Configure Notification Alerts In Azure Account

We are aware that hosting our applications on the Cloud has some cost associated with it. One might be interested in monitoring the Billing details and setting up some alerts automatically once the billing reaches a certain threshold.

Note: Only account administrator will be able to configure these alerts.

For ex: As an Account Administrator, I would be interested in getting a notification as soon as the spending of a given subscription reaches $X or gets nearer to $X.

It’s possible to monitor your billing details by configuring notification alerts for your Azure Subscription billing. Let’s see how to do this setup.

Once you log into your Azure subscription, click on your account name in the right hand corner of the portal. You will see a menu as shown below.

View my bill

As shown above, click on “View my bill”. You will be taken to the Subscription’s Dashboard page as shown below.

Dashboard

Click on the “Account Center” link of your Dashboard page as shown above to navigate to your account where you can see all your subscriptions.

Account Center

As shown in the above screen capture, currently, I have only one subscription named “Developer Program Benefit”. Of course, you can multiply using the “add subscription” button of the above screen capture.

Now, navigate to your subscription details page by clicking on the Subscription in the above page.

add subscription

The above screen capture is the Summary of all the usage within my selected subscription. As our article is above configuring Billing Details, let’s focus on just Alerts.

In the above screen capture, you can see the “Alerts” tab which is a preview feature. As I have already enabled it for my subscription I am able to see the same. In case you don’t see the “Alerts” tab in the Subscription summary page, click on the “Preview features” link which is available in the top menu.

Clicking on the “preview features” will take you to the page where you see all the features that are still in preview as shown below.

preview features

You can find the “Billing Alert Service” somewhere in the bottom of the above page. As I have already enabled it I can see “sign up again”. Otherwise, you might see “try it now” in the green button.

sign up again

Clicking on the “try it now” will open a popup as shown below.

try it now

Clicking on the “sign up for a subscription” button will display all your subscriptions in a dropdown where you can select the subscription for which you would like to enable the feature.

sign up for a subscription

After you select the subscription click on the “tick” mark and you will get an e-mail shown below notifying that it has been enabled.

tick

Once it is done, come back to your subscription summary page where you can see your “Alerts” tab as shown below.

Alerts

Now, let’s see how to create alerts by clicking on the “ALERTS” link shown in the above screen capture. You will be navigated to another page as shown below where you can create 5 Alerts.
ALERTS
Currently, I don’t have any alerts and so you don’t see any alerts. Let’s create one by clicking on the “add alert” link highlighted above.

Below is the default form that has opened when you click on “add alert” link.

add alert
Let’s provide the details for configuring the alert.

configuring
As per the above screen capture, I configured an alert to send an e-mail to me when the Billing total exceeds one rupee. In real time, it doesn’t make sense to set “1” rupee as a threshold. You will set some realistic amount based on your needs.

Now, click on “Save” to save the Alert details and you will be taken to the alert listing page as shown below.
Save
You can click on “+” to edit the details.
edit
That’s it. You will receive an e-mail when your spending gets nearer to the threshold that you have configured.

Below is an example that we have received for some other subscription.

example

Hope you enjoyed reading the article. Your feedback is really appreciated.