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DOCS-8111 (#32793)
* DOCS-8111 Add Cloud Costs Explorer Documentation Updated existing doc page to include more information on the side panel. * Apply suggestions from code review Co-authored-by: Rosa Trieu <107086888+rtrieu@users.noreply.github.com> * [DOCS-8111] Incorporate feedback * [DOCS-8111] Update image * [DOCS-8111] Update link --------- Co-authored-by: Rosa Trieu <107086888+rtrieu@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Bryce Eadie <bryce.eadie@datadoghq.com>
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content/en/cloud_cost_management/reporting/explorer.md

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@@ -44,7 +44,44 @@ Use the Cost Explorer to:
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4. Select a time range using the time picker to analyze costs over different periods (hour, day, week, month, or custom range).
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**Note:** When querying costs across multiple providers, resource-level tags are not available. To access resource-specific tags, filter to a single provider in your query.
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**Note**: When querying costs across multiple providers, resource-level tags are not available. To access resource-specific tags, filter to a single provider in your query.
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## Cost Change Summary side panel
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Click any row in the table at the bottom of the Explorer to open the **Cost Change Summary panel** for that specific provider, service, or resource. The panel highlights what and who may be driving cost changes for the current period versus the prior period.
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The panel contains four general sections:
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- Cost change summary
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- Associated teams
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- Change details
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- Investigate further
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{{< img src="cloud_cost/reporting/cost-change-sidepanel.png" alt="The Cost Change Summary panel highlights what and who may be driving cost changes for the current period versus the prior period." style="width:100%;" >}}
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At the top, you can see the **total cost** for the current period and the dollar and percent cost change versus the prior period (**what happened**).
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### Investigate the change
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Use the **Change Details** and **Investigate Further** sections to:
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- **Instantly identify cost anomalies**: Unexpected deviations in cost, calculated against historical data, are automatically highlighted in red, allowing you to focus your investigation on critical trends.
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- **Analyze Change Drivers**: Easily determine the cause of a cost change—whether it was driven by a change in **usage** (the count of resources) or a change in **unit price** (the cost per resource). For example, in the screenshot below, the change in spend is driven by a shift in unit price rather than usage---the resource count stays flat while cost per resource rises and falls, causing the overall cost change.
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{{< img src="cloud_cost/reporting/cloud-cost-spend-summary.png" alt="The change in spend is driven by a shift in unit price rather than usage—the resource count stays flat while cost per resource rises and falls, causing the overall cost change" style="width:100%;" >}}
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### Collaborate and monitor
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- **Contact the responsible team**:
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- Review the **Associated Team(s)** section to identify which teams own the resources driving the cost change (inferred from tags like `team:shopist`). Follow up with the listed teams (for example, Shopist, Platform, Cloud-Networks) to gain full context for the change.
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- Click **Send Notebook** to share the full cost investigation context directly with the team, allowing them to capture findings, add annotations, and track the investigation thread.
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- **Filter by tags**:
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- Use **Associated Tags** to see all tags contributing to the cost line item.
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- Click any tag value (like `account:demo` or a specific `aws_account`) to refine your search and filter the entire Explorer to show only resources with that tag.
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- **Create a monitor**:
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- Set up a Cloud Cost Monitor to be alerted the next time a similar change occurs. Learn more about [Cloud Cost Monitors][8].
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## Refine your results
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[6]: /cloud_cost_management/saas_costs/
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[7]: /cloud_cost_management/datadog_costs/
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[8]: /monitors/types/cloud_cost/
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[9]: /cloud_cost_management/reporting/
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[9]: /cloud_cost_management/reporting/
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