The Onboarding Wizard

When you sign up, Ankos runs a six-question wizard that configures your ledger before you ever see it. The goal is to skip the "blank spreadsheet" moment — you land on a ledger that already reflects your company, not a generic template.

You can skip any question. Skipped answers fall back to safe defaults (full scope, no assignments, no target date). Every choice can be adjusted later.

Question 1 — What kind of entity are you?

Options: merchant, service provider, multi-tenant service provider, card issuer, other.

What it changes. PCI DSS has different requirement sets depending on your entity type. Ankos scopes out the entries that don't apply, marking each as not_applicable with a pre-filled justification you can edit before sharing with your QSA.

Question 2 — How do customers pay you?

Options: hosted-only, tokenized, in-person, multi-channel, other.

What it changes. Ankos scopes out the cardholder-data-handling entries that don't apply to your payment flow. Same not_applicable treatment with a pre-filled justification you can edit.

Question 3 — Where does your infrastructure run?

Options: AWS-only, GCP-only, multi-cloud, physical, other.

What it changes. Cloud-only environments have entries the wizard scopes out automatically (physical-CDE controls that don't apply). Each scoped entry carries a pre-filled justification.

This question is about your cardholder-data environment's location (cloud vs. physical) for scoping physical controls — it doesn't limit evidence collection. Whatever you pick, the CLI can still pull evidence from GitHub, Okta/Entra, and Kubernetes alongside your cloud accounts; see provider selection.

Question 4 — When is your target assessment date?

Options: Within 30 days, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, 6+ months, Not scheduled yet.

What it changes. Ankos computes a target completion date and writes it on the cycle. Tight timelines flag the long-lead items as priority so you start them immediately rather than discovering the crunch in week three.

Question 5 — Who handles infrastructure and security configs?

A single email address. This person is pre-assigned as owner of the infrastructure-heavy slice of your cycle.

If the email isn't an existing Ankos user, they get a branded invite email (as Editor) with context about what they'll own.

Question 6 — Who handles policies, training, and compliance docs?

A single email address, or a checkbox for "same as infrastructure owner." This person is pre-assigned as owner of the program-and-policy slice of your cycle.

If the same person owns both, the two assignments are combined into a single invite with the total entry count.

The completion screen

After the wizard runs you'll see a summary with:

• In-scope — total entries you'll actually work on
• Marked N/A — entries scoped out based on your answers
• Assigned to each owner — broken down by role
• Unassigned — anything not covered by the two owners, assignable from the ledger later
• Priority 1 — urgent-bucket items (only if you chose "under 30 days")
• Your top 3 priorities — personalized starting points

You can re-run none of this; all state lives in the ledger and is editable from the cycle detail and entry detail pages.

Next steps