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Documentation - HPE Usage and Analytics

Creating budgets

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Use the HPE Consumption Analytics platform's Budgets feature to create shared budgets that enable you and others in your organization to track your cost or usage against targets over time.

Budgets let you set spending or consumption targets for individual departments or other buckets across your organization, track your actual spend or usage against those targets during the current period and historically, and receive email alerts when spend or usage crosses thresholds or is projected to exceed a target. You can share a budget with groups or users to increase accountability in your organization.

The HPE Consumption Analytics platform has two ways to view budgets; you can create budgets in either location and perform the same actions with them. The differences between the two are:

  • The Budgets page is available to all users in their default view.  In the Budgets page of your view, you can edit only budgets you've created.

  • The Budgets feature described in this page is selected from the left navigation, and displays extra detail about each budget in the list, appropriate to an administrator.  You must have the Manage Shared Budgets permission to use this feature (see Permissions).  With this permission, you can edit any budget that has been shared with you, in addition to budgets you've created.

Sharing a budget

You can choose to share your budgets with other individuals and/or groups.  Anyone you share a budget with can view it with the same data permissions as yours.  This ensures that everyone working with a given budget sees the same set of targets and the same actual cost or usage against them.  They will also receive all of the email notifications you specify.

For a budget with targets Per Field Value (see Creating a budget below), you can reduce the number of notifications you receive by choosing which targets you want to receive notifications for, but you must choose at least one.

Setting up notifications

When you create or edit a budget, you can specify two types of email notifications for it:

  • The first is a set of thresholds; you opt to receive an email when your actual cost or usage reaches the threshold for each target.
  • You can also opt to be notified when your cost or usage is projected to exceed a budget target, to help you adjust your consumption to meet the target. As long as your cost or usage is projected to exceed the target during the period, the HPE Consumption Analytics platform continues to send either daily or weekly notifications.

When the budget targets Per Field Values, you can also choose the targets for which you want to receive notifications. For each of these, you’ll receive the notifications you specified when saving the budget.

The HPE Consumption Analytics platform groups all notifications for a given budget on a given day or week into a single email for you.

Creating a budget

To create a budget

  1. In the left navigation menu, click Budgets.
  2. Click the + icon.
  3. In the Budget Configuration section, choose the interval and date range. For example, you can create a quarterly budget for the current fiscal year, or create a monthly budget for a project that ends four months from now.
    1. In the Interval field, set the monthly, quarterly, or yearly interval you want to track.
    2. In the Budget Starts and Budget Ends fields set the first and last periods covered by the budget.
  4. In the Budget Configuration section, choose whether to budget on cost or usage.  If budgeting on cost, select Cost in the Budget On field, set the target, and proceed to step 6.  If budgeting on usage, skip to step 5.
  5. To budget on usage, select Quantity in the Budget On field.  This will prompt you to select the Meter against which to budget, since budgeting on usage is done on a per-meter basis.
  6. Next, in the Budget Configuration section, choose whether this budget will have a single overall target or targets for each value of a particular field in your data (see Note below). 
    1. If setting a single target, select Single in the Targets field, then proceed to step 7.
    2. If setting targets per field values, select Per Field Values in the Targets field, then select the desired field from the Field list.

For example, if you're creating a budget for your own department, a single target is all you need, and the Budget Targets table displays a single row.  However, if you're creating a budget to cover each department in your division, you can set a target for each department, by choosing to target Per Field Value by your department field. This gives you a row in the Budget Targets table for each value in that field.

As the HPE Consumption Analytics platform continues to collect usage data, if usage comes in for a new department, that new name is added to this table. If you choose Per Field Value in Targets, you can choose a particular field in your data to track.

  1. In the Filters section, you can filter the data considered by the budget, to create a budget focused on a specific piece of your cost or usage.  Filters are especially important for a single-target budget, so you can filter the data to that single target.
    1. Click Add New Filter.
    2. In the Filter Manager, click Filter Field and select a field to filter on.
    3. Click Operator to choose how you want to filter the data field.
    4. Click Selected Values to choose which values in your data you want to filter on.
    5. Click Save.
  2. In the Budget Targets table, double-click the data cells in the Targets column to enter your target cost or consumption values. They can vary from one period to the next.

The Budget Targets table shows your budget data. For current and past periods, the HPE Consumption Analytics platform shows your actual cost or usage and the difference between the two. In the Difference column, a red value in parentheses indicates a period where you are over budget.

The Actuals vs. Targets charts show you the same information visually.  For a budget with targets per field value, you get a breakdown of the current period by target, and you can choose which of those targets to view in the historical chart, including the total of them as an overall budget.

  1. Click Save.
  2. In the Save Budget dialog:
    1. Enter a Name and Description for your budget.
    2. If you want to enable others to view your budget, choose to share with all users, or select specific users or groups. 
    3. In the Send email notification at threshold(s) field, select thresholds that generate an email to you when reached.  For example, if you select a threshold of 90%, and your monthly budget is $30,000, HPE Consumption Analytics portal notifies you by email when the cost for any month reaches $27,000. 
    4. In the Send email notifications if budget is projected to exceed target field, specify notifications to be sent when your cost or usage is projected to exceed a budget target. As long as your cost or usage is projected to exceed the target during the period, the HPE Consumption Analytics platform continues to send either daily or weekly notifications.
    5. Click Save.

View budget results

When your budget is complete, you can view the results.  You can also export it to CSV if you want to work with the target, actual, and difference amounts in another application.

To view budget results

  1. Click Budgets in the left navigation menu.
  2. Click the ellipsis icon for your budget.
  3. Click View Details to see the charts and tables showing target and actual budget values over time.

Results of the budgets are shown as follows:
 Budget_detail_fig1.png

1

Budget line chart: The chart shows the current state of your budget. The vertical black line indicates the current date in relation to the current budget period. The color of the budget line represents a projection of whether cost or usage will exceed the budget based on today's amount spent:

  • Green if projected to be under budget.
  • Orange if projected to exceed the budget.
  • Red if the budget is already exceeded.

2

Performance charts: The charts show you a visualization of the information in the Detailed Budget Data table below.

For a budget with per field value targets, the Current Period Performance table shows a breakdown of the current period by target, and you can choose which of those targets to view in the historical chart, including the total of them as an overall budget.

3

Detailed Budget Data table: Your budget data. For current and past periods, The HPE Consumption Analytics platform shows your actual cost or usage and the difference between the two. In the Difference column, a red value in parentheses indicates a period where you are over budget.

If you need to work with a budget in another application, you can export the target, actual and difference amounts to a CSV file.

Edit a budget

To edit a budget

  1. Click the budget's Name or the gear icon
  2. Click Edit
  3. Edit the budget settings (refer to steps 3-8 under Creating a Budget)
  4. Click Save.

Some changes, such as selecting a different Interval or Targets setting, will reset any existing target values to zero.

To edit a budget's name, description, sharing or email notifications

  1. Click the gear icon
  2. Click Properties
  3. Edit the budget's properties (refer to step 10  under Creating a Budget)
  4. Click Save.

To choose targets for notifications

  1. Click the gear icon for a budget
  2. Click Notifications.
  3. Select one or more targets, including the total of all targets
  4. Click Save.

Video overview

The following video is a high-level introduction to viewing and creating budgets.

The following video is a high-level introduction to creating and editing shared budgets.