token lifetime settings were changed recently.

4. If users are accessing the portal via a saved bookmark, try navigating directly to your SSO login URL (e.g., https://yourcompany.cognexo.com/v3/login/) as a fresh load rather than resuming a previous session.

When to contact Cognexo support

Raise a support ticket if:

• The above checks do not resolve the issue

• Multiple users are affected at the same time

• The issue started after a Teams or Azure AD update

• A user who was suspended and later reactivated cannot log in via SSO

When raising the ticket, include: the user's email address, the error message or behaviour they see, whether it affects all users or specific ones, and whether anything changed in your IT environment recently.

Understanding SFTP User Upload Error Notifications

If your organisation uses SFTP to sync users into Cognexo automatically (via a daily CSV upload), you may receive system error notification emails when a file fails or partially fails to process. This section explains what each error type means and what to do about it.

The three error types

What to do for each error type

• File name format error: Correct the filename to match the required format (CLIENTCODE_users_DDMMYY.csv) and re-upload. No data will have been changed — the file was rejected before processing.

• Partial failure: No action is usually required. The summary shows how many records succeeded. If the counts look wrong (e.g., far fewer Created or Updated than expected), review the error rows and contact support with the filename and error detail.

• Duplicate key error: Contact Cognexo support with the filename and the email address shown in the error. A duplicate record will need to be resolved on the platform side before the user can be created.

Confirm Readiness

Once testing and whitelisting are complete:

1. Re-run the test email link verification.

2. Confirm you can access https://cognexo-app.com and https://intelligence.cognexo-app.com internally.

3. Notify your Cognexo Customer Success Manager that your network is ready.

They will then schedule your Teams App installation (if applicable) and proceed with account configuration.