Recommendations Widgets
Four widgets surface actionable recommendations on the dashboard: Advisor Recommendations, Orphaned Resources, Commitment Utilization, and Commitment Recommendations. They share the layout described in Shared Widget Behavior; this page covers the metric cards, click destinations, and tier behavior.
Widgets on This Page
Advisor Recommendations
Active Azure Advisor recommendations grouped by category. The external-link icon on the title opens Advisor Recommendations. Requires the Advisor Read permission.
Five metric cards count active recommendations across the Azure Advisor categories: Cost, Security, Performance, High Availability, and Operational Excellence. Click any card to open Advisor Recommendations filtered to that category. Hidden and legacy recommendations are excluded from these counts.
Recent Changes
Time-window dropdown defaults to 3 days, with options 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, and 31 days. Click any row to open Advisor Changes with both scans pre-selected.
Orphaned Resources
Resources with no apparent owner or active dependency, with their estimated savings. The external-link icon on the title opens Orphaned Resources. The subtitle counts orphaned resources after the widget's filters apply. Requires the Data Read permission.
Metric cards
Cards are not clickable. Use the external-link icon on the title or click an individual row to drill in.
- Total Orphaned
- Number of orphaned resources detected after filtering.
- Monthly Savings
- Sum of estimated monthly cost across all orphaned resources, in your billing currency.
- Annual Savings
- Sum of estimated annual cost.
Top 7 Savings Opportunities
The seven highest-cost orphaned resources. Rows show N/A when cost data is unavailable. Click a row to open Orphaned Resources with that resource pre-selected.
Filtering before counts
The widget hides:
- Resources you have already manually hidden in the Orphaned Resources page.
- Resources flagged by metric-based detectors (such as low-traffic VMs) that have had recent activity inside the metrics-timeframe window. Default is 30 days.
Use per-widget settings to tune scope
Raise Min Monthly Cost to filter out low-impact items, or change Metrics Timeframe to a wider or narrower window in the editor.
Commitment Utilization
How well your reservations and savings plans are being used. The external-link icon on the title opens Commitments Dashboard. The subtitle counts reservations and savings plans, and appends · inventory-only when you are on the base tier. Requires the Cost Read permission.
Metric cards
Cards are not clickable.
- Overall Utilization
- Weighted-average utilization across all commitments (e.g.
82.4%). Shows—when no utilization data is available. - Monthly Commitment Spend
- Total monthly cost of all commitments in your billing currency. Always populated when there are commitments.
- Monthly Wastage
- Estimated wasted spend, the unutilized portion of each commitment multiplied by its cost. Shows
—in base tier. - Next Expiry
- Days until the soonest commitment expiry (e.g.
47d). Shows—when no expiry data.
Lowest-Utilized Commitments (Top 7)
Utilization color thresholds: red below 50%, amber below 85%, gray at 85% or above. Click any row to open Commitments.
Base tier is inventory-only
On the base tier you see commitment counts and total monthly spend; utilization, wastage, and the Top 7 list stay empty. Enabling enhanced tier requires additional Azure permissions for Cost Management and reservation/savings-plan utilization. The partial tier populates utilization where data is available and leaves — on resources without it.
Commitment Recommendations
Suggested actions on your reservations and savings plans. The external-link icon on the title opens Commitment Coverage. The subtitle counts purchase, underutilized, and expiring recommendations. Requires the Cost Read permission.
Metric cards
Cards are not clickable.
- Purchase
- Recommended new reservations or savings plans.
- Underutilized
- Existing commitments wasting spend.
- Expiring
- Commitments expiring within the warning window. Defaults to 90 days.
Top Opportunities (Top 7, by monthly impact)
Each row carries a colored dot keyed to subtype: green for purchase, amber for underutilized, red for expiring. Click any row to open Commitment Coverage.
Base tier shows purchases only
On the base tier, only purchase recommendations are populated. Underutilized and Expiring counts read 0 because their detection needs utilization and expiry data available only on partial or enhanced tiers.
Where the 90-day expiry window is set
The expiring window defaults to 90 days and is configured in the scanner settings, see Settings > Scanner. Documentation coming soon for the exact field name on that page.
Shared Behavior
- Advisor counts exclude hidden recommendations (set on the Advisor page) and legacy recommendations.
- Orphaned, Commitment Utilization, and Commitment Recommendations read pre-computed recommendations. They update only when the scanner generates new ones.
- Currency comes from the underlying recommendation data. Multi-currency tenants will see different rows in different currencies.
See also
- Orphaned Resources for cleanup workflows and per-resource detail.
- Commitment Coverage for purchase recommendations, utilization, and expiry triage.
- Permissions & Data Tier for the base / partial / enhanced tier requirements.
Troubleshooting
Advisor counts have not changed in days
Answer
Azure Advisor itself updates infrequently and on its own schedule. New StratoLens scans do not re-run Advisor; they read what Azure has currently published.
Orphaned Monthly Savings shows $0 but I see N resources
Answer
Cost data is missing for those resources, so their rows show N/A. Run a scan after the cost backfill completes; until then the count is correct but cost is unknown.
My commitment row click took me to the page but did not pre-select
Answer
Commitment widget rows currently navigate to the parent page without an item-specific filter. Use that page's search or list to find the row you came from.