Monitor — Dashboards#

Monitor dashboards are personalised cost visibility workspaces built from a library of 13 widgets. Arrange them on a canvas, configure each widget’s data scope, and save as a named dashboard. Dashboards can be shared with teammates and set as your default view.

Navigate: left navigation → FinOps → Monitor → Dashboards.

The dashboards list#

The Dashboards section shows:

  • Your dashboards — dashboards you created

  • Shared with you — dashboards shared by teammates

  • Search bar to filter by name

  • “+ New dashboard” button

Creating a dashboard#

  1. Click “+ New dashboard”

  2. Choose a starting point in the template drawer that opens from the right:

Option A — Start from a preset#

Preset

Intended for

Pre-configured widgets

CFO Executive

C-suite / finance leadership

Spend summary, monthly comparison, top cost categories, resource inventory, provider and cost-group breakdowns, quarter-to-date trend

DevOps Engineer

Platform / infrastructure engineers

Resource inventory, top cost categories, provider and environment breakdowns, 30-day trend

Product Owner

Product and project managers

Cost summary and comparison, top cost categories, provider and project breakdowns, 30-day trend

FinOps Analyst

FinOps practitioners

Spend summary and comparison, top cost categories, inventory, provider and cost-group breakdowns, quarter-to-date trend, fastest-growing groups

Team Lead

Engineering and team managers

Spend summary and comparison, top cost categories, inventory, provider and cost-group breakdowns, 30-day trend

CTO Technical

CTOs and engineering leaders

Infrastructure spend, top cost categories, inventory, provider and cost-group breakdowns, quarter-to-date trend, fastest-growing groups

Startup Founder

Startup founders and CEOs

Monthly burn rate, growth comparison, quarter-to-date trend, provider and cost-group breakdowns, top cost categories

Multi-Cloud Architect

Cloud architects

Cross-cloud spend, inventory, provider and cost-group breakdowns, 30-day trend, fastest-growing groups, top cost categories

Foundry & AI Cost Monitor

AI platform and FinOps engineers

Azure Foundry / Azure AI spend, month comparison, AI cost categories, trend, meter and charge details, cost groups

Storage & Data Meter Monitor

Data platform and FinOps engineers

Azure, AWS and GCP storage/database spend, provider comparison, trend, meter and charge details, cost groups

Option B — Start blank#

Empty canvas; add widgets manually.

The optional allocation selector applies the selected cost groups to all widgets in the preset. You can change the filters later in each widget’s configuration drawer.

  1. Give the dashboard a name → Save

Adding and configuring widgets#

Changing the viewing period#

In dashboard view, Dashboard period applies a preset or custom calendar range to compatible cost widgets. Saved widget periods restores the individual saved configurations. A custom range takes effect after Apply range; its end date must be yesterday or earlier.

Budget Status, Group Budget Comparison, fixed Month Comparison and Resource Count always retain their own budget, calendar or inventory scope. The filter changes only the current view; it does not save or alter dashboard/widget settings.

On the dashboard canvas, click “+ Add Widget” → the widget library opens.

The 13 widget types#

Overview

  • Cost Summary — KPI card: total cost for a period with optional comparison

  • Resource Count — count of discovered resources

Trends

  • Cost Trend — line or area chart over time

  • Month Comparison — current month vs previous month bar chart

  • Group Trend Comparison — cost trend for multiple groups overlaid on one chart

Breakdown

  • Top Cost Categories — ranked cost split by service categories such as compute and storage

  • Cost by Provider — spend split by Azure / AWS / GCP

  • Cost by Group — spend per Group hierarchy node

  • Meter & Charge Details — actual spend grouped by provider, native billing meter and charge detail

  • Top Growing Groups — groups with the biggest month-on-month increase

  • Group Allocation Efficiency — % of costs attributed vs unallocated per group

Budget

  • Budget Status — utilisation for a specific budget

  • Group Budget Comparison — multiple budgets side-by-side

Widget configuration options#

Setting

Description

Time Range

Preset time ranges (same as Assess and Analyze)

Providers

Filter to Azure / AWS / GCP

Metered resource types

Limit cost widgets to supported services such as Foundry / Azure AI, storage, or databases; leave empty to include all resource types

Group filter mode

All Organisation / Specific Groups / Environments only / Projects only

Specific Groups

Multi-select from the allocation tree (available when mode = Specific Groups)

Chart type

Line / Area / Bar (available on trend widgets)

Meter and charge labels use provider billing details (for example, an Azure meter and its charge detail, an AWS usage type, or a GCP SKU). Older costs may lack this detail; within the selected filter scope they remain part of total-cost widgets and appear as unavailable in the meter breakdown. Clear the metered resource type filter to include all resource types.

Sharing a dashboard#

  1. Open the dashboard

  2. Click the Share button

  3. Search for users by name or email

  4. Set permission: View (read-only) or Edit (can modify widgets and layout)

  5. Save

Shared users see the dashboard under “Shared with you” in the Dashboards list.

Setting a default dashboard#

Click the three-dot menu on any dashboard card → “Set as default”. The default dashboard loads automatically when you open the Monitor tab.

Resizing and moving widgets#

  • Drag the widget header to reposition

  • Drag the bottom-right corner to resize

  • Click Save layout after rearranging to persist the changes

Cost Spike Detection#

Reply CMP automatically analyses your ingested costs after every refresh and sends a notification when an unexpected spike is detected.

Navigate: left navigation → FinOps → Monitor → Cost Spike Alerts.

How it works#

After each cost ingestion, the platform compares the most recent day’s costs to a ML-generated forecast. A spike is raised when both of the following conditions are met simultaneously:

Condition

Default threshold

Percentage increase above forecast

≥ 25 %

Absolute increase above forecast

≥ 2.00 (reporting currency)

Both conditions must hold at the same time. This prevents alerts from firing on small absolute amounts that happen to be high in percentage terms (e.g. a €0.50 resource doubling in cost would not trigger an alert with default settings).

Group-level spike detection#

When Detect group spikes is enabled (default: on), the engine also checks spend within each allocation group and reports which groups crossed the threshold — not just the tenant total. The notification email lists each affected group with its actual cost, forecasted cost, and the excess amount.

Configuring spike alerts#

  1. Open FinOps → Monitor → Cost Spike Alerts

  2. Toggle Enable spike detection on or off

  3. Adjust Percentage threshold (default 25 %) and Absolute threshold (default 2.00)

  4. Toggle Detect group spikes on or off

  5. Configure Notification settings:

    • In-app — notification bell in Reply CMP

    • Email — one or more recipient addresses

    • Webhook — select registered webhook channels (see Webhooks)

Tip

Lower the absolute threshold if you want to catch spikes in lower-cost environments. Raise the percentage threshold if you have noisy workloads with high natural variance.

Note

Spike detection runs automatically after every cost ingestion. There is no manual trigger — it is always evaluated against the most recently ingested data.