Using CloudMonitor
CloudMonitor answers one question in a lot of different ways: where is our cloud and AI money going, and what should we do about it?
This section explains how the app is laid out, so you can find the report you need without hunting for it. If you’d rather learn by clicking, everything described here is live and needs no login at demo.cloudmonitor.ai: it runs on made-up data from a fictional company, so you can press anything.
The menu follows what you’re trying to do
Section titled “The menu follows what you’re trying to do”The sidebar has Overview pinned at the top, then report groups ordered the way a cost question usually unfolds. The exact pages come from your active persona, which you choose under Profile & preferences. Your Organization Owner defines the shared persona menus, so two organizations (or two people using different personas) may see different lists.
| Group | The question it answers | Start with |
|---|---|---|
| Inform | Where did the money go? | The Ledger: your whole bill, one row per charge |
| Optimize | Where can we spend less? | Savings & Waste and Commitments |
| Operate | What needs attention today? | Anomalies and Budgets & Forecasts |
| Microsoft 365 | What is happening across tenant usage, licensing and Copilot? | Microsoft 365 |
| Tokenomics | What do our AI tools cost, and who uses them? | AI Spend |
The reports lists every one of them against the question it answers, which is the faster route if you already know what you’re trying to find out.
The Microsoft 365 and Tokenomics groups depend on optional modules and your active persona, so either may be shorter or absent. A group disappears when your active persona has no pages in it. Microsoft 365 keeps Usage, Security, Licensing, Copilot and Cowork as flat report rows; deeper functions remain tabs inside the report rather than creating a third menu level.
Settings has its own menu, reached from the bottom of the sidebar. That’s where cost groups, allocation rules, budgets, virtual tags and workspace configuration live. Most of it needs an admin role: if you don’t see something described in these docs, that’s usually why.
Persona menus are for relevance, not access. Existing feature, role and cost-group gates still win, and an authorized direct link keeps working when its page is merely omitted from your menu.
Filters live at the top, and apply everywhere
Section titled “Filters live at the top, and apply everywhere”The controls along the top bar (the date range, the provider, the cost group, virtual tags) are global. Set them once and every report you open honors them, until you change them again. No report has its own private copy.
What surprises people:
- A filter chip sometimes grays out. That means the report you’re looking at can’t honor it. The Unallocated Costs report ignores the cost-group filter, for instance, because unallocated spend is by definition the spend that belongs to no cost group.
- The cost basis, whether you’re looking at what you were invoiced or what you actually used, is not on the top bar. It’s a personal preference, on Profile & preferences, because you’ll set it once and leave it.
Getting help while you’re in the app
Section titled “Getting help while you’re in the app”- Most page titles have a small ⓘ next to them. Hover it for a sentence on what the page is for.
- Help & support at the bottom of the sidebar reopens the guided tour and links back to these docs.
- Send feedback, just above it, goes straight to the team.
Where to go next
Section titled “Where to go next”If you’re setting CloudMonitor up for the first time, start with Getting started and granting access to your Azure environment.
If CloudMonitor is already showing your data and you want to get it organized (spend grouped by team, budgets in place, alerts going to the right people), work through the how-to articles.