Snowflake Usage Templates

Sigma offers easy to use templates to create presentation-ready dashboards displaying your Snowflake account usage data. These dashboards can be used to quickly dive into understanding and sharing your organization’s Snowflake usage.

Summary of Content

Requirements
Usage Dashboard Types
Accessing Snowflake Account Usage Data in Sigma
      Setting a Role on your Connection
      Granting a Role permissions in Snowflake
Create a New Snowflake Usage Dashboard
Troubleshooting Q&A
Related Resources

Requirements

  • You must be an organization Admin in Sigma.
  • Your connection must have access to the warehouse’s account usage data. Learn more.

Usage Dashboard Types

  • Compute Cost: tracks cost by warehouse over time
  • User Adoption: tracks how users are using warehouses and databases
  • Performance Monitoring: tracks database, warehouse, and individual query performance
  • Storage Cost: tracks storage cost by database and over time.
  • Snowflake Cost (Reader Accounts): tracks compute and cloud service costs specific to Reader accounts.

Accessing Snowflake Account Usage Data in Sigma

Before you can take advantage of these templates, you will need to grant the Role used for your Sigma connection to Snowflake access to your warehouse’s ACCOUNT_USAGE schema.

Setting a Role on your Connection

  1. Open your Admin Portal by selecting Administration in the user menu at the top right of your screen.
  2. Select the Connections page from the left hand panel.
  3. Select your connection from the connection list.
  4. The current Role will be listed under Connection Credentials.
    If you would like to change this role, click the blue Edit button under Connection Details.
  5. Enter the new Role.
  6. Click Save.

Granting a Role permissions in Snowflake

To learn how you can grant a Snowflake role permission to your warehouse’s ACCOUNT_USAGE schema, visit Snowflake’s Account Usage documentation.

Create a New Snowflake Usage Dashboard

  1. If you have not already, configure your Snowflake warehouse and its Sigma connection to access your warehouse Account Usage data.
  2. Once your data is available in Sigma, navigate to your Sigma Home Page.
  3. Under DASHBOARD TEMPLATES, select your desired template: Compute Cost, User Adoption, Performance Monitoring, or Snowflake Cost (Reader Accounts). If it doesn't appear on the main page, click VIEW ALL.
    Screen_Shot_2021-01-12_at_2.19.24_PM.png
  4. When you select a template, you will be shown a preview of that template along with a list of tables and columns needed to successfully use the template.
    Screen_Shot_2021-01-12_at_2.26.08_PM.png

  5. First, you will need to select a data source to use with the template.
    Sigma will attempt to select the appropriate data source. If one more data source options are found, you will see the following view:
    Screen_Shot_2021-01-12_at_2.49.44_PM.png
    If you see this view, select your source and a location for your new dashboard. Then click Create. 
    From here you will automatically be redirected to your new dashboard!
    If we were unable to match data in your warehouse to the selected template, you will be prompted to manually select your data sources from the Advanced Table Mapping View.  
    IMPORTANT: There is no need to continue with the instructions below UNLESS you intend to manually select your data source(s).

  6. Select a connection and click Next.
    Note: This step will be skipped automatically if you only have access to one connection.

  7. Select data source tables from the provided lists. Then click Next.

  8. Select a destination for your new dashboard and its sources.
    Note: If creating a new folder using the Create Folder button, don’t forget to name and open the folder before continuing.
    Screen_Shot_2021-01-12_at_3.27.41_PM.png

  9. Click Add.
    From here you will be routed directly to your new dashboard!

Troubleshooting Q&A

Question: My Snowflake Usage Dashboards are slow to load and/or time out. Why? What can I do to improve their performance?

Answer: Slow load times and query timeouts typically occur when the warehouse is struggling to respond to a request. This is often due to warehouse size. In response to slow load times, Sigma will time out a request if the query is still running after 2 minutes.
To check on your query run times and view timeouts, visit your dashboard’s Query display modal.
There are a couple ways you can improve your dashboard performance.

[Option 1] The quickest way to speed up your usage dashboard load time is to filter the date to a smaller date range. `ACCOUNT_USAGE` tables are partitioned by time, so filtering by the date may improve performance.
Screen_Shot_2020-07-01_at_3.18.02_PM.png

[Option 2] To improve your usage dashboard’s performance when working with large or low-performing data sets, we recommend increasing your Snowflake warehouse size to medium or larger. You may also want to create a new connection in Sigma specifically for using Snowflake Usage Templated Dashboards.

Related Resources

Dashboard Templates: An Overview
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Lacework Dashboard Templates
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