Savings Plan Analytics at the L2 

• Savings Plan Analytics are now available to L2 customers through the CMx UI
  Savings Plan Analytics allow customers to identify their coverage, cost, savings, utilization, and waste. The report allows you to see these trends over 1, 3, 6, or 12 month timeframes to gauge the effectiveness of your Savings Plans against your resource fleet. See additional details in this Success Center article.

Improvements 

• "Generate Total Tax" has been added to the “Edit schedule Invoice” page

• New Best Practice Check for Idle EFS Shares is now available, which detects when there are no input/output operations being performed on the file system

  • Access via Resources → EC2 Utilization → Idle Instances
• Cost Savings Report has been enhanced to surface idle EFS Shares for possible cost savings opportunities
• Unused Load Balancer BPC has been improved to support the case that Network load balancers can have Application load balancers as targets
• Enhanced RI Unsharing to support AWS Elasticache size flexibility rules, which has also been updated in platform Inventory and Recommendations reports, as documented in New – Size flexibility for Amazon ElastiCache reserved nodes | Amazon Web Services   
• OpenSearch reservation support has been expanded to the Inventory, Unsharing, Amortization, Cost Savings and Recommendations reports 

Bug Fixes

• Solved a corner case when "Inherit Tags to Payee" is selected which intermittently preventing Advanced Grouping reports and Cost BI Exports from successfully completing 
• Addressed a discrepancy in Saving Plan Analytics where MTD Utilization was improperly visualized
• Resolved an issue where the Unused Elastic Load Balancers BPC that had a registered target of an Application load balancer was incorrectly reported as a Cost Savings opportunity

Improvements 

• Enhanced the “Generate Unique Invoice ID” workflow options to support suppress or show the Unique Invoice ID, as well as to allow the user to enter a custom Invoice ID of their choosing: 

  • Unchecked - Do not show Unique Invoice ID label and Value is blank (Default value) 

  • Checked - Show text box that populates Random value with description or help icon that describes that user can enter the value of their choice

    
    
    
    

• The get_invoice_v2 API now supports enable/suppress the Unique Invoice ID

  • show_unique_invoice_id : true/false - optional
  • unique_invoice_id : alphanumeric should be between 1-10 character - optional
• Users may now optionally decide Inherit / not Inherit Tags from Payer to Payee at the Project level
• Azure Savings Plan purchases for Legacy and Modern CSP are now captured and reported in Advanced Grouping and One Time Charge configuration pages

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue when the API call “get_detailed_billing_grouped_pdf” does not complete when using a CMx bearer token (worked with Core API key). 
• Resolved an issue preventing the AWS List of Workspaces inventory report from successfully reporting, only when the Directory Type is reported as null from AWS. 
• Fixed an issue with Cost BI | Export which indicated that certain email addresses are invalid when they are a functional email addresses. 

Improvements 

• "Usage Type" Filter has been added as a filter to the "Custom Usage Rates" page in CloudCheckr.
  
• CloudCheckr-generated Invoices now contain a unique numerical identifier as well as a Project Code, which are newly able to be called as part of Get_Invoice_V2 API calls. 
• Added support for Azure’s Spain Central region. 

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue preventing successful reconsent with an existing MCA project in CloudCheckr. 
• Solved an issue which appeared when trying to access the IoT list of things report with very large datasets. 
• Resolved an issue preventing Azure CSP Multi-Account Views (MAVs) from properly building. 
• Addressed an issue with Savings Plan Unsharing that was causing account owned savings plans to be incorrectly unshared.  
• Resolved an issue with Cost BI exports not successfully sending to email addresses containing certain punctuation characters. 
• Solved an issue preventing Assigned Credits at the L1 not appearing in the L2 after finalization. 

Improvements 

• Added the ability to filter on Account or Account Family when using the Billing Cost Changes Report, mirroring the capability in the Advanced Grouping page. 
• Users are now able to generate a unique ID for each invoice generated in the Bill Invoice Generator. 

Bug Fixes

• Solved an issue where the user name was not being surfaced in a subset of BPCs. 
• Addressed a cosmetic issue such that "New File Available" is only be displayed for locked months, since unlocked months automatically process new files. 
• Resolved an issue preventing automated emails from being sent from within a project when an L2 Pseudopayer was auto-created while adding a reseller link.
• Solved an issue where large and complex Cost BI reports did not export successfully. Users will receive an email when the report has been generated successfully.

Improvements

• Service Principal Credential support for Azure EA and MCA accounts provides an alternative method of credentialing Azure billing accounts in CloudCheckr (existing Azure EA/MCA credentialing methods continue to be supported).
  Additionally, it is possible to switch between initiating consent via User Consent or leveraging Service Principal directly on the Manage credentials page. Use these steps to credential Azure EA and MCA accounts using a Service Principal:  

  • Log in to CloudCheckr, and navigate to the 'Use Service Principal with secret key' tab on the Azure credentials page. Input the Tenant ID, Application ID, Secret Key, and specify the Account type (EA or MCA). 
  • Start in the Configure Account screen in CloudCheckr Core UI, select the Collect billing data from my Enterprise Agreement option, and the Use Service Principal with Secret Key tab.

1. Log into your Azure portal find and select the Microsoft Entra ID service. Use the search box if you don’t see it right away.
2. Locate your Tenant ID and copy it. Return to the CloudCheckr Configure Account screen and paste at step two.
   
3. Return to the Azure portal and in the left-side menu, under Manage, click open App Registrations.
4. Click the New registration button.

5. On the Register an application screen 

   1.  make up a Name (this can be changed later) 
   2.  for Supported account types select Accounts in this organizational directory only 
   3.  for Redirect URI select Web and enter https://localhost 

   4.  click Register to save.

      

       

6. Back in the Azure portal new App registrations screen, copy the Application (client) ID. While there collect the Object ID and Directory (tenant) ID for later use. Then return to the CloudCheckr Configure Account screen and paste Application (client) ID at step seven. 

   

   
   

7. Return to the Azure portal. In the left-side menu, under Manage, select Certificates & secrets. 
8.  In the center, under Client secrets, select New client secret.

9. On the Add a client secret screen 

   1. make up a Description 
   2. choose when it Expires 
   3. click Add to save
      

10. Copy the Value from the new client secret, return to the CloudCheckr Configure Account screen, and paste step eleven.

    

11. Return to the Azure portal and navigate to the Cost Management + Billing Overview screen. Collect the Billing account ID for use in the next step. 

12. Use the Role Assignments – Put testing screen to assign the Enrollment Reader role to the registered application via API call. Navigate here Role Assignments - Put - REST API (Azure Billing)  Sign in as Enterprise Admin, then click the green Try it button to open the API testing screen.

    

• In order to credential Azure MCA billing accounts, follow the steps as shown in the Azure credentials page below, it is similar to that of how Azure EA accounts are credentialed except the way roles are assigned to the registered Application in the tenant which are mentioned from the step 12 onwards.

  

•  Now in CMx, users can also choose to switch credentialing mechanism between User Consent and Service Principal for EA and MCA billing accounts.

  • For credentialing a new EA/MCA project,  users can Click on Manage Credentials button and choose the authentication mechanism from the dropdown as shown below. 

    

     

  • For switching between the credential mechanism for the existing Azure EA/MCA projects, Click on Manage Credentials button and select the option accordingly.

    

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue preventing successful Azure VM Inventory data ingestion when flexible Scale Sets are in use.    
• Clarified via application Info Bubble that RI and SP amortized monthly charges for the entire month show at the beginning of the month. 
• Aligned weekly cost emails generated by a Saved Filter as well as the month-to-date cost emails with the totals represented in the UI, fully accounting for new AWS-reported spend. 
• Addressed an issue preventing Idle or Unused Load Balancers from being reported correctly in the Best Practice Checks. 

Bug Fixes

• Solved an issue that could prevent scheduled invoice generation from taking place as expected.  
• Resolved a scenario preventing Azure PayGo subscription configuration from completing successfully. 
• Addressed an issue that in certain cases prevented List Cost Analysis from properly reflecting Savings Plan Amortization for All Upfront or Partial Upfront Savings Plans. 
• Resolved an issue where the description of deallocated SavingsPlanCoveredUsage rows were not being converted to “Usage” as expected.
• Solved an issue where the Stale IAM Users BPC was showing results without the Username. 

Improvements

• There is a new API call that allows customers to perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete of Custom Usage Rates

  • Get Custom Usage Rates - Admin API Reference Guide 
  • Add Custom Usage Rate - Admin API Reference Guide 
  • Edit Custom Usage Rate - Admin API Reference Guide 
  • Delete Custom Usage Rate - Admin API Reference Guide  

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue that was preventing email notifications from being sent when the cost of an Azure Reservation does not auto-assign to the desired purchased or scoped Subscription. 
• Resolved an issue preventing new accounts from being properly configured in the platform.  
• Solved an issue where a custom billing charge Transaction Type for a previously saved custom charge could not be changed. 

Improvements

• Budget Alerts may now be applied using both Account Family and Project Code in addition to Account: 

• The User Email of the user ID that is currently logged in to CloudCheckr is now displayed at the menu top.
• Azure BPC now supports 'Microsoft Defender for Cloud' BPCs.
• Extended current AWS Cost Alert API Call support to also support creating, modifying, and deleting Azure Cost Alerts.  

Bug Fixes

• Addressed an issue where AWS Change Monitoring did not match CloudTrail Events. 
• Solved an issue where the CSV Export for AWS | MAV List of EC2-VPC Security Groups Report was ignoring the report configuration / export options. 
• Resolved an issue where new Payee Accounts were not being placed in the same group as parent group despite being configured to do so. 
• Addressed a case where the Azure Reserved Instance Billing Configuration page did not load. 

Improvements

• To clarify the List Cost display on the Billing and Cost Management Dashboard, we are now summarizing all charges between -.01 and .01 (currently displayed as 0) into “Others” and then we display the aggregate cost of these very small costs in “Others”. Previously some very small value services would be displayed as “0 when in fact they represented cost that had been rounded down to 0. 

• Program Credit Management has been enhanced to more flexibly hide or show credits. There are now two scenarios:

  • “Hide Credits from Payees” is selected, which then allows the user to select which credit types should be SHOWN to the owner in the Assign credits screen. 
  • “Hide Credits from Payees” is not selected, which then allows the user to select which credit types should be HIDDEN from the owner in the Assign Credits screen.

CASE 1: “Hide Credits from Payees” is selected:

• For cases when Azure is reporting duplicate / ambiguous VM Reservation data, CloudCheckr is correctly capturing the cost, even though the Service Category is set to Unknown for these ambiguous reservations.
  Customers who wish to capture all Service Category data for VM reservations may now do so by providing CloudCheckr with the Reservation Order Reader role, which is accomplished by following steps through Permissions to view and manage Azure reservations - Microsoft Cost Management 

Bug Fixes

• Azure MCA Marketplace charges are now being fully collected and reported.