S3 CSV Telemetry (Beta)

Beta. This integration is currently in Beta. To enable it for your account, contact your Finout customer success manager or email [email protected].

Telemetries allow you to take business or usage data - like API calls, active users, bytes transferred, or queries run - and use them to power cost allocation, unit economics, and shared cost breakdowns.

S3 CSV telemetry lets you feed that data into Finout through CSV files uploaded to a bucket on S3.

Once connected, Finout reads your CSV files daily, maps the date and metric columns you define, and makes the data available across Virtual Tags, Cost Centers, and dashboards.

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Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have:

• An S3 bucket with CSV files already exported to it (see CSV format requirements below)

• An S3 endpoint configured in Finout, or the ability to create one during this flow (see Set up an S3 Endpoint below)

• Telemetry management permission in Finout

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CSV format requirements

Your CSV files must include exactly three types of columns:

Column type	Count	Required	Purpose	Format
Date	1	Yes	One row per date per dimension combination	See supported formats below
Metric	1	Yes	The numeric value for that date and dimension	Positive number
Metadata (dimensions)	0–10	No	Attributes to filter and group telemetry (e.g., team, environment, feature)	Any string

Supported date formats:

• yyyy-MM-dd

• yyyy/MM/dd

• yyyy/M/d

• MM/d/yyyy

• yyyy-M-d

• yyyy-MM-dd'T'00:00:00'Z

Column headers must not contain spaces. The metric column name becomes the telemetry identifier in Finout — choose it carefully, as it cannot be changed after creation.

Example CSV:

"date","teamname","bytes"
"2022-06-07","Servers","12.12"
"2022-06-07","Storage","6.22"
"2022-06-08","Network","0.05"

In this example: date is the date column, teamname is a metadata dimension, and bytes is the metric.

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Set up an S3 endpoint

Finout reads your CSV files through an S3 endpoint — a configured connection to an S3 bucket that grants Finout read-only access.

If you already have an S3 endpoint configured in Finout, skip to Create an S3 CSV telemetry.

To set up a new S3 endpoint:

1. Navigate to Settings > Endpoints.

2. Click Add Endpoint, then select Amazon S3.

3. Under Bucket Access, select Read Only.

4. Copy the External ID shown on screen.

5. In AWS IAM, create a new cross-account role:

   1. Enter the AWS Account ID associated with your S3 bucket.

   2. Enable Require external ID and paste the External ID from Finout.

   3. Click Next through to the review screen.

   4. Name the role FinoutMetricsReadOnlyRole and create it.

   5. Open the newly created role, copy the Role ARN, and paste it back into Finout.

   6. In the role, click Add permissions > Create inline policy.

   7. Select JSON and insert the following policy. Replace <BUCKET_NAME> with your bucket name:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["tag:GetTagKeys"],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:Get*", "s3:List*"],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::<BUCKET_NAME>/*"
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:Get*", "s3:List*"],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::<BUCKET_NAME>"
    }
  ]
}

1. Name the policy finout-access-policy_telemetry_export (or a name of your choosing) and save it.

2. Back in Finout, fill in the endpoint details:

   • Endpoint Name and optional description

   • Role ARN

   • Bucket Name

   • S3 Path Prefix (optional — the folder path within the bucket)

   • Region

3. Click Test Endpoint to verify the connection.

4. Click Add Endpoint.

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Create an S3 CSV telemetry

1. Navigate to Settings > Telemetry.

2. Click Add Telemetry and select S3 CSV.

3. Select an S3 endpoint from the list of configured endpoints.

4. Enter a prefix to identify which CSV files in the bucket belong to this telemetry (required).

   
5. Enter a telemetry name (the display name shown in Finout).

6. Finout fetches a sample of your CSV and displays 10 rows from recent dates. Review the data to confirm you're pointing at the right files.

   
7. Select the date column — one column only.

8. Select the date format that matches your file from the list of supported formats. Finout validates that the column parses correctly and blocks progress if it does not.

9. Select the metadata columns (dimensions) you want to include. You can include up to 10. Deselect any columns you don't need.

By default, no metadata columns are selected. Select the ones you want to use as dimensions in cost allocation and filtering.

1. Select the metric column — one column only. This becomes the telemetry identifier in Finout.

2. Review the full configuration summary: endpoint, prefix, telemetry name, date column and format, selected dimensions, and metric.

   
3. Click Create Telemetry.

Result: The telemetry is created with Active status and appears immediately in the Telemetries table under Settings > Telemetries. Finout begins ingesting data from the next daily sync.

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What's next

• Use your new telemetry in shared cost reallocation

• Build unit economics dashboards that bring cloud cost and business metrics together

• Manage or deactivate telemetries from Settings > Telemetries