You can create a schedule for bill generation using the Automation Central feature of VMware Aria Operations.
Procedure
- Click in the left menu of VMware Aria Operations. Alternatively, click from the three horizontal dots next to the GENERATE BILL button on the Bills page.
- In the Automation Central page, click Add Job.
The
Create New Job page opens. This page displays the following cards:
- Reclaim
- Rightsize
- Billing. This card is available when you when you have VMware Cloud Director configured in VMware Aria Operations.
- Actions
- Click the Billing card.
- In the Billing Information step of the wizard, provide the following inputs and then click Next:
| Property |
Description |
| Name |
Specify a name for the job. This is displayed in the calendar. |
| Description |
Provide a description for the job. |
- In the Select an Object step of the wizard, use the toggle button to display either OVDC or Organization objects in the right hand pane. Drag the OVDC or Organization objects to the left hand pane to generate bills for those objects. You can select multiple objects. Click Next.
- In the Schedule step of the wizard, provide the following inputs:
| Property |
Description |
| Start Date |
Set a start date which is on, or after the current date, for the job to start. Select a date from the calendar displayed on the page.
Note: There will be a delay of up to five minutes for a job to run. The actual start time for an action also depends on the action itself and the number of target objects involved.
|
| Time zone |
For the start time and date to be calculated for the job, select a time zone. Choices are:
- Browser - based on the current location reported by the browser.
- Host - based on the current location of the host machine.
- GMT based time zone - Based on a location calculated as per UTC+0.
|
| Start Time |
Select a start time for the job. The drop-down menu provides options in five minute intervals, starting closest to your current browser reported time. |
| Recurrence |
Set a recurrence for the job. The choices are:
- Weekly. Select the days of the week when you want the job to run, by clicking the day of the week abbreviation.
- Monthly. Select the months when you want the job to run, by clicking the month abbreviation. By default, all the months are selected. For the months that you select, you can configure the job to run:
- On specific days of the month, by clicking the number. Or, the last day of the month, without specifying the exact date, by clicking Last.
- On the specific number of the week (first, second, third, fourth or the last) in the month, combined with the specific day of the week.
You can make multiple selections for each of the options in the drop down menu.
For the Daily, Weekly, Monthly options, you can set when the job must end based on a date, or the number of occurrences. |
| End |
Provide a date when the schedule will end. |
| Bill Start Day |
From the drop down options, provide the start date for the billing period. |
| Bill End Day |
From the drop down options, provide the end date for the billing period. |
| Notifications |
In the Notifications section, select the Receive Updates on Job via Email check box to receive notifications two hours before the job is set to run and after it has been executed. For the email to be sent, you must also select the email outbound plugin from the drop down menu, and enter the email address to which the email must be sent. If you have not created an email outbound plugin, see the topic, Outbound Settings in VMware Aria Operations.
Note: You can send updates via email to only one email ID.
|
- Click Create to complete the steps in the wizard and create the job.
Results
The job to create a bill as per the schedule is created and added to the Automation Central calendar. When you click
Automation Central in the left menu, you see the calendar of events. You can also switch the tabs to
History,
Jobs to see more information about the jobs.
Note: The
Reports tab does not display any information related to billing.
