Copy page

Reporting

Share and schedule reports

Share a saved cost report through a link that expires, see what the link opens, and deliver the report by email, Slack or Microsoft Teams on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule.

Both start from a saved cost report and act on it as saved. A share link opens the report to anyone who has the link, without signing in. A schedule sends the report's figures and a link to it on a fixed day and time.

Before you start

• A saved report without unsaved changes; see Save and manage reports. A new report has no Share or Schedule until it is saved.
• Creating share links and schedules, and seeing the share links that exist, needs the Editor team role in a workspace your team can edit. See Access model.
• Share links also need the Pro plan or higher; see Plans and billing. Schedules come with every plan.
• A schedule delivers to email, Slack and Microsoft Teams apps; add one first under Notification channels, which also says which plan each channel needs.

When one of these is missing, the report's Share or Schedule button is disabled. Hover over it, or move keyboard focus to it, to see why. While the page has unsaved changes it reads "Save your changes first": save or discard them. Without edit access it reads "Sharing this report needs edit access to its workspace." or "Scheduling this report needs edit access to its workspace.". On a plan without share links it names the plan that includes them, for example "Share links is not included in the Free plan. The Pro plan lifts this."

Share by link

Included in the Pro, Business and Custom plans. Compare plans

Under New link the dialog shows the link you just created with a button that copies it, and "Copy the link now: it is shown only once." Costfluent stores the link only as a hash, so it cannot show it again: copy it before you close the dialog, and create a new one if it is lost.

Active links lists the report's links that have not expired or been revoked, each with the date it was created, a line saying how often it was opened and when it expires, such as "Opened 3 times · expires Jan 5, 2099", and a button that revokes it at once.

What a share link opens

The link opens a page outside the app with the report's title, "Shared via Costfluent", its grouping, and Sign in to Costfluent. Below them is the report as it appears in the app: the "Total cost" card, the comparison cards when Compare to previous period is on, the chart and the breakdown. A named range is worked out at each visit. The visitor cannot change the range, the grouping or the filter.

On that page a provider grouping shows provider keys such as aws, and a virtual tag grouping is headed "Virtual tag" rather than by the tag's name. Every visit is counted. A link that has expired, was revoked, or whose report was deleted shows "Link unavailable". So does every link while the organization is on a plan without share links: the links stay listed and can still be revoked, and moving back to a plan with share links brings back the ones that have not expired.

Schedule delivery

Without any of these apps, the dialog says "No email, Slack or Microsoft Teams app is configured" and offers Open notification settings.

Existing schedules lists each schedule with its name, Active or Paused, its frequency, time and time zone, its destinations, "Next:" with the next delivery and "Last sent:" with the last one, or "Never sent". Times are in the schedule's time zone and name it. Each row has three buttons:

• edit opens Edit scheduled delivery for the name, frequency, time, time zone and destinations;
• pause stops deliveries, and resume schedules the next one from now;
• delete removes the schedule at once, without asking.

Print or save as PDF

Select Print on a report, or on the page a share link opens, to open the browser's print dialog. To keep a file, choose the dialog's PDF printer, such as "Save as PDF". The paper and the browser's settings, including orientation, are chosen there; the page fits A4 and Letter.

The paper holds the report's title, its cards, the chart and the breakdown of every group, in light colours whatever the theme. The menus, the filter, the chart options, the data table and the buttons are left out. Under the breakdown, "Report settings" lists what the figures were read with: the "Window", "Data through", the "Currency", the "Exchange rates" each converted currency was converted at, or "No currency conversion", the "Filter" in the filter language, or "None", the "Workspace", and when it was "Printed". The page a share link opens prints the same without the filter and the workspace.

How it behaves

• Each delivery carries the report's total over its saved range; when Compare to previous period is on, the change from the previous period as an amount and a percentage (while the range's last days are still arriving, only its days through the last settled day against as many days before, which the delivery says as "vs the same days before, through …"); the day its data runs through, as "Data through"; and, when a budget measures the report, the budget's state with what is spent and what remains of the current period. A usage budget on the report follows in its unit, with what is used and what remains, or that the report had no usage in that unit this period. It ends with a link to the report in Costfluent; the reader signs in to see more.
• When the report's range starts before the cost history your plan includes, the delivery says so below its figures: an email and a Microsoft Teams post with "Cost history before … is not included in your plan, so these figures start there.", a Slack message after "Data through" with "Cost history before … is not included in your plan".
• When the total leaves out spend that no exchange rate converts, the delivery names it per currency below the total with "Not included: …"; when the report's budget leaves out spend in other currencies it cannot count, it names that below the budget with "Not counted: …". Neither is added to the figure it follows.
• When the report rose against the previous period by at least the workspace's Notify from under Anomaly detection, the delivery also lists its largest increases, up to five services and five accounts, each with how much it rose and by what percentage, or "new" when it cost nothing before. They are read through the report's own filter and against its own comparison period, through the same day as the change, on the plans that include the Overview's Top movers.
• An email app receives it as an email; a Slack or Microsoft Teams app posts it as a message to the channel the app is connected to.
• The figures are read once when the delivery is due, so every destination of one delivery gets the same ones. A destination that cannot be reached is retried on its own, as Notification channels describes.
• A delivery lands at its time on the wall clock of its time zone, so it follows the change to and from summer time. A time the spring change skips is delivered when the clocks jump forward; a time the autumn change repeats is delivered once.
• A range such as "Last month" or "Last 7 days" is read on the date in the delivery's own time zone, so a monthly delivery on the 1st reports the month that just ended there, whatever the workspace's time zone.
• Changing the workspace's time zone does not move existing schedules.
• Deleting a report makes its share links show "Link unavailable".

Related

• Save and manage reports
• Notification channels
• Access model
• Report multi-cloud cost in euros