Dashboard Author

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note

Vega Dashboard Author is in Open Preview and is not General Availability (GA) at this time. More information about release phases may be found here.

About Dashboard Author

Vega Cloud provides a comprehensive set of standard FinOps dashboards to get your FinOps team operational and quickly. The Vega Dashboard Author feature is an optional add-on that enables you to go a step further, building your own custom data analyses on top of the Vega curated multi-cloud billing dataset, publishing dashboards for re-use, and distribution of your custom view to your stakeholders.

Enabling Dashboard Author

To access Dashboard Author, a user will need an admin to assign them to the report_author role. If this option is not available to you, please contact your Customer Success Manager.

Understanding the Vega Datasets

You will have access to the two standard Vega Datasets to build upon:

1. The All Cloud Spend Summary dataset provide a daily aggregate over 13-months of cloud spend.
2. The All Cloud Spend Detail dataset provides resource-level spend details over a rolling 90-day window.

These datasets are managed by Vega and cannot be modified in Dashboard Author. If you have custom data retention requirements, please coordinate your requirements with your Vega Customer Success Manager.

Create an Analysis

To create a custom analysis of your choosing, use the following procedure. Any analysis you create will be specific to your portal user.

1. Under Vega Dashboard Author, choose Analyses, and then choose New analysis.
2. Choose the given dataset to include in your new analysis, and then choose USE IN ANALYSIS.
3. In the New sheet pop-up that appears, choose the sheet type that you want. You can choose between an Interactive sheet and a Paginated report.
4. (Optional) If you choose Interactive sheet, follow these steps:
   • (Optional): Choose the type of layout that you want for your interactive sheet. You can choose one of the following options:
     • Free-form
     • Tiled

The default option is Free-form.

5. Choose Create.
6. Create a visual with desired fields and visual type.

Edit an Existing Analysis

Would you like to build another version or iterate on a prior analysis? Use the following procedure to make a copy tailored the way you wish.

1. Navigate to Vega Dashboard Author, click on Analyses, and select the specific analysis you wish to modify.
2. In case you are working with a pre-existing analysis from Vega, access the File menu and choose Save As to create your customized version.
3. Tailor the data and visuals to align with your specific requirements. Modify and enhance the analysis to cater to your unique insights.
4. Once your adjustments are complete, you have the option to either save the modified analysis for personal use or take it a step further by publishing it as a dynamic dashboard for broader access and collaboration.

Publish a Dashboard

When you are finished editing the analysis and layout, publish your Analysis to a Dashboard. Dashboards will be local to the user who creates them by default.

1. Open the analysis that you want to use. Choose Share on the application bar, and then choose Publish dashboard.
2. Do one of the following:
   • To create a new dashboard, select PUBLISH and then choose Publish new dashboard as, and then type a dashboard name.
   • To replace an existing dashboard, do one of the following. Replacing a dashboard updates it without altering security or emailed report settings.
     • To update it with your changes, choose Replace an existing dashboard and then choose a dashboard from the list.
     • To rename it, choose Replace an existing dashboard, choose a dashboard from the list, and then choose Rename. Enter a new name to rename the existing dashboard. When you rename a dashboard, it also saves any changes you made to the analysis.
3. (Optional) Choose the sheets that you want to publish in the SHEETS dropdown. When you select sheets to add to the new dashboard, the dropdown shows how many sheets are selected for publishing. The default option is ALL SHEETS SELECTED.
4. If you are replacing an existing dashboard, the sheets that are already published to the existing dashboard are pre-selected in the dropdown. You can make changes to this by selecting or de-selecting sheets from the dropdown list.
   • (Optional) Open the Advanced publish options. These options are only available if at least one sheet in the new dashboard is an interactive sheet.
5. Choose Publish dashboard.

Share a Dashboard

Would you like to share a dashboard layout with other users? You have multiple options depending on your use case:

1. Users not in the platform, or without the report_author role, will need an Export of the dashboard distributed to them. Depending on the configuration, PDF, XLS, or CSV are typical export formats and can be initiated by clicking Export in the upper right corner of the dashboard.
2. Users in the platform who are members of the report_author role can have dashboards shared with them. In the upper right corner of the dashboard, select Share and enter the email addres of the user. Shared dashboards will appear in that user's dashboard folder.

Data Dictionary

Column Name	Definition
closing_month	The calendar month in which the usage occurs.
usage_day	The date when the usage occurs.
reporting_month	The length of time for which usage is reported. For example: current, this month, last month, or last year. Note: If the day of the current date is less than or equal to 10, then reporting_month is set as 'current' whereas if it is greater than 10 then the reporting_month is set as 'this month'.
client_name	Name of the client.
billing_account_id	Unique identifier for an entity's billing and financial management.
business_group	Name of the high level aggregation of internal organization.
business_unit	Organizational unit derived from linked account and/or tags.
line_item_type	Classification or category used to label and describe individual charges.
linked_account_id	Unique identifier assigned to an associated account within a platform.
linked_account_name	Name of the linked account. For example: account name for AWS, subscription name for Azure, and project name for GCP.
cloud_provider_identifier	Concatenation of linked account name and ID.
cloud_provider	The company or organization offering cloud computing services and resources. For example: AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.
cloud_region	Name of the region where the resource resides. For example: US East.
cloud_specific_location	Specific location of the resource. This is a more granular version of cloud region. For example: US East (N. Virginia).
product	Individual product values defined by the cloud provider. For Example: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.
product_group	A higher level grouping than product cost detail category. This allows Vega to group individual consumption items into categories across clouds in a way that creates more meaningful aggregations of cloud consumption.
usage_type	Raw usage type from cloud provider billing that is a combination field. For example: BoxUsage:c4.xlarge represents instance based usage in AWS of a particular family, region and size type.
instance_type	The specific family, size and generation of a particular resource. For example: an AWS EC2 instance such as M5.xlarge.
disk_type	Type of disk used.
steady_state	This is a Vega defined logic used to check if the resource is running greater than 95% of the available time during a month. This drives specific recommendations such as autoparking.
cost_category	Breaks out billing lines by type, such as Credits, Marketplace purchases, On Demand usage, Savings plan coverage usage, etc.
lease_ownership_type	Type of lease ownership.
lease_purchase_month	The calendar month in which the lease is purchased.
ri_sp_arn	RI/SP ARNs are used for various purposes, including tagging, policy management, and resource access control. They allow you to reference and work with specific CUD instances within your AWS account.
is_committed_use_eligible	To check if a resource is eligible for committed use discount.
coverable_application_type	Represents the type of product category or product cost detail category covered for a resource.
product_category	An aggregation of individual products into natural grouping categories. These apply across AWS, GCP and Azure. For Example: Containers, Data Transfer, Disk storage, etc. This is a more granular version of product group.
product_cost_detail_category	This is a more granular version of product category which breaks out Data Transfer into items such as AWS Inbound and AWS Outbound.
billing_unit	This is a normalized field that represents how each resource line is billed such as instance hour, GB/hr, request, etc.
operating_system	The operating system associated with specific usage such as Windows, Linux, Red Hat, etc.
environment_source	The value that assigns the environment such as tag, linked account, resource, etc.
environment	This is parsed from the linked account name, resource ID and the tag.
application	Tag specific to identifying applications. Vega adds cleaning logic to account for capitalization and spelling errors.
financial_owner_name	Name of the financial owner.
financial_owner_email	Email of the financial owner.
technical_owner_name	Name of the technical owner.
technical_owner_email	Email of the technical owner.
technical_team_owner	Name of the technical team owner.
migration	Tag specific to Migration - typically Yes or No.
migration_origin	Tag specific to Migration which denotes which data center it was migrated from. Vega adds cleaning logic to account for capitalization and spelling errors.
channel	The channel a specific resource is associated with.
platform	Name of the platform used/ in use.
snapshot_origin	Represents the source or point in time from which a snapshot of data or a system state is taken.
disk_usage_gb	The amount of disk usage in GB.
ondemand_cost	The cost/ expense incurred for resources or services that are utilized as needed, without a fixed, ongoing commitment.
net_cash	Represents the sum of Gross Cash, Support Fees, Cross Service Discounts, Support Discounts and/or Private Rate Discounts.
net_fiscal_amount	Amount that includes amortization of upfront cash associated with Committed Use purchases as well as large Marketplaces purchases which are amortized over the term of the agreement. This also includes premium support allocation to each line of billing data as well as any credit allocations and billing error corrections.
usage_amount	Refers to the quantity or volume of a particular resource, product, service, or item consumed or utilized within a specified period.
savings	Represents the amount of money saved.