Before you begin

Ensure that:

You have the Owner role in your organization
You've determined what level of access the service account needs
You understand which resources the service account will access

Creating a service account

Navigate to Service Accounts
- Select "Manage organization" at the top of the Cast AI console:
  - In the organization profile view, go to "Access control" > "Service Accounts" in the navigation sidebar on the left-hand side:
Start service account creation
- Click "Create service account" button in the top right
- Configure basic settings
  - Enter a name for the service account
  - Add a description (optional but recommended)
Choose access method
You can configure access in one of two ways:

Through user groups

Service accounts can inherit access configurations from existing user groups, making it easier to maintain consistent permissions and reducing management overhead.
- Select "Through user group"
- Choose one or more existing user groups
  
  The service account will inherit all permissions from selected groups, and any changes to group permissions will automatically apply to it.
Direct access

Direct access gives you more granular control over the service account's permissions, allowing you to set specific access levels for individual resources. This is best when you need a service account with unique access to a resource or when you want to manage its permissions independently of your user groups.
- Select "Direct access"
- Select access scope:
  - Organization-wide access
  - Specific cluster access (select one or more clusters)
- Select role:
Generate API key
- Choose to generate an API key and give it a name:
- Copy and securely store the key, as it won't be shown again:
  
  You can generate additional keys for a service account later.