Edit report settings
Some settings are configurable only in Edit mode, which means, you need at least the Editor permission to make changes.
Overview
When viewing or editing a report, you can adjust report settings to have different views. Depending on the nature of the change, you may need to rerun the report.
Real-time updates: Changes that don't alter the results themselves are reflected in the report instantly, for example:
- Metric, Aggregation
- Advanced analysis
- Exclude partial Intervals, Include promotional credits
- Sorting of results (Edit mode only)
- Chart type (visualization), View data as (Comparative report) (Edit mode only)
- Changing currency (Edit mode only)
Changes requiring rerun: Changes that require you to rerun the report, for example:
- Adding/removing dimensions
- Modifying time interval/range (Edit mode only)
- Filtering dimensions
- Limiting results
Metric
There are two categories of metrics: basic metrics and custom metrics.
Basic metrics include:
Cost: Analyze your reports on a basis of how much your selected dimensions cost you. This metric reflects the cost from your cloud provider.
Usage: Analyze your reports and selected dimensions on a usage basis. Make sure to pair this with the standard dimension Unit for a breakdown.
Savings: Analyze your reports and selected dimensions on a savings basis. These savings come as a result of your commercial agreement with Google Cloud and the agreed-upon discount between your company and DoiT, including Flexsave savings.
NoteThe discount is not available for: Google Maps APIs, Google Support, Looker, Preemptible VMs (compute engine), third-party GCP Marketplace services, or Premium OS Images. See Credits and discounts for how to view various credits and discounts.
Time
The Time settings allow you to choose the time aggregation and decide whether to exclude incomplete time intervals from your report.
Time Range and Time Interval
Specify the time aggregation of your data points .
Time Range: Choose a predefined time range or define your own custom range.
Time Interval: Choose from Hour, Day, Week, Month, Quarter, and Year.
Changing the time interval will affect the Date/Time dimensions. For example, selecting the Time Interval Hour will result in Hour being automatically added to the X-axis (horizontal) of a report chart.
Time periods in DoiT Cloud Analytics reports use the time zone settings of the cloud providers:
- data from Google Cloud is based on the Pacific Time Zone
- data from AWS is based on the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
Exclude partial Intervals
When looking at a report, the most current interval is almost always incomplete. For example, if the report is Daily then the current day will be collecting billing data throughout the day.
To remove incomplete time interval from the report (e.g., to exclude data of the current day for daily intervals, current week for monthly intervals), select the Exclude partial Intervals checkbox.
This option is convenient when performing comparative reports, for example, Month over Month analysis, or Week over Week analysis. It can also improve the accuracy of the heatmap views by removing outliers, as partial intervals tend to skew trends by representing incomplete periods.
Filter results, Group by, and Dimensions
These three settings use Dimensions and labels to help you understand the composition of your cloud spend.
Filter results: Add filters to view specific information. For example, choose the standard dimension Cloud as a filter, and then specify the cloud provider of interest. See Filtering dimension values and Limit by top/bottom for more information.
Group by: Add fields along the Y-axis (vertical) of the chart. Note that when grouped by two or more dimensions, the report defaults to the Table view.
Dimensions: Add fields along the X-axis (horizontal) of the chart.
Filter dimension values
Once you selected a dimension, you can filter it.
For example, filter services by their names.
There are two additional options:
Exclude selection: To exclude a selection of values.
Advanced: To filter services using regular expressions.
Dimensions with filters are shown with a filter icon. Select Report configuration from the three dots menu (⋮) in the report title bar to view the details.
Limit results
When performing analysis, it is often helpful to only show values below or above certain thresholds. You can filter the results in your report based on metrics and/or ranks.
Limit by value
The Limit by value option allows you to filter data based on metrics.
Expand Limit results section in the left-hand sidebar, select Add limit, and then select Limit by value.
Select the metric to filter, the operator, and the value.
Supported operators: Greater than (>), Less than (<), Greater than or equals (>=), Less than or equals (<=), Between, Not Between, Equals (=), Not equals (≠).
Select Apply.
You can filter on a Metric different from the one used in the report. For example, you can chart Usage while filter any interval with a Cost > $50.
Limit by top/bottom
The Limit by top/bottom option allows you to specify the number of results (based on ranks) for fields displayed along the Y-axis (vertical) of the chart (the Group by settings).
Expand Limit results section in the left-hand sidebar, select Add limit, and then select Limit by top/bottom.
Specify the filter settings, including:
Limit to: Top or Bottom results.
Number: The number of results to display.
Metric: The metric by which the field is measured.
Select Apply.
Advanced options
The Advanced options allow you to identify trends and patterns in your cloud spend, see your costs in different currencies, and include promotional credits in the report.
Advanced analysis
You can select one or more options from the Advanced analysis drop-down menu to identify trends or make forcast.
Trend analysis
When analyzing cloud usage, it's easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of data points. The Trend Analysis feature employs the Mann-Kendall algorithm to remove noises from your Cloud Analytics reports and shows only trending Metrics (i.e. Cost or Usage) in your series.
Below is an example of the preset report Trending services, showing both trending-up and trending-down services.
Forecast
To generate a forecast, select Forecast from the Advanced analysis drop-down menu. The forecast estimates what your costs may look like for the period you selected moving forward.
Below is an example of the preset report Historical Costs and Forecast, which shows your costs in the last 12 months with a forecast for the next 12 months
You can also use the forecasting feature to get an idea of what to expect of your missing cloud costs, given that billing data may lag behind.
Aggregation
Data aggregation functions help you summarize patterns so you can quickly identify the source of potential issues.
There are five aggregation options. They are available in different chart types though may behave differently.
Total: The results are displayed in absolute terms. A row and a column, each titled Totals, are added at the end containing the sum of the results per row and column, respectively.
% of Total: Each result is presented as a percentage of the total sum.
In a Table view, a column titled Totals is added at the end containing the sum of the results per row, expressed as a percentage.
% of Row: Displays cell values as a percentage of its row.
% of Column: Displays cell values as a percentage of its column.
Unit Cost: Mainly used for cost-per-unit pricing validation.
Currency
Currency that the billing data is reported in (Metric must be Cost). See Supported currencies.
For the current month, we always apply the latest exchange rate (the rate of the present day or the day before) to the whole month.
Once it passes the last day of a calendar month, we apply the exchange rate of that last day to that whole month. See Exchange rates for more information.
Promotional credits
Promotional credits in the DoiT Console include migration credits, commitment credits, vendor program credits, and other credits you receive from DoiT. They are not credits from cloud providers.
Google Cloud customers, AWS customers on DoiT consolidated billing accounts: DoiT promotional credits are applied to the monthly invoices.
To view these credits in a Cloud Analytics report, you need to aggregate data with monthly or greater time interval and also select the checkbox Include promotional credits. See an example report with promotional credits.
AWS customers on dedicated payer accounts: DoiT promotional credits are applied to the billing data.
To view these credits in a Cloud Analytics report, you can use the dimension Cost Type and set it to
Credits. In such a case, the checkbox Include promotional credits is irrelevant.
Promotional credits do not cover discounts, private pricing, AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP or PPA), or Flexsave savings unrelated to credits. See Credits and discounts for how to view various credits and discounts.
View as
This is where you select how your report is visualized. For example, you can choose to view your report as Table, Heatmap, Column Chart, Bar Chart, Treemap, Stacked Area, and other visualizations.
View data as (Comparative report)
The Compare Data dropdown automatically adds either % change or actual difference between two time intervals in a report.
To view a comparative report:
Enter the Edit mode of the report.
Select an option from the View data as dropdown list:
When being prompted, select Show report to allow the DoiT Platform to make adjustments necessary to enable the Comparative Report mode.
Once enabled, you will see new columns in your table based view showing the Δ between time intervals. This difference (Δ) appears after the intervals compared.
In the example below, there are new columns in the report showing the Percentage Change (Δ%) between time intervals. The percentage change between months 11 (November) and 12 (December) is shown in the column 12 Δ%.
