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Having historic data and information of a subscription's usage records, for monitoring, comparison, or audit purposes, is essential. For this reason, we have introduced a reporting tool that helps the BSS user to view and export a legacy Azure subscription’s usage records along with the costs of the previous six billing cycles.


Accessing the Tool

To access the tool, please navigate to BSS Setup > Tools > Microsoft Cloud Services > Subscription's Usage Records.

The tool runs ad-hoc and returns the usage records for a specific legacy Azure subscription at a specific billing period.

Retrieving Usage Records from a Subscription

After selecting the tool, the BSS user lands on the following page, where the tool has three parameters for the user to submit in order for the retrieval process to be initiated.

The tool's parameters are the Subscription ID, the Previous Billing Cycles, and the Available Pricelists. 

However, as it can be seen, the only available field to be completed at first, is the Subscription ID. The other fields are locked until an ID is defined. Once the ID of the subscription is defined, the “Get Subscription Data” button needs to be clicked. This button retrieves all the available information for the provided legacy Azure subscription ID regarding its Previous Billing Cycles and Available Price-lists:

  • Subscription ID: The ID of the legacy Azure subscription for which we need to get the historic records.

  • Previous Billing Cycles: This is a drop-down where it displays the past six billing cycles. The dates represent the BSS cycles as retrieved from the subscription. However, if a subscription is relatively new, only the previous available billing cycles will be available. Its default option is the exact previous billing cycle. If for example the legacy Azure subscription is renewed every twenty eighth of the month and we run the tool on the eleventh then the available periods will be: 28/01/2020 - 27/02/2020. 28/12/2020 - 27/01/2020, etc. 

  • Available Pricelists: The BSS user has the option to change and select a different price-list, since the Available Pricelists field is populated with the following options:

    • No Pricelist (default option): The No Pricelist option displays the Usage Charges with no PL assigned to them. If selected, this option displays the Usage Charges with no price-list assigned to them.

    • Subscription Pricelist: The subscription's assigned price-list. If selected, this option displays the Usage Charges with the price-list that this subscription had assigned to it during the selected billing cycle.

    • Any other Pricelist found in this Organization that includes the legacy Azure product and is contained in the subscription added above.


Extra two buttons appearance after the "Get Subscription Data" action:

 

  • If an ID that corresponds to a legacy Azure subscription is used, then the two drop-down menus are populated and also two more buttons are displayed:

    • The Usages from BSS button: Upon clicking on it, it retrieves all the usage records found in our database.

    • The Usages from MS button: Upon clicking on it, it retrieves all the usages returned by Microsoft.



Displaying Usage Records of a Subscription

Once the BSS user has finished populating the Subscription ID and running the “Get Subscription Data” action as well as populating the Previous Billing Cycles and Available Pricelists drop-down menus, he can then choose to initialize the ad-hoc retrieval of usage records by clicking on either one of the two buttons (Usages from BSS, Usages from MS), according to the results he wishes to view; either from our BSS system or from Microsoft's system.

Then the tool, according to the BSS user's button-choice, displays a list of the usage records with the following columns:

  • Resource ID: The ID of the resource.

  • Resource Name: The name of the resource.

  • Resource Group: The group to which the resource belongs. Filtering is available.

  • Resource Category: The category to which the resource belongs. Filtering is available.

  • Resource Sub Category: The subcategory to which the resource belongs. Filtering is available.

  • Consumption/Unit: The consumption of the resource. 

  • Usage Charges: The usage charges of the resource.

  • Charge Start Date: It is the start date of the selected period. It will be the same for all records.

  • Charge End Date: It is the end date of the selected period. It will be the same for all records.

Different Calculations of Usage Records for a Subscription

In order to perform different calculations based on a different price-list or for a different billing cycle, the BSS User can make different selections in the drop-down menus and click again either one of the following buttons, "Usages from BSS" or "Usages from MS".

Clearing Results of Usage Records for a Subscription

If the BSS user wishes to clear the results and initiate a new search for a new Subscription ID, a clear button has been added. 

By clicking on it, all results regarding the previous Subscription ID are lost and the process starts again by having only the Subscription ID field and the “Get Subscription Data” button available.


Exporting Usage Records of a Subscription

After the appearance of the list of usage records, an button is available which will export the current view of the tool to a spreadsheet. This means that this action does not perform any extra retrieving of data but rather exports what is currently on the UI of the BSS User. The format of the name of the excel file is the following: 

For example, if the BSS User filters the resources and only the “Virtual Machines” Category is displayed and then the export is performed, only the “Virtual Machines” Category will be exported to that spreadsheet.


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