Ask Finn about your costs
Finn is CloudMonitor’s read-only cost assistant. Ask about spend, cost groups, savings, commitments or anomalies and get an answer grounded in your organization’s cost data.
You’ll find Finn in the Inform group, and in the help button in the bottom-right corner of every screen.
Before you ask, the screen explains the current processing boundary. Answers are machine-generated; your question and the data retrieved to answer it are processed by an external AI service. The deployed answer path uses a server-side service identity and a fixed semantic-model connection with SSO disabled. It does not use your delegated SSO identity or an OBO token. Answers use all organization cost data and are not narrowed to your personal report permissions.
Starting an investigation
Section titled “Starting an investigation”Choose one of the six starter questions, or select Browse more below them to search the supported question catalog by topic. The catalog lists the same question cards as the starters, grouped by topic, and you can narrow it by Focus (FinOps, Finance, Engineering or Executive) and by Cloud. Those filters change only which questions are listed: every answer still covers your whole organization. Close the catalog again with its X or Show fewer questions. You can type your own question at any time.
An answer stays in a conversation with the question that produced it. Ask a suggested next question or type a follow-up and Finn uses the visible turns as context. Choose New conversation to clear that context and return to the starter questions, where the catalog is available again. The thread lasts only for the current application session and cannot be reopened or shared. Each submitted question and its outcome are kept in an administrator-only audit record; answer text is not stored in that record. If you submit feedback, its rating, selected reason and optional comment are also kept in that audit record.
Asking well
Section titled “Asking well”The single most important thing: the question carries its own scope. Unlike every other screen, Finn ignores the top-bar filters, so put the period, the provider, the cost group and the cost basis into the sentence.
Not: what did we spend? (with Last 30 Days set at the top)
But: what did we spend on storage last month, for the Platform cost group?
That keeps the investigation explicit. Follow-ups can refer to an earlier visible answer, but Finn still does not silently inherit a filter from another screen.
Ask for billed or amortized cost explicitly if the distinction matters. See effective cost vs billed cost.
Reading and using an answer
Section titled “Reading and using an answer”Finn renders headings, lists and small tables instead of showing their Markdown characters. When the answer path supplies validated structured evidence, it can also show a table or chart alongside the explanation. Period, cost basis, scope, data freshness and sources appear only when the answer path supplies them; Finn does not guess missing evidence from its own prose.
After an answer you can:
- Copy the question, answer and available analysis context.
- Give a thumbs up when the answer was helpful, or a thumbs down to share a reason and optional comment when it needs improvement.
- Ask one of the complete suggested next questions.
- Open a read-only Explorer investigation when the answer includes a validated hand-off.
Finn cannot create or change budgets, allocation rules, tags, resources or other customer data. Unknown or malformed actions are ignored rather than turned into links.
What it’s good and bad at
Section titled “What it’s good and bad at”Good at the specific factual question: what did X cost, which service grew most, how does this month compare to last.
Less good at anything you intend to act on directly without checking. Treat an answer as an investigation, not an approval. If a number is going in a report, open The Ledger with the same scope and confirm it.
In the guided demo you read, you don’t ask
Section titled “In the guided demo you read, you don’t ask”The guided demo shows scripted sample questions and answers instead of a live conversation. Nothing you choose in it is sent to Finn.
You see this read-only experience in either of these cases:
- The whole app is in demo mode. The notice is labeled Guided demo.
- The workspace has Starter, or its license cannot be confirmed. The notice is labeled Read-only demo and includes View upgrade options or View plans.
You can follow the sample branches and see the shape of a Finn investigation, but the question box is not live. In an eligible workspace that is only using app demo mode, turn demo mode off on your profile page to return to the live experience. Turning demo mode off does not add Ask Finn to a license that does not include it.
Ask Finn works normally when the workspace has an eligible license, is connected to cost data and has a ready answer service.
Unavailable states you might hit
Section titled “Unavailable states you might hit”Answer service unavailable:
Finn is temporarily unavailable
Finn remains in the menu and the help panel when its assistant binding, relay, or runtime readiness is incomplete. An admin can’t repair that answer path from Settings. Contact support.
The plan check controls whether the app shows live Ask Finn or the guided demo. It does not describe or replace service-side access controls.
Where to go instead
Section titled “Where to go instead”Use The Explorer when you need to shape and save a durable view. Finn’s conversation is deliberately session-only.