Tabular View
You can view the Tabular View from the following pages:
|
•
|
Tabular View page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Tabular View)—This is the top-level tabular view and not specific to any billing center. Tabular View shows all the cloud spend ingested from the cloud provider for the last three years. |
|
•
|
Billing Centers page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers)—Tabular View is a data table found in the Billing Centers page that gives users a granular view into their cloud costs. To find a sample Tabular View go to the Billing Centers page (Cloud > Cost Optimization > Billing Centers), click a billing center, and then click Tabular View. Tabular View only shows costs that are scoped to the specific billing center that you are viewing it from. It works at both the top organization level billing center that the user has access to, as well as all child billing centers below that. You can group and filter data, select the dates, and export the data. |
Tabular View has several options to control the data shown:
|
•
|
Metrics in Tabular View—Choose to show or hide the metrics such as list price, cost, savings, savings percent, and usage |
Note:Your user settings are saved in the backend and are available the next time you log in to Flexera One, whether you are using the same or a different device or browser. These settings include table column visibility, table column order, table column filter state, table column sort state, table column width, table column pinning, dashboard settings, and dashboards and tabular view widget settings.
After you decide which Tabular View data to show, you can perform the following tasks:
Date Selector in Tabular View
Many pages contain a date selector which changes the time range to which the data on the current page applies. Click the date selector to open the picker. Some pages allow the granularity of data to be selected between Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, and Biannually. Other pages support only Monthly granularity but allow you to pick the time range from which to show data. A convenient list of common date selections (Quick Filters such as Past 3 Months or Past Year) is provided and can be set with a single click.
After the data selector is set, its configuration is saved as you navigate across other pages.
Cost Type Selector in Tabular View
Many pages offer the choice to view different cost types based on your use case. These options currently focus on amortizing one-time costs. On any page with the cost type option, your selection is reflected in the cost data on that page. On any page that does not have the option, the costs shown are unamortized.
Cost Amortization
Amortizing costs is defined as taking one-time costs and “spreading” the cost out over the lifetime of the purchase. If such a cost were shown “unamortized,” then the full cost of that item is attributed to the time of the purchase. If a cost were “amortized,” then the cost would be divided into all of the hours of the duration of the cost and shown in each hour.
The simplest example of such a cost would be an up-front purchase of a Reserved Instance. Let’s assume we purchase a 1-yr Reserved Instance from AWS on January 5, 2018 at 3:00 PM and it cost us $15,000. Here is how that purchase will be shown under both scenarios:
|
•
|
Unamortized—The full $15,000 shows in cost data on January 5, 2018. |
|
•
|
Amortized—The full cost is divided by number of hours in the lifespan of the item (there are 8,760 hours in a year) and the result is attributed to each hour in the lifespan. In this case, we would see a $1.71 charge on every single hour between January 5, 2018 3:00 PM and January 5, 2019 2:00 PM. |
Filters in Tabular View
To narrow down the data in the Tabular View, you can use Filters. Filters let you specify which dimension values to show in the Tabular View, and gives you a granular view into your cloud cost.
To add filters, click the Expand Widget button next to the Filter section. Hover over the button icon to view the button name. Click the plus sign (+) next to Add dimension, select the checkboxes next to the dimensions that you want to add, and then select the dimension values that you want to use to filter data in the Tabular View.
The following table lists the dimensions that you can choose from to filter data in the Tabular View.
Filters in Tabular View
| |
|
|
Adjustments
|
|
•
|
Adjustment Cost Multiplier |
|
•
|
Adjustment Usage Multiplier |
|
|
Billing Centers
|
Billing Centers
|
|
Cloud
|
|
•
|
Cloud Vendor Account Name |
|
|
Resources
|
|
|
Rule-Based
|
Note:Rule-based dimensions are specific to your organization.
|
|
Tags
|
Note:Tags are specific to your organization. Contact Flexera Support to add new tags.
|
To remove the filter selections, click the Edit Widget button and then click Remove filter selection. To delete all the dimensions that you added, click Delete all dimensions. Hover over the button icon to view the button name.
To delete a specific dimension, click the Delete <Dimension Name> button next to the dimension name that you added. Hover over the button icon to view the button name.
Metrics in Tabular View
To see the different values with the spend, you can configure the following metrics in the Tabular View by clicking the three dots icon:
|
•
|
List Price—The list price value is based on the provider specific details provided. Bill adjustments apply to list price. The list price can be either amortized or unamortized. Consider the following list price: |
|
•
|
AWS List Price—The price paid to the cloud provider before any discounts (including benefits from commitments). |
|
•
|
Azure Enterprise Agreement List Price—The price paid after the enterprise discount is applied, but before any benefits from commitments such as Reservation, Savings Plan, and Spot. |
|
•
|
Cost—The costs incurred. Depending on your configuration settings, the cost includes or does not include discounts from cloud providers. The cost can be either amortized or unamortized. Bill adjustments apply to cost. |
|
•
|
Savings—The amount of savings. This is the difference between list price and cost. |
|
•
|
Savings Percent—The percentage of savings compared to list price. |
Note:Consider the following:
|
•
|
The default metric is Cost. |
|
•
|
The List Price, Savings, and Savings Percent metrics are only available for AWS and Azure Enterprise Agreement. |
|
•
|
You can show and hide the metrics in the Tabular View based on the spend that you want to see by clicking Show and Hide, respectively. |
Usage Metric in Tabular View
The Usage metric appears in the Tabular View when you click the three dots icon in the upper-right corner of the Tabular View, and then click Show Usage. When selected, the Usage metric appears in addition to the other metrics selected. A usage column is visible under each date period you have configured for display. (For example, day, month, or quarter.) A Usage Totals column is also visible under the Totals heading. These columns also appear in CSV export from Tabular View.
To hide the usage metric or show it again, click the three dots icon in the upper-right corner of the Tabular View and click Hide Usage or Show Usage as appropriate.
Note:When viewing the usage metric:
|
•
|
Usage amount breaks down according to many different usage units which vary by resource, such as Gigabytes (GB), Requests, or Hours. |
|
•
|
Total usage amount can only be summed across a common Usage Unit. For this reason, when you show the usage metric, the Usage Unit dimension appears as a forced dimension in your Group By list. The forced Usage Unit dimension can be dragged up or down in the hierarchy, but it cannot be deleted as long as the usage metric is shown. |
|
•
|
Usage amount totals are visible for the Usage Unit dimension and any other dimensions below (to the right of) it in the hierarchy. |
Tip:Usage units and amounts cover a broad array of data and can be confusing when being viewed for the first time. The following table describes some common issues.
Common Issues with Usage Units and Amounts
|
|
|
|
Similar usage units
|
The usage units displayed in Cloud Cost Optimization are pulled directly from the bill data and may have some confusing similarities, such as “Hrs”, “Hours”, and “Hour”. However, they tend to be uniform across a single Resource Type or Usage Type. Adding those dimensions to Group By and filtering on a specific resource or usage type often yields a single, uniform Usage Unit.
|
|
Usage unit of “None”
|
Some usage amounts simply have no associated unit in the bill data, and these appear as “None” in the Cloud Cost Optimization user interface. For example, the free tier for AWS often appears with a Usage Unit of “None”. If you see a number for usage with $0 of associated cost, this is likely the explanation.
|
|
Availability of data
|
Usage data has been pulled into the Cloud Cost Optimization backend since April 1, 2019. It is possible to see some usage data from before that date if an organization has had its bill reprocessed since then. Usage data from before April 1, 2019 may not be complete.
|
Group By Filter in Tabular View
To get to the level of detail that is necessary to compare costs, you can select up to 10 criteria in the Group By function. When the ‘+’ is clicked, a dropdown list appears, so you can choose from the options in the following table.
Group By Filter Criteria in Tabular View
|
|
|
|
Adjustments
|
|
•
|
Adjustment Cost Multiplier |
|
•
|
Adjustment Usage Multiplier |
|
|
Billing Centers
|
Billing Centers
|
|
Cloud
|
|
•
|
Cloud Vendor Account Name |
|
|
Resources
|
|
|
Rule-Based
|
Note:Rule-based dimensions are specific to your organization.
|
|
Tags
|
Note:Tags are specific to your organization. Contact Flexera Support to add new tags.
|
After you select the appropriate Group By criteria, the data table begins to populate with the cost from the selected criteria. The Group By columns are ordered based on which criteria are selected first. You can move the Group By criteria to the left side or right side to group the data to your liking.
Search Box Filter in Tabular View
To scale down the data to your exact specifications, use the search box filter in the table. You can search the group by filter criteria by using the search box or the filter in each column. You can also sort the columns.
Expand/Collapse Group By Rows
The data table’s default view shows all the rows, as defined by the Group By criteria, in an expanded state. You can click on an individual row to collapse or expand that row. Also, once you add two or more Group By criteria, you can choose to collapse or expand all the rows in the data table by hovering over Group By column and clicking the menu icon. In the menu, choose Expand All or Collapse All to control the display of rows based on the Group By criteria.
Percent Change Indicators in Tabular View
The percent change arrows show trends from month to month. To display the arrows, click the three dots icon in the Table View and click Show Percent Change. This selection enables the color-coded up and down arrows to reflect the percent change from the previous month.
Percent Change Indicators in Tabular View
|
|
|
|
Dark Green
|
The decrease is 30% or more.
|
|
Light Green
|
The decrease is more than 5% and less than 30%.
|
|
Gray
|
The increase or decrease is 5% or less.
|
|
Orange
|
The increase is more than 5% and less than 30%.
|
|
Red
|
The increase is 30% or more.
|
Sharing the Tabular View With Other Users
You can share a configured tabular view with other Cloud Cost Optimization users outside of Flexera One.
To share the Tabular View URL with other Cloud Cost Optimization users outside of Flexera One:
|
1.
|
Create a tabular view with the dimensions, date, usage, and filter parameters. |
|
2.
|
Click the copy tabular view icon (sideways “V”) next to the cost selector. The current URL is copied to the clipboard. |
|
3.
|
Paste the URL into other tools such as email or chat clients to send to other users. |
Exporting Tabular View Data
After you have the appropriate Date Selector, Group By, and Search Box Filter criteria selected, you can export the data to either a .csv file or a .xlsx file.
To export Tabular View data:
|
1.
|
Click the Export button: |
|
2.
|
Then choose CSV or XLSX to set the file format and begin the download. |
The exported file shows all columns and dates that were selected as part of that criteria, and the filters also apply.