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Ask a question

Start a chat with Iris, read the answer, follow up, and pin results to a canvas.

A chat is a conversation with Iris about your spend. Every chat is saved in the Chats tab on Iris home.

Start a chat

Open Iris home

Select Observe in the sidebar.

Choose Ask a question

In the composer, select Ask a question. The composer notes that each question starts a chat, and that you can pin any answer to add a canvas beside it.

Pick a depth and ask

Choose Low, Med, or High (Answer depth), then type your question and press ↵. You can also pick a suggestion:

  • What are my top services across all clouds?
  • Why did spend spike on Sep 1?
  • Which accounts grew fastest this month?

Read the answer

Iris answers in the chat panel on the right. A typical answer to Why did AWS spike on Sep 1? includes:

  • The headline: the number and the change. Daily AWS amortized cost jumped to $110.9K, versus $45.1K on Aug 31 (+$65.8K, +146% day-over-day).
  • What it covered: date range, providers, and currency.
  • A freshness note: whether the period is complete or inside the billing lag.
  • What drove it: the services, accounts, or line items behind the change, with amounts and shares.
  • Where it landed: which accounts or teams absorbed it.

When the answer includes a chart, Iris adds it as a widget on a canvas next to the chat. The chat is then labelled with canvas.

Follow up

Type in Ask a follow-up at the bottom of the panel. Iris keeps the context of the chat. You can attach context with the paperclip.

Pin an answer to a canvas

Pin any answer to add it as a widget. Widgets that came from a chat are tagged from chat on the canvas, so you can trace them back.

Manage chats

The Chats tab lists every conversation with its first question, a preview of the answer, and how long ago it was updated.

ControlWhat it does
All / Starred / Shared with meFilter the list
Search chatsFind a chat by its text
New chatStart a blank chat
from Anomalies badgeThe chat was started from an anomaly
canvas · N widgetsThe chat grew a canvas with N widgets

Share a chat

Open the chat and select Share at the top of the page.

Good questions to ask

  • What share of spend has no owner tag, by account?
  • Which teams grew spend fastest this month?
  • List savings over $5K/mo that nobody owns.

See the Iris prompt guide for more.

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