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The 'Data Sources' menu allows an admin of the Exivity solution to manage Transcript 'Transformer' scripts. Transcript has its own language reference, which is fully covered in a separate chapter of this documentation.
As described in the Transcript Documentation, you are free to use your editor of choice to create and modify Transformers. However, the GUI also comes with a built-in Transformers-editor.
To create a new Transformer for Transcript, follow these steps:
From the menu on the left, select "Data Sources" > 'Transformer'
To create a new Transformer to normalise and enrich USE Extractor consumption and lookup data, click the 'Add Transformer' button
When your Exivity instance has access to the Internet, it will pull in the latest set of Transformer Templates from our Github account. These templates are then presented to you, and you can pick one from the list to start Extracting. If you don't have access to the internet, you can download them directly from Github. You are also free to start creating your own Extractor from scratch.
Provide a meaningful name for your Transformer. In the above example we're creating an Transformer for a consolidated bill of various IT resources. Therefore we call this Transformer : 'IT Services Consumption'
When you're done creating your Transformer, click the 'Insert' at the bottom of the screen.
!!! INFO The Transformer editor has syntax highlighting and auto completion, to simplify the development of your scripts
When you want to change or delete an existing Transformer, first select one from the list of Transformer that you want to change:
When you've selected your Transformer from the "Data Sources" > 'Transformers' list, you can change the Transformer script in the editor
In this example, we're adding a 'services' statement using auto completion, to simplify the creation of services
In case you want to save your changes, click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the 'Editor' screen. To delete this Transformer, you can do so by clicking the 'Remove' button, after which you'll receive an confirmation pop-up where you'll have to click 'OK'.
To test your Transformer, you can execute or schedule it directly from the Glass interface:
After you have selected the Transformer that you would like to run, click to the 'Run' tab next to the 'Editor' tab
Manual execution of a Transformer can only be done for a single day. Provide the date you want to run this transformer for in dd-MM-yyyy format. You can also use the date picker, by clicking on the down facing arrow, on the right side of the date field
When you've provided the required date, click 'Run Now' to execute the Transformer. After the Transformer has completed running, you will receive some success or failed message, after which you might need to make additional changes to your Transformer. For futher investigations or troubleshooting, consult the "Administration" > "Log Viewer" screen
Once you're happy with your output, you can schedule the Transformer via the 'Schedule' tab, which is located next to the 'Run' tab at the top of the screen
Transformer can be scheduled to run once a day at a specific time. Also you should provide a date, which is provided by using an offset value. For example, if you want to execute this Transformer against yesterdays date with every schedule run, you should provide a value there of -1
When you're done with the schedule configuration, you may click the 'Schedule' button. In case you want to change or remove this schedule afterwards, click the 'Unschedule' button.
!!! warning The as of version 1.6, it is recommend to use the Workflow function instead of the Extractor schedule
The 'Data Sources' menu allows an admin of the Exivity solution to manage USE 'Extractors'. USE has its own language reference, which is fully covered in a separate chapter of this documentation.
As described in the USE documentation, you are free to use your editor of choice to create and modify USE Extractors. However, the GUI also comes with a built-in USE Extractor-editor.
To create a new USE Extractor, follow these steps:
From the menu on the left, select "Data Sources" > 'Extractors'
To create a new USE Extractor where you want pull usage or lookup data from, click the 'Add Extractors' button
When your Exivity instance has access to the Internet, it will pull in the latest set of Extraction Templates from our Github account. These templates are then presented to you, and you can pick one from the list to start Extracting. If you don't have access to the internet, you can download them directly from Github. You are also free to start creating your own Extractor from scratch.
Provide a meaningful name for your USE Extractor. In the above example we're creating an USE Extractor for VMware vCenter 6.5 and higher. Therefore we call this USE Extractor : 'vCenter 6.5'
When you're done creating your USE Extractor, click the 'Insert' at the bottom of the screen
When you want to change or delete an existing USE Extractor, first select one from the list of USE Extractor that you want to change:
When you've selected your USE Extractor from the "Data Sources" > 'Extractors' list, you can change the USE Extractor variable values via the 'Variables' tab. Any variable value (except encrypted variables) from the USE Extractor script, can be change via this menu
In this example there is a variable called User, which has a value of vcenter_admin. We can change this value simply by changing that value to something else: my_new_user
When clicking 'Save' at the bottom right of this screen, you can save your changes to this USE Extractor
If you want to make more fundamental changes to this USE Extractor, you may click on the 'Editor' tab just next to the 'Variables' tab.
In the 'Editor' screen, you can make more advanced changes to your script. Such as:
changing existing API calls
changing csv output format
provide usernames / password that require encryption
In case you want to save your changes, click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the 'Editor' screen. To delete this USE Extractor, you can do so by clicking the 'Remove' button, after which you'll receive an confirmation pop-up where you'll have to click 'OK'.
To test your USE Extractor, you can execute or schedule it directly from the Glass interface:
After you have selected the USE Extractor that you would like to run, click to the 'Run' tab next to the 'Editor' tab
Most Extractors require one or more parameters, usually in a date format such as 20171231. In this example, the USE Extractor requires two parameters: a from and to date
When you've provided the required run parameters, click 'Run Now' to execute the USE Extractor. After the USE Extractor has completed running, you will receive some success or failed message, after which you might need to make additional changes to your USE Extractor
Once you're happy with your output, you can schedule the USE Extractor via the 'Schedule' tab, which is located next to the 'Run' tab at the top of the screen.
USE Extractors can be scheduled to run once a day at a specific time. Also you should provide a from and (optionally) to date, which are provided by using an offset value. For example, if you want to use the day before yesterday as a from date, you should use the down pointing arrows on the right, to select a value of -2. If the to date should always correspond with yesterdays date, you should provide a value there of -1.
If your Use Extractor requires additional parameters, you may provide these as well in the 'Schedule with these arguments' text field.
When you're done with the schedule configuration, you may click the 'Schedule' button. In case you want to change or remove this schedule afterwards, click the 'Unschedule' button.
As of version 1.6, it is recommend to use the Workflow function instead of the Extractor schedule
Exivity enables you to create account specific rate adjustment policies. An adjustment policy allows you to apply a discount or a premium using one of these modifiers:
a certain amount of money (i.e. $ 100)
a certain quantity (i.e. 100 GB/hours)
a percentage (i.e. 10%)
This Adjustment can then be applied to a single service, multiple different services, or one or more service categories.
To create a new adjustment policy for an account, follow these steps:
From the menu on the left, select 'Catalogue' > 'Adjustments'
Then select the Account from the list of accounts for which you want to create an adjustment policy
After selecting the account, click 'Add Policy', and provide a meaningful name for your policy in right screen where it says 'Adjustment name'
Provide the Start date, by selecting the initial month when this adjustment policy is applied
Provide the End date, by selecting the month when this adjustment policy will be discontinued. This is optional, since an adjustment policy can be applied permanently.
Select which Service or Service Category this policy is applied to. You are able to select multiple using the check boxes that are provided.
Select a Type for this adjustment. This can be either a Discount or a Premium
Select the Target, meaning: is this Adjustment targeting the total Charge or the total Quantity of the selected service(s)?
Select the Difference setting, to indicate an Absolute value (i.e. 100 units, or 100 dollars) or a Relative value (such as 10%)
Lastly provide the Adjustment value. In the example shown in the image above, there is a value of '10' provided in the Amount field, which will adjust the total charge with -10% given the provided parameters.
When you're done, click the Add Policy button. Your changes are now applied to all charge related reports.
The 'Rates' screen allows you to configure manual rates for services that do not have a rate provided with their data source. Before you can use this screen, it is required to create the necessary service(s) via the Transcript engine. When that requirement has been fulfilled, you may configure Global and customer specific rate configurations. The following rate types are currently supported for automatic, daily and monthly services:
automatic per unit
automatic per interval
automatic per unit & interval
manual per unit
manual per interval
manual per unit & interval
Automatic services obtain the rate and/or interval value from a column you specify, whereas manual services allow the user to manually specify a rate and fixed interval money value. For manual services, if a service definition has proration enabled, the charge on the cost reports is calculated based on the actual consumption (see services).
By default each service has a global rate configured, which will be applied to all accounts that consume this service. However, it is possible to use customer specific rates by overriding a service rate for one ore multiple accounts.
A manual service can have up to 3 rate values that can be changed: the unit rate, the interval money value and the COGS rate. To change these values, go the 'Catalogue' > 'Rates' screen and click on the service name for which you want to change the global rate value:
To change the rate values of this service, consider the following:
Effective date is the date from when this rate is applied to the service. A service can have one or multiple revisions. You may add new rate revisions by using the Add Revision button. Existing rate revision dates can be changed using the Change Date option
The Per Unit rate value is the value that the service charged for, every (portion of) configured interval service. In this example, if this would be a daily service that is charged 1 euro per Gigabyte of database usage, and each day a 100 GB database is consumed, a value of € 100 will be charged per day (and € 3100 if used for entire month of December)
The Per Interval charge is applied every occurrence of the consumed service, regardless of the total consumed quantity of that service. In the previous example at 2, this would mean every day a value of 110 euro will be charged for a 100 GB database: 100 euro because of the standard rate + 10 euro for the fixed interval charge. Considering the same consumption for the entire month of December, the total charge for that month will be 31 x € 110 = € 3410
It is possible to configure a COGS rate for this service. This is applied the same way as the Per Unit rate
To delete an invalid or wrong revision, use the Remove Revision button. Do bear in mind you cannot delete the last rate revision for a service
To save your changes, which will also initiate a re-preparation of the applicable Report Definition. click the Save Revision button (see defining reports to learn more about report preparation)
If you are planning to make more changes to other services in the same report definition, use the Save Revision > Without Preparing option. This will avoid running the re-preparation several times, and allows you to start the re-preparation only after you've made all of the required rate changes.
The services screen gives a user the ability to view and change the available services in the service catalogue of the Exivity deployment. When creating new services, it is required to use a Transformer with the service or services statement.
To view the details of a service that has already been created, click on one of the services listed in the 'Catalogue' > 'Services' screen:
The numbered items from above screenshot refer to the following list:
The description or friendly name for this service
The unique key value of this service (see service)
The time stamp when the service was created
The time stamp when the service was updated
The DataSet where this service relates to
Where to obtain the service name from (in header or in data). The value will be used for the service description (see 1)
The source column that has the consumed quantity
The Instance column refers to the chargeable instance column value (i.e. VM ID) which is required for automatic Services
The interval that defeines the frequency of how often this service is being charged. Meaning: automatic (every occurrence/record/hour), daily or monthly
When using proration, this checkbox will be enabled. Proration takes into account whether to charge for a portion of a consumption interval. For example: when having 10 days of consumption for a monthly service with a rate configured of € 90 per unit that has proration enabled, will result in a line item of € 30 for that services monthly charge
The Billing Type provides information whether this is a service that has manual (using manually provided, adjustable rate value) or automatic (using rate column) rates configured
COGS (Cost of Goods) of a service will have its own rate configuration, which can be either manual/automatic per unit or manual/automatic per interval
Exivity will in a future release allow the user to change and create services through the web interface. At this time, this feature is disabled.
In case you need to change the configuration of an already populated service, the GUI enables you to do so. To change an existing service you will need to make sure that you have first selected the appropriate report from the Report Selector and the left top of the screen. To change the configuration or delete a service, you will then need to follow these steps:
Navigate to the Catalogue > Services menu and click the white Edit button at the top of service list. The system will warn you that any changes made to existing service, may require you to re-Prepare the currently selected Report Definition.
If you have confirmed the warning message, you will be able to select one, multiple or all of the services within the currently selected Report Definition. You can then select the Delete button next to the Edit button, to delete all selected services.
If you want to change the configuration of one of the services, you should first select the service which you'd like to change.
When you have the service that you want to change selected, you can change any of the available parameters such as the Instance Column, Interval, etc. Once you are satisfied with your changes, you may press the Update button.
Ensure to re-Prepare your report in the Report Definitions in case you have made any changes.
The Workflows menu allows you to schedule various tasks and execute them at a specific date and time. This allows the execution of different Extractors and Transformers, so that they are tightly chained together.
To create a new Workflow, go to 'Administration' > 'Workflows', then click the green button '+ Workflow':
Provide a meaningful name for the Workflow
Optionally you can provide a detailed Description
The Start date of the Workflow, when it will run the first time
The interval: Hourly, Daily or Monthly
At what time should the Workflow start
Provide an interval value. I.e. provide 2 for every second Hourly / Daily / Monthly, depending on your configured interval
Add a new step in your work flow
Set the Type of the step using the drop down menu
Provide the option that goes with the selected Type. This can be your Extractor, Transformer, Report or other name
Depending on the selected Step Type, you can provide an offset date. This value is used during execution of that step. Typically this would be used for a From date offset (i.e. -1 for yesterday)
A To date offset can be provided for some step types (i.e. 0 for today)
Additional arguments can be send to the step. This is typically used for some Extractors and when executing a custom Command
You can delete a step using the red minus button
To view historical Workflow results, click the Status tab
Apart from adding Extractor, Transformer and Report steps, there are two different Workflow Step types:
Core
Execute Command
The Core command allows you to run a few predefined API calls, currently these are the following:
Run garbage collector
Cleans up the server getPrices cache table and Redis cache
Purge cache
This will Unprepare any prepared reports. Use with caution
Refresh budgets
Evalualte all configured budgets
Send heartbeat
Send an API heartbeat request. For future use.
Purge cache should be used with caution, as it will unprepare all available reports. This means that nonr of your reports will return any data, until you have prepared them again.
The Execute Command step enables you to execute an external command, like a script:
As an example: you could run a Powershell script to obtains some data from a special data source that Exivity Extractors are not able or allowed to connect to. This script could be executed the following manner:
The above command calls the Powershell executable to run the special.ps1 script, with a dynamically generated parameter that is evaluated at run time. This particular example always provides yesterdays date in yyyyMMdd format as a parameter to the special.ps1 script. Many other variations and scripting languages are possible. Feel free to experiment.
Exivity allows you to configure a number of system variables easily, such as:
custom logo, branding and color schema
currency and decimal values
date format
fiscal year
custom css
To change these and other settings, follow the instructions provided in this document.
To apply custom branding to the Glass interface, use the 'Administration' > 'Configuration' menu, and then select the 'Branding' tab:
The following GUI adjustments can be done:
Provide your custom product name
Change the logo as show at the left top part of the screen. The rectangular logo that says "Exivity" by default
Change the square logo at the top left part of the screen. Next to the brand logo that says "Exivity" by default
Change the favicon as shown in your browser favorites bar
Change the GUI default color using the drop down list.
If you want to change other colors, font types and other CSS specific parts of the GUI that are not listed in this menu, you can use the 'Show Advanced' button, to add custom CSS code
Click the 'Save' button to apply your changes/
To change country specific formatting or decimal rounding, use the 'Administration' > 'Configuration' menu, and select the 'Branding' tab:
The following changes to the formatting can be done:
Change the system wide Currency settings
Configure comma or dot value for the decimal separator
If you want to configure a thousands separator, you can choose between comma, dot and space
Rate precision refers to the amount of decimal values shown on reports for the (average) rate value
The Report precision can be changed to limit the number of decimal values shown on non-invoice reports
The Invoice precision can be changed to limit the number of decimal values shown on invoice cost reports
The quantity decimal values can be limited using Quantity precision
To apply a system wide date format, choose your preferred date format from the Date format drop down list
To change reporting settings, such as the address lines and logo on your invoice report, use the 'Administration' > 'Configuration' menu, and select the 'Reporting' tab:
The following changes to the reporting configuration can be done:
Use the Address lines text field to provide a custom address which will be shown on the textual invoice cost reports
To change the Logo that will be shown on the right hand side of your invoice cost report, use Select File to browse and select your custom logo
A custom footer text can be added to your invoice report using the text field next to Extra text
To adjust the maximum amount of series shown in the Exivity graphical report line graphs, change the value for Maximum graph series
If you have a non-standard fiscal year start, you may change the Reporting start month using the provided drop down list
Use the Save button to apply your changes
Exivity is able to send out e-mail messages for certain tasks. This can be used for resetting user account passwords and sending out events such as failing workflows. To enable this functionality it is required to configure an SMTP server. This can be done using the following procedure:
Navigate to: Administration > System > Environment
Ensure to fill in your SMTP server details as shown in above image
Click the Update button to save your changes
If you now logout and try to login again, you will notice a "Reset Password" link. This can be used by all of your users, as long as a valid e-mail address has been associated to each user account
Make sure that your SMTP server allows relaying using the provided credentials (user/pass) and from the Exivity host's IP address. Consult your mail server administrator for additional information.
config.json
In order to access advanced configuration for all users which can't currently be modified through the interface, edit the file config.json
in the web/glass
subdirectory of the Program directory.
The default contents of this file should look like this:
When logging in, users have the option to change the API domain by clicking the Change domain
link:
In order to specify a default for all users, edit the config.json
file and add your default domain as the apiHost
option:
To never show any Exivity related branding in the interface, set the whiteLabel
option to true
:
When the whiteLabel option is enabled, certain functionality will be disabled in the GUI:
Manual clearing of caches on the About page.
Documentation links in the header will be turned off.
Some other elements in the interface have Exivity branding by default. These defaults can be modified to match your brand:
The title and logo of the application (displayed in browser tabs, sidebar, and so on) can be changed on the Configuration page.
The sender e-mail address and name for system and notification e-mails on the System page.
The Groups and Users menu's, allow you to configure Role Based Access and Account level permissions. Groups are created to define custom restrictive roles, that can be associated to users that must have access to only certain parts of the Glass interface. Users are created to provide login credentials for other users of the Exivity system. A user can be associated to a single Group, and can have access to all accounts or to a subset of accounts.
To create a custom group with limited access to the Exivity Glass user interface, follow this procedure:
Go to 'Administration' > 'Groups', then click 'Add Group'
Provide a meaningful Name for this Group
Select one or multiple permissions from the custom list of 'Role Names' below
When you're done with your selection, click the 'Save' button to create your group. Now you can create Users and associate them to this group.
5.
To create a User that will only have access to a certain account or a selection of several accounts, use the following procedure to create a user with special account level permissions:
Go to 'Administration' > 'Users', then click 'Add User'
Provide a login name in the 'Username' field, a valid 'E-mail' address, and a 'Password' of at least 8 characters
From the 'Group' dropdown box, select the 'Group' you want to associate to this users
Next, click the 'Account Access' tab, and select the 'Access Type' for this user:
Grant access to all accounts - to provide access to any of the available accounts in the system
Grant access to only specific accounts - to only provide access to usage and charge data of specific accounts
If you've selected Grant access to only specific accounts, then select from the Account Access list, each Account Name where this user should have access for. You may select a top level account, or an account further down in the hierarchy. Account inheritance is applicable, meaning lower level accounts are automatically included when selecting a top level account. If there are multiple Report Definitions, select the corresponding Definition from the drop down list first, before selecting any accounts.
When all fields have been filled in, you may create the user by clicking the 'Save' button.
Role Name | Description |
View Reports | Provides access to all elements of the Reports menu |
View Cogs | Enabling this option, provides access to the Cost of Goods rates and charges |
View Logs | Provides access to the Administration > Log Viewer |
View Audit | Provides access to the Administration > Audit Trial |
Manage reports | Allows the creation and deletion of Report Definitions |
Manage accounts | Provides access to the Accounts menu section |
Manage catalogue | Enables read and write access to the entire Catalogue menu. This includes adding and changing of Rates and Adjustments |
Manage data sources | Allows to create, edit and delete Extractors and Transformers |
Manage users | Allows to create, edit and delete all internal users and Groups |
Manage configuration | Allows editing of all elements in the Administration > Configuration menu |
Manage system | Provides access to the Administration > System Info menu. This includes updating of the installed license file. |
Upload files |
Allows to upload usage and lookup data through the Exivity API (see )