Using LevelFour
Boards
The home screen of the dashboard, where each board is a grid of cost, allocation, savings and anomaly cards you can rearrange and filter.
Boards are the first thing you see when you sign in. Each board is a grid of cards: spend so far this month, cost trends, cost by team, open savings, anomalies and more. Every board in your organization is listed under Boards in the dashboard sidebar, and as tabs across the top of the page.
The boards you start with
| Board | When it appears | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| FinOps Board | From the start | KPIs, cost trends, allocation and anomalies. The weekly review board |
| Google Cloud | Once you connect Google Cloud | Credits, projects, GKE, BigQuery, commitments, budgets and inventory |
| DigitalOcean | Once you connect DigitalOcean | SKUs, projects, resources, invoices, tags, utilization and inventory |
A provider board shows only that provider's cost, and its Provider filter is locked to it. It stays in your list while the provider is connected.
An organization that connects Google Cloud or DigitalOcean but not AWS sees its provider board in place of the FinOps Board, which is built around AWS.
Create a board
Start a new board
Click New board in the board header.
Name it and pick a template
Type a name, such as Q1 Cloud Review. Under Start from a template, pick Blank board for an empty canvas, or start from the FinOps Board, Google Cloud or DigitalOcean layout.
Create it
Click Create board. The new board opens as its own tab.
Arrange the cards
Click Customize Board to open the catalog of insights. Filter it by KPI, Cost trends, Allocation or Operations, and click an insight to add it to the board.
Drag a card to move it. Some cards can also be resized from their edge.
Undo steps one layout change back, and so does Cmd+Z (Ctrl+Z on Windows and Linux). Reset layout returns the board to its default layout.
Filter a board
The filter bar sits above the cards. The Provider chip narrows every card on the board to the providers you pick. On a provider board it is locked to that provider. The date control on the right sets the period.
Google Cloud credits
A Google Cloud bill can carry large credits. The Google Cloud board adds a Cost basis toggle to its filter bar:
- After credits, the default, shows what you pay.
- Before credits shows gross cost, before any credit applies.
The board keeps the choice you make. Google Cloud credits describes the two figures in the API.
Act on an anomaly
The Anomalies card lists detected spikes with their status, the size of the spike, the cost impact and how long ago it started. From a row's actions you can:
| Action | What it records |
|---|---|
| Acknowledge | A real anomaly you are looking into |
| Mark as planned | Expected spend, such as a launch or a migration |
| Snooze 1h | Hide it for an hour. It comes back if the spike continues |
| Not an anomaly | A false positive. It moves out of the list unless you turn on Show dismissed |
Rename, duplicate or delete a board
Open the menu on the board's tab and pick Rename, Duplicate or Delete board. Deleting removes the board's layout and filters. The cards themselves stay available in the catalog. Your last board cannot be deleted.
Who can change a board
Everyone in the organization can read boards. Creating, arranging and deleting a board, and acting on an anomaly, take the Member or Admin role. Members and roles lists the rest.
Next
- Costs and Usage breaks one provider's spend down by service, account, tag or virtual tag
- Virtual tags give cards such as Cost by Team one clean key to group by
- FinOps Agent answers questions about the same numbers in plain language