Whether you’re a freshman, a thriving startup, or the largest project, you have financial constraints, and you need to know what you’re spending, where it’s being spent, and how to plan ahead. No one wants a surprise when it comes to the bill, and that’s where Microsoft Cost Management comes in.
We’re always looking for ways to learn more about your challenges and how Microsoft Cost Management can help you better understand where costs accrue in the cloud, identify and prevent bad spending patterns, and optimize costs to enable you to do more with less. Here are some of the latest improvements and updates based on your feedback:
Let’s dive into the details.
Scheduled alerts for views included in cost analysis
Cost management offers many ways to stay on top of your costs and catch unexpected charges, such as setting budgets to get notified when costs are approaching or exceeding pre-determined limits, or configuring anomaly alerts to receive notification when we detect atypical spending patterns in your subscription costs. But sometimes you are looking for something a little simpler. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a quick email to let you know what things have been like for the past week? Maybe you want to see how you’re trending against your budget or what you can expect to spend for this month or maybe you want to know your daily running rate over the past 30 days. Perhaps you simply want to check in once a month to see how your usage trends have changed compared to previous months. These are exactly the kinds of reasons you might want to use scheduled alerts in your cost analysis. I’ve been able to save a custom view and schedule alerts for a while. Now, you can also schedule alerts using the built-in chart views available in Cost Analysis:
|
accumulated costs |
daily costs |
Cost according to the service |
|
|
|
|
To get started, open Cost Analysis, choose one of the built-in (or saved) chart views from the View menu, and select Participate Top of the page.
To learn more, see Save and share custom views, and stay tuned for more opportunities to control costs.
Details about the costs included in the cost analysis preview
Knowing what is included in your costs is an important part of understanding what you spend and where. While this is covered in the documentation, there is nothing better than highlighting these details directly in the experiments you use. To this end, you can now view additional details about cost in the cost analysis preview, including:
- Total (unabridged) cost.
- The dates indicated by the change in cost.
- What are the costs included or not included.
- Additional Notes on Usage Processing.
Tell us what you’d like to see next. There are a lot of great things on the horizon in the cost analysis space. If you haven’t experienced the latest changes, check out our cost analysis preview today.
Enable the preview features and share your feedback
Obtaining feedback has always been an important part of the cost management experience. We introduced Cost Management Labs for this exact purpose – to get your early feedback on the latest features and improvements that are being developed. The earlier we get your feedback, the better we can improve the experience for you. This is your chance to lead the trend and influence the future of cost management.
Participating in the cost management labs is as easy as selecting a preview experience from the cost management overview. You’ll see a list of preview features with links to share ideas or report any bugs that come up. Reporting an error is a direct line back to the Cost Management Engineering team, where we will work with you to understand and resolve the issue. Of course, you’ve probably seen all of this before. The preview experience is nothing new. New this month is the fact that your preview features are remembered across portal sessions. When you enable a feature, we’ll keep that enabled when you return to the portal, making it easier than ever to get the most out of every preview.
We hope you find this update useful. Tell us what you’d like to see next and don’t forget to share your feedback on each preview. To learn more, see Enable preview features in cost management labs.
What’s new in cost management labs
Of course, that’s not all. Each Microsoft cost management change is available in the Cost Management Labs a week before it hits the full Azure portal or the Microsoft 365 admin center. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and understand what you’d like to see next. what are you waiting for? Try Cost Management Labs today.
New ways to save money in the Microsoft Cloud
Lots of updates over the past month! Here are new and updated offers you may be interested in:
New videos and learning opportunities
Here’s a new video about cost optimization for web applications that you might be interested in:
Want a more guided experience? Start spending Control Azure and manage billing with Microsoft Cost Manager.
Documentation updates
Here are some documentation updates you might be interested in:
Do you want to monitor all document updates? scan the Record changes to cost management documents and billing in Azure Docs The repository is on github. If you see something missing, select it release at the top of the document and send a quick pull request. You can also submit an issue on GitHub. We welcome and value all contributions.
What then?
These are just a few of the great updates from the past month. Don’t forget to check for previous Microsoft Cost Management updates. We are always listening and making continuous improvements based on your feedback, so please continue to receive feedback.
He follows @employee on Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates, tips and tricks. You can also share ideas, vote for others in the Cost Management Feedback Forum, or join a research panel to participate in a future study and help shape the future of Microsoft Cost Management.
We know these are difficult times for everyone. Best wishes from the cost management team at Microsoft. Stay safe and stay healthy.