Azure Synapse Analytics - Automation Task

In this article, we’ll learn about automation task, specifically about emailing the billing details on a monthly basis or as per the user’s choice for the resources we use for Azure Synapse Analytics. This lesson can however be used to know about the billing amount for specified time duration for multitudes of resources and services used in Azure.   

Azure Synapse Analytics 

Azure Synapse is a limitless enterprise analytics service that enables us to get insight from data analytics and data warehousing. Using dedicated resources or serverless architecture, data can be queried and provides scalability as per the increase in the size of the data. You can learn more about it in the previous article, Azure Synapse Analytics.  

Data Warehouse 

Data Warehouse can be understood as a core part of business intelligence which enables data analysis and reporting and are basically the major repository that consists of data that are integrated from different disparate sources. The endless possibility of data mining starts with Data Warehousing.  

This article is a part of the Azure Synapse Analytics Articles Series. You can check out other articles in the series from the following links. 

1. Azure Synapse Analytics    
2. Azure Synapse Analytics - Create Dedicated SQL Pool    
3. Azure Synapse Analytics - Creating Firewall at Server-level    
4. Azure Synapse Analytics - Connect, Query and Delete Data Warehouse SQL Pool    
5. Azure Synapse Analytics – Load Dataset to Warehouse from Azure Blob Storage    
6. Azure Synapse Analytics - Best Practices to Load Data into SQL Pool Data Warehouse   
7. Azure Synapse Analytics – Restore Point  
8. Azure Synapse Analytics – Exploring Query Editor 
9. Azure Synapse Analytics – Automation Task 

Automation Task  

Automation Task in Azure refers to the logic app resource with a workflow which starts with trigger. We know that billing and metering are based on the trigger for different action executions in the logic app workflow. This can be used to provide ourselves with Billing details for the usage of different resources in Azure with the consumption pricing model.  

Let us learn to create our automation task for the services we used. Here in our case, Azure Synapse Analytics.  

Step 1 

Visit the Azure Portal. Now, create a resource such as a SQL pool and explore with some queries.  

Step 2 

Explore the SQL Pool we created using following the Azure Synapse Analytics - Create Dedicated SQL Pool.  

Step 3 

On the SQL pool resource page, click on Tasks under Automation. This will take you to the Tasks page.  

Step 4 

Now, Click on Add Task or the Add a task button on the Menu.  

Step 5 

Now, you’ll be taken to the Template Selection Page. Here, we are going to automate the monthly billing cost for the resource of Azure Synapse Analytics.  

Click on Select under Send monthly cost for resource.  

Step 6 

Now, we’ll be forwarded to Authenticate page. Here, we can see the services listed – the Azure Resource Manager and Office 365 Outlook.  

Let us choose Office 365 Outlook and Click on Create.  

Step 7 

We’ll be taken to Sign in to create connection without email account.  

Click on Sign in.  

You can now select the email account you want to receive the monthly automated emails to.  

Step 8 

Now, we can see, the Office 365 Outlook account has now been connected. 

Step 9 

Select the Azure Resource Manager now and Click on Create.  

Step 10  

Now, we’ll be taken to Configure page. Name the Task Name as per your Wish. I’ve named it as Billing and added my email id.  

Step 11 

Now, as the sign in connection is successful, we can see, the Connected Green Tick bars in Status.  

Now, click on Review + Create. 

Step 12 

Now, we’ll be taken to Review + Create Page. Here, the Logic App will be in process to be created for our Billing. Click on Create.  

Step 13 

Now, as the automation task is created, we are notified of the process.  

As the task is created, we’ll now be automatically emailed about our monthly billing to our email id that we added for the resources we used – here in our case the SQL Pool Data Warehouse.  

Conclusion 

Thus, in this article, we learned to create an automation task to email us about our monthly expenses for resource usage. The automation task can perform other services just like billing. Moreover, the billing can be performed and scheduled for the time limit as we choose to from weekly, monthly, and so on.