Creating Scheduled Exports (Preview) in the Azure Portal

Note: This step is required only if you are using Exports.

Important:If you have not enabled the improved Exports (preview) in Azure Portal, the instructions in this section are not applicable. Instead, see the instructions in Creating Scheduled Exports in the Azure Portal.

Note:In the Azure Portal, scheduled exports must be in one-month chunks and can go back up to a maximum of 395 days.

Exports enable you to create a recurring task that automatically exports your billing data to an Azure Blob Storage on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The exported data is in CSV format and contains all the cost and usage data.

You can export large amounts of data with exports from Cost Management and import it into Flexera One.

To export data in the Azure storage account for importing it into Flexera One for cost reporting purposes:

In the upper-left corner of the Web page, click the Show portal menu icon, and then click Cost Management + Billing.

In the left pane, click Cost Management, and under the Settings section in the left pane, click Exports.

Click Add to create a new billing export. The New export page opens.

Input information on the Basics tab.

From the Type of data dropdown list, select one of the following options.

Note: You must create two exports—one for each type. Repeat steps below for each export type.

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Cost & Usage (Actual)—To export standard usage and purchase costs.

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Cost & Usage (Amortized)—To export amortized costs for purchases like Azure reservations and Azure savings plan.

In the Export name field, enter the name for your export.

From the Dataset version dropdown list, select the dataset version. For Azure MCA, only versions 2021-01-01 and 2021-10-01 are supported. It is highly recommended to use the 2021-10-01 version.

From the Frequency dropdown list, select Daily export of month-to-date costs so that the latest data is aggregated from the previous daily exports. You can then specify more fields to define the date range in UTC format.

Note:It is recommended to use the Daily export of month-to-date costs option.

Click Add and then click Next. The Destination tab is activated for you to define the export destination.

Input information on the Destination tab.

From the Storage type dropdown list, select the storage type. The default type is Azure blob storage.

In the Destination and storage section, choose the Use existing or Create new option, and input information of your Azure storage account subscription.

From the Storage account dropdown list, select the storage account name or create a new one. If you create a new storage account, choose an Azure region.

Important:If you are setting up a new storage account in the Azure portal, you must assign the Storage Blob Data Reader role to the storage account to access the blob data. For instructions, see Assigning Permission to Azure Storage Account.

In the Container and Directory fields, input the storage container and directory path for the export file.

If you want to split your exports into multiple smaller files, enable the File partitioning option. This option is enabled by default. It is recommended to keep it enabled.

Choose whether to enable the Overwrite data option. This option is enabled by default. When it’s enabled, daily exports replace the previous day's file with an updated file.

Click Next. The Review + create tab is activated.

Finally, create the export URL to connect a Bill Connect in Flexera One. The URL should be in the following format.

https://<storage-account>.blob.core.windows.net/<container-name>/<directory-path>/<export-name>

Tip:For information on creating and managing exported data, see Microsoft’s documentation on Improved exports experience - Preview.

Seeding Data for Older Months

You don’t need to create multiple exports with different names for each month. You only need two exports—one for amortized and one for unamortized. You can always edit the existing exports.

Note:This simpler method of seeding data only supports the improved Azure Exports (preview). If you have not enabled the improved Exports (preview) in Azure Portal, you need to use the Exports API to seed old data.

To seed data for older months:

Go to the Exports page and click the export you created in Creating Scheduled Exports (Preview) in the Azure Portal.

In the Export selected dates section, select the Start and End dates. The Start date should be the first day of the month, and the End date should be the last day of the same month. For example, “03/01/2024” and “03/31/2024” can be selected as the start and end dates, respectively.

Click Execute.

Repeat steps 1 to 3 for the other months that you want data for.

Repeat steps 1 to 4 for both the amortized export and the unamortized export.

Note:Compressed exports in the gzip format which are created from Exports API are not supported.