Improvements

• Added the ability to ignore individual resources for Azure BPCs

  • While reviewing a Best Practice Check failure in an Azure Subscription, you can choose to ignore a specific resource for future consideration by clicking on the visibility icon to the right of the resource name.

• Configurable monthly Best Practice Summary & Consolidated Billing Summary emails for AWS MAVs

  • While in an AWS MAV, go to the Settings menu in the top right corner of the application. Account Configuration > Email Settings

• Added the ability to define a default account family for a payer. This will allow any new sub-accounts that are identified by the application to be automatically assigned to that default account family.

  • This setting can be found on the account family configuration page.

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  • Note: Only one account family per payer can be set as the default.
  • An associated API endpoint, get_account_Family_v2, has been updated to include a new boolean property, "DefaultAccountFamily": True, to define if the family is default or not.

Bugs

• Resolved an issue where RI Historical Savings report was not reporting all purchased RIs.
• Resolve an issue where Cost BI and Advanced Grouping CSV exports contained the incorrect year format when grouping by year.
• Resolved an issue where Azure usage costs were not being appropriately assigned to configured Department Names within CloudCheckr.

Improvements

• It is now possible to automatically lock a billing month upon identification of both the Invoice ID and AWS Marketplace ID, to ensure that all Marketplace charges are included in a given month. This is an optional project-level configuration setting.
  The default will continue to be “automatically lock the month upon identification of just the Invoice ID” while the new ability allows customers to require the Marketplace Invoice ID to have been written, as well as the traditional invoice number. 
  

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where users were unable to update custom usage rates, as the button would gray out but didn't save the changes.
• Resolved an issue where some customers were receiving a 502 Bad Gateway response when attempting to retrieve saved filters via API.

RDS Rightsizing Report 

• Users can now identify rightsizing opportunities for RDS. With this new report, users can filter by various input parameters, including:

  • Idle Instance
  • Provisioned Status (e.g., "Under-provisioned," "Optimized," "Over-provisioned")
  • Provisioned Status Justification (e.g., "Memory under-provisioned...")
  • Idle (True/False)
  • Tag Key and Tag Value
  • Lookback Period (7 days, 14 days, 30 days)
• Users can find the report in the left navigation menu under Resources > RDS Utilization > Right Sizing

Other Improvements 

• Users can now optionally send Advanced Grouping CSV reports as email attachments, allowing recipients to access the reports without the need to log in to the application. To configure, select Email Report in Advanced Grouping, and then select “Make Available without Authentication” and the configured report will be available to anyone with the link.

• Help text for Tier Compression now clarifies that S3 costs are tiered per region.

Bug Fixes

• Recent slower data ingestion performance has been improved.
• Addressed an issue preventing EC2 cost summary report from successfully running. 
• Fixed an issue preventing Friendly Names from being updated properly. 
• Addressed an issue preventing Saved Filters in certain Azure subscriptions from being updated.  
• Solved an issue where the Azure get_detailed_billing_with_grouping_by_currency API call returned no data (instead returning 202, indicating that data needed to be refreshed). 
• Fixed an issue with the AWS OpenSearch RI Inventory page preventing the reporting RIs at the Payer and Payee levels. 

Improvements 

• Tax may now be specified as a part of List Cost calculations. 

This calculated tax can be transferred to an MSP’s L2, and L2s can also calculate and apply Tax using this same List Cost. 

• Note the new section within the Add a Custom Billing Charge “Add a percent discount or premium tax line item” 

  • The custom billing charge creates an additional single charge or credit based on the specified percentage charge (or discount) of the total amount, where the Description (Max length = 100 characters) is used to label the charge on the invoice. 

• Cost Spend Alerts may now be configured for negative spend (i.e. dip in spend) changes in both AWS and Azure 

  • Access via Alert Manager, Cost, and create a New Alert – enter a negative number or negative percentage on which to alert. 
• Savings Plan Analytics can now be enabled / disabled at each L2 customer, based on a configuration setting at the L1. 
• “Yearly" is now a group-by option in Advanced Grouping for both AWS and Azure, and is also supported by Saved Filters. 

• Family IDs are now more widely available in the UI and API. 

  • For AWS we now

    • Display the Account Family ID in the UI.

    • API updates:

      • get_invoice_v2

        • added family_id parameter in return
        • optional family_id parameter added

      • get_account_family

        • added family_id parameter in return
        • optional family_id parameter added

      • modify_account_family

        • optional family_id parameter added

      • delete_account_family

        • optional family_id parameter added

  • For Azure, we now

    • Display the Subscription Family ID in the UI.

    • API updates:

      • get_subscription_family    

        • added family_id parameter in return
        • optional family_id parameter added

      • create_subscription_family    

        • family_id generated on the return

      • modify_subscription_family

        • optional family_id parameter added

      • delete_subscription_family

        • optional family_id parameter added 

Bug Fixes

• Solved an issue that excluded usages from the Savings Plan Unsharing calculation only when the operation field in the CUR is empty, noted in Lambda usages.  
• Addressed an issue preventing the Untagged Resource report from running with very large datasets.     
• Resolved an issue seen when creating AWS Custom Charges, where the checkboxes for Include Savings Plan Negation Credits in Calculation and Include All Other Credits in Calculation could be out of sync with selections made in the Transaction Type dropdown. 
• Solved an issue preventing successful execution of the API call used to pull Azure cost data from the platform (get_detailed_billing_with_grouping_by_currency) when requesting large datasets from more than 18 months in the past.  
• EU compliance checkbox has been restored after failing to display after saving an edit to a saved filter scheduled invoice in Core and CMx. 
• AWS Professional Service charges are now reflected in the proper service category in Advanced Grouping. 
• Addressed an issue where Generate Total Tax configuration was not properly applying to scheduled invoices.
• Resolved an issue where the Azure API get_detailed_billing_with_grouping_by_currency was not working in a customer-defined MAV. 
• Fixed an issue in AWS Cost Reports which caused the RI Purchase by Frequency report to redirect to an error. 
• Solved an issue where making any changes on the Credits by Account tab would cause existing credit configurations to revert back to hidden, preventing stacked updates.

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.