Getting Started with CloudAct.ai

Video Overview

This 12-minute tutorial walks you through the complete CloudAct.ai setup process, from creating your account to running your first cost analysis. Whether you are evaluating CloudAct.ai for your organization or setting up a production deployment, this video covers everything you need to get started.

Duration: 12 minutes
Level: Beginner
Prerequisites: A cloud billing account (AWS, GCP, Azure, or OCI) with billing data access

By the end of this walkthrough, you will have a fully configured CloudAct.ai organization with connected cloud providers, a populated cost dashboard, and a working knowledge of the core features.

Chapters

Chapter 1: Signing Up and Creating Your Organization (0:00 - 2:15)

We start with the CloudAct.ai signup flow. You will see how to:

• Create your account with email and password
• Enter your company details (name, industry, team size)
• Select a subscription plan (Starter, Professional, or Scale)
• Complete Stripe checkout for billing setup
• Land on the welcome screen with your new organization ready to configure

Your organization slug is automatically generated from your company name and a unique timestamp (for example, acme_inc_ml01ua8p). This slug is used throughout CloudAct.ai as your unique identifier.

Tip: Start with the Professional plan if you have 3-6 cloud provider integrations. It includes 25 daily pipeline runs and supports up to 6 seats -- enough for a FinOps team to evaluate the platform thoroughly.

Chapter 2: Connecting Cloud Providers (2:15 - 4:30)

Next, we connect your cloud billing data sources. The video demonstrates connecting all four supported cloud providers:

1. AWS: Create a cross-account IAM role with billing read permissions. CloudAct.ai provides the trust policy -- just paste it into your AWS console. Connection takes about 2 minutes.
2. GCP: Set up a billing export to BigQuery (if not already configured), then provide the service account credentials. CloudAct.ai reads directly from your BigQuery billing dataset.
3. Azure: Create a service principal with Cost Management Reader role. Provide the tenant ID, client ID, and client secret through CloudAct.ai's encrypted credential store.
4. OCI: Generate an API signing key and provide the tenancy OCID, user OCID, and compartment OCID. CloudAct.ai uses the Usage API to pull cost data.

All credentials are encrypted at rest using Google Cloud KMS. CloudAct.ai never stores plaintext credentials -- every secret is encrypted before being written to the database.

Chapter 3: Running Your First Pipeline (4:30 - 6:00)

With providers connected, we run the first cost pipeline. The video shows:

• Navigating to the Pipelines page
• Selecting a provider and clicking "Run Pipeline"
• Watching the pipeline progress in real time (typically 30-60 seconds for the first run)
• Understanding pipeline stages: data extraction, FOCUS 1.3 conversion, and BigQuery write
• Verifying the pipeline completed successfully with the green status indicator

Each pipeline run extracts billing data for a specific date, converts it to FOCUS 1.3 format (adding standardized fields like BilledCost, EffectiveCost, ServiceCategory), and writes the normalized data to your organization's BigQuery dataset.

Chapter 4: Exploring the Cost Dashboard (6:00 - 8:30)

With data flowing, we explore the cost dashboard. Key features demonstrated:

• Total spend overview: Your aggregate cloud spending across all connected providers, displayed in your organization's default currency
• Provider breakdown: Donut chart and table showing spend distribution by provider (AWS, GCP, Azure, OCI)
• Service breakdown: Drill into which services (EC2, BigQuery, Azure VMs) are driving costs
• Time series trends: Daily, weekly, or monthly cost trends with configurable date ranges
• Cost type filter: Switch between Cloud, GenAI, and SaaS cost views, or see all costs unified
• Currency selector: View costs in any of 20 supported currencies with daily exchange rate conversion

The dashboard is powered by the Semantic Data Layer, which pre-aggregates data for fast query performance. First-time dashboard loads may take a few extra seconds as the cache warms up.

Chapter 5: Setting Up Your Hierarchy (8:30 - 10:15)

Cost attribution requires mapping cloud resources to business structure. The video shows how to:

• Navigate to Settings and then Hierarchy
• Create departments (C-Suite level, prefixed with DEPT-)
• Add business units under departments (prefixed with PROJ-)
• Add functions/teams under business units (prefixed with TEAM-)
• View the hierarchy tree with expand/collapse controls
• Edit and reorganize entities using drag-and-drop or the edit dialog

The hierarchy model supports up to four levels: Organization, Department, Business Unit, and Function. Each level rolls up costs from the levels below it, so a department's cost is the sum of all its business units, and each business unit's cost is the sum of all its teams.

Chapter 6: Asking ELSA About Your Costs (10:15 - 12:00)

Finally, we demonstrate CloudAct.ai's AI assistant, ELSA. The video shows how to:

• Open the Chat interface from the sidebar
• Ask natural language questions about your costs ("What was our AWS spending last month?")
• Get detailed breakdowns with charts generated in real time
• Ask follow-up questions in the same conversation context
• Request comparisons ("Compare our GCP and AWS compute costs")
• Get optimization suggestions ("Where can we reduce spending?")

ELSA uses your connected cost data to answer questions accurately. All queries are scoped to your organization's data -- ELSA cannot access other organizations' costs, enforced through multi-tenant isolation at the query level.

Next Steps

After completing this walkthrough, you are ready to:

1. Connect all your providers -- add any remaining cloud, GenAI, or SaaS integrations
2. Set up budgets -- create department or team-level budgets with alert thresholds
3. Configure notifications -- route alerts to Slack, email, or webhook endpoints
4. Invite your team -- add team members based on your plan's seat allocation
5. Schedule daily pipelines -- ensure your cost data is refreshed automatically each day

For more detailed guidance on any of these topics, explore our other resources including the Complete Guide to Cloud Cost Optimization and the GenAI Cost Management Best Practices blog post.