Registering an agent in Partner Center

This tutorial walks you through how to register an agent in IBM Cloud® Partner Center. By completing this tutorial, you learn how to provide your company details and set up access for your team to help with the onboarding process.

Agents are AI-powered services that you can list in the watsonx Orchestrate and IBM Cloud catalogs. You can choose between two types:

  • External agents: Run on your own infrastructure and connect to watsonx Orchestrate through an API.
  • Native agents: Built and deployed directly within watsonx Orchestrate by using IBM-managed models and tools.

When you onboard an agent, your solution becomes available to IBM enterprise customers who use watsonx Orchestrate. As an independent software vendor (ISV), you can reach those customers directly, as they can discover, purchase, and deploy your agent alongside IBM AI capabilities. Agents in the catalog support enterprise use cases including HR, IT automation, customer service, and collaboration. For more information about the program and onboarding requirements, see IBM Agent Connect documentation.

This tutorial is one of six in a series that demonstrates how to onboard and publish an agent to the watsonx Orchestrate and IBM Cloud catalogs. It uses a fictitious company that's called Example Corp. As you complete the tutorial, adapt each step to fit your product's needs.

Before you begin

Before you register your agent, make sure that you complete the following prerequisites.

  1. Verify that you're using a Pay-As-You-Go or Subscription account by going to Manage > Account > Account settings in the IBM Cloud console.
  2. Verify that you're assigned the administrator role on all account management services and all IAM-enabled services. For more information, see Assigning access to account management services and Managing access to resources.

Provide your company name

The first time you access Partner Center, you are required to provide your company name. This name is displayed in the catalog and identifies your organization to customers.

  1. In the IBM Cloud console, click the Navigation menu icon Navigation menu icon > Partner Center > Overview > Get started.
  2. Enter the legal name of your company as you want it to be displayed in the catalog, and click Save. For the purpose of this tutorial, enter Example Corp as the company name.

Set up access for your team

You can enlist team members to help with the onboarding process by assigning them specific levels of IBM Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) access. Create an access group to streamline the process of assigning access.

  1. Click Assign in the Assign access section.
  2. Enter Example Corp Agent as the name of the access group, and click Assign.

To review the list of permissions granted to this access group, see Giving team members access in Partner Center.

Next steps

You're ready to start the onboarding process. In the Onboard your product section, click Let's go, and define the product details for your agent.