Segments and allocation rules
The Segments page, under Reporting, assigns each cost line in a workspace to one owner. The principles are in Allocation model; this page covers the steps.
Before you start
- Viewing segments needs any team role. Adding and changing segments and rules needs the Owner or Editor team role in a workspace your team can edit.
- Your plan limits how many allocation rules a workspace can have; see the pricing page.
- Tagged resources make rules simpler. Check tag coverage first.
Add a segment
- Under Segments, select Add segment.
- Enter the Team, Product and Cost centre and save. The team is a name, so an owner does not have to exist as a team in Costfluent first.
The Public API can also link a segment to one of your organization's teams (teamId) or create a shared cost bucket (isShared), whose cost is spread across the direct segments. A shared bucket appears in the product as Shared cost and can be chosen as a rule's segment.
Team, product and cost centre together identify a segment, so two segments cannot have the same three. Rules point at a segment by identity, so renaming one changes no rule.
Add a rule
- Under Rules, select Add rule and give it a Name.
- Under Matches, choose the Field (Account or subscription, Resource group, Resource name or Tag), the Comparison (equals, starts with, ends with or contains) and the Value. For Tag, also enter the Tag key. Values are compared as literal text, with no wildcards and no regular expressions.
- Choose the Segment the rule assigns cost to.
- Set the Priority. Lower wins. Leave gaps, such as 10, 20, 30, so a later rule can be placed in between.
- Select Preview. What this rule would move shows the amount and how coverage would change, computed on the same committed cost a report reads. Nothing is saved yet.
- Save the rule.
Claims cost turns a rule on or off without deleting it. Move up and Move down reorder rules.
Read coverage
Coverage shows, for the window it names, the Total and how much of it is Direct, Shared and Unallocated. When shared cost has no direct segment to spread across, the page says how much was counted as unallocated for that reason.
To see cost per segment over time, open a cost report and set Group by to Segment.
How it behaves
- Rules are evaluated when a report is read. Adding, disabling, reordering or deleting a rule changes what every past month says, not just future ones.
- The first matching rule claims a cost line; nothing is claimed twice.
- Deleting a rule makes the cost it claimed unallocated in every month.
- A segment cannot be deleted while a rule still assigns cost to it. Re-point or delete those rules first.