# Get started with Network Flow Monitor
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To help you get started, the section provides a high level overview of the steps to configure, and then gain insights, with Network Flow Monitor. For details, see the additional sections in this guide about initializing Network Flow Monitor, deploying agents, and creating monitors.
+ Initialize Network Flow Monitor, to accept service-linked role permissions, create a *scope* for monitoring in Network Flow Monitor, and create an initial topology. If you want to observe network performance for network flows for instances in multiple accounts, you must integrate with AWS Organizations, and then add the accounts to your scope. To learn more, see [Initialize Network Flow Monitor](CloudWatch-NetworkFlowMonitor-configure-begin.md).
+ Deploy *agents* on your instances, by using AWS Systems Manager or by configuring Kubernetes, depending on how your resources are deployed. If you install agents on VPC EC2 instances, make sure that you enable permissions for agents on each instance to send metrics to the Network Flow Monitor backend. To learn more, see [Install Network Flow Monitor agents on EC2 and self-managed Kubernetes instances](CloudWatch-NetworkFlowMonitor-agents.md).
+ Review top contributor metrics for network flows returned by the agents, to gain *workload insights*. Workload insights provide a high-level view of the performance for network flows in the scope you're monitoring.
+ Based on the network flows that you want to see detailed network information about, create one or more *monitors*. For each monitor, specify the local and remote resources that you want to monitor network flows between. Using a monitor, you can see detailed metrics and information, including the network health indicator, as well as view network paths for specific network flows, over time periods that you select.
+ On a regular basis: 
  + Review network flow information in the monitors that you've created, to learn about and help troubleshoot network impairments in your workloads.
  + Review workload insights for the network flows that you're monitoring, to determine if the monitors that you've created are covering the most relevant network flows or if it would be helpful to create new monitors.